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The Movement for Public Safety

woman talking into microphone

Some time ago, we hatched an idea for a handful of videos, narrated by Newark residents, that would tell about the city’s strides on public safety. That idea culminated in late June with a 56-page report and a two-day convening that brought together dozens of Newarkers, including the mayor, and policy experts and funders of justice reform and transformation from across the country.

The initial driving force of the project was our belief that no one had told the full story of what was happening in Newark. Here was a city, once plagued by extreme violence, deep-seated poverty, and ailing social systems, that was reversing its outcomes on murders and shootings. And there was something special at the center.

Community. 

Grass roots organizations and long-time residents were pushing for change and building solutions that focused on the needs of neighborhoods. These ideas and solutions cut to the root causes of violence. 

They also fostered collaboration with the police, but with the insistence that law enforcement cannot be the sole point of contact for public safety. 

There is no question that Mayor Ras J. Baraka has cultivated a unique environment to build a public safety ecosystem. But we believe that they have built a model that can be replicated across the nation. 

But cities can replicate the model only if they know it exists. That’s why we determined this storytelling project was essential, and why we brought Newark’s community organizations and, ultimately, leaders nationwide together for an amazing convening. 

That is how a few social media videos evolved into The Future of Public Safety.

We limited attendance for health and logistical reasons, but we did record all of the externally focused sessions. Please take some time to watch our executive director, Jami Hodge, talk with our partners in producing this report: Mayor Ras J. Baraka and Aqeela Sherrills, chair of the Newark Community Street Team. They talk about why Newark’s public safety ecosystem is essential and how it can guide other cities across the country. 

The future of public safety is now. Get involved.

 

Panel II — Funding and Sustainability

Panel III — Where We Are Going

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Newark: A Blueprint for Safety and Healing

vibrantly painted city mural

Reimagining Justice This Month: June

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence — responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

Newark: A Blueprint for Safety and Healing, NewarkSafety.org

Newark, as moved through and lived in by its people, is a healing city. It is a city still hurting, still learning from the past, still working hard to figure out just what safety means. For decades, Newarkers have leveraged the power and possibility of their experience and connections to break cycles of trauma and violence. The roots of the public safety ecosystem that has grown in Newark are a deep love of community and a commitment to understanding safety not just as the absence of violence, but the presence of wellbeing, and of thriving neighborhoods. Take a walk through the report, listen to the stories of hard work and innovation to center community and equity in public safety, and sign up for updates. 

  • A deep love of community, collective community identity, and a spirit of innovation opened channels of communication that engaged a full community and set the social and cultural conditions for transformation (pg. 28-37)
  • Political leadership and vision, and responsiveness to community solutions created the political and institutional conditions for transformation (pg. 38-41)
  • Community-led strategies like high-risk street intervention, bridge building between community and police, healing-centered programs, and community-led coordination drive transformation (pg. 41-46)
  • Systems-led strategies like budgetary support, City-level coordination, and city and state grant programs strengthened the infrastructure for an ecosystem to grow and thrive. (pg. 46-48)

A Public Safety ‘Ecosystem’: Newark’s Success Story, The Crime Report

With community and police violence on the rise in cities across the country, and headlines about rising crime dominating the news, something different has been happening in Newark. The partnership between the community and the system in Newark offers a case study in what’s possible if we care about safety, wellbeing, and equity. As EJUSA’s Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives, Will Simpson reminds us, the community-centered public safety ecosystem that is growing in Newark is the work of generations. (Bonus: read more about EJUSA’s report in collaboration with the Newark Community Street Team and the City of Newark here). 

California spends $156 million for violence prevention, Just The News

At a time when communities are suffering and politicians are doubling down on policing and mass incarceration, we need transformational solutions more than ever. We know that the healers who are closest to violence are the ones who know those solutions best. This month, the California Violence Intervention and Prevention (CalVIP) program granted $156 million to organizations – including community-based violence intervention and healing groups – in 79 cities. This funding is a vital step toward justice reimagined, and with $53.4 million still available, we need to make sure community-based groups know about the opportunity to apply for these funds. 

 

In Case You Missed It: Read and Share What’s On the EJUSA Blog 

  • Where is the death penalty movement today? — listen to a conversation between Sarah Craft and Jennifer Pryor, Director of Organizing and Community Outreach for Ohioans to STop Exectutions about the evolution of the death penalty movement over the past 17 years.
  • Remembering a Victory for Justice — on the tenth anniversary of the repeal of the death penalty in Connecticut, Colleen Cunningham shares the story of murder victim family members changing the narrative and leading the way to victory.
  • Fearless Advocating — check out Jaylah Cosby’s profile of Pastor Gwendolyn Cook, who has dedicated her life to stopping sexual violence and breaking cycles of generational trauma

 

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The Future of Public Safety is Now

EJUSA HomePage Photo

What is safety?

For centuries elected officials and lawmakers nationwide have grounded the notion of safety in police, prosecutions, and prisons. But are these truly the foundations of safety? 

When we explore the idea of safety more deeply, we understand that the traditional meaning — based on the absence of harm, danger, or injury — does not fully represent what safety means to a community and only perpetuates punitive approaches.  

That has to change. 

Black, Brown, marginalized, and poor communities live with the daily impact of this harmful interpretation of safety. For so long, law enforcement has translated that interpretation by disproportionally targeting these groups, all in the name of “public safety.” A deeper understanding recognizes the white supremacist roots that encourage a “safety” rooted in fear and punishment rather than healing and thriving.  

The Newark community has for years been building a movement to put the public back in public safety by embracing a broader understanding of safety. Long-time residents and grass roots activists have channeled the trauma, grief, and anger that decades of violence and police oppression produced, along with the love, hope, and resilience present within the community, into healing-centered solutions — and the passion to make them reality. 

On behalf of our partners — the Newark Community Street Team and Newark’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery — we are proud to publish a chronicle of that evolving movement: The Future of Public Safety: Exploring the Power & Possibility of Newark’s Reimagined Public Safety Ecosystem.

Newark activists during 24 hours of peace.
Credit: Newark Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery

The movement started as pure activism: community members tired of seeing their friends and family members killed or harmed. They demanded change. Some identified specific needs in the community and built solutions to the root causes of violence. The strategies started to complement each other and have a real impact. 

These strategies weren’t necessarily new. But they didn’t fit inside the dominant paradigm because they are rooted in the dignity of each person rather than the “good people” vs. “bad people” frame central to our punitive approaches.The leaders driving these alternative strategies are challenging that dominant paradigm. They are expanding the notion of safety beyond the absence of violence and danger to make the presence of well-being and the infrastructure to support it essential to public safety. 

The Future of Public Safety captures the stories of Newark’s people, the trauma that inspired them to seek change and the hope and commitment that turned ideas into a working ecosystem of solutions. 

We release this report now to lift up the work that has been happening for generations in Newark because other cities can learn from Newark’s journey and replicate the successes. The need is urgent. The future of public safety is now.

Jamila Hodge, Executive Director
Will Simpson, Director of Violence Reduction Initiatives

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Fearless Advocating

Paster Cook with one of the youth she's helped

Pastor Gwendolyn Cook was a preacher before she became a fierce advocate for young women swept into sex trafficking. As a preacher she had the unique position of supporting her congregants in their lowest moments, including while they are in prison. The individuals that stood out to Pastor Cook the most were young girls.

Pastor Cook serves the Camden, NJ, and she is the newest member of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network. She serves a special role on the network because she has many years of experience helping youth. Her gift for accessing the needs of young people made her uniquely positioned for helping young girls.

Most of the youth she served were survivors of sexual assault and sex trafficking. After visiting almost 50 girls over a number of visits in a female juvenile prison, she says, “I couldn’t believe there were so manly little girls in that situation.” On the ride home, she couldn’t stop crying from the weight of all the girls she had just seen. Even through her tears, Pastor Cook thought, “How can I help them?”

She started mentoring girls in a local juvenile facility in 2009. Her advocacy then began to expand when she realized that children all over New Jersey needed help.

Pastor Cook recognized the risk from increased gang activity, drug distribution, and overall crime and knew that she needed to pray for the youth and find a way to support them. The need became even more apparent when the violence reached her own family. Her niece was swept up into sex trafficking.

Pastor Cook’s solution was to create an organization that acted as a crisis unit. Women Walking in the Spirit (WWITS) Girls Mentoring Program isn’t a 9 to 5 organization,” Pastor Cook said. “Crime doesn’t happen that way.” And she’s right — especially in Camden, a city well-known for its poverty and struggles with violence. The city’s need for trauma-informed care is essential.

WWITS gets refers from courts, police, and schools, and community members for girls that might be at risk of being involved in the justice system.

The organization’s goal is to try and connect with the girls before they become victims. One of the ways Pastor Cook does is by “mentoring the whole family.” Sexual violence can be a generational trauma, and in order to help the girls, the whole family has to receive support.

Her relationship with EJUSA first started when we worked together to frame a narrative for WWITS’s work and build a program model so they could gain new funding sources.

In the future, Pastor Cook wants to build an art institution. She believes kids are put into environments, like the gray blank walks of public-school classrooms, that subconsciously prepare them to be in prison. Instead, kids should be in an environment that urges them to be creative and free.

She first collaborated with EJUSA to help build the framework for her organization and find resources for funding. And so far she’s benefited from learning about applying for grants and working with Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. Working with EJUSA has expanded beyond anything she could have possibly thought she could do for the children of her community.

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Remembering a Victory for Justice

three women sitting next to each other

Ten years ago, the governor of Connecticut, Dannel Malloy signed a bill ending the state’s death penalty. This victory was the result of years (decades, really!) of organizing and advocacy, and I was lucky enough to be on the frontlines of the final couple years of that push.  

There are so many people and events that made repeal possible, but on this anniversary, I want to share the story that I often tell when presenting to classes or bragging to friends how cool my work is. It’s the story of a mother, outside a courthouse, knocking on the door of a news van with a clear message: “My son matters, too.” This woman, and this refrain, were crucial to the demise of the death penalty in Connecticut.  

The woman is Vickye Coward. Her son, Tyler, was murdered in 2007. That same year, Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters were killed in a home invasion. The trials for the two men who murdered the Petits and the man who killed Tyler took place at the same courthouse, at the same time. Tyler was a Black kid from the inner city. The Petits were white and from an affluent neighborhood. One of these cases got far more attention than the other. 

While Vickye attended the trial for the man who murdered her son, news vans swarmed to tell the story of the Petits. Vickye felt pain for both her son and the Petit family. And she was frustrated that only one of their stories was being told. The Petits had become a household name; Vickye wanted Tyler remembered as well. When the press paid no attention, she started knocking. “My son matters, too.”

Her advocacy on behalf of her son became a news story. Then I went knocking on Vickye’s door. She welcomed me with open arms and an infectious smile, and then rolled up her sleeves. 

Vickye knew that the death penalty was exacerbating the disparities she saw in the system: Some cases received much more attention and resources. The loss of white women was far more likely to be considered worthy of the ultimate punishment than the death of a black man.  Instead of helping grieving families heal, the current system fed them lies about punishment as closure. 

three women sitting next to each other
(From left to right) Vickye Coward, Fran Watson, and Colleen Cunningham before the Senate vote in 2012.

Vickye and other family members of murder victims were the backbone of the campaign to end Connecticut’s death penalty. They had to be. 

In 2011, we thought we had enough votes in the legislature to pass the bill, but at the 11th hour, a senator changed her mind. Dr. Petit, the lone survivor of the high profile home invasion, had come to talk to her. He was adamant that the men who killed his family be executed. Citing his pain, the bill died that year, and the future of Connecticut’s death penalty was framed as a question about murder victims’ families. 

For years murder victims’ families in Connecticut had been sharing their beliefs about the death penalty. But Vickye and a core team decided they could add more voices and share a clear message: regardless of how one personally feels about the death penalty,  the system harms murder victims’ families. The strategy worked. 

The murder victims’ family members in Connecticut set out – with grace, compassion, and fierce determination – to educate lawmakers and the media of the many ways the death penalty inflicts harm on surviving families. Vickye was at the helm of this – writing op-eds and letters to her local paper, hosting press conferences, having small group meetings with lawmakers, speaking at community events, and mobilizing 179 Connecticut murder victims’ family members to sign a group letter in support of ending the death penalty. 

The result was that Connecticut became the 17th state to end the death penalty. They also forever changed the way media and the public framed how the death penalty harmed murder vicitms’ families. After the Connecticut campaign, news stories and common wisdom said, “of course murder victims’ families oppose the death penalty, look at what a rotten process it is for them.”

This work rippled beyond Connecticut to other state campaigns to end the death penalty. And so did Vickye. After the victory in Connecticut, I started working intensely with the team in Colorado. One of the first things we did was fly out Vickye to meet with Colorado murder victims’ families. Vickye’s story, and the story of the Connecticut win, inspired a core group of Colorado murder victims’ families who were instrumental voices for Colorado’s 2020 repeal. 

Vickye is also a part of EJUSA’s Trauma and Healing Network. This network of local leaders share their experiences with trauma, healing from violence, and how they are doing the work of reimagining the justice system. Just the other day, Vickye told me she’d met a grieving mother in her new hometown and was helping her make connections to healing services. 

Throughout the Connecticut campaign, Vickye and the other murder vicitms’ families would explain they do this deeply painful and personal work because they don’t want any other families to suffer the way they have. That selflessness and clarity of purpose cuts through the noise of a controversial debate where so often people have long-held positions they don’t want to reconsider. A mother, knocking on a door to make sure people understand  “my son matters, too,” can change history. That’s something to celebrate 10 years later. 

Stay tuned. Later in May we will bring together voices from the Connecticut repeal campaign, including Vickye, in a webinar to reflect on what we’ve learned from the campaign and the 10 years of repeal efforts since then.

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Healing Communities through Trauma to Trust

Lionel LaTouche interview screenshot

A vision of a world where violence is rare is EJUSA’s north star. As we work toward making that vision a reality, we must address the violence that over-policing inflicts on Black and brown communities — which sows enduring fear and distrust.

We invite you to watch a short video on Trauma to Trust, our groundbreaking initiative in Newark, NJ, that moves us toward this vision, by exploring and healing the trauma that policing so often inflicts.

Youtube video screenshot

 Trauma to Trust video

As a supporter of EJUSA, you know that our criminal legal system — fueled by racism and a fixation on punishment — creates and aggravates trauma.

Trauma to Trust reduces the harm caused by such trauma. Community members and law enforcement spend 16 hours together, delving into a series of difficult but necessary conversations about the​​ impact of police violence on communities of color. At the end of the training, residents and police officers report greater trust, empathy, and mutual understanding.

We thank Chubb for making this video possible and for its support of the soon-to-be-launched Trauma to Trust program in Baton Rouge, LA, and other efforts to replace a system anchored in retribution with one that produces healing and true safety for everyone.

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Where is the death penalty movement today?

scales of justice statue

The prospect of a death penalty repeal has never gotten as far along in Ohio as it has this year. So it seemed like a great time to bring together Jennifer Pryor, Director of Organizing & Community Outreach at Ohioans to Stop Executions, and Sarah Craft, Death Penalty Program Director at EJUSA. They discussed the evolution of the death penalty movement over the past 17 years. 

To put it plainly, a lot has changed. In 2005, leadership that supported executions. Today, national and local leaders vocally condemn capital punishment. Executions have decreased to just over a third of what the numbers were in the past.

National support for repealing the death penalty has grown every year. Many more people are being vocal about being against executions fundamentally. Historically, a call for innocence or obvious racial bias has dictated the wave of support.

There’s a clearer understanding that racial disparities in the death penalty run throughout the criminal legal system. Visit our YouTube Channel to listen to their conversation.

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A Review of Who We Are

who we are movie poster

Growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, a focal point during the Civil Rights Movement, I had been to museums and monuments around the city that honor activists and organizers from the sixties. I’ve read every plaque, and I know every story where a Black person was denied access to a building during segregation. 

The steps leading up to my school were the very same steps that a mob beat Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth for trying to enroll his daughters into John Herbert Phillips High School, a white school at the time. 

I can give you directions to Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, point out one of A.G. Gaston’s old buildings, and recite Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” Each story, legacy, and struggle permeated my everyday life in both obvious and subtle ways.

As I got older, I became aware of the evolution of anti-Black racism over the years. The familial relation between American slavery and it’s offspring — mass incarceration, poverty, death penalty, and others — became clearer.

As I sat down to participate in a virtual screening of Jeffery Robinson’s Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America, I was skeptical that I would learn anything new about our country’s history of racism.

My issue was that I kept being left with the same unanswered questions. How do we reconcile what’s been going on for centuries with what people of color are still suffering from today? And, I had yet to watch anything that fully answered my questions.

The documentary opens with Robinson, the former deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, giving a lecture on Juneteenth about anti-Black racism in the U.S. The platform reminded me of a TEDTalk, so I was excited to see the visual aspects of his speech. 

To reduce his lecture down to its bare bones, he argues that America, the country that we love, was founded on anti-Black racism, and the effects of that are pretty obvious.

He draws a line from Virginia laws that allowed the death of an enslaved person while resisting a master, and the death of Black people today killed while resisting arrest by a police officer.

Throughout his talk, there’s footage of him traveling to lynching sites and institutions that were built by enslaved people, showing the remnants of our racist founding. 

The most troubling part of the documentary was his conversations with supporters of the confederacy. The individuals he met with were unaware of how enslaved people were treated and the true cause of the Civil War. As books and media that tell the full picture of America are banned, I fear that the gap between the truth and the people is widening.

Many of the reviews of this movie call it a necessary watch. Whenever a retelling of our history is in the form of a movie or a series, it’s called “necessary.” To their credit, the reviewers are just trying to express how much they think viewers would benefit from watching. However, every other piece that comes out on a streaming platform can be considered “necessary” or a “must watch.” 

What’s the difference between Who We Are and, say, a show like Bridgerton, that is considered a “must watch”? 

The thing that’s standing between us as Americans and true change, is our inability to reckon with our history. Until we do that, there will always be a block. So Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America isn’t “necessary,” it’s a step in removing that block.

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A Personal Experience with Trauma to Trust

people talking at table

When someone joins the EJUSA team, the organization works to get them to Trauma to Trust quickly to experience the exploration of trauma and its impact on people and communities. My turn came in the fall of 2021.

I hit the road, in central New Jersey, at 6 a.m. to get to the training center in Newark early. I was excited to lend staff support to the team as they delivered a unique, innovative training in a challenging session.

I should back up and give a little context. EJUSA’s Trauma to Trust (T2T) program is a 16-hour experience that creates space for community residents such as survivors of violence, formerly incarcerated people, and community activists to have a guided conversation with local police officers. The goal is to reduce harm in the relationship between police and communities of color by increasing empathy, mutual understanding, trust, and accountability that repairs through truth exchanges and learning about trauma.

Every training session is different, but I didn’t expect a potentially traumatic incident to intrude on the work at hand. Our program leader, Lionel Latouche, had his wallet stolen on his way to the session. The experience could have thrown the team off track, for understandable reasons. But the power of a trauma-informed space quickly became evident. 

Tracee Thomas, T2T’s project manager, called the EJUSA team — including Zayid Mohammed, our Newark strategist, and Dr. Monique Swift, a former full-time staff who serves as a session facilitator — back to center as we stood facing each other outside the training room. 

Tracee led us through grounding techniques and created a sense of safety — crucial when a person is involved in a traumatic situation, regardless of their perspective. We didn’t just learn about trauma, we experienced collective healing together. We did some deep breathing. Each of us shared a word that we would be holding throughout the day. I felt myself relax. 

Lionel arrived just a few minutes into introductions, and he and Dr. Swift kicked off the session with a bang. My nerves dissipated as I started soaking up the learning. 

Dr. Swift first talked about the three E’s of trauma. Individual trauma is a result of an event that a person experiences that has a lasting adverse effect. So, for instance, a childish scare in a hallway might be an event that you experience, but may not have a lasting impact. However, if hallways continue to scare you, then we would call that a traumatic event.

We shifted to learning about Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). This theory suggests that these traumatic events, specifically in childhood,increase the likelihood of being impacted by a decreased lifespan. We talked about marginalized groups such as Black women, the largest growing group of incarcerated individuals. Their incarceration is often preceded by sexual trauma, hence the notion of a “sexual abuse to prison pipeline.”

You could feel the tension loosen as the community members and police officers leaned in for a Minute Earth video on the science of epigenetics. We learned that fear can change your genetics and impact the chemicals that affect your DNA, as evidenced by a study of Swedish families who suffered starvation. Our T2T cohort included Black and Brown people who collectively nodded as we heard the term “transgenerational epigenetic inheritance.”

By the middle of the day, everyone was eager to dig into locally sourced lunch from Newark’s BurgerWalla. Sharing a meal feels crucial to the process of breaking down barriers and creating common ground. Officers and community members were tentatively sharing jokes as they ate and drank. The day continued with more intensive learning.

We returned to the training center the following Wednesday for another eight-hour day. At this point, people were familiar with each other’s faces. I felt a warmer vibe as we served breakfast and coffee. Attendees were already asking Tracee who would be catering lunch because they knew she’d selected another all-star local vendor. Community members and officers got excited when they learned that  Irvington’s KB’s BBQ Smokehouse was on the menu. 

Having laid a solid foundation and understanding of trauma in session one, session two focused on equipping participants with trauma-informed responses to incidents of violence. 

T2T participants started to open up about the trauma they experience in their respective roles. I teared up as I heard one community advocate talk about the trauma of seeing a loved one’s dead body treated disrespectfully by the police. The pain was palpable, even years later. Another community member was finally able to express his deep grief about losing a childhood friend to gun violence. He had never had the space to express the pain. 

My heart ached when I heard a police officer talk about watching a woman take her last breath as her toddler nephew stood by, then having to go to his own home and greet his wife and kids as if nothing significant had happened. Dr. Swift probed the officer about how he felt. Finally, after deflecting for several minutes, he was able to articulate how traumatic that day had actually been. Trauma truly is everywhere. Once this officer reluctantly admitted to the psychological impact his work had on him, he also shared the fact that he struggled to get the support he needed. 

The reality is, officers often don’t have the time to properly heal. And there’s some stigma involved when officers do ask for that kind of support, which perpetuates the trauma cycle.That revelation caused many community members to gasp. Who would want their mental health held against them when being considered for promotion? This double-bind drew empathy from the whole room. Our current criminal legal system harms everyone. 

We could feel people changing their minds in that training center in Newark: we slowly moved from an “us versus them” paradigm, to a recognition of the universal need to heal from collective trauma caused by violence. We went from blaming individuals, to naming the present day systems and historical dynamics that cause us to lash out. We progressed from seeing punishment as the only solution, to imagining a system where safety is built through collective healing and non-punitive accountability. 

I think we all left that day feeling cautiously optimistic about implementing what we’d learned. I, for one, gained a trauma-informed lens that I’m confident will stay with me.

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Remarkable Women

women looking at water

Reimagining Justice This Month: February

Reimagining Justice This Month highlights stories about effective responses to violence — responses that disrupt cycles of violence, heal trauma, and address structural racism.

Remarkable Women: Tonja Myles, NBC Local 33

In this spotlight on one of EJUSA’s Trauma & Healing Network members, Tonja Myles, we can see what is possible when solutions come from the people who are most impacted by violence. As a survivor many times over, Tonja knows that people in crisis need community, not enforcement. That’s why she’s a leading advocate for the 988 crisis line, a national alternative to 911 that goes straight to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. 

Not Another Child: Mother Turns Grief into Solutions for Gun Violence, Grieving Families, Mississippi Free Press

Oresa Napper-Williams is connected to a growing network of women meeting the needs the current justice system fails to address. Mothers, sisters, grandmothers, and daughters are bringing empathy where law enforcement too often only blames young Black people for the harm they experience. They’re also building legacies of humanity where the legal system ignores and further hurts communities. From harm reduction to grief support, and healing circles to wrap-around services, these women are breaking cycles of trauma and creating equity and safety through collective action.    

NYC Council Supports Movement to Expand Victim Compensation Eligibility, Pix11

Movements are powerful when they are led by the people closest to the problems that need solving. Survivors and victims’ family members gathered in New York City to tell their stories. They know intimately that in the wake of violence, people need pathways to healing, including financial support for unexpected hospital bills, mental health counseling, and replacing locks. They also know first-hand just how many barriers exist in the current system, especially for those who need support the most. Their voices are leading the call to expand access to victim compensation and create pathways to healing for all. (Bonus: if you’re in New York, you can add your voice, too, and learn more about the issue from our partners at Common Justice here).

In Case You Missed It: On the EJUSA Blog 

  • A Step Forward for True Justice — in the Director’s Corner, Jami Hodge shares her thoughts on the groundbreaking nomination of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court.
  • Failed By the System — read Sarah Craft’s call for all of us to act to stop the execution of Melissa Lucio, whose experience epitomizes the cycles of violence perpetuated by the criminal legal system.

 

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