I will remember this holiday break as a special one. My youngest daughter expressed a new interest in movies about Black history, and I was all in! We watched some inspirational movies focused on the roles of Black women, like the new film The Six Triple Eight, depicting the first and only Women’s Army Corps…
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Greetings in this new year. Just weeks ago, I had the pleasure of traveling to Arizona to the EJUSA retreat that was so on time! Our team’s time together was a ray of collective light. It came, however, against a hard background and reality… Daniel Penny, the ‘unofficial’ killer of Jordan Neely, was cleared by…
Read More(December 9, 2024) Thousands of stakeholders from across the political and faith spectrums are calling on President Joe Biden to commute all federal death sentences before he leaves office. The group includes Black pastors, Catholics, former corrections officials, civil rights advocates, current and former prosecutors, families who have lost loved ones to homicide, pro-life conservatives,…
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Over the last week, I have been flooded with calls from friends, family, and people across our network of healers. Many of them have asked me how I’m doing, many have asked for support. I’ve heard fear, rage, grief, anxiety, and confusion. All have told me how tired they are. So they reached out, because…
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This morning we woke to heaviness and uncertainty. We cannot predict the future, but there is no denying: we elected a president who promised retribution, who dehumanized so many people, and who spewed blatant hate and harm. It remains to be seen how deep and how wide the impact will be of this election, but…
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The death penalty system responds to violence with more violence. It takes the trauma that violence produces, multiplies it, and stretches it out over decades — impeding the healing of those who need it. Take action to abolish the death penalty.
Act Now(October 7, 2024) — Equal Justice USA (EJUSA) announced today that it will partner with four new communities to build new restorative justice diversion programs. These programs serve as an offramp for youth, protecting them from the harsh punishment of the criminal legal system while still creating an accountability process that identifies root causes and…
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Freddie Owens. Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams. Travis Mullis. Emmanuel Littlejohn. Alan Miller. Five men, all of them executed over the previous seven days. The last time we had so much state-sponsored killing was in 2003. It has been a horrific week, and I suspect you feel the same heaviness that all of us at EJUSA carry. …
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Just a few weeks ago, I flew to Bogalusa, Louisiana, to join several team members for a special day. They had spent the last year working with community members on a groundbreaking public safety plan. Read the Report On the plane, I continued reading “The Movement Made Us,” David J. Dennis Jr.’s account of his…
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Jen Pagan (she/her) is a Restorative Approaches Specialist with the Center for Restorative Approaches facilitating restorative circles and training school faculty and staff in restorative approaches. Sierra Scott recently sat down with Jen to talk about restorative justice practices and what it is like to facilitate restorative justice circles. Can you describe what restorative justice…
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