I recently attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Mothers in Charge, the essential organization that Dr. Dorothy Johnson-Speight founded after her son’s senseless murder. She supports and heals mothers and family members who have lost loved ones to violence and incarceration. MIC and Dr. Dorothy have been incredible partners with EJUSA over the years while…
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Have you ever thought about your relationship with your breath? To your body? For Black, brown, indigenous, queer, and trans people working on the frontlines of violence intervention, the relationship to the body and breath can be simultaneously sacred, tenuous, and uncertain. BlPOC communities have experienced generations of surveillance from police, forced labor, and bodily…
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EJUSA staff members and partners traveled to Montgomery, Alabama to visit Equal Justice Initiative’s Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice. The tour group included partners from our Evangelical Network and Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. Here are reflections from our staff. Demetrius Minor, Manager, Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty We…
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In 2016, we launched a groundbreaking program in Newark, NJ, that brought community members and police officers into the same room to explore trauma — especially as it is connected to encounters with policing. And we wanted to explore the trauma of both groups. Since then hundreds of community members and police officers have gone…
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Lionel Latouche, our director of Trauma to Trust (T2T), turned the lights back on as the video of Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul apologizing for the killing of Alton Sterling came to a close. My chest was tight, feeling the tension of the room as Baton Rouge community members and police officers waited for…
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I recently got a text message from one of the most prominent district attorneys in the country. He thanked me for writing this op-ed on what survivors of violence need — and why meeting those needs, especially in the communities most impacted, builds community safety. He told me that his attorneys were talking about it. …
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Thirty years ago, my father was the victim of a brutal assault that had a lasting impact that no one in my family could appreciate in that moment. We all struggled in different ways. A big part of that struggle stemmed from not seeing ourselves as survivors of violence, and not having access to the…
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Tell your Oklahoma lawmakers, urging them to support legislation that would halt all executions so they can address the recommendations of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission and the concerns raised by Richard Glossip’s case.
Tell Your Lawmakers
About six weeks ago, Najee Seabrooks sent out a call for help. He texted his co-workers at the Paterson Healing Collective — an EJUSA partner and ally in the movement to build community safety — that he was in crisis and he needed them. Najee was trained as a healer and a violence interventionist, so…
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In 2018, I left the Department of Justice after a dozen years as a prosecutor. I had seen our criminal legal system up close and came away certain that it was too big, too rigid, and too steeped in its racist origins to ever deliver true justice. I wanted to find the solutions to violence,…
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