On Tuesday, June 4th at 5:30 Pacific/8:30 Eastern, we invite you to join us for the second of our Conversations on youth justice reinvestment. Zachary Norris and Grace Bauer, co-directors of Justice for Families coalition, are co-producing this series. Justice for Familiesis a national alliance of local organizations working to end the youth incarceration epidemic in the United States.
Converse with and join the Q & A with these amazing change-makers at the forefront of the fight for Youth Justice, working to end the school-to-prison pipeline and the for-profit prison system that is shackling the future of our families and our communities’.
We will feature Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) organizers Kim McGill, Kruti Parekh, and youth leaders. YJC is successfully building a youth, family and prisoner-led movement to challenge race, gender and class inequity in L.A.’s and California’s juvenile injustice system. Direct actions, advocacy, political education, transformative justice and activist multi-media arts are all used by YJC to demand immediate and systemic change.
Additionally, Nicole Cheatom will join us. Nicole is a leader with the Baltimore Algebra Project (BAP). BAP is a youth-run non-profit that increases math literacy and empowers Baltimore’s students through fair-wage math teaching jobs, education-as-a-right advocacy, and leadership development. In the last nine years, BAP has funded $2 million in wages to employ youth. Recently, BAP was part of an astounding coalition that successfully prevented the construction of a new $99.7 million youth detention building .
We also welcome King Downing, attorney, founder of the Human Rights-Racial Justice Project, member of theCampaign to End the New Jim Crow, and former Program Analyst for the Healing Justice Program of the American Friends Service Committee.
Our guests and their groups are united in their desire to move resources (money, time, human energy) away from locking people up and toward prevention, building healthy communities, and supporting youth and families!
For our June 4th Conversation, each guest will bring their expertise on, and holistic solutions to, the devastating impact of our nation’s juvenile injustice policies. We will hear success stories and future plans: supplemental education structures, affordable transportation and employment, closure of youth detention facilities, prevention of new youth prisons, restorative justice practices, community-based prevention and support systems, and more!
Our progressive cabinet podcast series, Conversations with the Cabinet is in its eighth year, and our June 4th interview is our 87th. This project has evolved to now focus on sharing practical ideas and engage in coalition building. Our follow-up resource pages are an online creative echo chamber for organizer- and stakeholder-led solutions to difficult issues. Our technology-based Conversation series functions alongside Backbone Campaign trainings and workshops. We hope both structures are of use.
Call instructions:
Register for the call by clicking the RSVP or join the conversation links. You will receive an email with the call-in number and PIN. You can ask questions through our public chat atBackboneCampaign.org/chat, this will let the moderator know to call on you. No password is required to use the chat, just type your name into the username section.
We invite call participants to ask questions of the quests and have a dialogue. To facilitate turning the conversation into great resource page in the future we’ll keep other mics muted to cut down on the background noise. If you are not at your computer you can still indicate you have a question. PLEASE let us know that you have a question or comment by pressing “1” on your telephone keypad. We’ll then ask you what your question is and let Diane our moderator know to call on you.
Join the growing movement for youth justice reinvestment! Join our Conversation!
Diane Wittner
Bill Moyer
Conversations with the Cabinet
Backbone Campaign