Shades of Freedom

What would it take to make Detroit a “just city” – an actual sanctuary of justice for its residents? Amanda Alexander, founder and Executive Director of the Detroit Justice Center is working on exactly that. Based on a wide range of experiences – from learning alongside ACT-UP AIDS activists, to spending time in newly post-apartheid South Africa, to the Movement for Black Lives – Alexander combines her background as a historian and an attorney to reimagine safety and justice in Detroit.

For Eric Cadora, Director of the Justice Mapping Center, the map is just the beginning of the process. In this episode of "Shades of Freedom," he walks us through his youth in Lebanon, and on to his work in the US (and elsewhere around the globe) helping communities to understand their justice-related data, and turn that information into new ways to transform the justice system and enhance community safety.

Chekemma J. Fulmore-Townsend, President and CEO of the Philadelphia Youth Network, joins us for this episode to discuss the evolution of youth justice work in Philadelphia, and her own personal journey from working directly with youth and families, to running Philadelphia’s major youth-serving nonprofit.

This bonus episode of Shades of Freedom is drawn from a February 2021 online event of the same name. The guests discuss how, as a nation, we are witnessing increased public support for re-imagining and transforming policing and the whole criminal justice system, and tackles the question of how we can make change happen in a way that takes into consideration the historic injustice of our legal system.

For nearly three decades, prisoners have been denied access to a college education – but it wasn’t always that way. The Reverend Vivian D. Nixon, Executive Director of College & Community Fellowship, joins our podcast to explore her own journey through both prison and college, and to tell the story of how federal policy was shifted over time, as part of the ‘war on drugs’ and the continuation of Jim Crow via the justice system. Reverend Nixon calls out the power of education to create change in individuals, who can then change our society and our underlying beliefs about who is valued, and who is not. Recent bipartisan federal legislation will remove one key barrier to college-in-prison, but much remains to be done to erase stigmas and embrace education and opportunity for all people.

Bobbin Singh, founding Executive Director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, discusses Oregon’s past and how that history influences its current policing response to protests and the prison system’s response to COVID-19, as well as calls on Oregon to recognize its past in order to transform its criminal legal system.

Dwayne Betts’ story is one of tribulation and triumph. At 16, he was tried as an adult and spent eight years in prison. He discovered a love for literature while incarcerated and decided to become a writer.

How did we end up with schools that are based in fear, rather than love, and how is that leading towards the adultification and criminalization of Black girls in particular? Dr. Monique Morris joins us to look into these questions, as well as the paths forward to a better future.