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A New Era of Justice Seekers

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau is the only program of its kind in the nation. The program works with qualified persons to help reduce recidivism and to encourage entrepreneurship and academic development through a 12-week training program, that is taught on the Texas Southern University (TSU) campus.

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By Jeffrey L. Boney, NNPA Newswire Political Analyst

Imagine spending nearly two decades in prison for a crime you never committed.

Even worse, imagine spending 12 of those years behind bars on death row.

That is the story of former Texas death row inmate Anthony Graves, whose case garnered international attention after he was wrongfully convicted of multiple homicides in 1992. Graves was sentenced to the death penalty.

Graves’ sentence was overturned in 2006. Then, after having to deal with countless legal loopholes and roadblocks, he was forced to fight and wait another four years in order to be fully exonerated and released from prison in 2010 after 18 ½ long years.

Sadly, stories of false imprisonment and wrongful conviction have impacted countless African Americans for decades — from having to deal with the controversial and inhumane convict-leasing system, to flawed public policy that disproportionately impacts African Americans.

Graves’ case serves as but one example of the complex nuances that make up the America’s controversial criminal justice system.

In 2017, Netflix released a documentary entitled “Time: The Kalief Browder Story.” The film chronicles the tragic case of Kalief Browder, a young Black teenager who spent three years of his young life in pre-trial detention and solitary confinement on New York’s Riker’s Island, without ever being convicted of a crime.

Despite denying the charges, Browder was held because he was on probation for a prior incident. On top of that, because his parents could not afford the money for bail to get him out of jail. Half of Broder’s time in jail was spent in solitary confinement, until 2013 when he was released and all charges against him were dismissed.

Two years after being released, at the age of 22, Browder committed suicide outside of his mother’s home, which led to calls for criminal justice reform in New York.

Stories and incidents like these have prompted activists from across the globe to focus on ways to help bring about comprehensive and effective criminal justice reform in the United States, which is why Graves has chosen to work with the ACLU of Texas and Texas Southern University’s Urban Research and Resource Center (TSUURRC) to launch the Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speaker’s Bureau. Graves said this program was much needed across the country.

“I travel all across the country sharing my story and no matter where I go, I hear story after story about someone who has been impacted by the criminal justice system, whether it was them or someone close to them,” said Graves. “I felt like I had to do something to give these people a voice to share their stories, which I strongly believe will empower them to help bring about changes in the criminal justice system in America.”

The Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau is the only program of its kind in the nation. The program works with qualified persons to help reduce recidivism and to encourage entrepreneurship and academic development through a 12-week training program, that is taught on the Texas Southern University (TSU) campus.

The Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau allows formerly incarcerated people to be trained in professional public speaking and to serve as effective ambassadors related to criminal justice issues.

The program utilizes highly credentialed and experienced trainers who follow approved curriculum specific to the topic areas of criminal justice reform. The class sizes range from 5 to 10 students who are trained and prepared for speaking engagements around the country.

Students who successfully complete the program receive a certificate of achievement certifying their skills.

Selection for training is competitive. Applicants submit a 10-minute video for consideration and/or participate in a phone interview. Afterwards, candidates are then invited to a face-to-face interview.

Speakers are trained to be effective agents of change at the local, state and national levels. Speakers’ skills and time are highly valued. Trained speakers are fairly compensated consistent with speaking fees for other public policy professional engagements.

The TSU Urban Research and Resource Center (TSUURRC) chose to partner with the ACLU of Texas with a goal to help reduce mass incarceration by 50 percent. They hope to do this through researching the key drivers of incarceration and formulating policies aimed at impacting those drivers in a way that achieves the goal.

“This program trains the people who will be most influential in telling the real stories and showing the real faces of the criminal justice system,” said Marcia Johnson, TSU law professor and director of the TSU Urban Research and Resource Center. “The program helps to humanize the people within the system instead of seeing them as numbers. It ensures that we know that these are people not to be forgotten but helped to achieve goals that benefit themselves, their families and society.”

TSU students and faculty conduct research on the issue of criminal justice reform in order to educate communities and policy makers on issues like bail reform, sentencing reform and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

“When they tell their compelling stories, policy makers get to see the positive differences they could make,” Johnson added. “We do not have the luxury of marginalizing our fellow citizens. We must act humanely if we want to move our nation forward together.”

The Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau program is being administered by TSU journalism professor Serbino Sandifer-Walker, who developed the curriculum for the program.

The program focuses on a range of communication skills and training, which include:

  • Effective storytelling and general techniques for effective communication
  • Media training and how to effectively communicate with the news media and handle interviews in a variety of different formats
  • Delivery of impactful testimony and how to communicate before legislative bodies
  • How to communicate to the legal profession and engage with private attorneys, public defenders and the District Attorney’s offices
  • Public engagement and generating public support for criminal justice reform by speaking before a general audience

The first seven participants of the Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau recently graduated from the inaugural program and have begun practicing what they have learned by participating in speaking engagements around the country, with one of the first speaking opportunities taking place during the Texas Legislative Session this month.

Having paid their debt to society, previously incarcerated people need and deserve the opportunity to integrate back into civilian life and become positive contributors to society. This program will help these individuals hone and perfect their communication skills, thereby maximizing the impact of their personal testimonies and experiences can have on fostering change in the criminal justice system.

For more information on the Anthony Graves Smart Justice Speakers Bureau, please visit http://urrc.tsu.edu/areas-of-focus/criminal-justice-reform/tsu-anthony-graves-smart-justice-speakers-bureau/.

Jeffrey Boney is a political analyst for the NNPA Newswire and BlackPressUSA.com and the associate editor for the Houston Forward Times newspaper. Jeffrey is an award-winning journalist, dynamic, international speaker, experienced entrepreneur, business development strategist and founder and CEO of the Texas Business Alliance Follow Jeffrey on Twitter @realtalkjunkies.

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Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

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Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.
Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

  • restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
  • finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
  • aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

  • She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
  • In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
  • She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
  • A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

  • Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
  • DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
  • For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

 

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

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Activism

‘Criminal Justice Reform Is the Signature Civil Rights Issue of Our Time,’ says D.A. Pamela Price

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

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“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.
“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and practices of the 1950s, our country is not going to move forward,” she said.

By Ken Epstein

Part Two

District Attorney Pamela Price, facing a recall that began before she took office in January 2023, explained in an exclusive interview with the Oakland Post how she came to dedicate her life to transforming a deeply flawed criminal justice system into one that provides equal justice and public safety for all and ends mass incarceration for African Americans and other working-class people.

She summarized her life experiences as someone who was “traumatized and radicalized” by Dr. King’s murder, joining the Civil Rights Movement full force, getting arrested when she was 13 years old in a civil rights demonstration, being tracked into the juvenile justice and the foster care systems, and making it as a foster kid from the streets of Cincinnati to Yale College.”

“I understand a lot of things about struggle, about sacrifice, about trauma and fortunately survived all of that, and as a survivor learned some important lessons, and I brought all of that with me into the law and have been able to become a civil rights attorney in Alameda County,” she said.

“That’s been the joy of my life; I’ve lived every lawyer’s dream,” she said.

“Years ago, when I first decided to run for district attorney, I realized that mass incarceration was so destabilizing to our communities,” she said.

She saw that the “criminal justice system has so many impacts on our community, the safety of our community, the stability of our community, the growth of our community, the direction of our community.”

“As long as our criminal justice system is stuck in the mentality and the practices of the 1950s … our society is going to be mired in discord, and we will not have social justice, racial justice, economic justice, none of the things that actually make our communities worth living in.”

Speaking about the destructive impact of mass incarceration, Price asked people to consider “how many children have incarcerated parents, where the practice has always been to isolate and eliminate connections between people who are incarcerated and their children and their families and the community. So, when we bring people home, they have no more connection.”

It is crucial to address the needs of “young people in the juvenile justice system when they are more likely and able to be rehabilitated and redirected,” she said. Young people are much more able to be rehabilitated before the age of 18, really before the age of 26, and before they end up in an adult prison.

D.A. Price’s predecessor, Nancy O’ Malley, joined the D.A.’s office in 1984, where she remained for 39 years. She was promoted to a leadership position after just six years in the office during the era of mass incarceration when there was an explosion of prison construction in California.

“Prosecutors like my predecessor were the ones who filled (those prisons) up.  She became a leader in the office around 1990. And what is very important for the public to know is that prior to becoming the district attorney in 2009, she was the chief assistant district attorney for 10 years under Tom Orloff.

“O’Malley worked very closely, hand-in-hand with him for the period of time that included the illegal conduct or the unconstitutional exclusion of Jewish people and Black people from death penalty juries.”

Commenting on the recall campaign against her, she said that had not a handful of multimillionaires and billionaires “put millions of dollars into this, we would not be having this recall. It is not a grassroots movement. It’s a platinum movement.”

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I’m just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said.

If they successfully paint Oakland as a failed city, then hedge fund billionaires and real estate developers can come in and buy up the property cheap, she said.

Though D.A. Price has been bombarded by a massive tsunami of lies, slanders, and misrepresentation, she remains strong and positive because she is a woman of faith, she said.

“I’ve been saved and guided by (a) higher power since I was 13 years old. So, I’m not a new person to faith, and I’m grounded in that,” she said.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.
Activism2 hours ago

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“People have no idea what the vision is for the next district attorney, or where the office will go if I am, in fact, recalled, she continued. “I'm just running against a billionaire,” who does not show his face in public, she said. Courtesy photo.
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