Freedom Dreams

A final reflection from Amanda and Casey as they sign off, at least for now. Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

On July 8th, 2013 people being help in prisons across California stopped eating. They were protesting the state's use of ⁠solitary confinement⁠. 29,000 inmates participated in the strike. On this episode, you'll hear about the origins of this mass movement and how it impacted policy and perception around the use of solitary in the United States. --- Eduardo Dumbrique is studying to become a lawyer through an apprenticeship with the PJLC. Mr. Dumbrique began his legal studies during the 24 years he spent in prison, convicted of a crime he did not commit. As a jailhouse lawyer, Ed successfully litigated Title XV and civil rights cases against the state, including Dumbrique v. Brunner, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 105791, in which he sought relief for prison guards' retaliation against him for his participation in a hunger strike protesting solitary confinement. Now, free and fully exonerated, Ed works to ensure that children and their families are treated equitably and fairly within the juvenile justice system. He travels and speaks on his experience as someone wrongfully convicted and sent to adult prison at age 15. He has spoken to high school students and youth in juvenile halls and camps, sharing his story and encouraging them to cherish their lives and futures. Sarah Shourd is an award-winning, trauma-informed investigative journalist, Pulitzer-presented playwright, anti-prison theater activist, author, producer, somatic practicioner and 2019 Stanford John S. Knight Fellow based in Oakland and San Rafael, CA. Dolores Canales is Co-Founder of California Families Against Solitary Confinement --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

"It's the education that goes with wanting to be safe. And if you talk to young people, they get it. They understand the police don't make us safe. The cameras don't make us safe. We make us safe." Myrtle Thompson Curtis, Feedom Freedom Growers --- Myrtle Thompson Curtis is the founder of Feedom Freedom Growers. She is a mother, grandmother, visionary organizer and thinker on the east side of Detroit. Myrtle is a life-long Detroiter , urban farmer and member of the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center. Curtis Renee is an aspiring healer and chef, a reiki practitioner, and a lifelong Nonviolence (positive peace) activist from Detroit, Michigan. Curtis' Social Justice passions encompass Black liberation, Black & Palestinian solidarity, feminism, and queer activism.   Mama Myrtle and Curtis join Freedom Dreams to describe their vision for safety and beloved community in Detroit and why programs like Project Greenlight and ShotSpotter are not part of that vision. Curtis was featured in season 1 of Freedom Dreams in the episode, How Can We Heal and Reimagine Safe Communities?--- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

"The big idea was 1) Be hyperlocal. 2) Determine what resources are needed. 3) Shift the mindset of what the role of policing in the neighborhoods are and how they perform those duties." - Marlon Peterson --- Since his decade of incarceration, Marlon Peterson has written, created programming, lectured, organized, and advocated alongside the formerly incarcerated, victims of gun violence, womxn, immigrants, and young people.  Marlon is the author of Bird Uncaged: An Abolitionist’s Freedom Song, host of the DEcarcerated Podcast, and owner of his own social impact endeavor, The Precedential Group Social Enterprises and its nonprofit arm, Be Precedential, Inc. His TED talk, “Am I not human? A call for criminal justice reform”, has amassed over 1.2 million views. --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

"The absence of any statistics, like data, history, etcetera around informality is what drove me into getting into it because it was like, these are questions that kept me up at night that I wanted to solve." - Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of EAT - Equity and Transformation --- Richard Wallace is the Founder and Executive Director of EAT and Nicole Laport is the Director of Communications at EAT, an organzation that's been doing something really powerful in Chicago the past several years. They’re organizing people in the informal economy—that includes economic activities that aren’t regulated or protected by the state. As EAT puts it, “These are the bucket boys who we pass on the way to the train every day, the DVD bootlegger at your local barber shop, the person selling loose cigarettes at two for a dollar in front of the local liquor store, and the trans and cisgender commercial sex workers in our communities.” This is a huge part of the economy! And it’s often one that people with criminal records are forced into because they’re shut out of the formal workforce. Very often, work in the informal economy is criminalized, which means it can lead to re-incarceration and extreme poverty. So, EAT saw a need to build power among informal workers and fight to change the structure of the economy itself, and fight the anti-Black racism at its core.--- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

"We consider ourselves an incubator for transformative justice here in the south. We are committed to really creating a new way of being, of dealing with violence." - Rukia Lumumba, Executive Director, People's Advocacy Institute. Rukia Lumumba comes from a lineage of Black Freedom Fighters. Her dad was Chokwe Lumumba, former member of the Republic of New Africa and eventual mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She is the Executive Director of the People's Advocacy Institute, co-coordinator of the Electoral Justice Project, and campaign co-coordinator of the successful Committee to Elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba for Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She joins Freedom Dreams to describe how she's help build an incubator for transformative justice in the south. --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠. ⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG⁠

"We think that there is a basis for human beings to change, and if I didn't think that I wouldn't be involved in this. I often say I, I don't give this speech to alligators...they're not going to change, and I'd be wasting my time. I do think that humans can change and we have to shift the conditions that make it possible for people who may be leaning toward change to want to actually walk toward each other in a way that hold redemptive possibilities for the nation. - Reverend Nelson Johnson, Co-Founder of the Beloved Community Center. On November, 3rd, 1979, Reverend Nelson Johnson, Joyce Johnson and fellow members of their Communist Workers Party helped organize an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally and march. Five people were killed that day and others injured. Over 20 years after the Greensboro Massacre, the city convened a truth and reconciliation process designed to unpack and better understand the events of 1979. On this episode of Freedom Dreams, we ask...did it work?  --- DIG DEEPER: The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission Beloved Community Center --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠. ⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center IG

"There is not one model or one program that is going to make us safe. There is not one alternative that is going to replace prison. That is not the formula. It's like, what is the whole range of the kind of thing we should do that cumulatively is gonna keep us safe?" - Danielle Sered Danielle Sered is the founder of Common Justice, an organization that develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed.CJ operates the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States that focuses on violent felonies in the adult courts. --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠To support our work click here⁠. ⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠ ⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠ ⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠ ⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠ ⁠Detroit Justice Center IG

"We can do incredible things from a technological medical care standpoint. Right? Like there's been incredible advances in healthcare and with some of the things that we have in terms of like stopping bleeds and doing all these things right to prolong life. But, you know, I knew that there was a gap in terms of  preventing re-injury." - Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE: Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday --- A doctor in Detroit notices the same patients keep passing through his ER, often with gunshot wounds. He realizes this "golden hour" of opportunity is the precise time to engage patients with a transformative intervention to stop an unnecessary cycle of violence.  GUESTS: Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE, Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday & Chuck, a DLIVE member Learn more about DLIVE @ detroitlive.org --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here. Freedom Dreams Website Freedom Dreams IG Freedom Dreams Twitter Detroit Justice Center Detroit Justice Center IG

"What if you can still feel a sense of justice without reaching out to the legal system? What if you still can have access to healing without punishment? What if this person who harmed you can do the hard work to never harm anyone ever again? Would that feel like justice for you? And if so, how can we support you in achieving that goal?" - Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center  On this opening episode of Freedom Dreams: Season 2, Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center in St. Louis, Missouri is building a movement of survivors in order to design systems that actually keep us safe, rooted in Black freedom, self-determination and healing. --- Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here. Freedom Dreams Website Freedom Dreams IG Freedom Dreams Twitter Detroit Justice Center Detroit Justice Center IG