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The best part about me being me, is... I'm not trying to be you.
— Queneke King (@mzqueneke) May 10, 2014

Alaska Cannabis Club

Fact Sheet: How Bad Is the School-to-Prison Pipeline?

“In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunities of an education.  Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right that must be made available on equal terms.”
-  Chief Justice Earl Warren, Brown v. Board of Education (1954)

The school-to-prison pipeline: an epidemic that is plaguing schools across the nation. Far too often, students are suspended, expelled or even arrested for minor offenses that leave visits to the principal’s office a thing of the past. Statistics reflect that these policies disproportionately target students of color and those with a history of abuse, neglect, poverty or learning disabilities.

Students who are forced out of school for disruptive behavior are usually sent back to the origin of their angst and unhappiness—their home environments or their neighborhoods, which are filled with negative influence. Those who are forced out for smaller offenses become hardened, confused, embittered. Those who are unnecessarily forced out of school become stigmatized and fall behind in their studies; many eventually decide to drop out of school altogether, and many others commit crimes in their communities.

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reason for the school-to-prison pipeline. Many attribute it to the zero tolerance policies that took form after the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. Others blame educators, accusing them of pushing out students who score lower on standardized tests in order to improve the school’s overall test scores. And some blame overzealous policing efforts. The reasons are many, but the solutions are not as plentiful.

So how bad is the school-to-prison pipeline? See the stats for yourself, leave suggestions, find programs in your local community, take a stance.

This infographic from SuspensionStories.com demonstrates a general overview:

Facts and Statistics:

-  A 2007 study by the Advancement Project and the Power U Center for Social Change says that for every 100 students who were suspended, 15 were Black, 7.9 were American Indian, 6.8 were Latino and 4.8 were white.

-  The same study reports that the U.S. spends almost $70 billion annually on incarceration, probation and parole. This number lends itself to a 127% funding increase for incarceration between 1987-2007. Compare that to a 21% increase in funding for higher education in the same 20-year span.

-  Based on statistics from the Civil Rights Data Collection (see sources below), in 2009, the Los Angeles Unified School District reported the following numbers for out-of-school suspensions: 62% Hispanic students, 33% Black students, 3% white and 2% Asian. LAUSD also reported that of their expulsions, 67% of Hispanic students and 5% of Black students were not offered educational services. Lastly, 77% Hispanics and 8% of Asian, Black and white students were expelled under zero tolerance policies.

-  The CRDC also shows that in 2009, the West Valley School District in Spokane, WA expelled 20% Black students and 60% white students and offered no educational services. Of those who were expelled, 10% Black students and 60% white students were done so under zero tolerance policies. Those who were referred to law enforcement included 10% Black students and 80% white students. However, Spokane school districts reported a higher number of enrolled white students. West Valley School district consisted of 86% white students and 4% Black students.

-  In St. Louis, MO schools, the Normandy School District’s 98% Black student population drew in the following: 100% of all students who received more than one out-of-school suspension, 100% of those who were expelled without educational services and 100% of those who were referred to law enforcement. In Missouri’s Ritenour School District, 67% of Black students vs. 33% white students were referred to law enforcement.

-  New Orleans, LA has numbers equally as staggering. The Orleans Parish School Board’s expulsions under zero tolerance policies were 100% Black, with 67% of their school-related arrests being Black students. The RSD-Algiers Charter School Association had 75% of their expelled students without educational services black. Furthermore, 100% of their expulsions under zero tolerance policies and 100% of their school-related arrests were all Black students.

Below are expanded statistics pulled from the Civil Rights Data Collection, with latest results from 2009.

Remember: While it’s easy to think the school-to-prison pipeline only impacts particular students and their respective families, we must remember that our whole society will feel the consequences. Today’s youth are tomorrow’s leaders. And we must remember that we cannot teach a student who is not in school.

PBS

School to Prison Pipeline

The term "school-to-prison pipeline" is a phrase that is used by education reform activists and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Justice Policy Center, Advancement Project, and the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) to describe what they view as a widespread pattern in the United States of pushing students, especially those who are already at a disadvantage, out of school and into the American criminal justice system. They argue that this "pipeline" is the result of public institutions being neglectful or derelict in properly addressing students as individuals who might need extra educational or social assistance, or being unable to do so because of staffing shortages or statutory mandates. The resulting miseducation and mass incarceration are said to create a vicious circle for individuals and communities.The school-to-prison pipeline is understood to operate at all levels of US government (federal, state, county, city and school district), and both directly and indirectly.

Critiques of the school-to-prison pipeline attempt to show how it falls into larger systems of domination such as racism, ableism, and capitalism. An unfair distribution of educational resources make students less likely to learn, less likely to find good jobs, and more likely to end up in prison. The more people in disadvantaged communities that go to prison, the more alienated and economically disadvantaged these communities become.The pipeline can also be critiqued in terms of neoliberalism, the idea that market forces can organize every facet of society. Because prisons can be privatized and run for profit, and traditional public schools cannot, the market favors sending people to prisons rather than schools--particularly if they are not destined to become part of the high-skilled workforce. (As prisoners, people can be compelled to perform labor anyway.) In keeping with this system, school budgets have shrunk while prison budgets have expanded massively, while even within schools more funding goes to police and less to teachers and children.^[15] The feedback loop between standardized testing and school funding is seen by some as another facet of neoliberalism, creating competition between students and teachers who need good test scores to keep their jobs.

Because neoliberalism does leave out a large and arguably expanding section of the global population, it creates disenfranchised people that it needs to control.According to an article from Black Agenda Report, the criminal justice system dedicated to controlling and arresting members of poorer populations is a necessary counterpart to the "free market" policies that constitute neoliberalism's public face.

Wikipedia

The School to Prison Pipeline by Advancement Project

Campaign to End the New Jim Crow Trenton/Princeton Chapter

About

We educate and organize to end mass incarceration and discriminatory practices in our criminal justice system, by increasing awareness of our broken system

Who We Are

We are a grass roots coalition of Princeton area leaders and concerned individuals and organizations, who have come together to help to end mass i

ncarceration. We have been inspired by Michelle Alexander’s book: The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in an Age of Colorblindness, and her many predecessors and allies, who have worked to alert government and the public to the antecedents, problematic nature and societal impacts of our "criminal justice" system. 

Our Mission

We educate and organize to end mass incarceration and discriminatory practices in our criminal justice system, by increasing awareness of our broken system, supporting advocacy groups, families of the incarcerated and influencing legislation.

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420 Event Trenton NJ

"Make the most you can of the Indian Hemp seed and sow it 

 everywhere."


- George Washington, U.S. President



"Hemp is of first necessity to the wealth & protection of the 

 country."  - Thomas Jefferson, U.S. President 

NJ Cannabis Conference Rally

Legalize Marijuana Rally

Come out on Saturday, October 18, to the NJ State House for a parade and rally to support the legalization of marijuana in NJ. 

This rally will include potheads, NJ Medical Marijuana Patients, cannabis consumers, politicians, parents of sick children who need medical marijuana, and anyone against the current NJ laws on cannabis. 

This is a legalization rally but will also support any progressive measures on marijuana, including a more compassionate medical marijuana program - But this rally is a demand for the Full Legalization of Marijuana. 

We will ride the trains and buses to Trenton to CONFRONT Governor Christie. 

The "Parade of the People" will begin at 2:00 PM at the Riverline train station. NJ Weedman will lead the march up Clinton Avenue make left at State street and march on to the NJ statehouse, where we will join those already gathered in front of the Statehouse steps at 3:30 PM with speeches, special prayers and ingesting of our sacrament at 4:20 PM!

At 4:20 PM, we will smoke in unison across the street from the NJ State Building in a defiant act of Civil Disobedience. 

Those who dont want to smoke can stand across the street in support. Over 150 people did this at the 4/20 rally on Easter in front of police officers, and no one was harassed or arrested. The philosophy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. is that with large numbers the people have the power to successfully confront the decision-makers. We plan to implement this at the state capitol. 

COME JOIN US! 

Books Written by Gandhi

• All Men are Brothers
• Diet and Diet Reform
• The Bhagavad Gita
• The Story of my Experiments with Truth - An Autobiography
• Trusteeship
• Truth is God
• Satyagraha in South Africa
• Unto this Last - A Paraphrase

To purchase books written by Gandhi or about Gandhi please:  >>>Click Here<<<

Racial Profiling On Our Nation's Highways

This report maybe 15 years old, but here in the United States we are still facing these same issues.  Often they are just swept under the rug.  We need to stop this as a SOCIETY.  Here's the intro to the research on Driving While Black.

June 7, 1999

By David A. Harris,
University of Toledo College of Law

An American Civil Liberties Union
Special Report
June 1999

INTRODUCTION

On a hot summer afternoon in August 1998, 37-year-old U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Rossano V. Gerald and his young son Gregory drove across the Oklahoma border into a nightmare. A career soldier and a highly decorated veteran of Desert Storm and Operation United Shield in Somalia, SFC Gerald, a black man of Panamanian descent, found that he could not travel more than 30 minutes through the state without being stopped twice: first by the Roland City Police Department, and then by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.

During the second stop, which lasted two-and-half hours, the troopers terrorized SFC Gerald's 12-year-old son with a police dog, placed both father and son in a closed car with the air conditioning off and fans blowing hot air, and warned that the dog would attack if they attempted to escape. Halfway through the episode – perhaps realizing the extent of their lawlessness – the troopers shut off the patrol car's video evidence camera.

Perhaps, too, the officers understood the power of an image to stir people to action. SFC Gerald was only an infant in 1963 when a stunned nation watched on television as Birmingham Police Commissioner "Bull" Connor used powerful fire hoses and vicious police attack dogs against nonviolent black civil rights protesters. That incident, and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s stirring I Have a Dream speech at the historic march on Washington in August of that year, were the low and high points, respectively, of the great era of civil rights legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

How did it come to be, then, that 35 years later SFC Gerald found himself standing on the side of a dusty road next to a barking police dog, listening to his son weep while officers rummaged through his belongings simply because he was black?

Rossano and Gregory Gerald were victims of discriminatory racial profiling by police. There is nothing new about this problem. Police abuse against people of color is a legacy of African American enslavement, repression, and legal inequality. Indeed, during hearings of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders ("The Kerner Commission") in the fall of 1967 where more than 130 witnesses testified about the events leading up to the urban riots that had taken place in 150 cities the previous summer, one of the complaints that came up repeatedly was "the stopping of Negroes on foot or in cars without obvious basis."

Significant blame for this rampant abuse of power also can be laid at the feet of the government's "war on drugs," a fundamentally misguided crusade enthusiastically embraced by lawmakers and administrations of both parties at every level of government. From the outset, the war on drugs has in fact been a war on people and their constitutional rights, with African Americans, Latinos and other minorities bearing the brunt of the damage. It is a war that has, among other depredations, spawned racist profiles of supposed drug couriers. On our nation's highways today, police ostensibly looking for drug criminals routinely stop drivers based on the color of their skin. This practice is so common that the minority community has given it the derisive term, "driving while black or brown" – a play on the real offense of "driving while intoxicated."

One of the core principles of the Fourth Amendment is that the police cannot stop and detain an individual without some reason – probable cause, or at least reasonable suspicion – to believe that he or she is involved in criminal activity. But recent Supreme Court decisions allow the police to use traffic stops as a pretext in order to "fish" for evidence. Both anecdotal and quantitative data show that nationwide, the police exercise this discretionary power primarily against African Americans and Latinos.

No person of color is safe from this treatment anywhere, regardless of their obedience to the law, their age, the type of car they drive, or their station in life. In short, skin color has become evidence of the propensity to commit crime, and police use this "evidence" against minority drivers on the road all the time.

For the rest of this article about racial profiling; >>> Click Here!!! <<<

Person of Interest Day 3

Mahatma Gandhi 

Born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, India, Mahatma Gandhi studied law and came to advocate for the rights of Indians, both at home and in South Africa. Gandhi became a leader of India's independence movement, organizing boycotts against British institutions in peaceful forms of civil disobedience. He was killed by a fanatic in 1948.

Spiritual and Political Leader

Indian nationalist leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, more commonly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was born on October 2, 1869, in Porbandar, Kathiawar, India. He studied law in London, England, but in 1893 went to South Africa, where he spent 20 years opposing discriminatory legislation against Indians. As a pioneer of Satyagraha, or resistance through mass non-violent civil disobedience, he became one of the major political and spiritual leaders of his time. Satyagraha remains one of the most potent philosophies in freedom struggles throughout the world today.

Fight for Indian Liberation

In 1914, Gandhi returned to India, where he supported the Home Rule movement, and became leader of the Indian National Congress, advocating a policy of non-violent non-co-operation to achieve independence. His goal was to help poor farmers and laborers protest oppressive taxation and discrimination. He struggled to alleviate poverty, liberate women and put an end to caste discrimination, with the ultimate objective being self-rule for India.

Following his civil disobedience campaign (1919-22), he was jailed for conspiracy (1922-24). In 1930, he led a landmark 320 km/200 mi march to the sea to collect salt in symbolic defiance of the government monopoly. On his release from prison (1931), he attended the London Round Table Conference on Indian constitutional reform. In 1946, he negotiated with the Cabinet Mission which recommended the new constitutional structure. After independence (1947), he tried to stop the Hindu-Muslim conflict in Bengal, a policy which led to his assassination in Delhi by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu fanatic.

Death and Legacy

Even after his death, Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and his belief in simple living—making his own clothes, eating a vegetarian diet and using fasts for self-purification as well as a means of protest—have been a beacon of hope for oppressed and marginalized people throughout the world.

"Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2014. Web. 16 Sep. 2014

About Broken On All Sides Documentary

Broken On All Sides Documentary

Synopsis

The project began as a way to explore, edu­cate about, and advocate change around the over­crowd­ing of the Philadelphia county jail sys­tem. The documentary has come to focus on mass incarceration across the nation and the intersection of race and poverty within criminal justice. The feature-length documentary is avail­able for activists and edu­ca­tors to use in order to raise consciousness and organize for change. Since its completion in February 2012 the director, Matthew Pil­lis­cher, has been doing a grassroots tour of the movie: set­ting up meetings in cities across the country, where a screen­ing of the movie can kick off dis­cus­sions by people who were formerly incarcerated and their families and allies on how we can dismantle the sys­tem of mass incarceration. If your school, workplace, organization, or religious institution can host a screening, please contact the director.

The documentary centers around the theory put for­ward by many, and most recently by Michelle Alexander (who appears in the movie), that mass incarceration has become "The New Jim Crow." That is, since the rise of the drug war and the explosion of the prison population, and because discretion within the sys­tem allows for arrest and prosecution of people of color at alarmingly higher rates than whites, pris­ons and criminal penal­ties have become a new ver­sion of Jim Crow. Much of the discrimination that was legal in the Jim Crow era is today illegal when applied to black people but perfectly legal when applied to "criminals." The prob­lem is that through subjective choices, people of color have been tar­geted at significantly higher rates for stops, searches, arrests, prosecution, and harsher sentences. So, where does this leave criminal justice?

Through inter­views with people on many sides of the criminal justice system, this documentary aims to answer questions and provoke questions on an issue walled-off from the public's scrutiny.

Interviews

• Khalid Abdul Rasheed and Theresa Shoatz, activists with the Human Rights Coalition (Philadelphia)
• Michelle Alexander, author of "The New Jim Crow," Associate Professor of Law at Mortiz College of Law, and Senior Fellow at Kirwin Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
• Jonathan Feinberg, partner with Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing & Feinberg
• John Goldkamp, Chair of the Temple University Criminal Justice Department
• Nathaniel Gravely Hayes, construction worker, formerly incarcerated in the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS)
• Angus Love, board member of PA Prison Society
• Marlene Martin, National Director of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty
• Tom Namako, journalist who toured PPS and wrote City Paper articles on overcrowding
• John Street, former mayor of Philadelphia
• Judge Sheila Woods-Skipper, Supervising Judge at the PA Court of Common Pleas Criminal Division
• Su Ming Yeh, attorney with PA Institutional Law Project
• Carlton Young, former correctional officer in PPS

Drawings

by Leonard C. Jefferson (a prisoner at SCI Albion, Pennsylvania)

Music

• John Coursey
• Brendan Dougherty
• Shaun Ellis
• Jesse Olsen Bay & David Wilson (a poet incarcerated in California)
• Alexander Vittum
• Sunday Labor
• Tide Tables
• Tha Truth
• Matthew Pillischer

Person of Interest Day 2

Matthew Pil­lis­cher grad­u­ated in 2000 from Ben­ning­ton Col­lege with a degree in film­mak­ing. In 2010 he grad­u­ated from Tem­ple Uni­ver­sity Beasley School of Law and is now a licensed attor­ney in PA and NJ. Matt worked as a staff attorney at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, helping people with problems due to their criminal records. In the 10 years between col­lege and law school, Matt worked in var­i­ous jobs as a restau­rant and retail worker, a farm­hand, and a social worker. An artist at heart, Matt always cre­ated movies, plays, paint­ings, music, and other art on the side. Dur­ingthe lead-up to the 2003 inva­sion of Iraq and wit­ness­ing the poverty, police bru­tal­ity, and racism liv­ing in Cincin­nati, OH, Matt became deeply politi­cized by the events going on around him. He became an activist and worked with var­i­ous groups and indi­vid­u­als against racism and poverty, for work­ers' rights, women's and LGBT rights, and against mil­i­tary conquest.

Matt entered law school with an eye towards under­stand­ing the legal sys­tems that per­pet­u­ate the unjust sta­tus quo, and also hoped to use law as a way to help lib­er­ate poor and work­ing peo­ple. Matt con­tin­ued mak­ing music and movies through­out law school, par­tic­i­pated in activism in Philly and beyond, and dur­ing his last year of law school he began work on a movie about the Philadel­phia Prisons.

Through an intern­ship with the civil rights firm, Kairys, Rudovsky, Mess­ing & Fein­berg, Matt worked on a law­suit against the Philadel­phia Prison Sys­tem for over­crowd­ing con­di­tions. He inter­viewed inmates and inves­ti­gated some of the con­di­tions in the pris­ons. The sum­mer before, he had worked with PA Insti­tu­tional Law Project, a non-profit that serves the insti­tu­tion­al­ized pop­u­la­tions in PA, advo­cat­ing for pris­on­ers' rights. These expe­ri­ences, along with his­tory and polit­i­cal the­ory he had learned as an activist, focused his life's work on prob­lems within the prison and crim­i­nal jus­tice systems.

Matt was lucky enough to meet other stu­dents at Uni­ver­sity of Penn­syl­va­nia Law School who were inter­ested in the issue and col­lab­o­rated on the movie at var­i­ous stages. What started as a 15 minute video on local over­crowd­ing issues has become a fea­ture doc­u­men­tary that takes on the entire crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It would not have been pos­si­ble with­out all the won­der­ful peo­ple who helped along the way, par­tic­u­larly co-producers, Neal Swisher, Agatha Koprowski, and Karly O'Krent, and the movie's interviewees.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status—even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."

Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience. 



Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Contrary to the rosy picture of race embodied in Barack Obama's political success and Oprah Winfrey's financial success, legal scholar Alexander argues vigorously and persuasively that [w]e have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial segregation has been replaced by mass incarceration as a system of social control (More African Americans are under correctional control today... than were enslaved in 1850). Alexander reviews American racial history from the colonies to the Clinton administration, delineating its transformation into the war on drugs. She offers an acute analysis of the effect of this mass incarceration upon former inmates who will be discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives, denied employment, housing, education, and public benefits. Most provocatively, she reveals how both the move toward colorblindness and affirmative action may blur our vision of injustice: most Americans know and don't know the truth about mass incarceration—but her carefully researched, deeply engaging, and thoroughly readable book should change that. (Feb.) 
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.



By Middle-aged Professor
Thirty years ago, fewer than 350,000 people were held in prisons and jails in the United States. Today, the number of inmates in the United States exceeds 2,000,000. In this book, Alexander argues that this system of mass incarceration "operates as a tightly networked system of laws, policies, customs, and institutions that operate collectively to ensure the subordinate status of a group defined largely by race." The War on Drugs, the book contends, has created "a lower caste of individuals who are permanently barred by law and custom from mainstream society." Mass incarceration, and the disabilities that come with the label "felon," serve, metaphorically, as the new Jim Crow.

The book develops this argument with systematic care. The first chapter provides context with a brief history of the rise, fall and interrelation of the first two racial caste systems in the United States, slavery and Jim Crow. Subsequent chapters provide close scrutiny of the system of mass incarceration that has arisen over the past thirty years, examining each stage of the process (e.g., criminalization, investigation, prosecution, sentencing) and the many collateral consequences of a felony conviction (entirely apart from any prison time) and how and why each of these has operated to the detriment of African-Americans. The book also explores how the caste system Alexander identifies is different and not-so-different from Jim Crow, the many political and economic forces now invested in sustaining it, and how it has been rendered virtually immune to challenge through litigation. The book concludes with an argument that while many particular reforms will be needed to change this system, nothing short of a social movement that changes public acceptance of the current system can solve this problem and offers critiques and proposals for the civil rights movement based on this analysis. Everyone who reads this book will come away seeing the War on Drugs and mass incarceration in a new light.




Visit the book's website by clicking HERE!!!

Click Link to Buy:  The New Jim Crow Book on Amazon 

Person of Interest Day 1

Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander is a highly acclaimed civil rights lawyer, advocate, and legal scholar. In recent years, she has taught at a number of universities, including Stanford Law School, where she was an associate professor of law and directed the Civil Rights Clinics. In 2005, she won a Soros Justice Fellowship, which supported the writing of The New Jim Crow, and that same year she accepted a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at The Ohio State University. Since its first publication,The New Jim Crow has received rave reviews and has been featured in national radio and television media outlets, including MSNBC, NPR, Bill Moyers Journal, Tavis Smiley, C-SPAN, and Washington Journal, among others. In March, the book won the 2011 NAACP Image Award for best nonfiction.

Prior to entering academia, Alexander served as the director of the Racial Justice Project for the ACLU of Northern California, where she coordinated the Project’s media advocacy, grassroots organizing, coalition building, and litigation. The Project’s priority areas were educational equity and criminal justice reform, and it was during those years at the ACLU that she began to awaken to the reality that our nation’s criminal justice system functions more like a caste system than a system of crime prevention or control. She became passionate about exposing and challenging racial bias in the criminal justice system, ultimately launching and leading a major campaign against racial profiling by law enforcement known as the “DWB Campaign” or “Driving While Black or Brown Campaign.”

In addition to her nonprofit advocacy experience, Alexander has worked as a litigator at private law firms including Saperstein, Goldstein, Demchak & Baller, in Oakland, California, where she specialized in plaintiff-side class-action lawsuits alleging race and gender discrimination.

Alexander is a graduate of Stanford Law School and Vanderbilt University. Following law school, she clerked for Justice Harry A. Blackmun on the U.S. Supreme Court and for Chief Judge Abner Mikva on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She currently devotes much of her time to freelance writing; public speaking; consulting with advocacy organizations committed to ending mass incarceration; and, most important, raising her three young children—the most challenging and rewarding job of all.

Person of Interest

I am going to be research different people who are making a difference in our country.  You never know a person's story until you ask. I am going to call it "Person of Interest" Making a Difference.

I want to put an emphasis on the Brown people I put on here. It is often the Brown success is over powered by the negative image that has been depicted from stereotypes.  

Breaking the School to Prison Pipeline

Reforming the Criminal Justice System

Let's Keep the Kol Nidre Food Drive Going

Uneducated MUST SEE!!!

This is a must see.  It's something else. More importantly, truthful.

Post by Andre Terry.

Volunteer with A Better Way

A little about A Better Way

Our mission is to better our communities by providing 360 degrees of support to those re-entering society, at-risk youth and their families thus helping them to find A Better Way to live. We stress empowerment by education and exposure to job skills, life skills and volunteerism thereby creating an environment of support and a history of success. Individuals who participate in our programs and master these strategies have had a positive impact on society and have become role models for their families and the communities in which they live.

ABOUT A Better Way: An organization which specializes in helping community members find a better way to live. A Better Way was created by law enforcement officers and mental health professionals who noticed that youth at-risk for incarceration, previously incarcerated individuals, and their families have the least amount of job training and lowest rate of employment. Individuals and families who would otherwise be a burden on the taxpayer can find resources and support from A Better Way. Our work in transitioning clients and their families into self-sufficiency saves taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. A Better Way is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization located in Mercer County, NJ.