December 7, 2021 • 22 mins
Alex Duran joins Jason to share with us his transformation from inmate to criminal justice reformer. He now manages a $20 million annual fund on behalf of Galaxy Gives dedicated to ending mass incarceration in the US.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.galaxygives.com/fellowship
https://lavaforgood.com/righteous-convictions
Righteous Convictions with Jason Flom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Co No1.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flamm. This is the
podcast where I speak with people who see the wrong
in the world and are driven to make it right. Today,
I'm speaking with a man who found himself caught up
in the criminal legal system when his friend made a
decision that changed both of their lives. But it was
his experience in that system that has forged his path
(00:21):
forward to where he is and who he is today.
This is not a theoretical exercise for us. Most of
the folks inside of the organization have been directly impacted
by the criminal legal system, whether they're per formed in
carcon written where there are survivors of crime, folks with
family in the system, and in some cases folks who
have actually worked in that system and across all those
(00:43):
categories are indicting the system, saying that we need transformation.
His unique perspective has brought him to the helm of Galaxy.
Gives criminal Justice Reformed portfolio. Alex Duran right now on
Righteous Convictions. Welcome back to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam.
(01:20):
That's me and today I've got a guy who do
just have to hear what he has to say. Our
guest today is Alex Duran and Alex is this is
this title doesn't do him justice and justice is a
strange word to choose in this particular case. But anyway,
he is the program officer overseeing Galaxy, gives criminal justice
reform portfolio, and he has a unique perspective and a
(01:44):
unique set of skills. And without further ado, Alex, welcome
to Righteous Convictions. It's a pleasure and honor to be
here with you. And Alex, your background, we can't leave
that out, okay, because it really informs everything that you're
doing now. And then it's all about how you use
those experiences to create a life of meaning, right, So
(02:04):
that's what we're here to talk about, to tell us
about your childhood growing up. So, I was raised on
the west side of the Bronx, a neighborhood called University Heights, which,
by the way, it gets its name from the fact
that New York University's undergraduate school was based there from
eighteen ninety four to nineteen seventy three, when ny U
(02:27):
basically gave up on the Bronx because it had an
economic crisis, crime was rising in the city, and they
just totally pulled out the City of New York systematically
disinvested in my community. My parents immigrated from the Dominican
Republic in the late seventies and I moved to University
(02:48):
Heights and coming out of my house in the mornings,
it was sort of side stepping a landmine of of
crag files. It was a community that was heavily criminalized.
Around ten percent of five year old folks there have
a college degree, so I'm a product of that. I
(03:09):
also believe in individual agency. You know, I made some
choices that put me in a situation that I ended
up with a fourteen year sentence. I wasn't a shooter
on my case. I had a code offending that was
the person with further gun that ultimately killed a young
man in two thousand and five. I didn't know that
my co offending was going to take someone's life. Later on,
(03:31):
we're both charged from murdering a second degree. I was
offered three and a half years to testify my code offended.
I didn't take it. I start to the code of
the streets that you never snitch, and we both ended
up pleading guilty to fourteen years in prison. And I
(03:52):
definitely regret the choices I've made, but the sort of
series of events that led me to be there on
that day. I think that our country and the way
that we sort of designed these communities because of redlining,
a whole bunch of other policies that created a condition,
(04:12):
like I said, that made me make some decisions of
survival essentially, and also the culture that that creates, the
violence of that engenders, it's all sort of interconnecting. So
you end up a very young man, right twenty one
years old when you went to prison, You end up
with this fourteen year sentence. How did you turn this around?
(04:32):
What kept you going before you turned it around? And
then what was it that that sort of lit that
fusee inside of you that unleashed this you know, beautiful
human that so many people know and respect and look
up to now. And I would say reading um saved
my life. Remember going into solitary confinement, And I wish
(04:57):
I could remember this guy's name because he actually saved
my life. It was my neighbor and he left the
box like two days after I got there. By the
second day, I was just, you know, one, I was
sort of just playing over like the events that led
during incarceration, wondering why I should have stayed home that day.
(05:20):
Why did I you know, when I got a call
from my friend, why did I go? I should have
stayed with my girlfriend? Like you, you just play the
scenario so many times and beating yourself up. I got
there with a full set of hair, and I used
to wake up every morning with gobs of hair on
my pillow because of the stress, because I was dealing
with that deep shame and stigma having hurt my family,
(05:43):
and I threw my life away, Alex, the three books
that this guy left you, the guy who you referred
to as a guy to shaved your life, Which three
were they? They were all mafia books. It was The
Murder Machine. It was another book about the rise and
all of the Gambino crime family. And then there was
another book about the fine crime families of New York.
(06:07):
And even though you know those books, you're talking about crime,
he gave me something to occupy my mind because the
monody of sold a reconfinement is the thing that hurts
you the most, not having something to do, and as
you're like basically just looking up at the wall. So yeah,
(06:27):
that that gentleman, he was an angel. It's great, You're
saved by the mafia. That's a good story. Okay. So
the fact that you spent twelve years in prison, right,
including much of that time in solitary confinement, and then
you know, it's it's really the transformation that you underwent
during that time. And I've read some incredible things how
(06:50):
you were influenced by Plato among other people, and how
Bard College became a very central part of your story
and your journey. Sorry, Gamma g Deem. Really after landing
at Five Points Correctional Facilities, one of the first maxes
I went to when I was up state, and then
I transferred to green Haven Correctional Facility. It is known
(07:10):
for having a lot of programs that I run by
incarcerated people helping other men and mentoring them to do well.
And that's where I got an opportunity to apply for
the Bar College President Initiative program. It was life changing
because here I got the opportunity to really show that
I could live a more meaningful life. And yeah, Plato
(07:32):
was definitely a huge influence. I remember reading The Republic
and the Power of the Cave is one of my
favorite stories in the book, when Socrates and Plato are
arguing about what is enlightenment. And if you haven't read
the Power of the Cave, it's a story of Socrates
is trying to argue, like what is ignorant? So they say,
(07:54):
imagine someone inside of a cave, shackled, looking at a
wall behind them. There's a sort of a ventriloquists in
front of a fire, projecting shadows on the wall in
front of the person who was shackled. And if they
were born into that and they're thinking that those shadows
on the wall is reality. Imagine if you you were
(08:15):
just to take the person out of the cave and
outside into the sun and show them that that is reality.
What is the effect that I will have on that person?
And I was like ship for a long time. I
was the person inside of the cave. Righteous Convictions with
(08:47):
Jason Flam is super excited and honored to have the
support of a great organization like Galaxy Gives. Galaxy Gives
leads the film tropic efforts of the Novagrads family. They
invest in organizations, camp Haines and leaders who are directly
impacted by and working to dismantle the current punitive justice system.
Galaxy Gives also builds power for the community's most harmed
(09:08):
by mass incarceration and forges transformative solutions for responding to
that harm. They envision a society where the structural barriers
created by racism, poverty, and inequality are no more, where
instead all people have the dignity, freedom, and rights needed
to thrive. You know, there's been a long held view
(09:35):
that why should we educate people in prison when you know,
I can't even get education from my kids out of here,
or whatever the hell the typical things that you hear
about that. While we know, and you're as good of
an example as anyone of the transformative power of education
in prison, and you know, and for people on the
(09:57):
outside they say, well, it doesn't affect me, It certainly does,
because people that go to prison in America are more
coming home. So tell us a little bit about Barden,
of course. But by BART, I mean Bart Prison Initiative
or bp I. So, Jason, the argument that you're alluding
to presumes that folks like me from black and brown
(10:19):
communities similar to the one that I came from. It
presumes that we got a high quality education and that
we somehow discarded it and decided to just one day
and step out of our house and commit a crime
that could be the further from the truth. The fact
is that this country, we've made a series of policy
(10:41):
choices essentially that has created the conditions for folks like
me and so many other kids of my generation and
not have pathways to opportunity, good jobs. And you just
to take a step back in for the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act was signed, had a provision
(11:04):
there that people in prison weren't eligible to receive pell
grants funding anymore. And that just completely decimated college and
prison based programs all over the country. And Barred sort
of a rose out of that and they started to
provide a high quality education to first it was only
(11:26):
two twenty people. It has now expanded to six facilities,
but that was transformational and the bar College President Initiative
program recidivism rate today is almost zero percent, and that's
in comparison to the national rate people released from prison
returned back to prison within three years. You don't have
(11:46):
to be a statistician to understand those numbers, right, I
mean zero percent, ladies and gentlemen. That's the value of
education in prison and it's not just bar the end
you as a prison education and program there's a lot
of other places that do. But we all need to
be pushing our legislators to establish more of these programs,
(12:07):
not to take them away, because you're hearing it right now,
the power of what it can do and how it
can transform somebody. And I am here now and privileged
to serve as program the rctor of Galaxy Gives, managing
a portfolio that invests around twenty million dollars a year
on and the Marsive Conservation in the United States. Tell
us about Galaxy Gives, the mission, the programs and how
(12:29):
you're driving changed from inside that organization. So Galaxy Gives
is the family philanthropy and Mike and Suoking over Grats
and I got the honor of serving as program director
UM and that organization started because of the injustices that
Mike nover Grads started to get proximate to here in
(12:50):
New York City. Yeah, we interviewed Mike no Regrats on
Righteous Convictions. It was better one of the more popular
episodes and m the link to that interview will be
in our bio, so please click on the link of
the bio check it out. You'll be inspired by his
personal journey. I mean He's a guy who's done extremely
well in the world, you know, multiple times over, but
(13:11):
you never know what to talk to him. He's a
humble guy. And you know, like, if you're listening, shout
out to you, shout out to Mike Novo Graphs for sure.
You know. Our vision is to build a society in
which the structural barriers created by racism, poverty, and inequality
are no more, and where instead we live in a multiracial,
(13:32):
fully representative democracy, where all people have the dignity, abundance, freedom,
and rice needed to thrive. Guys, He Gives is like
no other philanthropic organization, and that's because this is not
a theoretical exercise. For us. Most of the folks inside
of the organization have been directly impacted by the criminal
(13:54):
legal system, whether they're performed, incarcerated where there are survivors
of crime and never got justice, or healing from our
criminal legal system. Folks with family in the system, and
in some cases folks who have actually worked in that
system and across all those categories are indicting the system
(14:14):
saying that we need transformation. We have a particular set
of lived experience that actually informs our work and the
way that we think about our theory of change, which
is building power in communities have been systematically impacted by
mass incarceration, advancing thecarceerrative policies both at the front end
(14:36):
of the system and reforming our pre trial laws and
creating parity between public defenders and prosecutors, and at the
back end of the system providing second chance pathways for
people serving long term prison censuses, and reforming our parole
and probation laws. And then the last pillar of our
work is forge in transformative solutions. So, if we don't
believe that police is the answer to every re crisis,
(15:01):
what is the alternative? If we don't believe that our
person should end up in a cage in every situation,
what's the alternative to that? So we're sort of incubating
and developing different alternatives that doesn't rely on incarceration all
of the time. So can you give us an example
of an idea or an initiative that even working on lately,
(15:23):
that you're most passionate about. I want to say ending
the slavery exclusion in the thirteen for Amendment. That's a
campaign that is well. One of the organizations as Living
in is work Crisis, Bianca Tlic and also Daryl Atkinson
at Forward Justice. If we are able to amend the
(15:44):
Constitution to remove the slavery clause in the thirteen for amendment,
that would tremendously impact the way that we are currently
doing business. Galaxy gives criminal justice in front of They
(16:05):
spent over a hundred million dollars on it already, and
I think they're just getting warmed up. They're working on
sports based youth development, leadership, democracy and healing, and they
bet on And I think this is so important because
if you're listening, you have a bold idea, then write
this down and get ahold of Galaxy Gives, or get
ahold of aalax and will give you some some ways
to do that because Galaxy gives. Their reputation has been
(16:27):
built on betting on bold successful justice, performed projects right.
That includes the Bailed Project, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition,
and others. So they have a Galaxy Leaders Fellowship which
provides a one time, unrestricted award of a hundred and
fifty thousand to an annual cohort of ten fellows. So
you may be one of those people. Maybe you're in college,
maybe you've got an idea, maybe you want to change
(16:48):
the world, So write it down, get ahold of Alex whatever,
And of course there will be links in the bio
as well the episode bio for you to be able
to find the information that you need. You know, maybe
you'll be the one that helps really crack the code
on this awful and uniquely American problem. Now, Alex, we
turned to what I believe is the most fun and
(17:12):
interesting part of our show. So before I get to that,
I want to thank you again. And there's two parts
of our closing. The first one is called the magic
one question. It works like this, if you had a
magic one and could wave it and fix one problem,
what would it be? The garbage? You may be like,
(17:35):
what's That's exactly what I may be. Go ahead, so
let me explain. So. Mass incarceration is a set of
systems that extracts resources and talent from historically marginalized communities,
(17:56):
and the results of that entrenched poverty, lack of economic opportunity,
under funded schools, and deteriorating neighborhoods, which are the root
causes of violence. There was a study done by the
(18:16):
University of Pennsylvania Urban Health lab. They did a control
study that showed that if you clean up the garbage,
if you plan more trees, if you you know, turn
dilapidated buildings and you fix them up, that that will
reduce crime by in communities. Like we've talked about the
(18:42):
broken window theory, but rather than criminalizing folks, nobody ever
acts why we don't just fixed it them window? Right? So,
if you walk around New York City, for example, you're
seeing so much garbage and litter in rats running rampant,
(19:03):
right that I think that's that's that's part of the
failure of liberalism, the fact that we have so much
garbage in our streets. Go to California, hundred and fifty
people living in the streets. That's a shameful thing that
we have, right, and we need to care about these communities,
(19:24):
and we need to invest heavily in black and brown communities.
And it starts by having clean streets because you know, imagine, Jason,
the sort of sense of ownership that you have inside
of your home. Right, if we had that same sense
to our communities, we have different outcomes. The reason why
(19:45):
a lot of these communities feel that way is because
we feel that they don't care about us, Why should
I care about this? Right? And if we had clean streets,
if we had more trees, if we had more green spaces,
that would dramatic ually reduce the stress. It will forage
deeper social connections in neighborhoods, and it will improve public safety.
(20:09):
So I would you say, you know, auto magic one
always clean up the garbage. That's not the answer I
was expecting, but it's a good answer. And as a
New Yorker I can relate to it because it is
a scourge in our city. Um and obviously it's worse
in the zip codes that are lower income zip codes,
but it is. It is a scourge all over the
city and it needs to be fixed. And before we
(20:31):
go to our closing, I'd like to remind our audience
to tune in next week when we speak with Chris Brown,
a veteran of gun violence prevention work who sees gun
violence as a national healthcare crisis. And now the closing
of our show is called Words of Wisdom. This is
where I first of all, thank you for joining us
and sharing your perspective with our audience, and then turn
(20:52):
my microphone off, leave my headphones on, kick back in
my chair and just listen to anything else you feel
is left to be said. And I forgot to say this.
Part of the reason why we have so much trash
and blight in our communities is because we pump in
so much money into the police. They usually have the
(21:15):
largest line item in city budgets in large cities in America.
But if we were to reallocate resources from police departments
and into sort of place based investments in investing in communities, infrastructure,
fixing blight, dilapidated buildings, empty lots, and cleaning up the garbage,
that will reduce crime more than any police department can.
(21:48):
Thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason plom
I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claverne,
and Kevin Warris, with research by Lla Robinson. The music
in this production wild supply by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
at Lava for Good. You can also follow me on
(22:09):
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Blom. Righteous Convictions with
Jason Blom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Say About Company Number one
Welcome to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flamm. This is the
podcast where I speak with people who see the wrong
in the world and are driven to make it right. Today,
I'm speaking with a man who found himself caught up
in the criminal legal system when his friend made a
decision that changed both of their lives. But it was
his experience in that system that has forged his path
(00:21):
forward to where he is and who he is today.
This is not a theoretical exercise for us. Most of
the folks inside of the organization have been directly impacted
by the criminal legal system, whether they're per formed in
carcon written where there are survivors of crime, folks with
family in the system, and in some cases folks who
have actually worked in that system and across all those
(00:43):
categories are indicting the system, saying that we need transformation.
His unique perspective has brought him to the helm of Galaxy.
Gives criminal Justice Reformed portfolio. Alex Duran right now on
Righteous Convictions. Welcome back to Righteous Convictions with Jason Flam.
(01:20):
That's me and today I've got a guy who do
just have to hear what he has to say. Our
guest today is Alex Duran and Alex is this is
this title doesn't do him justice and justice is a
strange word to choose in this particular case. But anyway,
he is the program officer overseeing Galaxy, gives criminal justice
reform portfolio, and he has a unique perspective and a
(01:44):
unique set of skills. And without further ado, Alex, welcome
to Righteous Convictions. It's a pleasure and honor to be
here with you. And Alex, your background, we can't leave
that out, okay, because it really informs everything that you're
doing now. And then it's all about how you use
those experiences to create a life of meaning, right, So
(02:04):
that's what we're here to talk about, to tell us
about your childhood growing up. So, I was raised on
the west side of the Bronx, a neighborhood called University Heights, which,
by the way, it gets its name from the fact
that New York University's undergraduate school was based there from
eighteen ninety four to nineteen seventy three, when ny U
(02:27):
basically gave up on the Bronx because it had an
economic crisis, crime was rising in the city, and they
just totally pulled out the City of New York systematically
disinvested in my community. My parents immigrated from the Dominican
Republic in the late seventies and I moved to University
(02:48):
Heights and coming out of my house in the mornings,
it was sort of side stepping a landmine of of
crag files. It was a community that was heavily criminalized.
Around ten percent of five year old folks there have
a college degree, so I'm a product of that. I
(03:09):
also believe in individual agency. You know, I made some
choices that put me in a situation that I ended
up with a fourteen year sentence. I wasn't a shooter
on my case. I had a code offending that was
the person with further gun that ultimately killed a young
man in two thousand and five. I didn't know that
my co offending was going to take someone's life. Later on,
(03:31):
we're both charged from murdering a second degree. I was
offered three and a half years to testify my code offended.
I didn't take it. I start to the code of
the streets that you never snitch, and we both ended
up pleading guilty to fourteen years in prison. And I
(03:52):
definitely regret the choices I've made, but the sort of
series of events that led me to be there on
that day. I think that our country and the way
that we sort of designed these communities because of redlining,
a whole bunch of other policies that created a condition,
(04:12):
like I said, that made me make some decisions of
survival essentially, and also the culture that that creates, the
violence of that engenders, it's all sort of interconnecting. So
you end up a very young man, right twenty one
years old when you went to prison, You end up
with this fourteen year sentence. How did you turn this around?
(04:32):
What kept you going before you turned it around? And
then what was it that that sort of lit that
fusee inside of you that unleashed this you know, beautiful
human that so many people know and respect and look
up to now. And I would say reading um saved
my life. Remember going into solitary confinement, And I wish
(04:57):
I could remember this guy's name because he actually saved
my life. It was my neighbor and he left the
box like two days after I got there. By the
second day, I was just, you know, one, I was
sort of just playing over like the events that led
during incarceration, wondering why I should have stayed home that day.
(05:20):
Why did I you know, when I got a call
from my friend, why did I go? I should have
stayed with my girlfriend? Like you, you just play the
scenario so many times and beating yourself up. I got
there with a full set of hair, and I used
to wake up every morning with gobs of hair on
my pillow because of the stress, because I was dealing
with that deep shame and stigma having hurt my family,
(05:43):
and I threw my life away, Alex, the three books
that this guy left you, the guy who you referred
to as a guy to shaved your life, Which three
were they? They were all mafia books. It was The
Murder Machine. It was another book about the rise and
all of the Gambino crime family. And then there was
another book about the fine crime families of New York.
(06:07):
And even though you know those books, you're talking about crime,
he gave me something to occupy my mind because the
monody of sold a reconfinement is the thing that hurts
you the most, not having something to do, and as
you're like basically just looking up at the wall. So yeah,
(06:27):
that that gentleman, he was an angel. It's great, You're
saved by the mafia. That's a good story. Okay. So
the fact that you spent twelve years in prison, right,
including much of that time in solitary confinement, and then
you know, it's it's really the transformation that you underwent
during that time. And I've read some incredible things how
(06:50):
you were influenced by Plato among other people, and how
Bard College became a very central part of your story
and your journey. Sorry, Gamma g Deem. Really after landing
at Five Points Correctional Facilities, one of the first maxes
I went to when I was up state, and then
I transferred to green Haven Correctional Facility. It is known
(07:10):
for having a lot of programs that I run by
incarcerated people helping other men and mentoring them to do well.
And that's where I got an opportunity to apply for
the Bar College President Initiative program. It was life changing
because here I got the opportunity to really show that
I could live a more meaningful life. And yeah, Plato
(07:32):
was definitely a huge influence. I remember reading The Republic
and the Power of the Cave is one of my
favorite stories in the book, when Socrates and Plato are
arguing about what is enlightenment. And if you haven't read
the Power of the Cave, it's a story of Socrates
is trying to argue, like what is ignorant? So they say,
(07:54):
imagine someone inside of a cave, shackled, looking at a
wall behind them. There's a sort of a ventriloquists in
front of a fire, projecting shadows on the wall in
front of the person who was shackled. And if they
were born into that and they're thinking that those shadows
on the wall is reality. Imagine if you you were
(08:15):
just to take the person out of the cave and
outside into the sun and show them that that is reality.
What is the effect that I will have on that person?
And I was like ship for a long time. I
was the person inside of the cave. Righteous Convictions with
(08:47):
Jason Flam is super excited and honored to have the
support of a great organization like Galaxy Gives. Galaxy Gives
leads the film tropic efforts of the Novagrads family. They
invest in organizations, camp Haines and leaders who are directly
impacted by and working to dismantle the current punitive justice system.
Galaxy Gives also builds power for the community's most harmed
(09:08):
by mass incarceration and forges transformative solutions for responding to
that harm. They envision a society where the structural barriers
created by racism, poverty, and inequality are no more, where
instead all people have the dignity, freedom, and rights needed
to thrive. You know, there's been a long held view
(09:35):
that why should we educate people in prison when you know,
I can't even get education from my kids out of here,
or whatever the hell the typical things that you hear
about that. While we know, and you're as good of
an example as anyone of the transformative power of education
in prison, and you know, and for people on the
(09:57):
outside they say, well, it doesn't affect me, It certainly does,
because people that go to prison in America are more
coming home. So tell us a little bit about Barden,
of course. But by BART, I mean Bart Prison Initiative
or bp I. So, Jason, the argument that you're alluding
to presumes that folks like me from black and brown
(10:19):
communities similar to the one that I came from. It
presumes that we got a high quality education and that
we somehow discarded it and decided to just one day
and step out of our house and commit a crime
that could be the further from the truth. The fact
is that this country, we've made a series of policy
(10:41):
choices essentially that has created the conditions for folks like
me and so many other kids of my generation and
not have pathways to opportunity, good jobs. And you just
to take a step back in for the Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act was signed, had a provision
(11:04):
there that people in prison weren't eligible to receive pell
grants funding anymore. And that just completely decimated college and
prison based programs all over the country. And Barred sort
of a rose out of that and they started to
provide a high quality education to first it was only
(11:26):
two twenty people. It has now expanded to six facilities,
but that was transformational and the bar College President Initiative
program recidivism rate today is almost zero percent, and that's
in comparison to the national rate people released from prison
returned back to prison within three years. You don't have
(11:46):
to be a statistician to understand those numbers, right, I
mean zero percent, ladies and gentlemen. That's the value of
education in prison and it's not just bar the end
you as a prison education and program there's a lot
of other places that do. But we all need to
be pushing our legislators to establish more of these programs,
(12:07):
not to take them away, because you're hearing it right now,
the power of what it can do and how it
can transform somebody. And I am here now and privileged
to serve as program the rctor of Galaxy Gives, managing
a portfolio that invests around twenty million dollars a year
on and the Marsive Conservation in the United States. Tell
us about Galaxy Gives, the mission, the programs and how
(12:29):
you're driving changed from inside that organization. So Galaxy Gives
is the family philanthropy and Mike and Suoking over Grats
and I got the honor of serving as program director
UM and that organization started because of the injustices that
Mike nover Grads started to get proximate to here in
(12:50):
New York City. Yeah, we interviewed Mike no Regrats on
Righteous Convictions. It was better one of the more popular
episodes and m the link to that interview will be
in our bio, so please click on the link of
the bio check it out. You'll be inspired by his
personal journey. I mean He's a guy who's done extremely
well in the world, you know, multiple times over, but
(13:11):
you never know what to talk to him. He's a
humble guy. And you know, like, if you're listening, shout
out to you, shout out to Mike Novo Graphs for sure.
You know. Our vision is to build a society in
which the structural barriers created by racism, poverty, and inequality
are no more, and where instead we live in a multiracial,
(13:32):
fully representative democracy, where all people have the dignity, abundance, freedom,
and rice needed to thrive. Guys, He Gives is like
no other philanthropic organization, and that's because this is not
a theoretical exercise. For us. Most of the folks inside
of the organization have been directly impacted by the criminal
(13:54):
legal system, whether they're performed, incarcerated where there are survivors
of crime and never got justice, or healing from our
criminal legal system. Folks with family in the system, and
in some cases folks who have actually worked in that
system and across all those categories are indicting the system
(14:14):
saying that we need transformation. We have a particular set
of lived experience that actually informs our work and the
way that we think about our theory of change, which
is building power in communities have been systematically impacted by
mass incarceration, advancing thecarceerrative policies both at the front end
(14:36):
of the system and reforming our pre trial laws and
creating parity between public defenders and prosecutors, and at the
back end of the system providing second chance pathways for
people serving long term prison censuses, and reforming our parole
and probation laws. And then the last pillar of our
work is forge in transformative solutions. So, if we don't
believe that police is the answer to every re crisis,
(15:01):
what is the alternative? If we don't believe that our
person should end up in a cage in every situation,
what's the alternative to that? So we're sort of incubating
and developing different alternatives that doesn't rely on incarceration all
of the time. So can you give us an example
of an idea or an initiative that even working on lately,
(15:23):
that you're most passionate about. I want to say ending
the slavery exclusion in the thirteen for Amendment. That's a
campaign that is well. One of the organizations as Living
in is work Crisis, Bianca Tlic and also Daryl Atkinson
at Forward Justice. If we are able to amend the
(15:44):
Constitution to remove the slavery clause in the thirteen for amendment,
that would tremendously impact the way that we are currently
doing business. Galaxy gives criminal justice in front of They
(16:05):
spent over a hundred million dollars on it already, and
I think they're just getting warmed up. They're working on
sports based youth development, leadership, democracy and healing, and they
bet on And I think this is so important because
if you're listening, you have a bold idea, then write
this down and get ahold of Galaxy Gives, or get
ahold of aalax and will give you some some ways
to do that because Galaxy gives. Their reputation has been
(16:27):
built on betting on bold successful justice, performed projects right.
That includes the Bailed Project, the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition,
and others. So they have a Galaxy Leaders Fellowship which
provides a one time, unrestricted award of a hundred and
fifty thousand to an annual cohort of ten fellows. So
you may be one of those people. Maybe you're in college,
maybe you've got an idea, maybe you want to change
(16:48):
the world, So write it down, get ahold of Alex whatever,
And of course there will be links in the bio
as well the episode bio for you to be able
to find the information that you need. You know, maybe
you'll be the one that helps really crack the code
on this awful and uniquely American problem. Now, Alex, we
turned to what I believe is the most fun and
(17:12):
interesting part of our show. So before I get to that,
I want to thank you again. And there's two parts
of our closing. The first one is called the magic
one question. It works like this, if you had a
magic one and could wave it and fix one problem,
what would it be? The garbage? You may be like,
(17:35):
what's That's exactly what I may be. Go ahead, so
let me explain. So. Mass incarceration is a set of
systems that extracts resources and talent from historically marginalized communities,
(17:56):
and the results of that entrenched poverty, lack of economic opportunity,
under funded schools, and deteriorating neighborhoods, which are the root
causes of violence. There was a study done by the
(18:16):
University of Pennsylvania Urban Health lab. They did a control
study that showed that if you clean up the garbage,
if you plan more trees, if you you know, turn
dilapidated buildings and you fix them up, that that will
reduce crime by in communities. Like we've talked about the
(18:42):
broken window theory, but rather than criminalizing folks, nobody ever
acts why we don't just fixed it them window? Right? So,
if you walk around New York City, for example, you're
seeing so much garbage and litter in rats running rampant,
(19:03):
right that I think that's that's that's part of the
failure of liberalism, the fact that we have so much
garbage in our streets. Go to California, hundred and fifty
people living in the streets. That's a shameful thing that
we have, right, and we need to care about these communities,
(19:24):
and we need to invest heavily in black and brown communities.
And it starts by having clean streets because you know, imagine, Jason,
the sort of sense of ownership that you have inside
of your home. Right, if we had that same sense
to our communities, we have different outcomes. The reason why
(19:45):
a lot of these communities feel that way is because
we feel that they don't care about us, Why should
I care about this? Right? And if we had clean streets,
if we had more trees, if we had more green spaces,
that would dramatic ually reduce the stress. It will forage
deeper social connections in neighborhoods, and it will improve public safety.
(20:09):
So I would you say, you know, auto magic one
always clean up the garbage. That's not the answer I
was expecting, but it's a good answer. And as a
New Yorker I can relate to it because it is
a scourge in our city. Um and obviously it's worse
in the zip codes that are lower income zip codes,
but it is. It is a scourge all over the
city and it needs to be fixed. And before we
(20:31):
go to our closing, I'd like to remind our audience
to tune in next week when we speak with Chris Brown,
a veteran of gun violence prevention work who sees gun
violence as a national healthcare crisis. And now the closing
of our show is called Words of Wisdom. This is
where I first of all, thank you for joining us
and sharing your perspective with our audience, and then turn
(20:52):
my microphone off, leave my headphones on, kick back in
my chair and just listen to anything else you feel
is left to be said. And I forgot to say this.
Part of the reason why we have so much trash
and blight in our communities is because we pump in
so much money into the police. They usually have the
(21:15):
largest line item in city budgets in large cities in America.
But if we were to reallocate resources from police departments
and into sort of place based investments in investing in communities, infrastructure,
fixing blight, dilapidated buildings, empty lots, and cleaning up the garbage,
that will reduce crime more than any police department can.
(21:48):
Thank you for listening to Righteous Convictions with Jason plom
I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall, Jeff Claverne,
and Kevin Warris, with research by Lla Robinson. The music
in this production wild supply by three time OSCAR nominated
composer Jay Ralph. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter
at Lava for Good. You can also follow me on
(22:09):
TikTok and Instagram at It's Jason Blom. Righteous Convictions with
Jason Blom is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
and association with Say About Company Number one
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