REFLECTIONS ON AFJ’S 5 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

On the evening of September 15, 2016 the huge Temple space at the National Black Theatre of Harlem was filled to capacity with standing room only. Friends, supporters and curiosity seekers were gathered for the launch of Alliance of Families for Justice. Friends traveled from France, upstate New York, California, Washington, DC and beyond to lend their support and good wishes. 

It was an exciting evening filled with performances, speeches, audio glitches, congratulations, donations and anticipation. There was no admission charged to attend. We joked with everyone in attendance telling them that they wouldn’t have to pay to come in, BUT they would have to pay to leave. We knew what we wanted to achieve. How we were going to do it with NO money, was a totally different question. 

We raised $89,000 that evening and the blessings have continued to flow ever since. We were able to acquire a co-operative office space in Harlem where we are still headquartered. One of our founding board members purchased a copy machine and office supplies for us. Other supporters donated books, supplies and their time. 

As a new organization, it was very difficult to get funding. For the first 15 months of our existence, none of us earned a salary. We were struggling to make ends meet, but we were determined not to give up. 

Then one day, we received a phone call from someone who deeply believed in our mission. The caller asked if we could use a donation of $100,000 - I nearly fainted!! The generosity of that donor enabled us to stay afloat and hire three people at minimal pay.

Now, with 17 full and part time employees, those days seem so long ago. 

We’ve worked hard and accomplished so much because of the dedicated staff, board members, volunteers, donors, funders, friends and allies. Because they believed in us and our mission, we thrived and blossomed. 

In 2017 we held an historic 19 day March for Justice - marching from Harlem to Albany to highlight the human rights abuses that are pervasive in the NYS prison system and calling for the shut down of Attica prison. Thousands of people participated in the event including our beloved elders Queen Ivey Walton, Barbara Polk and Beverley Simms.

In 2018 and 2019, along with our partners in the Justice Collective, we co-hosted 6 regional conferences each of which focused on the impact of mass incarceration on individuals, families and communities.  The conferences took place in New York City, Peekskill, Ithaca, Buffalo, The Adirondacks and Albany - each one focused on participation from directly impacted individuals. Each one was a HUGE success! 

We hosted annual events in which we paid tribute to women and men whose lives were impacted by incarceration; held family healing retreats; conducted monthly community organizing meetings; hosted holiday dinner events with loads of toys for the children; sponsored communications and organizing training; held community forums; hosted advocacy days; appeared on radio and television; led postcard campaigns and demonstrations; and elevated the importance of families in the prison abolition/reform narrative.

In 2019 we boldly launched our Legal Support and Family Support Units; providing free legal representation and emotional and behavioral health support to directly impacted people. For hundreds of people, these services have been a lifeline to survival. 

In 2020 we were able to expand our reach and launch our wildly successful Youth Empowerment Project! We’re already served over 200 Youth Leaders, far surpassing our most ambitious expectations. We are hopeful that we’ll be able to continue to expand this program as we tap directly impacted communities and cultivate the leaders of tomorrow. 

While cultivating the leadership skills of our youth, we also developed ways to do the same for directly impacted adults through internships, fellowships and our first artist-in-residence opportunity! 

In addition to our Harlem based headquarters, we now have staffed offices in Ithaca and Albany; and we have allies across New York state. In 2021 we launched an intensive year-long community organizing training program for directly impacted people and our volunteers - this has been extremely well received.

The COVID19 pandemic forced us to immediately pivot all operations to a remote platform in 2020. We feared that this would wreak havoc on our programs and family member participation, however we experienced exactly the opposite. Our engagement more than quadrupled in large measure because we provided concrete ways for our constituents to process the trauma caused by separation from their loved ones AND gave them the tools to actively organize and resist. 

Another exciting development for 2022 is that we now have funding to elevate our #ShutDownAttica campaign. This promises to be an extremely effective initiative and provides a myriad of opportunities for diverse state-wide engagement. 

It has been tremendously rewarding to witness the evolution of our constituents as they transformed their pain into power. As concrete testament to this our people have become intensely civically engaged including voter education, registration, GOTV and they are deeply immersed in the statewide effort to restore the right to vote for incarcerated people. This effort follows our successful involvement in 2021 to restore the right to vote for people on parole. Restoring the right to vote for incarcerated people will take several years because it necessitates amending the state constitution. I’m confident that our members are up to the challenge and will join with millions of other New Yokers to eradicate this last vestige of slavery and the era of Jim Crow laws.