Mental Healthcare Resources Target Communities Left Behind, A Tech Giant Wages War Against ISIS and More

 
Rural America Finally Gets Mental Health Help, Governing
The absence of clinics, therapists and psychiatrists in our nation’s small towns have fueled incarceration, self-medicating opioid abuse and suicide. But developments like telemedicine and integration of mental health checkups into primary care visits have the potential to alleviate the psychic crises causing headaches in sparsely populated counties.
Google’s Clever Plan to Stop Aspiring ISIS Recruits, WIRED
The search engine is trying a new strategy to fight the Islamic State’s aggressive online recruiting campaigns. Rather than creating or hiding content, Google simply redirects traffic to videos featuring Muslim religious authorities debunking ISIS apocalyptic theology and undercover clips showing the devastation for Syrian and Iraqi civilians.
Can a Montana Community Run its Own Forest? High Country News
In 2002, to prevent real estate developers from subdividing 142 acres of lakefront property, locals in one small Montana town pooled their money to buy the land for the community. After financial hardships threatened to put the parcel back on the market in 2014, an under-utilized government fund saved the shoreline, preserving the West’s rugged landscape.
MORE: This Common Sense Program Could Be the Future of Mental Healthcare Nationwide
 

The Art of Using Film to Transform the Lives of Formerly-Incarcerated Youth

Comics, with their rowdy action boxed within firm, familiar lines and violence reduced to harmless bams, thwacks and kapows, give Mario Rivera the ability to escape from reality. “When you’re reading the comic book, you’re no longer thinking about your problems,” says Rivera, a 24-year-old New Yorker who served time in prison for a violent crime he committed at age 15. The same goes for Rivera’s younger brother Shawn King, 21, who lived in 37 foster homes between the ages of 7 and 18 and was jailed for a few months earlier this year. Comics gave him a “way of keeping in touch with my brother and my dad…[a feeling] like they were there next to me,” he says.
The two brothers — lanky guys with the same curly, orangish hair and dozens of tattoos between them — barely saw each other during their formative years, but they recently reunited at the Community Producers program at New York City’s Maysles Documentary Center (MDC) and discovered their shared interest in not only comics, but filmmaking as well. At MDC, the siblings, along with two dozen court-involved youth, created documentary shorts about their lives. After six months of production (all at no cost to participants), the films capture day-to-day life of someone who came into contact with the law and compel audience members to change the way they view these adolescents: not as convicts, but as creatives.
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“If you hear from a young person who’s been incarcerated and listen to his story, you’ll leave different somehow, based on what you learned,” says Christine Peng, MDC’s education director who founded and oversees Community Producers. “Serving the communities and neighborhoods of the tri-state region is important to NBC 4 New York and Telemundo 47,” says John Durso, Jr., vice president of community and communications for NBC 4 New York and Telemundo 47.  “Maysles Documentary Center provides an important service to the community in which it’s located and through 21st Century Solutions, our stations work together to support new programs and initiatives, generating positive change within our region.
APPLY: Maysles Documentary Center is an NBCUniversal Foundation 21st Century Solutions grant winner. Apply to the 2016 program today.
MDC founder Albert Maysles and his brother, David, were revered documentarians known for “direct cinema,” an approach where the cameraman simply observes without intrusion and edits the clips together without narration. By letting characters in films such as “Grey Gardens” and “Salesman” speak for themselves, the brothers (now both deceased) believed, “you really get to know the world, not the philosophy or point-of-view of the narrator.” Albert’s creed was that “you can listen to someone else’s story and truly hear them out, without jumping to assumptions,” Peng explains.
Similarly, Community Producers gives participants (all racial minorities with a criminal history) the opportunity to share their real-life experiences of growing up — a chance many haven’t been afforded by the social service bureaucracy or criminal justice system. After just a few minutes onscreen, the filmmakers break through misconceptions and reveal their vulnerabilities to moviegoers. For instance, a viewer will discover that the roughly 46 tattoos crowding King and Rivera’s arms aren’t the typical jailhouse variety: they’re actually Pokémon and X-Men cartoons.
The process of breaking down stereotypes starts with the filmmakers themselves, as the adolescent New Yorkers, ever protective of their own turf and judgmental about other neighborhoods, had to learn to trust their peers at MDC. When the program first began in March, King was silent, and Rivera would only pipe up if spoken to one-on-one. They didn’t discuss life at home. “Is this a safe space for me? Are these people going to judge me?” Peng says the kids wondered. “Part of what eventually built that trust was either realizing you were totally wrong about somebody or realizing that you shared a lot in common, as people who lost parents or siblings or who had traumatic experiences growing up.”
Emulating the Maysles brothers by working in a pair, Rivera and King kept the cameras rolling nonstop, finding details from their lives that would resonate with an audience. As they debated artistic vision, their collaboration forced them to learn more about each other. While the brothers describe the experience as “fun,” Peng says she witnessed them learn “to be accountable to each other, emotionally and physically.” Often, the siblings pointed the lens toward their own family members, including a sister with whom they’d lost contact, and sometimes themselves. “The process of making the film gave them an excuse to be around people,” she noticed. “They could be involved and also be a little outside,” retreating behind the viewfinder. One afternoon, on MDC’s rooftop, Rivera and King asked each other about their relationship with their dad, the first time they’d ever discussed him together.
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When NationSwell visited MDC in late June, King had been temporarily kicked out of the MDC space. Despite his brother’s absence, Rivera said he planned to finish the film, even if he was doing it alone. “I’ve already started it, and I’m not the type who’s into starting something and not finishing it,” he told his peers after previewing a two-minute rough cut. King returned after a brief hiatus, and together, the siblings put together “Back to Reality,” a film that shows the their tangible love for each other and, as Rivera puts it, their “daily escapades.” The short movie also tackles weightier issues: learning how to parent while coping with their mother’s recent death and grappling with the lifelong appreciation of comic books their dad instilled in them even though they now hate the man for skipping out on their childhood.
Unlike most arts programs that tout the cathartic value of transforming one’s life into art, the Maysles Documentary Center Community Producers program impacts youth through alternative means. King and Rivera received something that had largely been missing from their childhood: a new way to connect with their family members and each other. With a camera in hand, they could rekindle any relationship and ask questions that previously might have been awkward. After filming her, King and Rivera’s sister arrived at the showcase to watch their finished movie. Sitting together in the back row of MDC’s theater, the siblings once again looked like a family. After years of separation, spent reading comic books alone, this reunion looked better than any caped crusader’s rescue.
Maysles Documentary Center is a recipient of last year’s 21st Century Solutions grant powered by the NBCUniversal Foundation, in partnership with the NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations. The grant celebrates nonprofits that are embracing innovative solutions to advance community-based programs in the areas of civic engagement, education, environment, jobs and economic empowerment, media, and technology for good. Apply here for a chance to be one of the 2016 winners!

This Former Inmate Fights for Others’ Freedom from Life Sentences

Jason Hernandez never thought he would see the outside world again.
Since 1998, he had been serving a life sentence in federal prison for selling crack cocaine in his native McKinney, Texas. It was his first criminal offense, but due to the Drug Act of 1986 and the mandatory minimum sentences it required, Hernandez found himself locked up at the age of 21. Then, in 2013, his prayers and petitions were answered: He was granted clemency by President Obama.
Watch the video above and see how Hernandez uses Crack Open the Door, his sentencing advocacy nonprofit, to spotlight and fight for the release of other first-time nonviolent drug offenders serving life without parole.
MORE: Criminal Justice Reform Is Imminent. Here’s Why

Former Prisoners Find Redemption Running a Prosperous Business in San Francisco’s Public Housing

At the age of 13, Tyrone Mullins had his first contact with the justice system in 1998, handcuffed for starting a small tussle at school. He could’ve been hit with a minor reprimand, serving a few weeks of detention or even a suspension, but instead, he was formally charged with a crime — setting Mullins on a path of near-permanent incarceration for the next half of his life. “From that point on, it was juvenile hall, county jail and prison,” says Mullins, a San Francisco native who grew up in a Western Addition public housing project. As a felon, Mullins had limited employment opportunities after each release. Rejected from positions at hotels, supermarkets, department stores, doughnut shops, Jamba Juice and McDonald’s, Mullins subsided on money from the government ($336 a month, split into two checks). “All that allows is temptation to come in and make you do another thing, follow another walk of life,” Mullins explains. “You may not necessarily want to take that route, but people do things when they’re hurting.” And Mullins was hurting.
Navigating past numerous hard knocks, in 2010, Mullins co-founded a successful business that provides jobs to public housing residents, regardless of their parole status. At three Bay Area public housing complexes, Green Streets pays employees $12.25 an hour to sort trash from recyclables and compostables. While handling garbage is far from glamorous in a city that’s home to Salesforce, Twitter and Dropbox, Green Streets’s roughly two dozen workers wear their grey jumpsuits with pride. For many, it marks the first time they’ve financially supported themselves. (“Legally,” Mullins likes to add.) In a city that’s witnessed a mass exodus of low-income African-Americans due to the rising cost of living, these denizens of the projects can finally point to ownership of an enterprise in a world where so much is out of their price range.

Tyrone Mullins leads the design team from Exploratorium, a public learning lab, on a tour of the Buchanan Mall in San Francisco.

Green Streets got its unofficial start in 2010, when a work crew arrived at a Western Addition affordable housing development, managed by the for-profit company McCormack Baron Ragan, to install solar panels. Worried about thieves, round-the-clock security was desired. David Mauroff, McCormack Baron’s vice president at the time, didn’t have the money for guards, but he had another idea: “Why don’t you hire the guys who you think are gonna steal your stuff?” Resident DeMaurio Lee staffed the job, and nothing was stolen. Mullins, meanwhile, with two out of three felony strikes against him, installed panels himself, after finding the job through a nonprofit. Four months later, after the ribbon-cutting ceremony, DeMaurio and Mullins gathered the courage to approach Mauroff (despised by most residents, Mauroff says of himself, as the man who personally signed off on evictions) and asked for more work. With a background in city-run gang intervention programs, Mauroff could see the determination on their faces and agreed to see what he could do.
The solution appeared when the complex’s next waste disposal bill arrived. At just one project, Buena Vista Plaza East (193 units, known to many as “O.C.” or “Outta Control”), McCormack Baron faced a $14,000 annual charge from Recology to haul trash to the landfill or an incinerator. As part of San Francisco’s plan to become a zero-waste city by 2020, the bill could be significantly lowered by removing plastic bottles, aluminum cans, food, soiled paper and garden clippings from the overflowing dumpsters. Mauroff, who’s now credited as one of Green Streets’s co-founders, told Mullins he would pay residents to sort through waste, earmarking any savings on his bills for their wages. “I’m not telling you how to do this. I will just help you get the resources in place for you to launch this business,” he told the two men.
Neighbors made fun of the crew digging through rat-infested trash piles in their white protective suits. Yet within six months, thousands of gallons of trash were diverted each month, saving the property 60 percent on its bills. Soon, neighbors started handing Mullins their résumés.
To turn the model into a business, complete with hiring plans, a mission statement, marketing and sound financials, Mullins enrolled in free classes at San Francisco City College’s Small Business Institute. Severely complicating matters was the fact that in the Western Addition complex, danger and temptation were omnipresent. In the courtyards, residents had to dodge literal bullets. Mullins himself was sent back to prison for two years for violating his parole.
Tyrone and his crew sort through recyclables.

While Mullins served his time, the rest of San Francisco’s black population continued its decades-long “black flight.” (Since 1970, the city’s portion of African-Americans has been halved, from 13.4 percent to just 5.8 percent in 2014.) Green Streets employees interviewed for this story feel keenly aware of their skin color. Unprompted, they often identified others by race: Mauroff was a “white dude”; neighbors, a “bunch of black people.” They feel that racial differences have been exaggerated by California’s penal system, with which many public housing residents come into contact. In the past, more than half the lockups in San Francisco’s jail have been African-Americans, and last year, four city cops were investigated for trading bigoted text messages. Even in this famously tolerant city, race continues to be a point of tension, says London Breed, one of two African-American city supervisors on the city’s nine-member board. “I am just trying to hold on to evidence that blacks ever existed in San Francisco,” Breed, who grew up in Western Addition public housing, tells the Los Angeles Times.
For those African-Americans who have stayed in the city, the economic outlook looks bleak. The median household income among black residents has fallen to a slim $29,500, while all other racial groups have seen wages rise. (By comparison, the median household pay for white residents, thanks to tech money, now exceeds six figures: $104,300.) Roughly one quarter of the city’s black population relies on subsidized housing, according to data from the Mayor’s Task Force, but the lifeline doesn’t begin to meet demand (only 3.6 percent of applicants receive housing through a lottery system). For the lucky few, like Green Streets employees, housing may be affordable, but the city is anything but.
Gentrification isn’t the only reason why some neighbors are gone: gun violence regularly racks the housing developments. “In San Francisco, with this extreme wealth and income disparity, most of our crime is really centered, not in, but around public housing, these little pockets of poverty isolated from the $1 to $2 million homes right across the street,” Mauroff observers. Last summer, a 19-year-old girl was gunned down in a spray of bullets. The girl’s aunt, Shannon Watts, is Green Streets’s human resources manager. A victim of gun violence herself (taking a bullet in her right leg in 2012), Watts says that her work with Green Streets helped her overcome the debilitating trauma that once kept her captive inside her apartment, door locked and shades drawn.
The difficulties that Green Streets’s employees encounter are considered a badge of honor, a sign of how much they’ve overcome to reach their current success — meager as a minimum-wage job might look to any of the Bay Area’s elites. When Mullins finished his two years in prison, he enrolled in Project ReMADE, a 12-week program at Stanford that trains ex-cons to be entrepreneurs. “I see the transformation I’ve made, and I’m honest with myself,” Mullins says today. “I continue to be a work in progress.”
Reinstated as Green Streets’s operations manager and the leader of the business development team, Mullins took his education back to the informal economy of the projects, where some residents earn extra cash by doing each other’s hair, fixing cars and babysitting, while others sell drugs and break into cars. This self-contained marketplace arose because so many are kept out of workplaces by criminal records or lack of job experience, Mauroff notes. Green Streets bridges that transition to the working world, though it’s not without its bumps. Turf wars between gangs in different housing projects sometimes bleeds over when rivals are staffed together on company cleanup crews. Randolph Lee, the 48-year-old operations supervisor, says he’s responded to fights, stabbings and “a little bit of gunplay.”
A “two-time ex-felon” convicted of murder, Randolph has regularly been tempted to snap back to his old ways. Before he got the job with Green Streets, he says, “I was ready to go back to what I had done before. Just hustling, you know?” he recalls. “I was on my way back to do something I wasn’t supposed to do: I was going to go get it, go get some bread to pay bills.” Since starting with Green Streets in 2013, Randolph has been promoted through the ranks. In his current role as supervisor, he helps employees productively deal with their anger, pointing to his own story: “The only thing we have is our pride, and how far could that go if we allow ourselves to get incarcerated for life,” Randolph says. “I done terrorized and fought my community. It was time to heal my community. I never wanted my last legacy of myself just being a screwup.”
Green Streets operations supervisor Randolph Lee, pictured with Meaghan Shannon-Vlkovic of Enterprise Community Partners, at the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation Film Series in Atlanta.

Mullins envisions the same impact helping the poorest residents of Detroit, St. Louis, Miami and Phoenix, but a recent failed expansion to nearby Richmond and Oakland shows any scaling must overcome logistical issues. Because the two East Bay cities don’t have strong zero-waste initiatives that discount hauling of recyclables and compostables, the trash bill at housing projects only increased by hiring Green Streets. That’s not to say the model can’t be applied elsewhere, but green subsidies will have to be in place for it to work.
The Western Addition and Plaza East projects serve as evidence of just how successful this business can be. There’s a changed vibe and it’s cleaner, too, as 60,960 gallons of trash are being diverted into other waste streams. But more importantly, there’s fewer men on the corner, whispering street names for drugs to passersby. Many, like Randolph, now work for Green Streets, a model demonstrating that an entrepreneurial spirit can be found in any community, Mauroff says, no matter how unexpected. “A bunch of guys and girls in public housing aren’t given the credit for showing they can do that,” he argues. “I want people to understand that: Under the right circumstances, everyone will go back to work and try to compete in the market.”
For all the frustrations tech startups have unleashed on the Bay Area, they’ve also instilled a sense that the calcified structures of the past don’t necessarily need to be around tomorrow. Mullins brought that Silicon Valley ethic to the Western Addition projects. He deserves credit for his own powerful disruption: not just finding a new way to sort trash and manage its pickup, but for an entirely new vision of labor for those the tech world’s prosperity is leaving behind.

Criminal Justice Reform Is Imminent. Here’s Why

Van Jones may joke that he’s been an African American “for a very long time,” but it’s impossible for him to ignore the serious racial inequalities in the U.S. criminal justice system. With blacks incarcerated at six times the rates as Caucasians for the same crime, the multi-hyphen Jones co-founded the organization #Cut50, which works to reduce the prison population by 50 percent in the next decade.
During an exclusive interview with NationSwell, Jones discussed how the fight for reform is progressing and which 2016 presidential candidates are mostly likely to bring about change within the criminal justice system.
How has your organization #Cut50 participated in the [criminal justice reform] debate?
“I hosted a summit in March with Newt Gingrich — he and I became friends working together on CNN — and we thought, if we work really hard, we could get 100 people together for an hour, leaders from both sides, to talk about this issue. We got 700 people for seven hours, including 10 members of Congress, three governors, two Cabinet secretaries and a video from the president.
“Out of that summit, three bills were introduced and a channel was opened up between Koch Industries and the White House — mortal enemies, but not on this one issue. On JusticeReformNow.org, we collected 120,000 signatures from people saying Congress and the president should work together to get something done this year. We’ve worked as effectively as the other groups — the Coalition for Public Safety, ACLU, the Drug Policy Alliance or FAMM, Families Against Mandatory Minimums. We’re working very hard, and we’re very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish.”
In Washington, #Cut50 is lobbying for the SAFE Justice Act. What would that legislation do?
“The most important thing is letting judges be judges again. We so overreacted to the crack epidemic in the 1980s; we stripped judges of their right to judge and instead imposed mandatory minimum sentences. Even if you’re someone caught with drugs because you were forced to by a boyfriend who was threatening your life or you had never made any mistake before, a judge couldn’t say, ‘Well, look, the punishment should fit the crime here.’ In all circumstances, they just rubber stamped it and would give you some atrocious sentence. You can get 25 years for shooting a cop and 30 years for a non-violent drug offense. That’s the kind of thing that this legislation begins to address.”
READ MORE: 7 States Making Bold Criminal Justice Reforms
Even though Congress is talking about criminal justice reform, it doesn’t seem like the presidential candidates are giving it much attention, with a couple exceptions like Rand Paul. Why is that?
“They’re talking about reform more in this election than any other in American history. Even people like Ted Cruz have spoken out against mandatory minimums. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have addressed this issue, after being pushed by Black Lives Matter. But notice on the Democratic side, Bill Clinton in 1992 made his case to the American people by attacking Rev. Jesse Jackson, executing an African-American with mental health issues in his own state and putting more cops on the street. Hillary Clinton is having to speak out about the catastrophic excesses that have resulted from that kind of attitude. Even Bill Clinton himself has had to come out and say that things have gone too far.
“People pretend that Democrats have been good on these issues and that Republicans have been terrible. In fact, it’s the reverse. Some of the worst policies have come from Democrats like Bill Clinton, and Gov. Gray Davis and Gov. Jerry Brown here in California. Meanwhile, Republican governors like Rick Perry, Nathan Deal in Georgia and John Kasich in Ohio have actually been closing prisons. It’s not a traditional debating point, but it’s an issue that’s rising in importance.”
There’s a lot of discussion already, but that doesn’t always translate into reform. Do you think that now’s finally the time?
“Now here’s something that I think nobody knows. President Obama went to a prison, the only sitting president who’d ever been to a prison. Some people thought that was historic, but that was only a third of the history that was made that day. When he came out of the prison, he didn’t come out chastising the people who were locked up. Instead, he came out and identified with them. He himself had done some of the same things that got these kids in trouble. Now that’s history. For a sitting president to identify with incarcerated felons? And to point out, ‘There but for the grace of good and good parenting, go I?’ That’s extraordinary. That a president would have been in prison, that an American president would have been a felon — that’s a remarkable statement.
“Another third of the history that day was that no serious Republican in the United States of America attacked him for it. In fact, John Boehner himself said he wanted to have a vote on bipartisan criminal justice reform. Now this is a president who could put forward a bill that declared kittens are cute and he would be attacked by Republicans. This is a president that cannot get Republicans to agree with him on anything. And yet on this issue a black president goes into a prison and talks to black felons, and he doesn’t get attacked at all. Now that gives you a sense of the level and depth of the sea change on this issue. You can see in that one day how far this issue has moved in a very short period of time.
“We will get comprehensive criminal justice reform signed by this president, if not by Christmas, certainly by Easter. It’s the only thing that a critical mass of leaders actually agree needs to be done. There might be a thousand fights on the details, but everyone agrees it has to happen.”
This interview has been condensed and edited.
(Front page image: John Moore/Getty Images)

Here’s Yet Another Reason to Love Ben & Jerry’s

If you ever feel guilty about cheating on your 2015 diet goals with some Ben & Jerry’s, just think: By eating the icy treat, you are helping someone change their life.
As Good News Network reports, every time you indulge in the tasty brownies inside a tub of Chocolate Fudge Brownie or Half Baked, you’re also supporting the workers at Greyston Bakery, a business in Yonkers, N.Y., that employs people who just need a second chance.
Yahoo.com’s Rachel Tepper writes that most of the workers are people who’ve been “previously incarcerated, addicted to drugs or alcohol, homeless or faced other issues that made them seemingly unemployable.”
Good News Network notes that as soon as a new spot opens at the company, it’s given to anyone who is in line for that job — no questions asked. Not only that, Greyston also helps them with personal development tools and provides them with professional skills.
MORE: Ever Wondered What To Say To A Homeless Person? Here Are 5 Things to Say And 5 Things Not to Say
The forward-thinking company also offers subsidized housing and childcare to its employees, and it also gives back to the larger needs of the community by maintaining community gardens, offering nutrition education classes and providing free job training programs.
Ben & Jerry’s has been working with the bakery since the late 1980s and hasn’t looked back since. Learn more about the company in the video below:
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Shaka Senghor Doesn’t Let Mistakes Define Him

Shaka Senghor is a motivational speaker, a Director’s Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab and the author of six books. At age 19, however, he shot and killed a man.
“I was a young drug dealer with a quick temper and a semi-automatic pistol,” he reveals during a TED Talk in March.

Twenty-three years ago, that was Senghor’s story. With the support of his family, mentors, literature and a newfound passion for writing, Senghor changed his narrative.

His story begins like any other American child growing up. He was a scholarship student on the honor roll with aspirations of becoming a doctor. But his parents’ separation and divorce affected his upbringing, leading him to spiral down a dark path.

As a 17-year-old drug dealer working the corner on the streets of Detroit, Senghor was shot three times. A brief trip to the hospital led him directly back to the neighborhood with a bitter outlook.

“Throughout this ordeal, no one hugged me, no one counseled me, no one told me I would be okay,” he recalls. “No one told me that I would live in fear, that I would become paranoid, or that I would react hyper-violently to being shot. No one told me that one day, I would become the person behind the trigger.”

Violence is a vicious cycle, and for criminals it’s exacerbated by an incarceration system that perpetuates recidivism rather than affording inmates opportunities to turn their lives around.

“…the majority of men and women who are incarcerated are redeemable, and the fact is, 90 percent of the men and women who are incarcerated will at some point return to the community,” Senghor notes, “and we have a role in determining what kind of men and women return to our community.”

Hostility over his situation led Senghor to continue his criminal activities behind prison walls, ultimately landing him in solitary confinement for seven and a half years. But one day, Senghor received a letter from his son, which read, ‘”My mama told me why you was in prison: murder. Dad, don’t kill. Jesus watches what you do. Pray to Him.”
The sobering realization that his son identified him as a murderer forced introspection, and for Senghor to finally confront his actions. With guidance from mentors he met inside prison, delving into texts by inspirational authors like Malcolm X, unwavering support from his family and a penchant for journaling, Senghor was afforded an opportunity to leave behind his troubled past.
In the four short years since his release, that checkered history has been replaced with a bright future.
Among his other achievements, Senghor is a 2014 W.K. Kellogg Community Leadership Network Fellow, teaches at the University of Michigan and serves as a national spokesperson for Black Male Engagement (BMe), a network of black males engaged in their communities.
His personal transformation, he adds, was possible because of three components: acknowledgement of hurting himself and others, apologizing to those he hurt and atonement for his actions. For Senghor, atoning helps at-risk youth and former inmates transform their lives.

“Anybody can have a transformation if we create the space for that to happen,” he says. “So what I’m asking today is that you envision a world where men and women aren’t held hostage to their pasts, where misdeeds and mistakes don’t define you for the rest of your life.”

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MORE: How a Second Chance Can Benefit Prisoners and Taxpayers
 

The Legislation That Has the Potential to Reduce Youth Recidivism in California

The California juvenile justice system is caught in a depressing Catch-22.
It’s common knowledge that schools are one of the best ways to keep kids out of trouble. But for the troubled ones that are sent to juvenile hall, they face very difficult odds of reenrolling in class once they’ve served their time. This often means that if these kids aren’t readmitted, they are back on the streets — missing out on an education and possibly turning to a life of crime.
Nationwide, 80 percent of incarcerated juvenile offenders end up behind bars again. For California — the state with the highest rate of incarcerated youth — this has to stop. But now, a new bipartisan-approved bill (currently waiting Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature) could change this troubling statistic, VoiceWaves reports.
AB 2276, authored by Assemblymember Raul Bocanegra, could ensure “that juvenile justice-involved youth have a successful educational transition when they return to their local schools, and creates a process to help promote best practices for this transition.”
MORE: The Radical School Reform That Just Might Work
California’s juvenile court schools have the highest dropout rates in the state. VoiceWaves reporter Michael Lozano explains that “of the roughly 42,000 youth who attend California’s juvenile court schools each year, only 20 percent successfully reenroll within 30 days of their release from the system.”
Why do these kids have so much trouble going back to school?
According to Lozano’s report, when a child is released from the juvenile court system, school records are not immediately transferred from probation officials to the county office of education. This means that schools might force these kids to take redundant classes, or in a much worse case, deny these students from enrolling completely.
What’s troubling is that the majority of the country’s incarcerated youth are locked up for non-violent offenses, such as California high schooler Tanisha Denard, who served time in juvenile hall after racking up repeated truancies because she often couldn’t afford the bus to school, VoiceWaves reports. After being released, school officials did not allow her to reenroll at her former school. Luckily, she found another school to attend — but it wasn’t easy. Denard tells the publication that she only had five days to gather her numerous academic records, find a school that would actually accept her, as well as negotiate with her probation officer for an extension during her search. “A lot of times you get out from juvenile hall, and they look at you like a criminal, [and] they’re not likely to send you to a school where you’re likely to be successful,” she says.
There’s also appears to be a lot of miscommunication between the state’s probation offices and education departments. AB 2276 aims to reform a current law that would require these agencies to work together, expedite a student’s documents, as well as collaborate with local education organizations that help a child successfully reintegrate back into school. The bill would also create a stakeholder group that would study successful reentry programs and report back to the legislature.
ALSO: Foster Kids Need One Thing to Succeed in School. A Former Teacher’s Goal Is to Give It to Every Single One
It’s wrong to deny these kids another chance at an education, especially since most of them just want another shot. As Assemblymember Bocanegra says in his bill, “In 2010, the U.S. Department of Justice found that more than two-thirds of youth in custody have ambitions of higher education.”
It’s currently unknown how much the bill would cost; the creation of the stakeholder group alone would reportedly require $100,000. The Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, who has urged passage of the bill, found that the cost of a year of incarceration for a youth who does not reengage is $180,000. Additionally, the organization says that “youth who do not successfully transition back into school after leaving the juvenile justice system and drop out cost the state $46 billion a year, including $12 billion in crime costs alone.”
For California’s formerly incarcerated youth, this might just be a very small price to pay.
DON’T MISS: How Portland, Ore., Is Translating Student Grit Into Success

These 3 Urban Farms Provide the Formerly Incarcerated an Opportunity to Grow

You can’t argue with the benefits of urban farming. Not only does it provide fresh, local food, but it also helps to unite a community.
While most of these farms focus exclusively on the sprouting fruits and vegetables, a few are looking to grow better lives for a group that is commonly forgotten: former prisoners and at-risk youths.
With 2.2 million people currently in jail, according to the Sentencing Project, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world. But even after being released, life for many of these individuals doesn’t get much (if any) better. Many employers don’t want to hire ex-convicts, so the former prisoners fall back into their old life, committing crimes and returning to jail — continuing the cycle.
Which is where these urban farms come in. They employ those that are formerly incarcerated and at-risk youth, offering job-training programs and putting these individuals on a path towards higher education and full-time employment.
Here are three standout urban farms (according to Sustainable Cities Collective) working towards this goal.
1. Recovery Park: Detroit, Michigan
Started in 2010, Recovery Park currently has a fully-operational 30-acre farm on land that used to be an empty parking lot. That isn’t all though, as the group is now working to create a three-tiered business model that will produce fresh food for the neighborhood as well as create jobs for those unable to find employment, such as former inmates and addicts. Eventually, the farm plans to have 2,475 acres of land, plus a food processing facility and an indoor aquaponic farm. Over the next 10 years, the goal is to create 18,000 jobs.
2. Seattle Youth Garden Works: Seattle, Washington
On the west coast, you will find the Seattle Youth Garden Works. Since 1995, this group has been providing employment and education for young adults who are either homeless or involved with the juvenile justice system. Positive reinforcement and an education in agriculture, cooking, nutrition, entrepreneurship and resume building are provided to the group of 16-21 year olds.
3. Windy City Harvest Corps: Chicago, Illinois
From 2009-2013, the Windy City Harvest Corps offered 13-week transitional jobs in the urban farming industry to 60-90 recently-released inmates. During that time, the individuals were taught job skills and given the opportunity to better their lives.  After completing the program, many went on to work for Windy City Harvest or to other full-time jobs.
However, with the start of 2014, the group has switched their focus to at-risk youths. Through a partnership with the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, the group will work to create employment and education opportunities to curb the rate of imprisonment among 17-21 year olds.
To check out a few more promising urban farming programs, click here.
Opportunity can arise from anywhere, and as those that participate in these initiatives are experiencing, it can come in the form of farming. Sometimes a little dirt is all it takes to live a clean life.
MORE: This Inmate Has Become a Diving Expert in Prison. Here’s Why That’s Good for America