In this issue:
Lorenzo Jones at Building Bridges Conference
Mo Farrell at 2018 SOMOS Conference
Steven Powers, Katal’s New Apprentice Community Organizer
lorenzo jones at building bridges conference
What is the justice community in Connecticut doing about the overdose crisis? Lorenzo Jones, Katal’s Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director, participated in a panel last week to answer that question at a conference hosted by Central Connecticut State University (CCSU). Titled Building Bridges: Reframed, the conference followed Michelle Alexander’s CCSU discussion the previous evening on the intersection of race, social control, and mass incarceration in the United States. Lorenzo’s panel was named after a report recently released by the Sentencing Project, Opioids: Treating an Illness, Ending a War, which serves as a guide for policymakers to use a public health approach to end the current overdose crisis.
You can check out the report here.
mo farrell at 2018 somos conference
Mo Farrell, Katal’s Policy Strategist, is participating in a workshop titled Judicial Diversity and Impact of Criminal Justice Reform on Latinos during the SOMOS Conference in Albany this weekend. Moderated by New York Assemblymember Luis Sepulveda and Senator Jamaal Bailey, the workshop will address how bail, speedy trial, and discovery reform would impact the Latino community – and how the lack of Latino judges affects these reform efforts. Mo will be on the panel to discuss how successful reform requires an end to the over-criminalization, over-policing, and over-charging that drives disproportionate numbers of Black and Latino people into jails and prisons.
You can find more information about the workshop here.
steven powers, katal’s new apprentice community organizer
We are pleased to announce that this past January, we welcomed Steven Powers, Apprentice Community Organizer, to Katal’s New York City office. Steven has organized around issues of mass incarceration and immigration for the last four years in New York City. Originally from Texas, Steven has developed a life-long commitment to understanding and combating mass incarceration and its intersection with carceral border policy: a purpose he picked up from sharing county cells and holding tanks with migrant workers throughout his adolescence. Prior to joining the team, he worked as a Spanish and French interpreter for Haitian and Central/South American detainees for Families For Freedom, fundraised for the survival of the I.C.E. hotline and trainings, and worked with abolition groups and direct action services.
