Alliance of Families for Justice Inc

YOUTH EMPOWERMENT PROJECT:October 2021 marked the one-year anniversary of our Youth Empowerment Project, which has been a resounding success! We initially hoped to serve approximately 25 directly-impacted young people throughout the year, and are pleased to report that we actually served more than 200, 99% of which were Black or Latinx, and more than half of which were girls or non-binary. This is especially exciting, considering that our original conception of YEP was in a pre-pandemic world, and we had to pivot and get very creative in order to shift to a virtual structure. The entire YEP team are directly-impacted Black and Latinx individuals, and bring a passion for the work and a determination to build an effective program, in spite of, or perhaps especially because of, the challenging circumstances that COVID has presented. 2-3 remote learning pods have been offered on Zoom each week, on a variety of subjects. Youth Leaders earn $25 for each Pod in which they participate. Some examples of topics covered thus far include:? Community Leadership in Times of Crisis? Communications Training? Financial literacy? 13th Documentary: viewing and discussion on forced labor in prison? Tuskegee and COVID? Making Our Voices Heard? An Examination and Critique of Our Social OrganizationIn the months leading up to the New York State primary as well as the general election, AFJ Youth Leaders (YEP participants) engaged in street-level voter education and registration in the Bronx. AFJ was selected by Democracy NYC to educate voters about the new Ranked Choice Voting system, which Youth Leaders assisted with. Youth Leaders also distributed masks and information about preventing the spread of COVID-19 throughout the community. Over the summer, we hired two of our home-grown Youth Leaders as summer interns. They were quite invested in YEP, as they were and are participants themselves, and they were a great example to their fellow participants of stepping up to take on leadership roles. Interns assisted with coordinating YEP's activities, with co-facilitating learning pods, and also developed and led a pod of their own on environmental justice.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND CIVIC ENGAGEMENT:In June 2020, we started holding weekly organizing meetings on Zoom, which focused on visit policy as well as COVID policy in New York State prisons and jails. Throughout 2021, these meetings have continued. The pandemic is far from over, and we continue to monitor implementation of COVID protections in prisons and jails, as well as vaccine access, which remains insufficient. Additionally, while visitation has resumed, and while we accomplished advocating for DOCCS to restore processing marriage licenses which remained inexplicably suspended until recently, certain restrictions are still in place, such as the children's play areas remaining closed which makes visitation difficult for families with small children. The Family Reunion Program, which allows families to spend several days and nights with their incarcerated loved ones in a home-like setting, was at last restored, but only with double-standard vaccination policies requiring visitors to be vaccinated but not correction officers. In addition to continuing to monitor these policies and push for change, near the end of 2021 we began to reinvigorate our campaign to restore the right to vote to incarcerated people. In early 2021, we successfully advocated for the passage of a bill which codified the right to vote for people on parole. We are continuing to pursue our ultimate goal, which we have been working toward since the start of this campaign, of restoring the right to vote for all incarcerated people as well. We have begun to strategize around this campaign in our weekly organizing meetings, and will continue to do so. Before the primary and general elections, we engaged in intensive street-level voter education and registration in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. While we did not specifically target formerly incarcerated people, we knew the neighborhoods we were targeting were heavily impacted by incarceration, so it was no surprise to us that we registered many formerly incarcerated people to vote who did not even know they were eligible to vote. We also encountered some community members who were dealing with barriers we did not necessarily anticipate. Some had literacy challenges and needed assistance understanding and completing the registration form. Some had vision problems and could not read the form on their own. Tabling at the same intersections each week, we took our time with community members, had them sit with us if they wished and were patient with each and every one. In this way, we assisted them in overcoming barriers that may seem insignificant at first glance, but were standing in between them and their civic engagement.Throughout 2021, we also reinvigorated our call to shut down Attica. While the many injustices of the prison system are not limited to Attica, this infamous prison, the site of the 1971 Attica Rebellion, remains a symbol of the flagrant human rights abuses that are allowed to continue unchecked. By focusing on Attica, we draw attention to the abuses in all NYS prisons and jails. For the 50th anniversary of the Attica Uprising, which happened in September 2021, we organized a commemoration event with the Attica Is All of Us coalition. This event involved two evenings of panel discussions: "Attica Then, and "Attica Now." "Attica Then" reflected on the Attica Uprising, and Attica Now reflected on the human rights abuses still occurring there, and throughout the system, and the need to shut Attica down. Both evenings included survivors of Attica and other directly-impacted people. It was streamed on Manhattan Neighborhood Network, online, and was attended by several hundred people.