John Legend joins Battery Powered discussion
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A comfortable gathering of Battery Powered members met leading innovators at the forefront of the criminal justice reform movement last week, including recording artist and philanthropist John Legend.
The discussion also included San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Scott Budnick. The group continued the conversation started during Battery Powered’s very first theme focused on “How do we break the cycle of incarceration?”
Battery Powered’s themes last just a few months. But as we enter into this innovative program’s second year, we now see how the impact, and interest, continues to grow.
“The California prison system is the one topic area that Xochi and I chose,” Battery Powered founder Michael Birch said Thursday night to a small gathering of members. “We realized through this experience how screwed up this system is, and we wanted to learn a lot more.”
A national effort to free America
Following his Oscar-winning performance of his song “Glory” with hip-hop artist Common, Legend announced his #FREEAMERICA campaign. The multi-year campaign seeks to change the national conversation and transform America’s criminal justice system.
“In working with celebrities, I’m used to so many people who talk and don’t really do anything,” Budnick, who was the executive producer for The Hangover movies, said to Legend. “But a year later, what you’ve done about an issue that so few people care about is extraordinary.”
Legend’s national initiative has quickly emerged as an authoritative voice for criminal justice reform. He has toured prisons, lobbied politicians and promoted reform initiatives like Ban the Box, which helps returning citizens find jobs. Earlier in the week, Legend and Gascón met area district attorneys, many of whom oppose reform efforts, Budnick said.
Legend said his involvement in criminal justice reform flowed naturally from his philanthropic work with youth and education.
“We think about the community as a whole and the things that folks in the community need,” he said. “We couldn’t divorce the issue of child development and education from mass incarceration.”
Beside being a logical philanthropic step, it is also personal, he said. “I was getting more and more angry to an extent, thinking about decades of policies that made us the leader of incarceration.”
The conversation touched on topics of over-sentencing, youth incarceration policies, mental health, substance abuse and poverty, all of which contribute to a criminal justice system that costs American citizens between $54 and $75 billion annually.
“It costs us $250,000 a year to incarcerate one youth in California,” Budnick, who Gov. Jerry Brown named the state’s Citizen of the Year in 2012, said while raising one finger in the air to emphasize his point. “$250,000 a year.”
A failed push for safety
Gascón, who is nationally recognized as a leading voice for reform among district attorneys, said the era of mass incarceration has been evolving for more than thirty years.
“Here in California, we took the word rehabilitation out of our contract. We said, ‘We’re just going to punish you’,” he said, noting that a person who is incarcerated is likely to come out more broken. “Each cycle there are victims left behind. Rather than make our communities safer, we increase victimization.”
Gascón said that America would have to release 80 percent of its prisoners to return to the incarceration levels of the 1970s, before “tough-on-crime” politics and the failed war on drugs fueled incarceration rates that now outpace every other country in the world.
The war on drugs, Gascón said, particularly targeted the poor and people of color. “What everybody forgot is that who we are going to war with, is our own people.”
A push for continued change
In a dinner that followed the meeting, many members spoke about how individually they have seen the damage wrought by flaws in the justice system.
As visionaries like Budnick, Gascón and Legend explained, the opportunity for involvement and meaningful change is urgent and possible.
“This gives us a chance to start again on the prison theme and consider what we can do now and how we can take this further,” Amplifier CEO, Allison Duncan, said.
To learn more about Battery Powered or to get involved, contact Barbie Lucio at [email protected]
The discussion also included San Francisco District Attorney George Gascón and the founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, Scott Budnick. The group continued the conversation started during Battery Powered’s very first theme focused on “How do we break the cycle of incarceration?”
Battery Powered’s themes last just a few months. But as we enter into this innovative program’s second year, we now see how the impact, and interest, continues to grow.
“The California prison system is the one topic area that Xochi and I chose,” Battery Powered founder Michael Birch said Thursday night to a small gathering of members. “We realized through this experience how screwed up this system is, and we wanted to learn a lot more.”
A national effort to free America
Following his Oscar-winning performance of his song “Glory” with hip-hop artist Common, Legend announced his #FREEAMERICA campaign. The multi-year campaign seeks to change the national conversation and transform America’s criminal justice system.
“In working with celebrities, I’m used to so many people who talk and don’t really do anything,” Budnick, who was the executive producer for The Hangover movies, said to Legend. “But a year later, what you’ve done about an issue that so few people care about is extraordinary.”
Legend’s national initiative has quickly emerged as an authoritative voice for criminal justice reform. He has toured prisons, lobbied politicians and promoted reform initiatives like Ban the Box, which helps returning citizens find jobs. Earlier in the week, Legend and Gascón met area district attorneys, many of whom oppose reform efforts, Budnick said.
Legend said his involvement in criminal justice reform flowed naturally from his philanthropic work with youth and education.
“We think about the community as a whole and the things that folks in the community need,” he said. “We couldn’t divorce the issue of child development and education from mass incarceration.”
Beside being a logical philanthropic step, it is also personal, he said. “I was getting more and more angry to an extent, thinking about decades of policies that made us the leader of incarceration.”
The conversation touched on topics of over-sentencing, youth incarceration policies, mental health, substance abuse and poverty, all of which contribute to a criminal justice system that costs American citizens between $54 and $75 billion annually.
“It costs us $250,000 a year to incarcerate one youth in California,” Budnick, who Gov. Jerry Brown named the state’s Citizen of the Year in 2012, said while raising one finger in the air to emphasize his point. “$250,000 a year.”
A failed push for safety
Gascón, who is nationally recognized as a leading voice for reform among district attorneys, said the era of mass incarceration has been evolving for more than thirty years.
“Here in California, we took the word rehabilitation out of our contract. We said, ‘We’re just going to punish you’,” he said, noting that a person who is incarcerated is likely to come out more broken. “Each cycle there are victims left behind. Rather than make our communities safer, we increase victimization.”
Gascón said that America would have to release 80 percent of its prisoners to return to the incarceration levels of the 1970s, before “tough-on-crime” politics and the failed war on drugs fueled incarceration rates that now outpace every other country in the world.
The war on drugs, Gascón said, particularly targeted the poor and people of color. “What everybody forgot is that who we are going to war with, is our own people.”
A push for continued change
In a dinner that followed the meeting, many members spoke about how individually they have seen the damage wrought by flaws in the justice system.
As visionaries like Budnick, Gascón and Legend explained, the opportunity for involvement and meaningful change is urgent and possible.
“This gives us a chance to start again on the prison theme and consider what we can do now and how we can take this further,” Amplifier CEO, Allison Duncan, said.
To learn more about Battery Powered or to get involved, contact Barbie Lucio at [email protected]