Young Women Run will feature speakers, program-specific tracks with smaller group breakout sessions, policy-related plenary conversations and networking opportunities. Each day will be fast-paced and exciting, featuring speakers in government, public affairs, and business who can inspire young women to flex their political power.

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End US Neocolonialism in Haiti
March 29 is the anniversary of the 1987 Haitian Constitution written after the 1986 overthrow of the brutal Jean-Claude Duvalier dictatorship. The 1987 Constitution was designed to create “a socially just, economically free, and politically independent Haitian nation.” Those ideals are again in crisis.

The US-backed de facto president of Haiti Jovenel Moïse is refusing to leave office even though his term ended on February 7. Moïse and his Western allies – the US, Canada, Brazil, France, Spain and the European Union – are trying to push through a new constitution that takes power away from the people

The Haitian people have been bravely holding mass demonstrations, especially on Sundays, for months calling for Moïse to step down so they can appoint an interim leader and hold an election. The state response to their demonstrations has been violent repression.

The Biden administration and the Democrats who have been so vocal over Trump’s threats to stay in office are enabling the same behavior by a president in Haiti. The Biden administration and Democrats have loudly stated that Black lives matter while being silent about the violence perpetrated against Haitians.

We demand that the Biden administration:
1. End its support for Jovenel Moïse.
2. Withdraw from participation in Haiti’s constitutional process.
3. Stop interfering in the internal affairs of Haiti.
4. Stop deporting Haitians who are fleeing their country.

Yes, I'll Be ThereMeet at 1:00 at the JFK Federal Building, Cambridge Street side. Yes, I’ll be there!

Organized by Massachusetts Peace Action and Latin America Solidarity Coalition WMASS. Cosponsored by the Greater Hartford Cuba Solidarity Committee and the US Peace Council.

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Mass incarceration has an afterlife. While more people are incarcerated in the United States than in any other nation in the history of the western world, the prison is but one (comparatively) small part of a vast carceral landscape. 19.6 million U.S. adults are estimated to have a felony conviction. That’s a population 5 times the size of the jail and prison census, and four times the size of the population under probation and parole. A staggering 79 million Americans have a criminal record, easily accessible by landlords, employers, licensing officials, or anyone, really, with 30.00 and a debit card. But the size of the U.S. carceral state is second in consequence to its reach. The accused are greeted by 48,000 laws, policies and administrative sanctions that limit their participation in the labor and housing markets, in the culture and civic life of the city, and even within their families. They are subject to rules other people are not subject to, and shoulder responsibilities other people are not expected to shoulder. They live in a “supervised society,” a hidden social world we’ve produced through our laws, policies and everyday practices, and in fact, occupy an alternate form of political membership—what Miller calls “carceral citizenship.”

Join Professor Reuben Jonathan Miller as he examines “the afterlife” of mass incarceration, attending to how U.S. crime control policy has changed the social life of the city and altered the contours of American Democracy one poor (most often) black family at a time. Drawing on ethnographic data collected across three American cities—Chicago, Detroit, and New York—we will explore what it means to live in a supervised society and how we might find our way out.

After a brief presentation from his book, Professor Miller will be joined in conversation with Ronald Simpson Bey, a former tool and die maker from Flint, MI who spent 27 years in prison on a wrongful conviction. While inside, he helped lead some of the largest class actions lawsuits against the Michigan Department of Corrections and is now a leading voice for the decarceration of American Jails and Prisons. The event will be moderated by Professor Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Department of Sociology at Brown University.

Bios:

Reuben Jonathan Miller is an Assistant Professor in the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration (SSA). His research examines life at the intersections of race, poverty, crime control, and social welfare policy. His first sole authored book, Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, will be published by Little Brown and Co. in February of 2021. Halfway Home is based on 15 years of research and practice with currently and formerly incarcerated men, women, their families, partners, and friends.

Dr. Miller has conducted fieldwork in Chicago, Detroit, and New York City, examining how law, policy and emergent practices of state and third-party supervision changed the contours of citizenship, activism, community, and family life for poor black Americans and the urban poor more broadly. To capture the effects of crime control on social life in global cities with different public policies, Miller conducts ongoing fieldwork in Glasgow, London and Belgrade. He is currently conducting research on the “moral worlds” of people we’ve deemed violent and will launch a comparative study of punishment and social welfare policy in the port cities that were most involved in the transatlantic slave trade.

Prior to joining SSA, Dr. Miller was an Assistant Professor of Social Work at the University of Michigan where he served as a Faculty Associate in the Population Studies Center and a Faculty Affiliate in the Department of Afro American and African Studies. He was selected as a Member in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ (2016-17), the world’s leading center for curiosity driven research, a visiting fellow at Dartmouth University (2018), an Eric and Wendy Schmidt National Fellow at the New America Foundation (2018-19) and a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation for the Bellagio Center Academic Writing Residency (2020). His work has been published in journals of criminology, human rights, law, psychology, sociology, social work and public health, and he is frequently called upon to give media commentary on issues of crime, punishment, race and poverty.

A native son of Chicago’s Southside, Dr. Miller received his Ph.D. from Loyola University Chicago, an AM from the University of Chicago, and a BA from Chicago State University.

Ronald D. Simpson-Bey works as the Director of Outreach & Alumni Engagement for JLUSA and is a 2015 Leading with Conviction Fellow. He is a national decarceration leader committed to cutting the number of people under correctional supervision in half by 2030. Mr. Simpson-Bey does policy advocacy work with the Michigan Collaborative to End Mass Incarceration (MI-CEMI), and community organizing with the Nation Outside organization for returning citizens. He is a co-founder and advisory board member of the Chance for Life (CFL) organization in Detroit, Michigan. Mr. Simpson-Bey served 27 years in the Michigan prison system on a wrongful conviction. While inside, Mr. Simpson-Bey became a legal advocate, filing and leading, as a pro se attorney, some of the largest class action lawsuits against the Michigan Department of the Corrections. Mr. Simpson-Bey took on the state again and reversed his own conviction, one of few jailhouse lawyers to free himself. Today, Mr. Simpson-Bey is a leading advocate, working to dismantle mass incarceration and reverse its many harms.

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A new presidential administration that is supportive of trans rights provides opportunities to make further progress on addressing discrimination and violence against trans people. Join us for a panel discussion of how trans leaders are hoping to make gains during the Biden administration.

Panelists:

Kylar Broadus, Founder and Director, Trans People of Color Coalition
Sasha Buchert, Senior Attorney, Lambda Legal
Kris Hayashi, Executive Director, Transgender Law Center
Mara Keisling, Executive Director, National Center for Transgender Equality
Shannon Minter, Legal Director, National Center for Lesbian Rights
Moderated by Genny Beemyn, Director, UMass Stonewall Center

This event is being held to mark the publication of The SAGE Encyclopedia of Trans Studies, edited by Abbie Goldberg and Genny Beemyn. The panelists are all contributors to the work, and attendees will be given free access to their entries.

Sponsored by the UMass Stonewall Center and Clark University’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program. Co-sponsored by UMass Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies and the Five College Queer, Trans, and Sexuality Studies Certificate.

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Come hear about Rep. Pat Duffy's first weeks as your legislator and Q&A from your friends and neighbors. If you'd like to join the Zoom event and ask questions, send an email to info@duffyforholyoke.org. Or watch us streaming live in this space

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eing progessive, except for the issue of Palestinian rights, is a phenomenon within the progressive community. Among liberals, Democrats, progressives, and others, it is not uncommon for many to take progressive positions on climate change, health care, taxation, criminal justice reform, and more, while being unwilling to challenge the US support of the Israeli occupation […]

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