Justice In Action #1 Happy MLK Day, Biden, Justice40, Minimum Wage, etc
Hey Friends! Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Ever since ending my campaign for city council I’ve been grappling with how I’ll continue to communicate on the challenges we overcome, and have yet to. And now I’ve decided this newsletter will be the vehicle!
Justice In Action by Corey Jones will be a newsletter dedicated to recognizing the national and local accomplishments in criminal justice reform. With a continued discussion about what works and what doesn’t we can get closer to creating a system that works for everyone including our most underserved members of the beloved community. I’ll provide updates on my participation in local efforts and share basically whatever I feel like talking about each month. I’ll talk a lot about Community Violence Intervention (CVI) in these newsletters a good way to think of CVI is simple: opportunities instead of handcuffs. It’s a carrot-and-stick approach that uses social services as the carrot to reduce violence. And it's effective, CVI is very comprehensive so as I talk more about you’ll learn more. If you want to learn as much possible read Bleeding Out By Thomas Abt a Harvard Professor that does a great meta-analysis on violence reduction policy.
At The National Level
As we usher in 2024 it’s important to recognize some of the successes in creating a more just Union. Biden’s administration finished the year off by creating the first federal office of Gun Violence Prevention. Early in the year, he increased the budget by over $480M in violence reduction programming through the Office of Justice Programs. His administration released memos encouraging federal funds to be used to implement Community Violence Intervention (CVI) programs. They’ve encouraged federal programs to be utilized in CVI efforts.
In Biden’s administration's efforts to address the climate crisis, he’s included an initiative called Justice40 Initiative. Calling for over 40% of the funds to fight the climate crisis to be targeted at supporting disadvantaged communities. Biden has taken us leaps and bounds from where President Donald Trump had us when addressing violent crime and regarding criminal justice reform but there is still work to be done. As some of you may know I grew up in Iowa. An today also is the Iowa Caucuses I’m terrified that Donald Trump is polling historical numbers. While another Trump presidency feels very possible and imminent I lay terrified of the idea of such important work by Biden being reversed. Anyway let’s get back to policy.
More federal dollars have been classified as being used on CVI than has actually been implemented in CVI. A discovery I learned about in presentations from the feds on stimulus spending. Spending on CVI also has not matched the enormous increase in spending on police. If we want to reduce violence we have to increase restorative justice initiatives like CVI more police are not correlated with safer communities. We need smarter policing.
At The State Level
At the state level, things are much more dicey. From 2017 to 2023 states like Missouri, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, and Nebraska are just a few out of the now 27 that have passed laws allowing firearms to be carried without a permit. Newly democratic trifecta Michigan passed over seven gun safety laws. Rhode Island passed three in 2022 but two big ones fell short in 2023. With a federal focus on CVI cities like Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans, and Chicago reignited their efforts or started new efforts. In Chicago, progressives had a massive victory with Brandon Johnson winning the mayor seat. Brandon ran on a strong platform that focused on restorative justice as a key component to reducing crime.
Here In The Ocean State
On January 1st, 2024 Rhode Island's minimum wage increased to $14/ hr. The work isn’t done in lowering the gap between the cost of living and wage gains. And we still didn’t get an increase in wages for our incarcerated community a bill introduced by Senator Mack. Last year's state budget saw historic funding in housing over $200M as we wait for the Governor’s budget for this fiscal year. I presume that we won’t see the level of funding we saw last year due to less federal dollars but we will see some big numbers nonetheless. Which is a vital component in creating a more just state. One of the biggest problems our CVI endeavors will face is the ability to relocate an individual when they’re in the cooling-off phase. A time when there is immediate danger of street violence and they need to be relocated in order to broker peace and apply services like therapy or job training. Housing also can be the reason one slips into street violence. To truly have safe communities we need to fund prevention programs, intervention programs, and re-entry programs. Next, newsletter I’ll have some new announcements around CVI initiatives.
Time To Advocate
Time To Advocate has been working extremely hard as well! If you don’t know I’m the Board Chair of Time To Advocate and Time To Run. We updated our mission statement, released 3 NEW videos, and hosted a Fall Gala with keynote speakers Secretary of State Gregg Amore and Council President Rachel Miller. We’re excited to announce we’ve been granted official 501(c)3 status and we’re preparing in 2024 to participate in over 20 classroom exercises and service over 200 young people. We’ve solidified school partnerships and are in the process of applying for grants. Next, months newsletter we’ll make some official partnership announcements. In 2023, we were funded by the Papitto Foundation and we were able to make some of our first videos. Now, we’ll be presenting those videos in schools along with exercises to create Rhode Island’s future advocates of tomorrow. If you’d like to make a donation to Time To Advocate please send a check to the address below. If you’d like to make a donation to Time To Run you can at this link! Contributions at this time are vital as we spending are time and efforts applying for grants and not fundraising. We still have to pay for our administrative cost. Things like our website, quickbooks, and our accountant adds up quick. So please consider making a contribution so we can focus on programming not fundraising. Next month we’ll be announcing the date for this year's Fall Gala.
Time To Advocate checks can be sent to 214 Howell St. Providence RI 02906
