People of color have always faced systems of oppression with courage. Throughout history, Black people have put their bodies on the line—facing police batons in the streets, refusing to yield a bus seat, or taking up arms in the face of violence. This tradition of resistance carries many names and many perspectives, all flowing into the river of struggle honored during Black August.

Some, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., believed that unearned suffering—enduring injustice without retaliation—was the most redemptive experience a human could have. King and countless others bore pain, jail, and even death to expose the moral bankruptcy of segregation and racial violence, transforming suffering into a tool for collective liberation.

In 1996, a single piece of legislation transformed American prisons into sophisticated battlegrounds of psychological warfare. The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA), signed into law during Clinton's "tough on crime" era, wasn't just bureaucratic reform—it was counterinsurgency strategy, born from the state's determination to prevent another Attica uprising while ensuring that prison violence remained invisible to courts and the public.

I often hear people say: “The people who are closest to the problem are also closest to the solutions.” People with decision-making titles are often eager to amplify the embodied wisdom of survivors; yet, those leadership positions remain occupied by allies in the fight for social justice rather than the directly-impacted veterans beside them. The gap between rhetoric and reality is reinforced everyday in the nonprofit-industrial-complex. When it comes to college programs in New York prisons, the chasm is quietly turning into an echo chamber. This text is food for thought.

New York passed Proposition 1 on November 2, 2024. This amendment to the State Constitution, effectively expands constitutional protections against discrimination. While anti-discrimination protections already existed in various federal, state and local laws, this amendment lowers barriers and raises stakes. Experts say new theoretical legal arguments are likely to follow the implementation of these new provisions. In the next couple of years, Courts will decide cases that set new precedents in New York. The Equal Rights Amendment, passed 60 years after the Civil Rights Act that created protected classes, does more than just reinforce existing protections–it reminds us that those protections exist in the first place. Maybe people will pay more attention to the potential consequences of forcing job applicants to undergo a DOCCS volunteer application prior to a conditional offer of employment.

In the shadows of prison walls, a quiet revolution is brewing - one that seeks to transform the very essence of how we welcome those who’ve experienced incarceration back into our communities.

The Need for a Humanizing Approach
The current reentry process often treats individuals with justice system involvement as statistics rather than people with unique experiences and potential. By shifting our focus to a more humanizing approach, we not only address the immediate challenges of reintegration but also tap into the wealth of perspective and resilience that formerly incarcerated individuals bring to our communities. This paradigm shift has the power to redefine success in reentry, moving beyond mere recidivism rates to encompass holistic personal growth and community contribution.

Restorative Justice, much like its retributive relative–criminal justice– represents a conflict resolution ideal.  Punishment has proven to be a viable method of social control. It has not, however, proven to be a system that leads to safety. Despite its shortfalls, state sanctioned violence does seem to deter personal vendettas between people of European descent. It does not resonate as well with people from non-European cultures, hence the cycles of interpersonal violence in culturally specific contexts.