Other Provocations
Catherine Jones
Catherine Jones is a formerly incarcerated youth. Incarcerated at the age of 13 for murder, she was not released until the age of 30. She spent her time incarcerated educating herself and came home with a degree and several certifications, including a law clerk certification. In collaboration with Fresh Start Ministries, she designed and taught a curriculum for abused women focused on emotional healing and building self-confidence. Her experiences with the penal system as a child sparked a passion inside of her to be a voice for those she left behind and for the ones who will come after her.
When not wearing her advocacy cape, Catherine relishes her role as Mommy to her two beautiful children. Read more about Catherine and her organization The Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth here: cfsy.org/. Here is a video from the Marshall Project that features Catherine and her story: www.themarshallproject.org/2021/03/11/the-making-of-superpredators. |
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Frances Ellen Watkins Harper was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer. She was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, Harper had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at the age of 20. Our class read her address “We Are All Bound Up Together,” which she gave in May of 1866 to the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention in New York City. You can read the full speech here: www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1866-frances-ellen-watkins-harper-we-are-all-bound-together/.
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Marias of Brazil
Jodelynn Billington
Bryan Stevenson & the Lynching Museum
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children 17 or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 135 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced. Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of two highly acclaimed cultural sites which opened in 2018: the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias. Mr. Stevenson is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. (Bio and pictures from the Equal Justice Initiative) |
Albert György's sculpture "Melancholy"
Francis Sepulveda
"Born in New York and raised in Lawrence, Massachusetts. My family moved to Massachusetts when I was 8 years old. I skipped school often and was hanging out in the streets which led me to being on America's Most Wanted list. After being apprehended I was able to be sent to a prison where I was given opportunities to educate myself. I'm presently a student of Boston University Metropolitan College. While attending I met Wayne Grant who is the Chairman of the Norfolk Poetry group and that is where my interest for poetry grew." - Francis Sepulveda
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Pov Hour (Polo) (Musa)
My name is PovHour (aka Polo) and I am a BU student here in MCI Norfolk. I am scheduled to graduate in the Fall semester of 2021. I had an incredible experience with Professors Judy Braha, Emily Howe, and Trey Pratt in the past Empowering Song courses and it was an honor to share some of my spoken words within such artful space. At the near conclusion of my journey with BU, I have to admit the music course was the most richly rewarded experience I had and the most memorable.
Currently, the increasing of juvenile age up to 21 is underway in the Mass's Supreme Judicial Court, and a favorable adjudication would qualify me for parole sometime in 2022. I will be employed and part of my job description is to help organize charity events, including fund raising-dinners to help social causes and community needs around the Boston area. Also, inspired by Greta Thunberg, I want to raise funds to help countries or regions affected by climate crises. For instance, a couple months ago, Bangladesh was deluged by salt concentrated-sea water which destroyed the nutrient rich soil whereby the population depended on for agriculture trade and consumption. Furthermore, the salt concentrated-sea water had seeped into the underground channels adjacent to the fresh water supply which made it undrinkable. Currently, the people of Bangladesh are suffering from famine which prompted a 8 million people migration toward India. There will be many more Bangladesh-like catastrophe or worse, across the globe within the next ten years. To make this charitable endeavors effective, I will volunteer my time at the ISBCC of Boston to learn the transparency culture relative to informing the public about the allocation of funds to designated recipients, and incorporate the transparency culture into the project I will undertake upon my release. |
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