Events
month | week | day | tableFor Immediate Release:
March 2009
Contact: Kym Clark, 917-653-2610
FREE! Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment
FREE! Families Film Forum Social Justice Screening Series Launches in Harlem, March 9, 2009, the eve of historic Rockefeller Advocacy Day.
FREE! Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment, a grassroots community organizing collective of people with incarcerated loved ones, is launching a new monthly event at the Maysles Cinema in Harlem. Each month, FREE! Families Film Forum will present a different social justice film followed by interactive audience discussion to prompt dialogue, strategy and action by community stakeholders.
Join FREE!, and the Fortune Society for Drop the Rock Advocacy Day, part of the Drop the Rock Coalition's struggle to Repeal Mandatory Minimum Drug Laws in New York State.
Meet face to face with legislators and tell them exactly what needs to be done to eradicate these racist, wasteful drug laws, once and for all!
FREE! wants to see the $220 million dollars we'll save per year REINVESTED into OUR COMMUNITIES, those most impacted by mass incarceration!
Drug related incidents point to root causes of poverty, lack of educational and health care resources, and the NEED FOR JOBS CREATION!
We want to see corrections budgets shifting toward Green Jobs/Weatherization creation and training, and away from the profiteering private prison industry!
What would you do with $220 Million a year??
Have you ever thought about what you would do with $220 million dollars a year? Well, FREE! has!! FREE! Families Rally for Emancipation and Empowerment knows that $200 million a year are wasted on racist, inefficient mandatory minimum drug laws in New York State.
These laws don't increase public safety, waste hundreds of millions of community and taxpayer dollars, and fail to get at the ROOT of drug related incidents, which includes poverty, education and public health! Black and Brown people are "collateral damage" of this "drug war".
Inspired by Family Empowerment Day 2008, (organized by the Otisville Lifer's Group and facilitated by Judith Brink and Larry White, Prison Action Network), FREE! has joined other families and organizations to organize for more fair parole practices in New York.
And we need YOU to join our Political Action Delegation to keep our membership and constituency informed about developments in the work:
** Do you have an incarcerated loved one and you are concerned about impending parole?
** Have you been to the parole board and never understood the policies governing your freedom?
** Do you believe that people deserve a second chance after serving their time?
