Board of Pardons Hearings THIS TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY
9:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon
The BEST, most important reality TV you will EVER see!
Promise to watch just 15 minutes
|
|
PA State Senator Bartolotta Kickstarts Second Chances Month |
|
The Pardon Project of Washington County, southwest of Pittsburgh, was the first countywide Pardon Project to be created outside of Philadelphia. It’s only fitting that it kicked off Second Chances Month on April 1 with a “Clean Slate Clinic.” 30 people attended and received information about criminal records, 13 pardon applications were started and 3 clients will be able to expunge their records. Another 12 called in for advice, 5 of whom are pardon-eligible and 1 who can go for an expungement.
The event was organized by Southwestern PA Legal Aid and its headliner was State Senator Camera Bartolotta, the two driving forces behind the creation of the PPWC. “I am an enthusiastic supporter of our Pardon Project,” she says. “There’s nothing but upside to giving second chances to people who have turned their lives around.”
Perfectly said, Senator. Thanks for getting the month off to a great start!
[Pictured: Sen. Bartolotta and Pardon Fellow Kyle Duff, who runs the PPWC]
|
|
Ninth Pardon Project Opens in Centre County |
|
The power of pardons to bring communities together was on full display three weeks later in State College. On a beautiful afternoon last Friday, representatives of the Centre County Court of Common Pleas, public officials, bar association leaders and faculty from Penn State Law held a very well attended press conference. The occasion: the Pardon Project of Centre County went live! This followed six months of brainstorming and planning by almost 20 civic leaders, the appointment of a Pardon Fellow (one of four funded by the American Bar Endowment), and a well-attended CLE hosted by the Centre County Bar Association the week before.
Board of Pardons Secretary Celeste Trusty put it simply when she said: “We need to be looking at second chances, not just about benefiting the people who have criminal convictions, but benefiting all of us: it benefits taxpayers, it benefits all of us as neighbors.”
“This is an economic development package,” PPCC co-founder and State College Borough Council member Gopal Balachandran agreed. “People who are able to get pardons are able to give back to their communities, they are able to get higher paying jobs and they are able to get jobs that - right now - they are barred from getting as a result of their criminal records.”
The press was impressed, calling the growing network of county Pardon Projects “an emerging cornerstone of the state’s criminal justice movement.” Stay tuned! There are more to come!
[Pictured L to R: Robert Zeigler, Millheim Borough Councilmember; Jeremy Breon, Clerk of Courts/Prothonotary; Sec. Celeste Trusty; Gopal Balachandran and Sharon Barney, Penn State Law; Paul Takac, College Township Supervisor; Krista Henry, Pardon Fellow; PA Rep Scott Conklin; Ezra Nanes, Mayor of State College
|
|
Leaders of the Pardon Project Steering Committee Retreat, To Advance |
|
Since 2018, PLSE has been guided by its clients – people with lived experience in the PA criminal justice system – some 20 of whom have been working together as a Steering Committee. Thanks to grants from The Philadelphia Foundation and the Phoebus Criminal Justice Initiative of the Bread & Roses Community Fund, six of the team have participated in a six-month leadership development program with Dragonfly Partners. On April 23, those six spent all day together in a retreat, gelling as a team and preparing for the future. The day was generously hosted by Ballard Spahr, facilitated by Dragonfly, and funded by both the Patricia Kind Family Foundation and the Phoebus Fund.
What’s ahead for the PPSC? Another one-day retreat, but this one in Harrisburg with six other leaders who have joined the PPSC from Pardon Projects around the state. And then? Watch out, Harrisburg: Here we come!
* * * Thank you, Patricia Kind Family, Phoebus Family, TPF and Ballard Spahr for investing in our leadership!! * * *
|
|
If you do social media, you know Wallace Peeples -- a/k/a @wallo267. He has millions of followers across his social media platforms and serves as a role model and inspiration for thousands. His podcast “Million Dollaz Worth of Game” spent over 16 weeks at #1 on Apple Podcast charts. His personal story is compelling: arrested at 17 for armed robbery, he spent 20 years in prison, which is where he found his life’s purpose - helping his community. Upon release, Wallo started talking about his life, offering his insights and advice. He gained a massive following and he did exactly what he set out to do: inspire, uplift, and spread hope and positivity.
Wallo learned of the clinic we were holding at the Lenfest Center and reposted our flyer. The result? One of the largest clinics we have EVER had! Scheduled to last 2 hours, it went 4. The turnout was so large we had to call for more volunteers. 133 people went through our intake and became our clients, and we shared important information with scores more.
Thank you, Wallo, for helping to spread the hope of a clean record and a second chance!
If you’re not following and reposting PLSE, DO!!!
|
|
YES! FINALLY!!! WE ARE BACK!!! |
As the weather improves and the masks come off, PLSE is once again back on the street! – well, in parking lots, meeting halls, gyms – meeting people face to face, helping them understand what their criminal records mean and ways to clean them up. In April, we’ve held:
- The clinic at the Lenfest Center in North Philadelphia (story above). Sponsored by the City’s Office of Policy and Strategic Initiatives for Criminal Justice & Public Safety, it attracted over 150 participants!! Thanks so much to our volunteers from Temple University’s chapter of the National Black Law Student Association.
- A “hybrid clinic” at Chosen 300 on Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia. This one was sponsored by its clergy and congregation and by People’s Emergency Center, and staffed by volunteers from Penn Law who were kept busy serving both walk-ins and people calling in using a hotline.
- Our monthly clinic in Mantua, at Drexel University’s Dornsife Center for Neighborhood Partnerships. We’re now regularly using the hotline there, and Drexel’s law student volunteers are helping with intake and providing information about pardons.
And we’ll end Second Chances Month on Saturday, April 30, 12-2 pm in Mt. Airy at Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, where we held our very first clinic (in their basement in 2010) with a clinic hosted by State Representative Darisha K. Parker.
June is going to be equally crazy, with clinics (times to be announced) on:
- Friday June 10 at the Deliverance Evangelistic Church (2001 W Lehigh Ave) sponsored by the Institute for Community Justice (Philadelphia FIGHT)
- Saturday June 11 (Place TBA) sponsored by the Phila. Cannabusiness Association
- Saturday June 18 at the Lonnie Young Recreation Center (1100 E Chelten Ave)
- Friday June 24 at the Eastern State Penitentiary, 6-8 pm, as part of its “Night Tour”
|
|
PLSE Honored at Justice Dinner |
|
Speaking of being present in the neighborhoods, Philadelphia-based Champion of Change Award winner Chef Kurt Evans has been hosting “Ending Mass Incarceration” dinners since 2018. These dinners get community leaders together to discuss and more fully understand the horrific problems society now faces because of our justice system’s unrelenting focus on punishment. “For me, it’s about getting different people to the table,” says the Chef. “That’s the only way to achieve inclusivity – and food is the driver, the thing that brings people together.” |
|
This month, the host restaurant was Stina, a Mediterranean BYOB located at 1705 Snyder. Its co-founders Chef Bobby Saritsoglou has earned a spot Philadelphia's Top 50 Best Restaurants two years running, and Christina Kallas-Saritsoglou has been an activist and community organizer in Philadelphia for over 30 years.
You can understand why PLSE was incredibly honored to be selected as the beneficiary of the Justice Dinner this month! Thank you for what you are doing to elevate the need for criminal justice reform, for lifting PLSE up, for the financial support, and for the promise of new collaborations! |
|
Recognitions – LOTS of them! |
We know our people are way beyond excellent, but please join us in celebrating these accolades:
- PLSE Board Member Akeem Sims was invited to share the podium in Harrisburg with Lt. Gov. Fetterman, BOP Secretary Trusty, and others at a press conference announcing the BOP’s plan to have the clemency application fully online by the end of this year. You simply MUST take 3 minutes to hear Akeem’s remarks
- Paralegal Kelly Oduro, a senior at Drexel University on her way to Georgetown Law School in the fall, just had her paper Bringing the Marginalized into Epistemology published in Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal.
- Pro Bono Project Director MacDonald Taylor was selected by Delaware County Community College as its Paralegal of the Year, and is being honored this week at an on-campus dinner
And we’ve recently been awarded some simply WONDERFUL grants:
- $6,000 to support the advocacy efforts of the Pardon Project Steering Committee, from the Phoebus Criminal Justice Initiative of the Bread & Roses Community Foundation
- $10,000 from the Independence Public Media Foundation to create a video series telling the stories of people whose potentials are being held back by their past involvement with the criminal justice system, and those whose potentials have been released by expungements and pardons
- $10,000 from the Thomas Skelton Harrison Foundation – one of the very first area foundations to support PLSE – to continue our efforts to improve the lives and neighborhoods of low-income Philadelphians and the services provided them by the City of Philadelphia
- $100,000 from the Oak Foundation, a two-year grant that allowed us to hire our first-ever Pro Bono coordinator, Mac Taylor (honored above) – and this, just in time! We currently have over 200 volunteers helping our pardon clients, from Penn State Law in State College, to Dickinson Law in Carlisle, to more and more law firms in the greater Philadelphia region.
|
|
Oak Foundation: an appreciation |
Last month marked the end of the largest grant we had ever received, which honestly came out of nowhere. An email in the late spring of 2018 invited us to apply for a grant. It came from the Oak Foundation, based in Switzerland with offices in London. A small org without a fundraiser, we’d never heard of them. Obviously, we responded. When Program Officer Susanne Bjork told us what they had in mind, it took our breath away: a three-year, $225,000 grant. A year earlier, we had finished our fiscal year in the red with total revenues under $100,000.
Working with Susanne, we put together our first-ever multi-year business plan and proposed to use the grant to pay for our second attorney and to start a fundraising program. The timing could not have been more perfect: a month after applying, the Trump Administration cancelled (with 30 days’ notice) the AmeriCorps program that had funded our second attorney.
Suzanne told us that the grant was to give us some “breathing room”. What it really did was keep us from closing, and Suzanne helped us figure out what to keep our eyes on and what to track. In the years that followed, our new Program Officer Lucy Robson visited and continued providing advice, counsel, and encouragement. When the grant expired last month, she performed magic, finding us a “small” grant we’ll be using to transform PLSE into a quality volunteer organization (see story, above).
“I’ve been a volunteer for decades and done lots of fundraising,” says Tobey Oxholm who (back in 2018) had stepped up from being a volunteer staff attorney to become our Interim Executive Director, “but never, ever have I encountered a foundation like Oak or a grant officer like Suzanne and Lucy. It’s no exaggeration to say that without them, without Oak, PLSE would never be what we are today: a statewide force for restorative justice, pardons and criminal records reform.”
Thank you, Oak Foundation! We hope you are proud of the investment you made in us!
|
|
Three ways to get involved:
-
Watch the Board of Pardons Hearings on Tuesday or Wednesday morning
- Follow us on social media and retweet/repost our postings
- Contact us if you’re willing to host a community clinic: info@plsephilly.org
Because Social Justice Requires Social Action
Renee Chenault Fattah, JD
Executive Director
|
|
Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity
230 S. Broad Street, Suite 1102, Philadelphia PA 19102
(267) 519-5323
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
