Proud to share this video profile on our amazing partners Mothers in Charge as they launched the first participatory defense hub in Philadelphia! They started in March 2018 and have already won incredible victories securing the freedom of loved ones!

Another amazing group that recently joined our family is the youth organization Resilience Orange County. We went out to Orange County, CA in the Fall and met with a group of young organizers eager to learn how to incorporate participatory defense strategies and increase their support of young people caught in the crosshairs of the juvenile and immigration systems.

“Too many of our families are taking deals instead of going through trial, denying our families justice. Our families in Santa Ana and Anaheim are being ripped apart through arrest and deportations”- Dulce 

During the second day of our visit, we helped lead their first meeting with the parents of a youth that they were already supporting.  Because of their efforts, that youth was not transferred over to be charged as an adult, a glimpse of the power that Participatory Defense holds in the community.

To welcome them in, Sheri Costa from South Alameda County’s A.L. Costa Development Center shares her experiences as a participatory defense practitioner. Read her letter below!

We want to introduce one of the newest members of our family into the Network. With the support of the ACLU, De-Bug led a two-day participatory defense training with organizations involved in the prosecutorial accountability campaign in Riverside County during the summer of 2017. About a month later, Starting Over took the lead and held their first meeting shortly after the training. Since then, they have held weekly meetings and supported community members from Riverside, Moreno Valley, and surrounding areas.

As a family, we want to embrace them with a letter from Poet from Durham, North Carolina, where he is a part of the participatory defense team with SpiritHouse, Inc/ All of Us Or None. He shares his experiences and how he got involved supporting families through Participatory Defense. Read his letter below.

(The women of the National Council and the Participatory Defense Training Team after 2 days of building! Special thanks to Carl Williams for opening up the space for us!)

In a storied movement home in Boston, we had the great honor of building with the sisters of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. A few of us from De-Bug//San Jose Participatory Defense Hub joined Andrea (known as Muffin) Farrior from Spirit House//Durham Participatory Defense Hub to give a two day training to Council representatives from multiple cities, and a strong contingent from Boston, on participatory defense. The Boston community included Council affiliate, and newest Participatory Defense Hub — Families for Justice as Healing.

The gathering was incredibly powerful, and such an inspiration to be around sisters who not only fought for their own freedom, but are determined to bring other sisters home, and protect their communities. And the organizers from the Massachusetts Bail Fund also brainstormed with us on how bail funds can partner with participatory defense hubs. The Massachusetts Bail Fund is an abolitionist bail fund, and is one of the most effective funds in the country in freeing people pretrial.

We are profoundly grateful to the sisters of the Council, and the organization’s founder (and incredible freedom fighter!) Andrea James for bringing us out. The Council has an incredible vision of Women’s Justice Circles, and will use participatory defense as part of this larger liberation framework. Below, Andrea James describes the work ahead — which we could not be more excited bout! Continue reading →

Philadelphia has to be one of the most exciting cities in the country when it comes to community power challenging the daily operations of the courts. Philadelphia has elected a civil rights lawyer Larry Krasner as their next District Attorney, has a head of the Public Defender Office Keir Bradford-Grey who is committed to building community support for those facing court, and the people are taking to the streets for Meek Mill. Changes are happening in Philly that may be a blue print for the rest of the country.

And now, Philadelphia is starting participatory defense. Read this piece in the Philadelphia Citizen “Ideas We Should Steal: Participatory Defense” to see how the community is well-positioned to take the methodology to new heights.

(Poster from the first participatory defense forum in Philadelphia.)

Continue reading →

Check out the new piece by Maura Ewing in The Atlantic “How Prisoners’ Families Can Assist Overworked Public Defenders”. The piece features the great work of the Montgomery County, PA Participatory Defense Team!

NORRISTOWN, Pa.—Things were not looking up for Saabir Lewis last August. The 21-year-old faced up to 20 years in prison on charges including assault, trespassing on school property, and armed robbery stemming from incidents in 2015 and 2016. Though no one was badly hurt, the offenses were serious.

He is now in a dramatically different circumstance: After 10 months in county jail, Lewis will soon be transferred to a juvenile-detention facility to finish out a two-year sentence, after which he’ll have five years of probation. Aside from the benefits of a shortened sentence and detention among people closer to his age, he’ll be able to participate in rehabilitation programs that an adult prison likely wouldn’t have. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE >>>

As part of an effort to share Time Saved stories — how families and communities are using participatory defense to beat wrongful charges — we are sharing David’s story. David attended an anti-Trump rally and was arrested for resisting arrest. But rather than just wait for arraignment — he worked on challenging the allegations. He and the San Jose participatory defense hub clicked up with NLG lawyer Dan Mayfield. Here is David’s story.

Much gratitude to the participatory defense hubs who came to our first ever Social Biography Media Boot Camp (May 18th-22nd), where we taught organizations from 15 different cities on how to produce social biography packets and videos to impact the outcome of cases. At our intensive five day training held in San Francisco at the Google Community Space, organizations learned how to communicate the fuller truth of their loved ones to challenge and reduce charges and sentences and bring them home from incarceration. Each hub (coming from states such as Tennessee, Maryland, Washington, New York, Pennsylvania and California) brought a photo, and told the story of, a person they wanted to make a social biography packet or social biography video for to prevent or reduce an incarceration. They learned about narrative construction, how to collect and present records, how to create purposeful character letters, how to use camera and editing equipment, how to best support public, and more. Each hub produced a packet and a video during the camp. They worked tirelessly, and returned home with new tools, as well as a fully stocked media production equipment package to use! Here are some pics from the incredible gathering!

We were proud to have our partners from all over the country — and also meant the world to us to have some of the most incredible freedom fighter organizations in California joining us at the camp! Here is Youth Justice Coalition, CURYJ, Fathers and Families of San Joaquin about to start Day 1 of the Social Biography Media Boot Camp!

Andrew from Fathers and Families of San Joaquin shares in the introductory day as to why family stories should highlighted when courts are making decisions about peoples lives.

Carnell from East Palo Alto shows participatory defense hubs from across the country the social biography packet he made years ago. That packet that described his role as a single father, and was one of our first packets, is what he and his attorney used to turn a five year prison sentence into a six month out patient drug program. 

Hubs collaborated on coming up with narrative construction, themes, records, and imagery for their respective social biography packets. They also learned the technical parts of scanning and editing photos, and design/layout.

Through an equipment grant with Google, each hub was able to receive a media production package (video camera, laptop, audio equipment) to produce high quality social biography packets and videos!

Continue reading →

Special thanks to Santa Clara County Public Defender Sajid Khan for speaking at our national Social Biography Media Boot Camp! It was an intensive five day training, where 15 different participatory defense hubs from all over the country learned how to produce social biography packets and videos. Sajid came to talk about how public defenders have used these end products, and other ways public defenders and communities can work together to prevent incarceration. He wrote a short reflection after the gathering that we wanted to share. Thank you Sajid!

Santa Clara County Public Defender Sajid Khan addresses participatory defense hubs at the Social Biography Media Boot Camp held at the Google Space in San Francisco, CA May 18-22nd.

Thank you to Charisse Domingo and the beautiful folks at Silicon Valley De-Bug for hosting me on Friday to talk to their Participatory Defense partner groups from places like Philadelphia, North Carolina and Tennessee.  As I understand it, “Participatory Defense” is a movement to empower families and community partners of those ensnared in the criminal justice system to contribute to the defense of their loved ones, essentially expanding the legal team beyond just the public defender to achieve the best outcomes possible for the accused.   Continue reading →

Much thanks to writer Katti Gray for this piece on the growth of participatory defense! 

This article was originally published in The Crime Report, a criminal justice news service.
Ramon Vasquez was facing the threat of a lifetime in prison when he stood trial for a 2008 murder he didn’t commit.

“The only number I heard in court, was ’80 years.’ Like, I might get 80 years if I was convicted,” recalled Vasquez, a San Jose, Calif. delivery-truck driver.

Vasquez, then 29, knew the evidence proving his innocence was out there. But neither the expensive private lawyer his family initially hired but couldn’t afford nor the court-appointed attorney he wound up with (who urged Vasquez to plead guilty so he’d be eligible for parole within about eight years) seemed willing to go get it. (CLICK HERE TO GO TO CBS ARTICLE >>>)