ISSUE 8 JUNE 2016

DECARCERATE PA!

NO NEW PRISONS! DECARCERATION! REINVEST IN OUR COMMUNITIES!

MOTHERS DAY ACTION

CALLS FOR COMPASSION AND AN END TO

JUVENILE DEATH BY INCARCERATION
On Friday May 6, in honor of Mothers Day, the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI) held a powerful rally and press
conference calling on the state of Pennsylvania to make compassion, redemption, and healing in our communities possible by
recognizing the U.S. Supreme Court mandate to provide fair and
meaningful resentencing to the more than 500 children sentenced
to die in prison here in PA.
The rally sought to bring to light this inhumane policy and to demand immediate steps be taken to re-unify our families and heal
our communities. As CADBI member Patricia Vickers, CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

JAIL EXPANSION STOPPED

BUT BAIL REFORM URGENTLY NEEDED

IL

#NO215JA

Last spring, the

#No215Jail campaign
- which was started
by Decarcerate
PA and others to
stop the expansion
of Philadelphias
county jails
was successful
at blocking a City
Council bill that would
have allocated $7.2
million for land acquisition
to build a new 3000 bed jail

in Philadelphia. We believe that instead of

building and filling yet another Philly jail,
the city needs to tear down the dilapidated
House of Correction and change the costly,
immoral, ineffective policies that keep
Phillys jails full.
Since we defeated the land acquisition last
spring, the #No215Jail campaign has been
working hard to change the policies that
funnel people into the jail system and hold
them there for long periods of time, with a
focus on ending cash bail. Our organizing is
CONTINUED ON PAGE 7

INSIDE:
VOICES FROM THE INSIDE
MOVEMENT TO END DEATH BY INCARCERATION GROWS
ACTION STEPS
MARIPOSA AND THE SAINT REIMAGINING AND REBUILDING AT DECARCERATE PA

MOVEMENT TO END
DEATH BY INCARCERATION

The Coalition to Abolish

Death By Incarceration
(CADBI) has been hard
at work over the last
several months. CADBI
is a coalition that was
founded by Decarcerate
PA, the Human Rights
Coalition, Fight for Lifers,
and Right to Redemption to end life without
parole / death by incarceration (DBI) in Pennsylvania. Since we launched
the campaign last June, weve been working on developing our
coalition and figuring out our internal structures and strategy.
Were also in the initial stages of reaching out to legislators
and are putting pressure on the Philadelphia District Attorney
specifically around juvenile life without parole (see more in
the front page article about our Mothers Day Action)
.

CADBI. For folks on the

outside, you can join us
at our monthly meetings,
which take place on the
third Wednesday of every month at 6:30 at 1515
Fairmount Street in Philadelphia, or you can contact us at CADBIphilly@
gmail.com or 267-6060324. For people who are
currently incarcerated,
you can get involved by
writing to us at CADBI
c/o Decarcerate PA, PO Box 40764, Phila. PA 19107 and we will
mail you more information and a membership form.

GROWS

STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY

Since our launch event, we have been working internally to

develop strategy and structure to move the campaign forward. Several committees have formed to focus on specific
areas of work, including outreach, membership, prison visitation, and education. In February, we held a retreat to plan our
strategy for the coming year. At that retreat, we decided the
first targets of our campaign should be legislators who we
believe may be sympathetic to our cause. In addition, we
will be generally reaching out to legislators on
the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, since those are the committees
where legislation on the issue of DBI
could be introduced. We are also
interested in figuring out possible ways to pressure Governor Wolf.
For our initial outreach efforts, we want to connect
with people serving DBI and
their families, faith communities across the state, people
who have experienced harm
or violence, and social justice
organizations. And we decided
to plan two actions over the next
several months. The first was a rally
just before Mothers Day, highlighting
juvenile life without parole and calling
for compassion and healing, as well as calling
on the District Attorney to take action. The second
will be a bigger, statewide Day of Action against DBI in the fall.
People both inside and outside of prison can be members of

CADBI LEGISLATIVE UPDATE

One way we are engaging legislators is through our postcard

campaign. We are collecting signatures on postcards that ask
legislators to end life without parole. So far weve gotten
almost a thousand postcards signed.
We are also following up with legislators on specific pieces of
legislation. Senator Daylin Leach recently introduced SB1138,
which he claimed was a bill to end felony murder in Pennsylvania. In reality, the language of the bill is very vague and
does not end felony murder. Instead, it would merely add
language to the second degree murder statute requiring proof
that someone was committing a felony and intentionally,
knowingly or recklessly disregarded the risk that
someone could be hurt. The bill reads: (1) a
defendant [was] engaged as a principal
or an accomplice in the perpetration
of a felony; or (2) an accomplice
of a defendant engaged as a
principal or accomplice in the
perpetration of a felony and
the defendant intentionally, knowingly or recklessly
disregarded the risk that the
death of another human being would occur as a result
of their participation in the
perpetration of the felony.
While this may mean that some
defendants are able to avoid
a felony murder charge, we are
concerned that in practice especially given the way the criminal legal
system is stacked against poor people and
people of color, many of whom do not have
access to adequate legal representation overzealous prosecutors would continue to push for, and get, second
degree murder convictions very easily.
CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

We were happy to see that the bill does

have a retroactivity clause, but it would
only entitle people already sentenced
under the statute a judicial review to see
if they were eligible for resentencing,
which seems very limited in its scope.
In March, nine CADBI members met
with Senator Leach and his chief of staff
to express our concerns and disappointment about the bill. We hoped
to be able to push them to change the
language, but the bill had already been

introduced. Leach and his staff said they

included the current language to make
it more possible that the bill would
pass, and they did not seem open to
substantive changes to the language. If
you would like to see stronger language
in this bill language that would keep
Senator Leachs original commitment to
ending felony murder we encourage
you to write to Senator Leachs office to
express your concerns at Senator Daylin
Leach, 601 S. Henderson Rd #208, King of
Prussia, PA 19406.

We continue to develop strategies to

push the Pennsylvania legislature to
abolish death by incarceration in its
entirety, as well as seeking ways to
engage with and support other potential legislative reforms such as Senator
Kitchens SB1147 (seeking to abolish juvenile life without parole) and the efforts
of our Pittsburgh allies in Lets Get Free
to restore a meaningful commutation
process in Pennsylvania.

REIMAGINING LEADERSHIP
AND REBUILDING STRUCTURES
AT DECARCERATE PA

First of all, we
would like to
apologize for
such a long
newsletter delay. We have had a busy
six months, both working to advance our
two campaigns, and also re-imagining
Decarecerates structure and work to
more fully involve the leadership of our
Inside Advisory Board (IAB).
The Inside Advisory Board is a
group made up of nine individuals
in Pennsylvania Prisons. We have
representatives from Graterford, Muncy,
Cambridge Springs, Rockview, Greene,
Coal Township, and Somerset. All
Advisory Board members have actively
participated in political movements
against mass incarceration and have
worked either directly with Decarcerate
PA or a closely allied organization. Each
Advisory Board member has been paired
with an outside member of Decarcerate
PA as their main point of contact for
ongoing conversation and dialogue that
can be passed along to the whole group.
The outside liaisons are responsible for
maintaining regular correspondence
with advisory board members, bringing
their feedback to the group, supporting
Decarcerate in planning political
education events, and bringing decisions
to Decarcerates planning committee.
After several months of discussion, a

core group of Decarcerate PA

members met for a retreat in
March to determine a new
structure of Decarcerate PA.
The resulting model centers
the leadership and voices of the
Inside Advisory Board, seeks to
connect our campaign work and other
organizing to our inside membership,
and is working to develop avenues for
new people to join Decarcerate PA
and for all of us to engage in political
education and development together.
Decarcerate PA will have a monthly
meeting that will rotate every other
month between a Planning Meeting and
an IAB Dinner and Dialogue meeting.
The Planning Meeting will be where
the core of our business decisions are
made and where we receive in-depth
reports from our campaigns (#No215Jail
and CADBI). It will be a working meeting
to get tasks done as we build our
capacity. During the first six months,
the Planning Meeting will also focus
on developing the four priorities that
came out of our winter anti-oppression
retreat: political education; membership;
relationship building and group self-care;
and conflict resolution. The Planning
Meeting will provide a space to share

information
about what is
happening with the IAB, to generate
questions, and to generally better
incorporate the voices of people inside
in Decarcerate PAs leadership.
The Dinner and Dialogue meeting will
be where we welcome new members
and engage in political education, in
coordination with the inside members.
We hope to work with interested IAB
members and invite them to lead and/
or help develop political education
during these meetings on topics of
their choice and expertise (for example,
restorative justice or histories of antiprison organizing). We hope this new
structure helps us more clearly move
forward and include more people into
our work. We look forward to hearing
feedback and plan to reflect on and
evaluate this new model at the end of
the year.

MOTHERS DAY ACTION

continued from front page

whose son is serving a life
sentence he received when he was 17, observed: Pennsylvania sentences more young people to die in prison
than any other state in the country. We are holding this
action the Friday before Mothers Day to highlight how
these sentences tear families apart. No mother should
have to endure their child living an entire life behind
bars.

Despite the rainy weather, attendees packed the chapel

of the Arch Street United Methodist Church to standing room only. Speakers addressed how the retributive
nature of the prison system tears apart families and
communities, while failing to
improve public health and
safety and providing
little or no opportunities for
rehabilitation or
transformation.
Individuals like
Kimberly King
talked about
the devastation of losing
one brother
to a sentence
of death by
incarceration
when he was 22
Marching to the DAs office.
years old and anPhoto credit: Lowell Brown
other brother to street
violence at the same age.
Movita Johnson-Harrell, whose 18
year old son was shot and killed by two young
men in Philadelphia, submitted a statement
that spoke to her decision to ask for mercy
for the young men who had murdered her
son. We must realize that young people
frequently make poor choices, JohnsonHarrell observed. We must also realize
that while they make poor choices they
also have the capacity to grow and change.
It is important to recognize that part of
human development is making mistakes
but it is important to give young people the
opportunity to redeem themselves. No child
should live their entire life behind bars.It would
seem because of my own personal experience that
I would be the most unlikely candidate to fight to

The crowd at the Mothers Day rally listening to testimony

from people serving JLWOP and their loved ones.

abolish
youth death by
incarceration. I
stand with the Coalition to Abolish Death By
Incarceration (CADBI) because I understand that
one bad decision and my son could have been on
the other side of the gun. I also understand young
people change and can contribute positively to
society if given the resources and opportunity.
Kempis Ghani Songster, who was sentenced to
life in prison for a crime he committed when he was
15, recorded an audio statement for the press conference, encouraging attendees to recognize the hopeful
possibility, the critical importance, and the enormity
of the task before us. Only when all of us, says
Songster, our whole community families and friends of victims, families
and friends of the condemned,
and those who are themselves
condemned take responsibility for solving our communitys problems will the
healing begin.

CADBI delivers our demands to a

representative from the DAs office.
Photo credit: Lowell Brown

It was an emotional and

moving experience for all
those who participated.
After the rally, participants
walked from the church
to District Attorney Seth
Williams office to deliver a
giant Mothers Day card containing messages from mothers, fathers,
CONTINUED NEXT PAGE

MOTHERS DAY

continued from previous page

family members, and friends, as well as

those currently serving death by incarceration. To Seth Williams for Mothers Day,
the giant card read, Bring Our Loved Ones
Home!The action received a lot of positive news coverage, including articles in The
Metro, The Tribune, and Newsworks, as well
as local television reporting from 6ABC.

ACTION STEPS
END CASH BAIL

If you or someone you know has a story about the impacts and injustice
of the cash bail system that you would like to share for potential use in
the End Cash Bail social media campaign (see Jail Expansion Stopped article front page for more info), please write us! Letters can be addressed
to:
Decarcerate PA
And while the Mothers Day event itself is
ATTN: #No215Bail
now over, we want to keep up the pressure!
PO Box 40764
Thats why in the upcoming weeks we will
Philadelphia, PA 19107
continue to urge District Attorney Seth Williams to implement a meaningful and swift
resentencing process for those individuals
who were sentenced to die in prison as
children. We will continue to pressure the
D.A. to make a public commitment not to
seek to reinstate life without parole for
anyone going through the resentencing
process.
Please help us keep that pressure on! You
can participate by writing letters directly
to the District Attorney and by urging your
friends and family members to write, email,
call, and tweet him. See the Action Steps
section for his address and phone number.
People on the outside can find out more
about this mobilization (including links to
sample call scripts and sample letter drafts)
online at decarceratepa.info/calltoaction.
Finally, a huge thank you to all the many
folks who sent in written statements for
the Mothers Day Rally! Many of these were
read aloud by attendees at the event and
many other statements are being used as
part of our campaign to keep up the attention on this issue.
We see this effort as one component in our
overall campaign to abolish all death by
incarceration sentencing, regardless of age.
Our hope and intent is to take advantage of
the momentum currently being generated
around juvenile death by incarceration to
open the door to greater justice for everyone impacted by death by incarceration.

RESENTENCING FOR JUVENILE LIFERS!

Help us in encouraging District Attorney Seth Williams to implement
a meaningful and swift resentencing
process for those individuals who
were sentenced to die in prison as
children. Put pressure on the D.A.
to make a public commitment not
to seek life without parole during
the resentencing of any of the 500
people serving juvenile death by incarceration sentences.
You can participate by writing letters directly to the District Attorney
and by urging your friends and family members to write, email, call,
and tweet him.
Call District Attorney Seth Williams at 215-686-8000!
Email Seth Williams atseth.williams@phila.gov.
Write to Seth Williams at District Attorney Seth Williams, 3 South
Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA 19107

FIX THE FELONY MURDER BILL

In the spring of 2016, Senator Daylin Leach introduced SB1138, which
he claimed was a bill to end felony murder in Pennsylvania. In reality,
the language of the bill does not accomplish this goal (see page 2 for
more information). If you would like to see stronger language in this
bill, write to Senator Leachs office to express your concerns:
Senator Daylin Leach
601 S. Henderson Rd #208
King of Prussia, PA 19406

STATEMENT FROM

CARL DANIELS

FOR THE MOTHERS DAY RALLY

FOR COMPASSION, HEALING, AND REDEMPTION

One day while running around lost in the fog of Death by
Incarceration, I ran into an old sage. He said, Young man, why
are you running around like that?

scars of life want

to go away but cant
because you keep picking at them.

I said, My heart is full of hate and I cant see where Im going.

The old sage whispered life-saving jewels into my ear and sent
me on my way.
Later, I was moping around feeling depressed from thinking
about the hurt that filled my life. I bumped into an old sage
along the path of enlightenment. He said, Young man, why is
your countenance so low?
I responded, Ive hurt so many people and have been hurt so
much myself, I cant help it.
The old sage whispered life-saving jewels into my ear and sent
me on my way.
On another day, I was venting about how much I didnt care
about what happened to others because so much had happened to me. An old sage slid up on me out of nowhere. He
whispered life-saving jewels in my ear and faded on me as
swiftly as he had come.
This particular night I was sitting alone in the yard pondering
my sentence of Death by Incarceration and wondered what I
should be doing. On the way in, an old sage walked up beside
me. He said, Young man, I see that look on your face, and I
know just where youre at right now.
Yeah, alright old head, we both on our way to a cell right
now, I responded sarcastically. The old sage leaned over and
whispered life-saving jewels into my ear.
Years later I read a wisdom-filled book that taught me to be
careful when entertaining strangers because I could be entertaining angels and not know it. I had to have been entertaining
angels because their words sank into my spirit and changed
me.
The first angel told me, Let love be your guide, for only love
is bright enough to shine through the darkness of hate. Be it
yours or someone elses.
The second angel told me, Let healing into your spirit, for the

The third angel told me, Let

compassion into your heart, for it is only in caring and concern
for others that empathy can grow. This puts conscious brakes
on bad behavior.
The last angel told me, Let redemption be your lifes goal.
Spread love, spread healing, and spread compassion, for it is
these things that are the keys to redemption.
So here I stand today, 28 years on the path of Death by
Incarceration and I can say that I am whole. Despite a system
designed to choke any good that shows itself in me, my goodness comes forth. I refuse to be bound as a man to a future I
created as a boy.
To my sages Diheem Smith, David Lee, Tom Roach, and
Thorton Savage I cant thank you all enough for caring
for me and my growth and development when I didnt care
enough for myself and didnt know that I should.

PIATA RETROSPECTIVE
A young SW Philly rebel busts prison walls wide open at
the August 2012 Decarcerate PA community barbeque

JAIL EXPANSION
STOPPED
continued from front page
primarily based out
of a rec center at 8th
ing, but
and Diamond, in the heart of an area
agreed
where residents are heavily targeted
to parby mass incarceration. Meetings are
ticipate in
held at the rec center on the first
the hope
Monday of every month, and we have
of putting
also held two big public events, a BBQ
forward
Speak-out against the jail expansion
concrete
and a Valentines Day Love Not Jails
policy suggescommunity dinner and clothing drive.
tions directly
to those with
The campaign continues to engage with
decision-making
City Council, and is fighting to end cash
power. Unfortunately, the
bail in the city. Over 70% of people in
Working Group was abruptly
the Philadelphia Prison System (PPS) are
disbanded as the new administration
being held pretrial because they are untook over the mayors office.
able to pay bail. The bail system doesnt
enhance public safety, instead it penaliz- In January, it was announced that Counes and criminalizes people simply for be- cilman Curtis Jones would be convening poor. Although the city has received
ing a Criminal Justice Reform Commisa $3.5 million grant from the MacArthur
sion, which is composed of a panel of
Foundation to implement a number of
experts but has only one formerly
reforms aimed at reducing the jail popu- incarcerated member. The commission
lation, we believe these reforms are far
is holding hearings on criminal justice retoo short-sighted and limited in scope
form throughout the spring and summer.
and, by the citys own account, would
The #No215Jail campaign recently met
not decrease the population enough to
with Councilman Jones to assess his poclose the House of Correction (HOC).
sition and see if we could have any influWe want Philadelphia to follow the
ence or input in the hearings process. He
leadership of other cities, such as Wash- was open to including more voices on
ington DC, which have taken steps to
the commission and to holding hearings
more significantly reduce the use of cash specifically on bail and pre-trial detenbail and drastically cut pre-trial detention, and is interested in traveling with
tion. If these actions were taken, the jail
us to Washington DC to learn about
population could be reduced dramatihow pre-trial detention works there. We
cally and HOC could be closed.
continue to be in conversation with his
office about how to make this a reality.
After the land acquisition bill was
defeated, Councilman Bobby Henon
There is also some movement on the
who had originally introduced the bill,
bail issue on the state level. Senator
but then realized the political tide was
Daylin Leach is drafting a bill that would
turning invited us to participate in
potentially end the use of cash bail, but
and co-chair a working group on criminal we have yet to see the final language.
justice reform. We were skeptical of the In March, members of the campaign
political motivations behind the conven- traveled to Harrisburg to testify at a

hearing Leach
was holding
on the importance of
eliminating bail. Joshua Glenn, a member
of the Youth Art & Self-empowerment
Project (YASP) and Decarcerate PA,
testified about his experience when he
was 16 years old and was held pre-trial
for 18 months on charges that were all
eventually dismissed.
Over the coming months, we will be
launching a social media campaign to
lift up stories of people held pre-trial
in Philadelphia, meeting regularly to
grow our base and build our power, and
continuing to engage with City Council
and push them to end cash bail in Philadelphia. If you or someone you know
has a story to share about the impacts
and injustice of the cash bail system that
you would like to share for potential
use in this social media campaign, please
write us!
Decarcerate PA
ATTN: #No215Bail
PO Box 40764
Philadelphia, PA 19107
Please clearly indicate how we should
refer to you/what name we should use
for the social media campaign.

DECARCERATE PA TOURS PENNSYLVANIA WITH

Throughout the first week of April 2016,
Decarcerate PA travelled across the state
of Pennsylvania to support performances
of the play Mariposa & The Saint. Cowritten entirely through correspondence
by Julia Steele Allen and Sarah (Mariposa)
Fonseca while Mariposa was being held in
solitary confinement in a womens prison
in California, the play documents Mariposas personal history, her enduring spirit
of resistance, and her struggle to maintain
her health and sanity amidst the inhumane
conditions of the SHU. The California
Institute for Women, where
Mariposa is held, has seen
a huge spike of suicides and suicide
attempts in
the solitary
unit across
the past
several
years. In
the fall
of 2015,
the Associated
Press
reported
that the
suicide rate
at CIW is
more than eight
times the national
rate for female prisoners and more than five
times the rate for the entire California
prison system. Those numbers have only
escalated since that time.
This quarterly newsletter is intended to be
a tool of communication and information
between Decarcerate PA members on the
outside and people inside of Pennsylvania
prisons.
Decarcerate PA is a coalition of organi
zations and individuals seeking an end to
mass incarceration and the harms it brings
our many communities. Decarcerate PA
seeks mechanisms to establish and maintain
whole, healthy communities and believes that
imprisonment exacerbates the problems we
face. We therefore demand an immediate
and lasting moratorium on all new prisons: no
new prisons, no new county or city jails, no

MARIPOSA & THE SAINT

Every Pennsylvania performance of
Mariposa & The Saint was followed by
a dialogue with activists, advocates, and
survivors of solitary confinement
including members of Decarcerate
PA, CADBI, Reconstruction, the
Human Rights Coalition, the
Peoples Paper Co-op, and
Lets Get Free. At the close
of every show, audience members were
invited
to
engage
directly in
an action
step, filling
out CADBI
postcards
to their
legislators, urging
lawmakers
to abolish
death by
incarceration
sentencing in
this state. More
than 400 postcards
were collected between
Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, Haverford, and Philadelphia.

been performed at least 60 times in eight

different states across the country. In
addition to a local action step, all audience members are also invited to write
to Mariposa about their reactions
to the play. As a result, writer
and actor Julia Steele Allen
notes in an op-ed for The
Guardian: Mariposa
now receives two to
three postcards a day
from strangers who have
been deeply moved by
her words, sitting in their
church pew in central Texas,
or their Ivy League college or
their grassroots community theater. I
watch it happen each night: her words
igniting their imaginations, bringing tears
to their eyes. And I wonder if this is the
real reason she continues to be held in
isolation: the power of her, a fire so bright
the prison can only seek to contain or destroy it. Like so many others, whose will to
survive, whose complexity, confidence or
fight, is intolerable to the system; all these
burning candles in small boxes, marking
the length of our country.
If you have friends or family members who
want to learn more, encourage them to
visit:
www.juliasteeleallen.com/portfolio/
mariposa.

By the end of June, the play will have

prison expansions, no new beds in county jails, to write us at the address below.
no immigrant detention facilities, no private
prisons. We also demand changes in policing,
This newsletter is also available online at
sentencing and legislation to reduce the prison http://decarceratepa.info/newsletter
population. We believe that public money
should instead be spent on quality public
DECARCERATE PA
schools, jobs and job training, community-based
Box 40764
reentry services, health care and food access,
Philadelphia,
PA 19107
drug and alcohol treatment programs, stable
housing, restorative forms of justice and nondecarceratepa@gmail.com
punitive programs that address the root cause
of violence in our communities. The task before
decarceratepa.info
us is as large as it is necessary. With your help,
(267) 217-3372
we can put an end to mass incarceration.
If you know others who would also like to
receive this newsletter, please encourage them