Roots & Redemption: Social Justice & the Prison System presented by St. Mary's College of California

A special screening of clips from “The Trust”, in conjunction with a conversation on “Roots & Redemption: Social Justice & the Prison System”

Wednesday, October 7, 2009, at Saint Mary’s College of California

Last week, “The Trust” was invited to participate in a special evening of conversation organized by St. Mary’s Professor Marshall Welch in his role as Director of CILSA (the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Aciton), which is the academic center at Saint Mary's College for promoting a culture of service and social justice education.

The evening featured two clips from “The Trust” (both available on You Tube), with brief introductions by film co-producers Tamara Perkins and Jesse Dana.

To add more depth to the film clips, Tamara invited two social justice advocates to join us and talk about their efforts within the criminal justice system: The Honorable Gail Brewster Bereola, Judge of the Superior Court of California, and Rhody McCoy, Program Manager of The National Trust.  

Judge Bereola spoke passionately about her belief that the vast majority of young people she sees in her court have the capacity to be become educated, focused, and gainfully employed, if only we would re-allocate our resources to give them support instead of just punishment and warehousing. 

Rhody McCoy reminded us that this is a community problem, which is going to take community-based solutions, such as The Trust, to support incarcerated men in learning to break the cycle of incarceration and become an asset to their communities. In both of their presentations, it seemed clear that they just barely scratched the surface of what they have to share regarding these topics.

In order to bring the evening back to the topic initially posed for the Saint Mary’s students: “How does restorative justice relate to our mission for Social Justice here at Saint Mary’s?” we heard from three faculty members about the work they are doing to provide students with opportunities to learn more about the realities of our criminal justice system.

Participants than had a chance to discuss amongst themselves, and then to share with the group their own ideas about possible next steps in terms of what can be done at Saint Mary’s College to understand and promote restorative justice.

Ideas included creating awareness with a speaker series, offering field trips to visit prisons, providing scholarships for ex-offenders, and starting a mentoring program for Saint Mary’s College students to help teach reading and writing skills to the youth in juvenile hall.

We were pleased to hear back from the professors that several of the students enthusiastically continued the conversation in their classes the next day -- this mirrored the experience of the presenters and film crew, all of whom lingered long after the stated end time of the event, eager to build connections and share our own experiences. Building community, launching the conversation, getting people inspired and involved: this is precisely the goal of our project!

See below for more details on the current projects and past accomplishments of our guest speakers.

There was another chance to see exclusive footage and join the conversation on Wednesday, October 14 at SF's Sundance Kabuki Theater - stay tuned for an update on this special event.

Surviving Criminalization: Films on Incarceration & Family Detention - Presented by the Equal Justice Society, ACLU of Northern California, SF Film Society and the Commonweal Institute.

Guest speakers featured at "Roots & Redemption: Social Justice & The Prison System"

• The Honorable Gail Brewster Bereola is a Judge of the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda and the Presiding Judge of the Alameda County Juvenile Court. She has handled cases involving abused and neglected children who are dependents of the court, as well as delinquency cases involving youth accused of committing crimes. Interested in addressing habitual truancy and in maximizing positive outcomes for youth, Judge Bereola has launched several ground-breaking programs, including a Middle School Truancy Diversion Court pilot program designed to address habitual truancy of middle school students, and the first Alameda County Restorative Juvenile Justice Task Force to study restorative justice practices and how they could be utilized in Alameda      County. This task force developed a three-year restorative justice strategic plan, which was ratified by stakeholders in March 2009. Broad-based collaborative efforts are currently underway to implement the three year strategic plan that Judge Bereola believes will fundamentally and positively change how juvenile justice is administered in Alameda County, and will address issues of accountability, repairing harms caused by youthful wrong-doing, supporting and strengthening youth, victims, families and communities.
  

• Rhody McCoy III was born in Brooklyn, New York, and attended both the University of Massachusetts and the University of San Francisco. After more than 20 years of trudging, and struggling with addiction and periods of incarceration, Rhody changed his mind and began his amazing journey of “living.” Since his final incarceration ended in 2000, Rhody has dedicated his life to three pursuits: (1) becoming and remaining aware, healthy, and purposeful, (2) continuing to develop into the best father possible for his three children: Leah , Rhody IV, and Tre’ McCoy, and (3) becoming a model member in the community. Since 2007, Rhody has served as Program Associate for The National Trust for the Development of African American Men. He is also a Board Member of Positive Directions Equals Change, and a member of the African-American Action Network.

• John Ely is an Associate Professor in the Sociology Department of Saint Mary’s College of California. Professor Ely supports service learning courses in which his students interact with recent parolees, and is developing another course in Spring 2010 which would bring students inside San Quentin to support the work of The Trust Program.
  

• Peter Freund, Associate Professor, and Chair of the Art and Art History Department at Saint Mary's College, has taken an active role in the development of the San Quentin Media Project, working with film crew members Jess, Tamara, Diana and Shane to create a full-fledged film school within the walls of San Quentin.
  

• Barbara A. McGraw is a Professor of Social Ethics, Law, and Public Life and also the Director of the Center for Engaged Religious Pluralism at Saint Mary's College. She spoke to her personal experiences working with prisoners along with her institutional-based effort to shift towards a culture that acknowledges, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean, “people are more than the worst thing they have ever done in their lives." 
  

Photos of the panelists (from left to right: Judge Gail Bereola, Jesse Dana, Rhody McCoy, Tamara Perkins) provided by staff photographer Quincy Adamo of the St Mary's College of California "Collegian."