On February 13th, 1969, tear gas hung thick in the air outside of the Allen Building. More than one hundred local police officers and National Guard troops had been called in to bring order to the protest; dozens of white students stood nearby to support their classmates.
As volunteer advocates at the Community Empowerment Fund (CEF), a nonprofit that works with individuals toward goals of financial independence, we often work alongside justice-involved community members (those who have come into contact with any part of the criminal justice system) who routinely confront a society that continues to punish them long after they leave detention in the criminal-legal system.
We are the beneficiaries of this inequality. We are implicated in its persistence.
