"LIFT UPS, NOT LOCK UPS"
In the rebuilding of New Orleans
A donor briefing and fundraising to aid grassroots efforts to rebuild the gulf region

Join actors Patricia Clarkson and David Strathairn, and North Star Fund donors David Rosenmiller and Merry Tucker in support of Familes and Friends of Louisiana's Incarcerated Children (FFLIC) and Safe Streets - Strong Communities.

To see an article about this event, please follow this link:

www.huffingtonpost.com/linda-gross/nola-in-nyc-north-star-_b_40578.html

FFLIC and Safe Streets are still accepting donations for this event. If you would like to make a donation, please click this link and in the memo state: FFLIC NYC Fundraisier.

To donate immediately please use the following link. JJPL will accept donations on our behalf.

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The Beginning

In 1986, I met a boy that would someday go to prison. Of course, way back then I did not know that. But what if I had? Could I have done anything to change it? Was there a way to stop it? By the year 2000, folks that knew a lot more than I, did know he would go to prison. They published a report that said with the high drop out rate and low economic opportunities it was inevitable that kids like this boy would end up in jail and folks that could afford to invest in stocks should put their money into building the prisons to get ready for them. The United States went on a prison-building spree. The nation has tripled its prison population since 1980; opening the equivalent of 3 or more new 500 bed prisons every week. We went from spending 12 billion dollars a year on incarcerating human beings in 1972 to spending 100 billion in 2000. By 2001, the boy I knew was sitting in the Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth located in Northwest Louisiana. There he was deprived of an education, proper medical care, court ordered mental health care, court ordered substance abuse treatment and adequate basic needs, such as food, medicine and love. In TCCY he would be beaten by guards, learn to fight to keep the little he was given, develop posttraumatic stress disorder and eventually suffer a mental breakdown similar to what soldiers in war endure. He learned to live with the anxiety and panic attacks that the brutal conditions created in his young mind. We watched as a once bright and intelligent boy became someone we hardly recognized beneath the blacks eyes, swollen lips, bruised body and hopeless spirit. All the while the folks that invested in prisons collected their dividends and became rich.

Years ago, I met a juvenile justice attorney who used to work on cases where people were sentenced by the state to die. I asked him how it was that he came to work in the juvenile justice field? He told me he had represented men on Louisiana’s death row for a long time and he learned a lot about these men and their lives before prison. The reason he wanted to help children was that all of these men had been raised by the state of Louisiana in a juvenile prison. He felt there was something terribly wrong with a state that raised children to be violent and dangerous and then in return put them to death for what they (the state) taught them. The words that attorney said to me that day, almost seven years ago, are with me everyday as I go about my work of improving the juvenile justice system and our communities. The young man is not alone; today in the US, over 2 million people are behind bars. We must take action to stop the mass incarceration of our young people. As a community we should stand up and fight for justice and resources to keep our young people in their own communities where they can receive the help they need. We must come together, to demand that local decision makers put our tax dollars into the resources that will make a difference, good economic opportunities, quality education and healthcare for all people. And the young man I met on August 8, 1986…He waits for a day when he will be released and can start over. As his mother, I wait for the day when I can hold him atarms length, look him over and then hold him tight once more.

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FFLIC'S CIRCLE OF CARE

In the days following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, FFLIC staff gathered, intent on finding a way to help our members and families. We began going shelter to shelter searching for our members and for any families who had children incarcerated or detained in Orleans and Jefferson Parish when the storm hit. We drove families from Houston to Atlanta and Lafayette to Lake Charles to be reunited with loved ones. We advocated for our members to receive housing vouchers and get out of the Astrodome and other shelters. We helped folks find and make contact with loved ones who had been separated from them. We listened to stories of unimaginable shock, horror and grief. Within a week, we realized the magnitude of the devastation for our families. How could FFLIC even begin to help so many who had lost so much? We decided to write a letter, a cry for help to request donations and support and to tell the world of the despicable treatment and the lack of concern for our people that was happening in our beloved city…

Kori showing off our display of "helping hands" around "healing hearts"

“As you can imagine, our whole world has been turned upside down by the course of events in the last week. We have members in New Orleans whom we cannot find. Some were old and sick, some told us they were staying when we called last Saturday, saying, “God will take care of me.” In Louisiana right now, there are hundreds of kids locked up who have no idea if their families are alive or not. The youth from the Orleans Parish Detention Center arrived at Jetson Correctional Center for Youth on Wednesday, covered in sewage, starving, dehydrated, having been stranded for days with no water or food. We want to find our members and the young people our sister organization works with (the Youth Empowerment Project) and their families. We need to find homes for children who are being released but have no homes to return to. We need to get people out of shelters that are treating them like prisoners and into homes or at least hotel rooms with food and water and some security and hope. We also need the racist, dehumanizing news coverage to stop. We want members and non-members alike to LIVE and stop being blamed for being abandoned and left to die. We want our friends and families to stop being treated like “insurgents” in some kind of war, cast as “looters,” and “thugs,” and told that the people who are supposed to be saving them have the right to“shoot to kill.” We want people to understand that, in the words of a friend, a hurricane of poverty and racism hit New Orleans a long time ago..Only now, the world is watching. Only now it is…being photographed by news media that can get in and out of the city even though food and water cannot. Now, in vivi-color, we are all watching the sick truth of how this city, this state and this nation do not care about poor people of color…

We are not sure what was expected from that e-mail, but we could have never guessed that we would receive the extremely generous outpour of support that came to FFLIC from across the world.
• "Our thoughts & prayers are with you and we send along a mantra we like from a street mural in Upper Manhattan”: “Lose not courage. Lose not faith. Move Forward.” Lauren & Edward
• "Bless you for the work you are doing. Keep it up!" Bob & Judy
• "You all are amazing! A friend of mine wrote this check & I'm sending it along. I’m spreading the word to as many people as possible. Take good care of yourselves & each other.” Natasha
• "It is with a loving heart that I send this letter and check. Watching the tragedy of the hurricane expand far beyond property and into the lives of many has been deeply saddening. I know this check is not enough and as a congregation we are struggling to commit ourselves to being part of an accountable movement to
tear down all systems of racism and classism that hold this country up. Please accept this check as a small part of our commitment to justice. I hope to send more as we do other fundraising. Please feel free to ask for specific donations and I will see what I can gather from the community I serve and the
communities we are all apart. Yours in faithful solidarity,” Jason, Community Church of Boston.
• "Thanks for your commitment and hard work"…excerpts from letters we received.

We cannot begin to thank all of those people from around the country that thought enough of FFLIC and our members to send donations. We thank you for helping us help so many families at a time that our government would not. Our Circle of Care and our Movement is strong!