Today is the first day of the year 2020. Last year–2019–marked 400 years since the arrival of the first slave ship to what we now know as the Americas. With the new year comes new beginnings, but as the old African symbol of the Sankofa bird reminds us, we can’t see where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been.
Mass incarceration is a direct result of the transatlantic slave trade. Because the festering wounds from this collective trauma went unhealed, over the past 400 years we’ve seen the progression from slavery, to Jim Crow, to a public health crisis so severe that it affects one in every two American families.
Though these historic periods all share the intention of subjugating, controlling and profiting from Black people, people from all walks of life have become the collateral consequences of the system.
In other words, seeing the demise of mass incarceration is a struggle for everyone. And that’s what we have our eyes set on for 2020 and beyond.
At our last New Orleans chapter meeting of 2019, we asked our members to step back into what 400 years ago may have felt like. We asked them to reflect on what their ancestors may have been eating, smelling, and hearing; what horrors or moments of hope they may have witnessed; and who they may have been fighting alongside.
Then we asked them to take a look around the room at the freedom fighters of the present. Our membership includes everyone from Black leaders whose families have been in New Orleans for centuries, to Latinx and Asian activists whose families have experienced parallel horrors of mass deportation, to white organizers who were given the task of coming to one meeting a long time ago as a freshman college student, and then never left. Everyone is healing and fighting for freedom in distinct ways, but together we are a united front.
Finally, we asked our members to step 400 years into the future, to the year 2419. We heard what they want to see at this time, 800 years after the beginning of slavery.
They had a variety of hopeful answers, including that we’ll be flying, and so will our vehicles. Because there will be no need for highways, “everything will be all expansive,” says Darlene Jones. “We’ll have futuristic buildings and second-lines winding all over.”
In addition to creating major infrastructural innovations, our members know our society will also be more emotionally evolved.
“We’ll have multiple families living together with no conflicts,” says longtime VOTE member Kim.
“Justice will not be blind,” echoes Verelin, another longtime member. “She will not have blindfolds on.”
In a similar vein, “everyone will be equal,” Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice member Terell shares. “And we’ll have presidents of different races–a bunch of women presidents.”
Wendy, a newer but rapidly-growing member-leader whose son is incarcerated at Angola, chimes in. “We’ll live in a society where we will embrace our neighbors and grow together,” she says.
Our newest staff member, Community Health Worker Haki Sekou, had a more dystopian outlook on the future, postulating that mass incarceration would come in the form of chips implanted into people’s bodies.
His words serve as a warning for what could be if we don’t stick together and fight the system as we know it.
The VOTE staff took heed to his and everyone else’s visions as we went into strategic planning at the end of December. While we didn’t plan for the next 400 years, we did take a serious look at the next decade.
In the imminent future, we have the 2020 elections on our mind, including the race for District Attorney and some local judges. We are also developing more opportunities for transitional housing, as more people than ever before are coming home. Finally, and as always, we have plans to strengthen our local, state and national coalitions, so that together we are unstoppable.
“I don’t have 10 years to wait,” says our Executive Director Norris Henderson. “The world changes when people, money and ideas get organized. And all of those things are sitting right here in our shop.”