Every week, our Mission Possible team stays connected with people on the inside, sharing updates, answering questions, and hearing directly about what’s happening behind the walls via JPAY. These exchanges shape our work and keep us rooted in the people most impacted by this system. On the week Calvin Duncan won as Clerk of Criminal District Court, Solomon B., writing from Angola, captured it perfectly:
“Angola is smiling as one of their own
– Solomon B.
is becoming legendary in his own right.”
Calvin Duncan didn’t just win an election; he rewrote what’s possible. The co-founder of the Angola Special Civics Project alongside Norris Henderson, Duncan spent years of wrongful incarceration inside Louisiana State Penitentiary turning cells into classrooms and cultivating a generation of advocates who would challenge the system from within. Now, he’ll help oversee the very court system that once confined him. They built a legacy of civic education and organizing that would ripple far beyond Angola’s walls and that legacy now sits at the helm of the Orleans Parish Clerk of Court’s office.
But perhaps no one grasps the full magnitude of this moment better than the people still inside—Calvin’s former students, his comrades in organizing, the men who walked the same yard and dared to believe that transformation wasn’t just rhetoric but reality.
When we shared the news through JPAY, their responses didn’t just congratulate a friend. They celebrated proof that the bars, literal and figurative, can be broken. They spoke of hope rekindled in a moment when hope felt scarce, of families they’ll now mobilize to vote, of improvised cookouts behind walls to mark a victory that belongs to all of them.
Here’s what they told us.
Yes! This is going to be the weekend to remember! I have to say that I’m beyond excited. I have already decided on how I will celebrate Calvin Duncan win and I’m going to have my very own cook out! You all understand how we improvise behind the walls.
Dewitt E.
Hey VOTE,
Congrats to Calvin! Truly a testament to the power of second chances and the good that can come out of Angola!
Surge S.
Well VOTE we see that you can.t keep a good man down… No matter how hard they try, the truth has its way of showing up at the time when needed. So let Calvin know all the men in Angola is very proud of his success. Even if they are not in tune with the times, sooner are later they will understand what it was all about.
So, keep up the good work and thank you all. One step at a time, it works.
Theodore M.
Hello FAM!
Angola is smiling as one of their own is becoming legendary in his own right. I have not seen this much excitement since Obama won the presidential election.
Smile!… for us here he is a very personal inspiration, someone whom bled, cried and sweated with. He knows first hand how our plight feels as he has walked in our shoes feeling at times seemingly defeated but to be as the Phoenix, rising from the ashes and rising he has along now with our hopes and dreams of one day seeing Angola as free men ready to join in the fight with him.
Solomom B.
Bismillah!
Greeting Fam., Calvin made history! I’m so excited for our comrade, he has cross a boundary that many are afraid to cross. I’ll try to give him a call to congratulate him properly, I’m sure there’s alot that he needs to do first. Keep me posted.
Carl B.
Congratulations Calvin; we are all collectively excited to welcome you as the new Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal District Court!