Hello hello,
Welcome to March! Fun stat – 9 million people have been vaccinated in CA. Today, there were 3,516 new cases whereas 6 weeks ago, it was 50K new cases a day! That’s definitely progress 🙂
Last week, I was so fortunate to attend an event at work hosted by the Black employee resource group (ERG) from our Alpharetta, GA site. I randomly learned about the event due to some intra-ERG advertising, and I’m SO GRATEFUL I attended. The session was titled “Allyship: A conversation on the Restorative Justice Movement”, and going into the virtual meeting, I had no preconceived notions about the talk. The guest speaker, David Windecher, Esq started to share his personal story and the work he’s doing to provide an alternative option toward rehabilitation outside of the traditional criminal justice system. I have to be honest – he started talking without powerpoint slides, and I was a bit anxious thinking “where’s this guy’s slides?!” This says more about me than him – lol. In my corporate world, we’re probably too reliant on powerpoint slides which become a crutch and distraction. David was totally captivating as he walked through his life complex life experience – rumbling with poverty driven criminal activity and navigating the criminal justice system at such a young age… as a white man. He’s now a practicing attorney specializing in criminal defense, juvenile law, and expungement procedures.
I talk a lot about putting power to privilege and David Windecher is living proof of the concept. He started an organization called Rehabilitation Enables Dreams (RED) which rethinks rehabilitation through means other than jail time. In fact, RED’s mission is to keep people out of the criminal justice system and focus on the real needs of individuals: social, civic and financial literacy. Check out their website here to consider donating to the cause and signing up for the monthly newsletter: Rehabilitation Enables Dreams (RED) – Stop Recidivism His program is showing substantially reduced recidivism rates than our current incarceration programs.
He’s also written an autobiography for which a portion of the proceeds is donated to RED. Here’s a link to the book: The AmerIcan Dream: HisStory in the Making: Windecher, David Lee: 9781986274067: Amazon.com: Books
#blacklivesmatter #courageousconversations #powertoprivilege
Be Well,
Jessica
ICYMI: My guy Chad Sanders was on Armchair Expert last week, and the interview was excellent – find it here: Chad Sanders — Armchair Expert (armchairexpertpod.com) !!