IN THEIR NAMES | A Busboys and Poets Books Presentation
Date and Time
Apr 27, 2023 7:00 pm
Location
450K
450 K St NW, Washington, District of Columbia, 20001
Apr 27, 2023 7:00 pm
450K
When twenty-six-year-old recent college graduate Aswad Thomas was days away from starting a professional basketball career in 2009, he was shot twice while buying juice at a convenience store. The trauma left him in excruciating pain, with mounting medical debt, and struggling to cope with deep anxiety and fear. That was the same year the national incarceration rate peaked. Yet, despite thousands of new tough-on-crime policies and billions of new dollars pumped into “justice,” Aswad never received victim compensation, support, or even basic levels of concern. In the name of victims, justice bureaucracies ballooned while most victims remained on their own.
In In Their Names, Lenore Anderson, president of one of the nation’s largest reform advocacy organizations, offers a close look at how the political call to help victims in the 1980s morphed into a demand for bigger bureaucracies and more incarceration, and cemented the long- standing chasm that exists between most victims and the justice system. She argues that the powerful myth that mass incarceration benefits victims obscures recognition of what most victims actually need, including addressing their trauma, which is a leading cause of subsequent violent crime.
A solutions-oriented, paradigm-shifting book, In Their Names argues persuasively for closing the gap between our public safety systems and crime survivors.
Lenore Anderson will be in conversation with Ingrid Archie, Aswad Thomas and Patricie Sulton. They will be joining us on the Busboys stage to share their experiences assessing victimization, mass incarceration and crime rates to close its adverse gap. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during and after the event, and Anderson will be signing following the program.
This event is free and open to all. Our program begins at 7:00 pm, and will be followed by an audience Q&A. Copies of IN THEIR NAMES will be available for purchase before and after the event. Please note that this event is IN PERSON and will NOT be livestreamed.
We ask that guests RSVP in order to receive direct updates about the event from Busboys and Poets Books
Lenore Anderson is the founder and president of the Alliance for Safety and Justice. She is a former chief of policy at the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, former director of public safety for the Oakland mayor, and the recipient of a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award and a Frank Carrington Crime Victim Attorney Award. The author of In Their Names (The New Press), she lives in Oakland, California.
Ingrid Archie serves as the organizing director of TimeDone, a program of Alliance for Safety and Justice that creates societal change by removing barriers from prior convictions. She was born and raised in Los Angeles and a mother of six. Having been impacted by violence and incarceration her whole life, Ingrid became a community organizer and civic engagement specialist.
Aswad Thomas is vice-president of Alliance for Safety and Justice and the national director of Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice. He is the author of the children's book The Stars Represent You and Me.
Patrice Sulton is the executive director of DC Justice Lab. She is an attorney, criminal justice reform advocate, community organizer and law school professor who is powering a movement to fundamentally transform the criminal justice system in Washington D.C., which has one of the highest incarceration rates in the country.
