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john lewis
Why Mutual Aid Is Vital to Criminal Justice Reform’s Next Chapter
Bail funds play a powerful and important role not only in reducing the structural harms caused by our nation’s reliance on failing cash bail policies, but also in strengthening and preserving our country’s democratic ideals.
Dec 24, 2024
As political analysts continue to piece together the results of this year’s general election, an illuminating takeaway has emerged on issues related to criminal justice: Voters who cast their ballot in red states also voted in local elections for reform-minded candidates and passed progressive criminal justice ballot measures; whereas in some blue states, voters preferred candidates who promise to implement tough-on-crime policies.
These results show that people’s political beliefs no longer easily fall along party lines. And criminal justice reform doesn’t offer any obviously easy solutions. For many, what matters most is feeling safe in our communities. It also suggests that most people believe accomplishing this requires us to no longer view matters like criminal justice as partisan issues.
When I think about this, the legacy and words of John Lewis—a civil rights leader turned congressman—spring to mind: “We cannot thrive as a democracy when justice is reserved for only those with means,” Lewis wrote in 2020. It was at the height of a national movement for racial justice, and his words and the social unrest were signs of a new movement for a more just and equitable America. Lewis was 80 years old then and severely ill with cancer, yet he remained optimistic about the future of America. Several years since his death, Lewis’ lifework and reflections still resonate deeply.
Supporting different networks of mutual aid organizations, like bail funds, is how communities can lean on their shared values and hold tight to their purpose.
As our nation works to bridge divides and find common ground, Lewis’ legacy continues to offer our nation guidance. From the Jim Crow era of the 1960s to the political and racial justice movement that swept the country in 2020, Lewis witnessed our country’s capacity to transform. His life experiences and reflections offer a roadmap for how people can protect and strengthen American democracy. He believed, for instance, that democracy cannot thrive “where power remains unchecked and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this movement is simply not an option—for peace cannot exist where justice is not served.”
In today’s America, countless people are still living on the receiving end of that reality. Unarmed Black men continue to be brutally beaten by police. Women are being criminalized for pregnancy loss and for seeking reproductive healthcare. Meanwhile, families are being torn apart by a broken criminal justice system that puts a price on freedom for the legally innocent. But Lewis’ words offer us insight: “As a nation, if we care for the Beloved Community, we must move our feet, our hands, our hearts, our resources to build and not to tear down, to reconcile and not to divide, to love and not to hate, to heal and not to kill.”
To follow in Lewis’ footsteps means viewing this moment in our nation’s history as an opportunity to turn feelings of frustration and uncertainty into positive engagement with our community and fellow neighbors. One way to do that is through mutual aid—the practice of ordinary people helping others in their community by providing resources and services to help meet people’s needs. Groups organized for this purpose, like local community bail funds and The Bail Project, exist to support people when the government does not. Through wealth-based detention that results from the use of cash bail, our cities, states, and counties have shirked their responsibility to preserve the presumption of innocence, establishing a two-tiered system of justice: one for the rich, and another for everyone else.
Charitable bail organizations, like The Bail Project, are often local grassroot groups spearheaded by people from the communities they serve, staffed, for example, by faith leaders, legal experts, and advocates for criminal justice reform. Charitable bail organizations provide free bail assistance and even supportive services—such as court reminders and transportation assistance—to incarcerated people who have already been deemed eligible for release by a judge. In fact, many of the legally innocent people they help have been accused of low-level nonviolent misdemeanors, such as forgetting to attend a scheduled court date. Oftentimes, the only reason people remain incarcerated in jail before trial is because they cannot afford to pay the court a few hundred dollars in exchange for their release before trial—not because they pose a risk of flight or public safety concerns.
Bail funds play a powerful and important role not only in reducing the structural harms caused by our nation’s reliance on failing cash bail policies, but also in strengthening and preserving our country’s democratic ideals. In providing people who a judge has already determined is safe to release with free bail assistance and court support, we safeguard our country’s notions of liberty, freedom, and the presumption of innocence. These are fundamental principles that underpin American democracy—regardless of political affiliation. This work helps our society reimagine how our bail and pretrial systems can be improved.
As we look ahead, the road forward may not be easy, but we’re not alone on it. The work of mutual aid groups and charitable bail funds has helped usher in change. Over the last decade, more than 20 cities have safely minimized the use of cash bail. Supporting different networks of mutual aid organizations, like bail funds, is how communities can lean on their shared values and hold tight to their purpose. Now, more than ever, we must keep our eyes on what we’re here to accomplish, the change we’re fighting for, and the commitment that brought us together. Because, in the words of Lewis: “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do something.”
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In Remembrance of James Lawson, a Force for Good and Champion of Peace
We at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, where he worked for many years, are blessed to have counted the civil rights leader among our core team of organizers. It is with reverence that we remember his life and time with us.
Jun 16, 2024
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” To Rep. John Lewis, he was “the architect of the nonviolence movement.” Jesse Jackson simply called him “the Teacher.” We at the Fellowship of Reconciliation are blessed to have counted him among our core team of organizers. It is with reverence that we remember his life and time with us.
Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr., who died Sunday at age 95, was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and moved with his family to Massillon, Ohio, shortly after. As part of a deeply Christian family, James began regularly reading the bible and developed a prophetic and liberatory interpretation of the gospels at an early age. In a 2014 interview published by Fellowship magazine, Lawson told Diane Lefer, “By the end of my high school years, I came to recognize that that whole business – walk the second mile, turn the other cheek, pray for the enemy, see the enemy as a fellow human being – was a resistance movement. It was not an acquiescent affair or a passive affair. I saw it as a place where my own life grew in strength inwardly, and where I had actually seen people changed because I responded with the other cheek. I went the second mile with them.”
While attending Baldwin-Wallace College, Lawson met A.J. Muste, the Fellowship of Reconciliation’s executive secretary, a renowned pacifist and nonviolent direct action strategist. Deeply inspired, Lawson immediately joined the FOR. Graduating college in 1950, as the Cold War grew, Lawson determined that he would refuse the military draft. Instead of Korea, he was sent to prison, where he served 13 months.
In 1953, Lawson accepted an offer from Hislop College in Nagpur, India, to teach and coach athletics, giving him the opportunity to, like FOR members Howard Thurman and Bayard Rustin had done before him, explore the connections between the Indian self-determination movement and the African-American freedom struggle. Lawson spent the next three years on the subcontinent studying Gandhi’s life and the Satyagraha movement. “I combined the methodological analysis of Gandhi with the teachings of Jesus, who concludes that there are no human beings that you can exclude from the grace of God,” Lawson described to Lefer.
Lawson was completing a graduate degree at the Oberlin School of Theology when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., while visiting the campus, recruited him. King insisted to Lawson that his expertise was needed, not eventually, but immediately! “I mentioned to [King] that while in college I had long wanted to work in the South – especially because of segregation – as a place of work, and that I wanted to do that still,” Lawson told Fellowship magazine editor Richard Deats in 1999. “His response was: ‘Come now! Don’t wait! Don’t put it off too long. We need you NOW!”
When Lawson told A.J. Muste of his decision to move South, Muste quickly offered him a position as FOR’s Southern Field Secretary. Basing himself initially in Nashville, Lawson began working throughout the South, initially with FOR and then the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He focused especially on recruiting and training a generation of nonviolent direct-action activists. Those young people then launched the sit-ins and Freedom Rides and founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
In 1965, while representing SCLC on an International FOR delegation to Vietnam, Lawson met Thich Nhat Hanh. This encounter significantly affected Lawson, inspiring him to facilitate a meeting between the Buddhist monk and Dr. King, and ultimately led to King’s dramatic public stance against the U.S. war in Vietnam. Lawson’s profound assessment of U.S. militarism and what he called “plantation capitalism” shaped not only the interweaving of the 1960s civil rights and anti-war struggles but ultimately how our intersectional social movements are shaped today.
In 1974, in Los Angeles, Lawson continued his solidarity with impoverished low-wage workers. He founded Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice to enlist faith communities in this struggle and pushed direct action campaigns for which he was arrested “more [times] than [during] all his work in the South.”
Lawson spent his last decades both working within peace circles while offering critiques that their movements devoted too much of their focus outside U.S. borders. He believed that true change could only come from within. “Only by engaging in domestic issues and molding a domestic coalition for justice can we confront the militarization of our land,” he argued to Lefer in 2014. “We must confront that here – not over there.”
Whether prophetically interpreting the scriptures, challenging America’s original sin with the fierce power of nonviolent direct action, or strategically connecting with other monumental peace leaders, Lawson’s commitment to social justice was relentless and unwavering. We at the Fellowship of Reconciliation are blessed to have worked with and been mentored by him. As we continue to confront the injustices of our times, we know that Lawson’s spirit is walking beside us.
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Senate Dems Reintroduce Bill to 'Restore Critical Safeguards' of Voting Rights Act
One advocate said the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is "critically important for Congress to pass at a moment in our history when the freedom to vote is under attack in our nation."
Feb 29, 2024
Civil and voting rights advocates on Thursday cheered the reintroduction of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Introduced by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Laphonza Butler (D-Calif.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), S.B. 4—a companion to H.R. 14, introduced last September—is named in honor of John Lewis, a late civil rights icon and longtime Georgia congressman. Republicans filibustered the previous iteration of the bill.
"In our nation, there's no freedom more fundamental than the right to vote," said Durbin. "But over the past several years, there has been a sustained effort to chip away at the protections guaranteed to every American under the Voting Rights Act. That's why we've joined together today to reintroduce a bill that would not only restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act, but strengthen it."
We just re-introduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I’m joined by @SenSchumer, @SenatorWarnock, and civil rights group leaders now.
Our message it’s clear: we must ensure that democracy works for all of us. https://t.co/SH7ujaLfjw
— Senator Dick Durbin (@SenatorDurbin) February 29, 2024
Warnock said: "I was Congressman Lewis' pastor, but he was my mentor and hero because he believed voting is a sacred undertaking that's about more than a person's voice, it's about their humanity. That's why this legislation is more important than ever, because the fight to protect voting rights and voting access for every eligible American remains unfinished and even worse, so much of the progress Congressman Lewis fought for is being rolled back."
NAACP Legal Defense Fund president Janai Nelson called the bill "a vital piece of legislation that will safeguard the fundamental right to vote by strengthening and restoring the Voting Rights Act, one of the most impactful civil rights laws in our nation's history."
"It is fitting that this critical legislation is put forward as we approach the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when Black Americans—including civil rights hero John Lewis—endured brutal state-sponsored violence while marching for basic rights, which led to the enactment of the Voting Rights Act."
"The fight to protect voting rights and voting access for every eligible American remains unfinished and even worse, so much of the progress Congressman Lewis fought for is being rolled back."
The landmark VRA was meant to ensure that state and local governments could not "deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color."
However, the VRA has been eroded in recent decades by Republican-controlled state legislatures across the country, including with restrictions on voter registration, reduction in early voting options, and voter identification laws. These measures disproportionately disenfranchise minority voters, and some GOP officials have admitted that they are intended to give Republican candidates an electoral edge.
In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the VRA in Shelby County v. Holder, which eviscerated a key section of the law that required jurisdictions with a history of racist disenfranchisement to obtain federal approval prior to altering voting rules. In 2021, the nation's high court voted 5-4 in Brnovich v. Democratic National Committeeto uphold Arizona's voting restrictions—even as Chief Justice John Roberts acknowledged that they disproportionately affect minorities.
"Since Shelby and more recently Brnovich v. DNC made it even harder to challenge discriminatory voting laws, states have continued to limit access to the ballot and use the redistricting process to dilute Black voters' voices," Nelson asserted. "States that were formerly protected—including Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas—are all places where LDF has been forced to bring recent litigation to challenge unlawful racial discrimination in voting."
Common Cause president Virginia Kase Solomón asserted that the protections proposed in the new bill "are critically important for Congress to pass at a moment in our history when the freedom to vote is under attack in our nation."
"A bedrock of our democracy, the freedom to vote has been under sustained assault since the 2020 election with dozens of anti-voter laws passed in states all across the country to make it harder for Americans—particularly in Black and brown communities—to have a say in choosing their elected leaders," she added.
Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, said in a statement that "in the Shelby decision, the U.S. Supreme Court acknowledged that there is still discrimination in our nation's electoral process—and this bill would provide strong and robust safeguards to combat it."
"We urge Congress to work in a bipartisan manner to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and help make our democracy more responsive to all of our nation's voices," he added.
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