Category: In the News

The Atlantic quoted Board Member Rahsaan Thomas and Executive Director Taina Vargas-Edmond to discuss Initiate Justice's efforts to restore voting rights to people in prison and on parole in California.

Op-Ed in the Sacramento Bee, by San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon and former Alameda County Chief of Probation David Muhammad, supporting ACA 6. They talk about our Director of Inside Organizing and co-founder, Richard Edmond-Vargas, as someone making big contributions to our community who is denied the right to vote while on parole.

Two articles in Truthout (1, 2) discussed our CA voting rights work in the context of the national voting restoration movement.

Capitol Weekly discusses ACA 6 and shares results from our “Democracy Needs Everyone” Report.

Op-Ed by our Executive Director, Taina Vargas-Edmond, calling on Jackie Lacey to stop blocking SB 1437 re-sentencing in Los Angeles. Initiate Justice was one of many organizations that fought hard to pass SB 1437 in 2018. Yet, many DAs across the state, like Jackie Lacey, were fighting to keep people in prison for murders they did not commit.

Two articles in the Huffington Post about the 2020 Election Cycle quoted our Executive Director, Taina Vargas-Edmond, talking about how felony disenfranchisement narratives are changing around the country.

Associated Press piece about 2020 presidential race and the right to vote for people in prison and on parole, quoting our Executive Director, Taina Vargas-Edmond.

Initiate Justice Executive Director Taina Vargas-Edmond was named a 2019-2021 Leading Edge Fellow by the Rosenberg Foundation to launch the Institute of Impacted Leaders, a comprehensive organizing training program mobilizing people impacted incarceration to become policy and reform leaders.

This LA Times article discusses AB 45, a bill we are co-sponsoring to end copays in CA state prison and local jails. Initiate Justice Inside Organizer David “Jazz” Brown was interviewed for the story.