Legal Empowerment is Abolition
40 Washington Square South NY ,10012 (view map)
Legal Empowerment is Abolition:
Creating Opportunities for Communities Impacted by Incarceration to Know, Use, and Shape Law
Wednesday 19 February 2020, 6:00-8:00 PM
Vanderbilt Hall Room 210
Light refreshments will be provided
Legal Empowerment is Abolition is a panel hosted by NYU School of Law’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and the Legal Empowerment and Advocacy Hub (LEAH), and co-sponsored by NYU Law's Prison Reform and EducatioN Project (PREP). The panel, featuring LEAH's founder and Soros Justice fellow, Jhody Polk and other formerly incarcerated advocates and scholars, will highlight the national and international legal empowerment movement and how it connects to Jailhouse Lawyers and prison law libraries within the United States. Legal empowerment is the belief that impacted communities must lead their own struggle for justice. This panel will explore how the cycle of legal empowerment – a process of knowing, using, and shaping laws - can destroy the cycle of incarceration. Too often, the abolitionist movement relies on voices outside of the prison walls. The program will reflect on the ways incarcerated folks have obtained freedom from the inside out through the legal empowerment of the incarcerated, their families, and communities.