Originally published in Gotham Gazette. Written in collaboration with Topeka K. Sam At the time of this writing, more than 287 detainees in New York City jails and 441 Department of Correction staff members have tested positive for the new coronavirus, COVID-19. Each of these men and women have friends and […]

Originally published by Times Union. Written in collaboration with N. Reimer. COVID-19 represents a public health challenge to every institution in American life — especially our justice system. As coronavirus spreads, our courts could become dangerous vectors for disease transmission as defendants, jurors, officers of the court, facility workers and […]

Originally published by The New York Daily News. Written in collaboration with Dominic Dupont. We are all the sum of our choices. Yet some choices carry such weight as to change the course of our lives and the lives of others. The question is whether we allow those choices to define […]

Originally published in NY Daily News. With just hours left in their calendar, legislators are working feverishly to forge consensus on marijuana use in New York. Throughout the drawn-out debate, it seems the legislature is poised to pass decriminalization, making a session already marked by historic criminal justice reform even […]

Originally published by The Marshall Project and Vice. It began like any other spring day. I woke up in my apartment in Queens and went about my daily ritual of preparing a batch of coffee and watching the morning news. Then my plan was to wake up my daughters and […]

Dear Mayor de Blasio: As a resident of New York City, taxpayer, community member, criminal justice advocate and a formerly incarcerated individual, I am deeply concerned with your administration’s new proposals that would further exclude people with certain violent convictions from receiving legal representation during immigration proceedings. I’ve lived in our city […]

Originally published in The Daily Beast. I love my father. That wasn’t always an easy statement for me to say. In fact, for a long time I fought myself (and to a certain extent beat myself up) to be comfortable enough to say that. I was uncomfortable for so long […]

Father’s Day in an era of mass incarceration, deportation and criminalization is always emotional for me for a few reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful to be with my two daughters and seeing their faces light up when they say, “Happy Father’s Day!” I enjoy seeing my wife and […]

I’m an optimist by nature. That’s tough for a man of color to achieve in NYC, but I would say I fair pretty well. But every now and again I’ll see or hear something that just pulls the pessimist right out of me. That is what happened on the morning […]

I recently had a conversation with my friend Abraham. As our conversations usually find themselves, we began talking about the conditions that negatively impact the communities in which we, and those that we service and represent, come from. At this point, Abraham began an analysis that ultimately lead us to […]