“Rewriting Justice” Panel Talks Bad Raps, Good Trouble

by Lisa Reisman The New Haven independent

Toward the end of a criminal justice reform panel at Yale on Tuesday evening, Freeway Ricky Ross shared his take on redesigning the criminal justice system.

A former drug lord best known for the $900 million empire he established in Los Angeles in the 1980s, Ross, now an author and activist, threw out a quote from Rev. Jesse Jackson. “When there’s no hope, there’s dope,” he said, drawing applause from the sold-out audience of 400 at Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall.

That was among the topics in a spirited and wide-ranging discussion that delved into the impact of drugs on Black youth, the hell of incarceration and perils of re-entry, and the untapped potential of Black entrepreneurship, on a night that coincided with the 84-year-old civil rights leader’s death earlier that day.  

The occasion, in celebration of Black History Month, was hosted by Gaylord Salters’ Double GI LLC and the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale and moderated by historian Elizabeth Hinton, also a professor at the law school. Billed “Rewriting Justice,” it featured a panel of four men who have transformed their experience of wrongful conviction and lengthy incarcerations to become advocates for change.

Freeway Rick Ross autobiography on a table outside the panel. Credit: Lisa Reisman photo

Ross said that he was writing his first book while serving a life sentence when he first questioned how he came to be where he was. “I kind of feel the system, and the school system as well, cheated me out of just basic knowledge, knowledge to know even what school was for,” said Ross, who taught himself to read at 28 while incarcerated. “I was asking myself why am I at school wasting my time when I could be out on the street where the homies were, where I could make life better for my mother who was struggling.”

He decried a system that, while costing taxpayers at least $48,000 a year for housing, offers “no rehabilitation, no training, so it’s really a situation perpetuating itself, recycling the same people over and over again,” he said.

“We’re here today to allow you to understand how terrible our stories are, not how great they are,” said panelist Andre Brown, a youth advocate whose conviction was overturned in 2022 after he served 23 years in prison. He detailed the brown water used for drinking and bathing; the thin, hard mattresses; the hopeless feeling of gradually sinking into quicksand. “Our stories here today are tragedies. They are celebrated because we made it.”

Brown said that, while in prison, he watched young men getting beaten up, starving, and then joining gangs to survive. “That’s when I started telling these young people to get into the law library, you can get two days off your time, and I started working in the law library,” he said. “I said, ‘You don’t need them, come over here, I got you.’ They were only gravitating to those people because they were hungry, they were scared, they lacked knowledge.”

He drew a picture of an individual who parks at a store in his shiny BMW, then runs in to pick up milk and ice cream. “He comes out, his car is gone, he didn’t know the neighborhood,” he said. “That’s what it’s like for the youth in prison when you don’t know the law because they never teach us these things. You get lost.”

Hocus 45^th, a hip-hop artist and community leader, spoke of “the wall of resentment, the loss of connection between you and your loved ones” he experienced during the four years he served at Rikers Island. At the same time, “I became a vegan, I read a whole bunch of books, my whole thought process changed,” he said. When acquitted in 2012, “I had it in my mind that I’m going to keep the kids from going down the same path.” Among other initiatives, he founded the #DropMyFlagChallenge which inspires individuals to leave gang life behind.

For Gaylord “L.O.R.D.” Salters, author of “Momma Bear,” Fabric Over Fish Scales streetwear collection co-founder, and youth advocate, the message on re-entry was simple. “Have a plan, have a brainchild,” he said, using the example of Ray Boyd who started Next Level Empowerment re-entry program on his release, having already founded two re-entry programs while incarcerated. “Don’t expect help from anybody. You have to do it yourself.” That’s where Double G.I. LLC, or Go Get It, the name of his publishing company, comes from, he said.

An audience member asked for the panelists’ take on what is happening with ICE.

“We been dealing with that for a long time with machine guns pointed at our face,” said Ross. He said the first time he was handcuffed, he had never committed a crime. “I was a young tennis player but I was driving in South Central with two of my friends and they automatically thought we were gang members.” The only difference, Salters said, “is the support that’s been coming out for the other race which we never got.” For Brown, it was simple. “A human is dying, a life is being taken,” he said.

Then Allen Myers, 21, founder of New Haven’s Snucks Clothing, took the stage, appealing for the passage of emerging adult legislation which focuses on extending juvenile justice protections for young adults in recognition of their formative developmental stage. “This bill reflects what science already tell us, that young people are different, and the law should recognize that,” he said. He mentioned his recent appointment as a “Momma Bear” entrepreneurial mentor where, he said, “I’ll be teaching our youth how to source, design, and promote clothing for financial gain.”

It’s time, Andre Brown told the audience in closing. “Let’s change the mindset that Black people are no good, that Black and brown people are just the entertainment, coming through the side doors instead of the front doors, that we’re not educated, that we come to create violence, that we have no hope,” he said. “Let’s teach our youth that we are great men and women and let’s celebrate one another and celebrate Black excellence.”

Ross put it another way. “It’s like what Jesse Jackson told us,” he said, calling him the original freedom fighter. “When we give our kids hope, we ain’t gotta worry about nothing else.”