The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker Reprinted from The Catholic Worker newspaper, May 2019, 86th Anniversary Issue The aim of the Catholic Worker movement is to live in accordance with the justice and charity of Jesus Christ. Our sources are the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures as handed down in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, with our inspiration coming from the lives of the saints, "men and women outstanding in holiness, living witnesses to Your unchanging love." (Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer for holy men and women) This aim requires us to begin living in a different way. We recall the words of our founders, Dorothy Day who said, "God meant things to be much easier than we have made them," and Peter Maurin who wanted to build a society "where it is easier for people to be good."

Spiritual journey, as moving as it is inspiring.

In It's Jail Not Yale, former prisoner Corey Henderson talks straight about how police, prosecutors, judges and sometimes your own defense attorney collude to entrap and incarcerate. He then gives strategies you can use to avoid self-incrimination, detect and defend against unscrupulous defense attorneys, avoid or minimize your sentence and more. The second half of the book is devoted to emphasizing the rules you must follow to survive prison. Corey Henderson was an industrious middle-class well-educated young man. He owned a profitable business, had a good paying job and had just been accepted to a prestigious doctorate program. Then someone accused him of a crime. He would eventually spend four and a half years in a high security prison. Here he shares on-the-street insights about the legal system and the and the incarceration machine (once you're accused, you lose).

Dr. Herron Keyon Gaston examines the intersectionality of race, gender and class in American society and the ways in which one's status and privilege serves to impede or advance one's progress based on one's ontological and phonotypical makeup. The crux of this book is to chronicle Dr. Gaston's incarceration experience and to shed light on the grueling judicial process. The book details Dr. Gaston's nine-month stint in the criminal justice system in Florida after being falsely accused of sexual assault, and the impact this experience has had on his life. Dr. Gaston speaks candidly about how his incarceration experience and the blistering repercussions of his arrest have served as a roadblock to securing a plethora of personal and professional opportunities. Despite the insurmountable challenges formally incarcerated individuals face, Dr. Gaston demonstrates to readers that, with hope and resilience, one does not have to be defined by one's circumstances--but rather one's commitment to picking up the pieces and to keep moving forward. About the Author Author Dr. Herron Keyon Gaston is an American public intellectual, theologian, political activist, social critic, author, lecturer, pastor and an Ivy League university administrator. A product of the Deep South, Dr. Gaston has witnessed firsthand racial disparities and the disparate treatment people of color often experience within the criminal justice system and our broader society.

A VITAL NEXT CHAPTER IN THE ONGOING CONVERSATION ABOUT RACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE IN AMERICA When he was in his early twenties, William Juneboy Outlaw iii was sentenced to eighty-five years in prison for homicide and armed assault. The sentence brought his brief but prolific criminal career as the head of a forty-member cocaine gang in New Haven, Connecticut, to a close. But behind bars, Outlaw quickly became a feared prison “shot caller” with 100 men under his sway. Then everything changed: His original sentence was reduced by sixty years. At the same time, he was shipped to a series of America’s most notorious federal prisons, where he endured long stints in solitary confinement—and where transformational relationships with a fellow inmate and with a prison therapist made him realize that he wanted more for himself. Upon his release, Outlaw took a job at Dunkin’ Donuts, began volunteering in New Haven, and started to rebuild his life. Now an award-winning community advocate, he leads a team of former felons in negotiating truces between gangs on the very streets that he once terrorized. The homicide rate in New Haven has decreased by 70 percent in the decade that he’s run the team—a drop as dramatic as in any city in the country. Written with exclusive access to Outlaw himself, Charles Barber’s Citizen Outlaw is the unforgettable story of how a gangleader became the catalyst for one of the greatest civic crime reductions in America, and an inspiring argument for love and compassion in the face of insurmountable odds.

Winner of the 2019 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry Finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Poetry A searing volume by a poet whose work conveys "the visceral effect that prison has on identity" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times). Felon tells the story of the effects of incarceration in fierce, dazzling poems—canvassing a wide range of emotions and experiences through homelessness, underemployment, love, drug abuse, domestic violence, fatherhood, and grace—and, in doing so, creates a travelogue for an imagined life. Reginald Dwayne Betts confronts the funk of postincarceration existence and examines prison not as a static space, but as a force that enacts pressure throughout a person’s life. The poems move between traditional and newfound forms with power and agility—from revolutionary found poems created by redacting court documents to the astonishing crown of sonnets that serves as the volume’s radiant conclusion. Drawing inspiration from lawsuits filed on behalf of the incarcerated, the redaction poems focus on the ways we exploit and erase the poor and imprisoned from public consciousness. Traditionally, redaction erases what is top secret; in Felon, Betts redacts what is superfluous, bringing into focus the profound failures of the criminal justice system and the inadequacy of the labels it generates. Challenging the complexities of language, Betts animates what it means to be a "felon."

Jeff Hobbs tells the story of Robert DeShaun Peace, who went from a New Jersey ghetto to Yale but never truly escaped his past.