For the past twenty years, I have been an insider-outsider witness to struggle, truth, transformation and development in spaces created by and/or created with people that have survived life within the American carceral system. I have been a part of institutional, radical and grassroots spaces that have reaffirmed for me time and time again just how necessary it is to have a principled transformative justice politic that centers the people and their families who have survived incarceration. This is one of the People’s Advocacy Institute's sacred values that stands at the core of our systems change work. I propose today that you are the right people, at the right time, currently in the right place to bring forth a new system of governance that is community led and has a value-based perspective. I assert that there are no disposable communities or people, instead all citizens deserve investment. It is time we chart a new system of governance that builds equity, transforms our approach and response to harm, challenges the need for prisons, provides meaningful living wage jobs, eliminates mass criminalization and incarceration, and builds community health and wealth. 

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-Rukia Lumumba