Opinion: Keep on the path to borough-based jails
Queens Daily Eagle
“Angel Tueros, a Wooodsite resident and member of the Freedom Agenda, called for the city to push forward with its plan to close Rikers Island.”
Dartmouth Student Prison Initiative hosts virtual webinar, “The Crisis at Rikers Island: A Call to End Mass Incarceration”
The Dartmouth
“Co-head of DSPI Esme Lee ’24, who organized the webinar, said that she reached out to The Freedom Agenda –– an advocacy group pursuing decarceration and investments in communities disrupted by punishment –– to see what DSPI could do on campus to advocate for the end to mass incarceration.”Protesters demand jail closure after Rikers inmate dies
CBS News 12
“For them to sit here in the conditions that they are - any human being - it becomes an issue of human rights. It’s no longer a thing of right and wrong. The basic needs need to be met,” said Hope Sanders from Freedom Agenda.Advocates press on for population reduction at Rikers
NYN Media
“I was a teenager when I spent 19 months on Rikers Island, when the population was over 21,000. It was a crisis back then. Decades of lack of transparency, decades of lack of accountability contributed to the crisis. And the pandemic exacerbated the crisis. Jail guards not going to work exacerbated the crisis” said Darren Mack, formerly incarcerated activist and organizer at the Freedom Agenda."Organizers are demanding release for people at Rikers Island after photos reveal gruesome conditions
Prism
“Darren Mack, who is the co-director of Freedom Agenda, the leader of the coalition that forms the Campaign to Close Rikers, spent 19 months at Rikers when he was just 17 years old in 1992... 'Rikers is managed through terror, through brutality,' Mack said. 'The same thing that was plaguing Rikers Island then is plaguing Rikers Island now.'”Drug Confiscations in NYC Jails Doubled During Pandemic Visitor Ban
Newsweek
“Darren Mack, co-director of the Freedom Agenda, a part of the Urban Justice Center, told The City that he felt the numbers show that much of the drugs inside the city's jails were allegedly being funneled in from members of the staff.”When Visitors Were Banned From Rikers Island, Even More Drugs Showed Up
The City
“This data confirms what we’ve known all along — it is corrupt DOC staff who keep drugs flowing into Rikers,” said Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda, a jail reform organization. “But instead of swift action to root out this corruption, we’ve seen investigators fired, and discipline that is either absent or takes years to enact.”City transfers portion of Rikers Island land from DOC, moves closer to Renewable Rikers
QNS
Marco Barrios, who was previously incarcerated on Rikers and now a member of Freedom Agenda, said that this land transfer brings the city one step closer to leaving the “horrific legacy of torture island behind.” “[We’re] moving towards repairing the communities that have been harmed by mass incarceration and environmental racism,” Barrios said.
Edwin Santana
Community Organizer (he/him)
Advocates call on city to meet hunger striking detainees’ demands
Queens Daily Eagle
“Darren Mack, the co-director of the Freedom Agenda, said that he worries the city will respond to the hunger strike the way New York State responded to striking incarcerated people at Attica Correctional Facility in 1971, an incident that led to the deaths of over 40 people, including 33 detainees.”