Criminal Justice & Prison Reform Committee Meeting & Speaker Series
The Criminal Justice & Prison Reform Committee of the San Francisco Black & Jewish Unity Coalition is honored to announce that speaking at our next monthly meeting on Tuesday, February 25 at 5 pm will be Earl Simms, the Bay Area Regional Director of the Timelist Group, an amazing nonprofit organization that works to rehabilitate incarcerated people and provides a range of services to formerly incarcerated people, including providing housing, to help them succeed. Earl was raised in Los Angeles and was convicted of a gang-related homicide as a young man. He served 22 years in California prisons and was paroled to Oakland. He has devoted his life to working to reduce violence including working with gang members to show them a different path from the one that Earl himself experienced. Earl will talk to us about his life and why the work he does is so important. He will discuss changes in the criminal justice system that will help reduce mass incarceration and how we need to change the reentry process to welcome formerly incarcerated people into our communities and to help them be accepted back into society. Earl will also focus on what we audience members can do to support these efforts.
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Earl Simms is the Bay Area Regional Director of the Timelist Group, a 501(c)(3) organization that provides rehabilitation courses for those currently incarcerated, and housing and supportive services upon release. Earl was raised in Los Angeles and paroled to Oakland after serving 22 years in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for a gang-related homicide. “Now here in the Bay Area, I’m trying to battle the disease of violence… a disease that I had myself, but that has designed me to be effective in providing a solution to others who are in the process of battling it.” Earl has worked tirelessly in the area of violence reduction and community healing since his release. Earl has experience as an intensive case manager for Oakland Unite, a violence reduction program focused on supporting Transitional Aged Youth who have been impacted by gun violence or who are at risk of committing gun violence. Earl is a member of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), sits on the Formerly Incarcerated Advisory Board (FIA) for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office and recently graduated as fellow in the Safety and Justice Challenge with that office, which was sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation. Earl is a certified Community Care Coach, and has certifications as an Advanced Peer Specialist and an Advanced Facilitator with Applied Mindfulness. Earl is dedicated to lifting up the voices of those who are impacted by poverty, systemic racism and mass incarceration.
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