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(upbeat music) (bell ringing) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

It's Friday, April 29th, and I'm Sue Cyncynatus, interim chief executive officer and chief financial officer at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry.

It's my pleasure to introduce you to today's forum, which is part of the City Club's Authors and Conversation series, and is also the second annual Charles R. See forum on reentry.

Mr. See and his family are with us today.

For 44 years Charles R. See worked to support and advocate for people returning to the community after incarceration.

During his tenure at Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry, Mr. See expanded community reentry services and helped to establish the Innovative Care Teams Program, which trained returning citizen for positions assisting older adults living in public housing.

The once controversial idea grew into a nationally recognized program.

It's in Charles See's honor that we present to you today's forum on reentry where we will highlight other nationally recognized efforts and individuals currently working in reentry.

Joining us virtually from Los Angeles, California is Ms. Susan Burton.

She's the founder of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit organization which aims to help other women break the cycle of incarceration.

She is also author of the award-winning book, "Becoming Ms. Burton From Prison to Recovery "To Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women" where she shares her own experiences with addiction, incarceration, trauma, and reentry.

Our panelists here in person at the City Club are, Malika Kidd who also has experienced reentry firsthand and is currently working at Luther Metropolitan Ministry as the program director for Work Force Development, a department that includes the Chopping for Change Program.

Chopping for Change provides work experience and culinary training for women currently incarcerated at Northeast Reintegration Center and helps them rejoin the workforce post release.

We have some of the Chopping for Change participants here today and are proud of our longstanding partnership with the City Club's executive chef, Adam Crawford, who also provides training for these women.

Also with us is Dr. Roxanne Coey, the assistant deputy director at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction Office of Reentry.

During her 22 years of service with ODRC Roxanne has served as the correctional warden's assistant at the Ohio Reformatory for Women.

She also has experience as a reentry case manager, program coordinator and victim advocates.

In 2006, she was named the ODRC Employee of the Year.

Today's conversation is moderated by Rachel Dissell, an investigative journalist working with the Cleveland Documenters and the Marshall Project.

If you have questions for our panelists you can text them to 330-541-5794.

That's, 330-541-5794.

You can also tweet them @thecityclub.

City club staff will try to work them into the second half of the program.

Members and friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Ms. Burton and our panelists to this afternoon's forum.

(audience applauding) - Good afternoon everyone.

Wave to Ms. Burton, she can see you guys.

She can see the audience, everyone give her a wave.

I want you all to know that here at the City Club today, we're in conversation with the woman who Michelle Alexander, the author of "The New Jim Crow," dubbed the Harriet Tubman of reentry.

So if there's anything we can all aspire to it's a moniker like that.

(audience applauding) And if you're on the fence about Dan's recommendation to get the book, I urge you to get it.

If you're feeling tired in this work, after more than two years of a pandemic, you will feel energized after reading her story.

Ms. Burton, your book, "Becoming Ms. Burton," knits together your life experience, your childhood that included abuse, the loss of your son, KK, and all kinds of things that primed you to better understand and confront the callousness and harm of this country's drug policies and the carceral system, and particularly its effect on black women.

There's a passage in the book that seems like a good place to start for today's conversation on reentry.

You were about to be released from prison again and you knew there was little chance that this time was gonna be different than others and I'm just gonna read what it says really quickly and then we can talk.

"It was like walking in the rain "determined that this time I wasn't going to get wet "but I still had no umbrella "so how the hell was this time gonna be any different "than the last time it rained?"

I'm hoping you can share more with us about these moments in your life, the insights from your experiences that propelled you to create that umbrella for other women at A New Way of Life.

- Yes, I'd like to first thank Mr. See for his lifetime commitment to this area.

I can only imagine 45 years of trying to help people work through a maze of discrimination and hardship and I know it's not easy because it's what I do every day and so I just wanna thank him for his long time commitment and I wanna thank the ministry, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry for having me here today at this City Club Forum.

I'm totally honored to be here and I had an opportunity to meet with the women in Chop for Change and I was so inspired.

And then I wanna shout out to the chef to say thank you for training them.

I know what it means to get a life skill and the hope that it gives us.

So first I wanna thank them for all of that and all of our panelists here today.

So yes, I left prison more times than I can count on one hand with this determination to get my life together, to not go back to prison and it was like walking in the rain and saying, "I'm not gonna get wet, "but I don't have an umbrella."

People say things like, "Pull yourself up by your bootstraps."

Well I'm barefoot.

(audience laughing) And so when someone did help me, I thought how humane and productive this help is and I questioned why hadn't someone helped me before?

I wasn't a bad person, though society and the criminal justice system made me feel as though I was a bad person.

I was a harmed, hurt, woman who had been through a lifetime of trauma, violence, pain, and hardship and all it took was someone to extend types of support and help instead of punishment and being cast off as if my life didn't have value or I didn't have value, as if I was a bad person or a wasted human.

So when I did get help, I committed to help other women just like me to transition out of prison, find their place in the community and build a better life.

So I guess what I did is I bought a few umbrellas for people.

(audience laughing) - You know, one of the things that you talk about in the book is having unwavering empathy in the work that you do and it struck me that that is a contrast to the lack of empathy that you often experienced growing up and as you moved through the court system, the prison system.

How do you think we can continue to work to build that type of empathy and support among the people in our community and in the systems that we have so that we don't keep reverting and reverting and reverting to punishment, despite all the research that shows us and tells us that that doesn't work and as you brought up, it's just not being humane.

- Yeah, it does not work and as a society, we've sort of been trained to look for retribution, to make someone pay.

So I'm a 12-stepper.

I am in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and through that program, through counseling, maybe through the pain and hardship that I suffered, there opened up this reservoir of compassion and empathy and it freed me, it made me feel free to love, to extend myself, to have patience with people, to look for the best in everybody and what I found is that by doing this, as I walk through my life and as I engage with people, I become more hopeful, I become more resilient, I become stronger, both emotionally and through my intelligence.

There's a reservoir of empathy inside of all of us if we are willing to make that emotional, so I have a little activity going on outside.

(audience laughing) I live on a corner in Compton and I love my community but there's a little activity that go on and I have to continue, I hope the ambulance gets there on time and I hope everybody's okay.

And it doesn't cost us anything to actually extend empathy and compassion to others, both in an emotional way, and I mean, and sometimes monetarily.

Well, I say to myself, not can I afford to do it, but can I afford not to do it?

What is the cost if I don't do it.

I wanna make the world a better place.

I wanna leave a print and I'm sure Mr. See has extended a reservoir of compassion and empathy, that's the only way you can do this work for 45 years.

(audience laughing) And you get this reservoir just to send out to the world, and again, it doesn't cost us anything to have patience and tolerance and give a little grace.

We've all received grace in our lifetime.

How do we send grace back out into the world is what I do and what I can say, it's really, really easy, it's different.

It's much different from what I've been taught and the way the world, as a major part, operates, but I can be that one or I can lead the way to showing how effective we can be when we have patience, tolerance and support people to become the best that they can be.

- Thank you, and so we're gonna bring in some of our other fantastic panelists here, but I also wanna encourage you to jump in if you have something to add on to what they say or if you have your own question to ask.

Okay?

- Yeah.

Yeah, one thing I wanna add before we go there, I was so inspired and I've been thinking about, I was so inspired by the conversation with the women in the Chop for Change Program and they've been on my mind, every night I go to sleep with you all on my mind, thinking about how you'll use your skillset after you're released from incarceration and I just want to put out there and ask, is there a bridge for the women to walk across?

Do they have an umbrella to implement the skillset that they've learned when they walk out of the prison there to actually, it's like all this potential that you've cultivated for them, is there a place that they can spend that potential?

Is there a program after incarceration for them to implement their skillset?

- All right, you get the first question and I'm gonna toss that one to Malika 'cause you're gonna know best, what is in place for folks once they complete.

- So we do help them with employment.

We try to help them as well with housing.

If they stay in the Cleveland area we have more resources but we do look into other areas of Cleveland, reaching out to ODRC to try to find other areas that can help them if they don't stay in the Cleveland area.

So we help them as much as we can, even if they need help, even with our licensed social workers, they can still come back and speak to them if they're having issues or dealing with some of their problems.

I'm available for them personally, some of 'em even ask for a ride to church because they've been to the church that I'm a member of and I'll take 'em to church with me.

We can give them clothes.

We offer them clothes 'cause we have a gently used and new clothes resource room.

So we offer them clothes, shoes, whatever they need.

So we try to help them as much as we can.

- [Susan] Nice.

- So I think that what Malika's saying is that she has some umbrellas and maybe what Ms. Burton was saying is that if any of you all have umbrellas that you'd like to extend to folks who might need employment or other help once they complete the program, there's a place where you could do that, right?

You can see Malika afterwards.

She will take all the umbrellas.

(audience laughing) Malika, we're hearing from Ms. Burton about how her lived experience informed her work that she's carried on.

You also have had to persist in each step of your reentry process to get to where you are now and you've talked about that a lot and there was many roadblocks that you faced and you told a reporter in 2020, "I am a felon, I am a female and I am African American "so I have to work three times as hard as anybody else."

Can you share a little bit about some of those roadblocks you've had to get past and what kind of helped you be resilient and get to where you are now?

- So when I was first released, well, before I left incarceration the Northeast Reintegration Center, I did a lot of work for them in there and a lot of people came through and toured the place and somebody offered me a job and so when I was released I went to them for the job and they said, oh, we don't have any funding.

So that was a roadblock and so I was persistent and I stayed humble and I had three different jobs working like five or 10 hours, not even equaling up to a part-time job, I actually spent more time on the bus than I did on those jobs but I stayed humble because it gave me work experience.

I had been incarcerated for 14 years so I didn't have that experience so I stayed humble and I worked all those jobs even if they weren't even a good job to work at, they didn't know I didn't like that job and I try to tell them the same thing.

And so six months after I was released they came up with this program and they asked NERC who would they recommend to head it that has lived experience and I was recommended and so once I got that job I realized that I can help other people because of the issues that I dealt with coming home, even in housing, once I got the full-time job I went to apply for apartments.

It cost a lot to get those application fees and then telling you no because of your background.

I was blessed on a Saturday to apply for apartment and she told me I had it.

However, once I got married, and my husband has a criminal background and I tried to put him on a lease they told me not only could he not be on the lease, but he could not even visit.

So those are just some of the stumbling blocks that I had to deal with coming home and then when I realized those, that empowered me to help those coming behind me so it won't be as hard for them as it was for me.

- And can you talk a little bit more about how the experiences that you've had prepared you to lead Chopping for Change and the way in which you lead it and the way in which you do this work?

- So I know how it is to be incarcerated so I am big on their family reunification, so they have family nights, we try to do Christmas parties for them and their kids, even when we had the COVID and they were not allowed to come, we JPay'd them, their email system in there, and asked them what's their addresses because we still had donated gifts and stuff and we were mailing stuff to their families for their kids.

So we wanted to keep them engaged even when we had the COVID pandemic going on, even our alumni were able to come in.

If they lost their jobs at restaurants we were able to give them care packages of food for them and their families and they came in and volunteered because they wanted to help us.

So I'm a big advocate for them.

- Sounds like you have a recognition of the impact of doing those things that keep people connected to family and support when other support isn't there.

So, a question for Dr. Coey, can I call you Roxanne, am I allowed?

- Yes please.

- Okay.

Sounding very formal here.

(Rachel laughing) I'd like to hear just a little bit about the path that brought you to leading the office of reentry for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections and how the work that you've done kind of before that and now has shaped your view on what the reentry process is and then maybe what it should be, as it keeps evolving.

- Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Roni Burkes is the deputy director, so I'm her assistant in the Office of Reentry and I think that...

I'm just gonna be truthful.

I never thought about reentry, initially, early in my career and when Sue introduced me working in the Office of Victim Services, one of the things I did there was implement victim centered programming.

So we had impact of crime programming.

We had batterers intervention programming.

And so going around to the institutions, talking with not only the facilitators of the program but the men and women who were participating in that program in those rooms I saw trauma.

I saw hurt, I saw neglect and it really hit me that people need healing to be able to thrive and to do well and so it's not just about programming, it's about healing, helping a person heal holistically and so from there I went to the Ohio Reformatory for Women and I saw the trauma, you know, men and women have different, some the same, some very different experiences, and I was kind of overwhelmed with what men and women have to deal with, not only during incarceration but upon release and so when I was asked to go to the Office of Reentry I was on board 'cause I thought, I can maybe make a difference in there, so that's how I got there.

- So now that I've given you a promotion.

(people laughing) Accidentally.

Apologies to the- - No, it's okay.

- When we talk about reentry mostly we're thinking about our neighbors who are returning to communities and what support they need for stability and for success and what barriers they might face.

But you mentioned to me when we were talking that you'd like to see more support for family members, for mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, spouses, children.

Can you talk a little bit more about like what you would like to see in the future for more family support when it comes to reentry?

- Yeah, and again, I learned things that I don't know intuitively.

One of the things that we realized in DRC is that we have been, we're doing better, but we haven't done well with giving families access.

Access to information and knowing what goes on and what's going on with their loved one and we had a community based forum here in Cleveland before the pandemic and we had 19 family members come and we had a warden, our regional from the Adult Parole Authority, parole officers came, we had a lot of people there just so we could answer questions for families and there was really a lull in that whole event and I asked the family members, I said, what brought you here tonight?

What did you want to know?

And it was silent and one of the ladies that was in attendance, she says, we didn't know what to expect.

We've never had this opportunity before.

Families have not had access to us to ask questions and so that was really interesting.

In that event and a couple other events I had a woman say, "I have never had a good experience with the ODRC," and she was not happy with me, you know?

And that's okay and I said to her, "I believe you.

"And that's why we're here "and I'm so glad you're here."

She said, "Well, I have to leave early."

That's okay.

It's okay.

I was just glad that she came in and she stayed for the whole event and afterwards I went up to her, I said, "I'm so glad you stayed.

"I hope this was helpful," and she said, "My son yells at me," and he had done 30 years and she said, "He's angry and he yells at me," and my heart broke.

My heart really broke 'cause he's angry and he's got a lot of stuff going on and he's not sure how to navigate that and mom's not sure how to navigate it and I gotta tell you guys, it hit me like a truck, that we're not helping families during incarceration.

We're not helping families through the reentry process.

And I don't know, you can't do reentry in the institutions.

It's a community piece and so we're learning, we have a director that is supportive of family engagement.

She started the Family Advisory Council and we have two members of our Family Advisory Council here today, it was a nice surprise to see them.

But I think we need to help families understand not only the impact of incarceration, but the impact of reentry and help the men and women coming home, help them understand the impact that their incarceration had on families too, because everybody's so impacted and we really need to bring those things together for people.

- Yeah, so it sounds like what you're saying, it's like the healing extends to folks who are trying to rebuild relationships and restore relationships.

Malika, you sound like you wanna say something about that?

- 'Cause I didn't realize until months later into my sentence that my family was doing that time with me.

They live in Illinois, so I am from Illinois, I decided to stay here after I was released.

However, my mother didn't tell me until after I was released that she had to go on antidepressants because of my incarceration and her having to deal with all of that and deal with raising my son and I didn't know that.

And so they do need that, to know what's going on and to help them with that as well.

My son probably needed counseling and she did try to get 'em that at first and I wish me and him had gotten counseling when I was released.

I wish there was some type of therapy and I wish there was something that I could have done inside of ODRC because when I was there, I was told when I went through intake that, "You sure you don't need any drugs "because you got a 14 year sentence for drug trafficking?"

I'm like, "I'm positive," and I thought that was the only mental health thing that I can get and I never saw them again throughout my whole sentence and just because they want to pump drugs in you at that time, I don't know how it is now, and I didn't want that and so I wish I would've had some type of counseling and I just thought, assumed, that I couldn't go back again.

- I think that was a theme in Ms. Burton's book as well and so maybe Malika, both you and Ms. Burton, you both know a lot about the barriers that exist.

You both have done a lot of work to smooth the way for those who are coming behind them.

I stole that phrase from you, Malika.

One area that you've mentioned that needs some work in your opinion is how parole supervision works and Ms. Burton, you talk about this in your book too, kind of having to keep going back to parole for a long time and there never really being any credit for all the wonderful things that you were doing.

What do you think needs to change about that part of reentry where there's time that's put on you when you're in the community and what that kind of sets up in terms of really being able to reengage in your life and getting credit for the work that you're doing.

Malika, you can start and then I think Ms. Burton might have something to add about it when you're done.

- So my interactions with the parole office here was not a good one at first.

Some sensitivity training and not looping everybody who comes out in the same category, I did everything I could to be positive and do everything in the society and I was asked to go out to different states to speak and I would have to go in to get a travel permit and I would have to wait for hours just to get this travel permit and I would hear the secretary saying, "She's been waiting for a while," and I hear one of the parole officer, "Oh, she can wait."

Now, I was blessed to have Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry who has compassion for returning citizens, and so they were okay with me sitting there for two hours but what about those individuals who doesn't have a job that allowed them to sit there that long and wait for that?

Even when I first came home, my parole officer told me, "Oh, you're from outta state," and put me on an ankle monitor.

I later found out that that was not in any policies.

She just did that.

And two weeks after I was released I was back in the prison speaking and they were like, "Why do you have this ankle monitor on?"

I'm like, "That's what she told me."

Well, they checked it out and they got it removed but I didn't know any better.

But what about those who doesn't have that temperance to not get in trouble because of what they're getting done and for five years I had to go through this and I was a model person coming home and I was doing everything right and some of those policies need to change.

If you're doing the right things, how come you can't get off early?

And I had mandatory five years.

- Ms. Burton, I feel like some of those experiences are similar to ones that you shared in your book as well.

- Yeah, so I just have to question if parole is a good expenditure of our resources.

Do we continue to have to supervise, which I call oppress people, through parole supervision?

I'm looking at 14 years sentence for drug trafficking or conspiracy to drug trafficking, that sentence is extreme.

So my question, I wanna question is parole a good expenditure of our resources as is 14 years a good expenditure, is 14 years extreme to incarcerate someone for a drug charge.

I had the opportunity when my book was first published to go to the women's reformatory in Ohio and I went there with Michelle Alexander and did a book talk and a book signing because I felt like incarcerated women were one of the most important readers for this book so they could understand that there is life after incarceration but you have to fight like hell for it, but it is possible.

There was a woman who stood up that day and she said to me, I was talking about what are you gonna do when you go home and she said, "I've been incarcerated here for 45 years.

"I have no idea what going out of here looks like.

"I'm scared to death.

I have nowhere to go.

"I have no one left."

And I mean, I was just speechless.

I had no response for her.

So does parole walk her out of there and place her in a safe environment?

I don't think so.

Does parole support you in real concrete ways?

I don't think so.

She talked about, or I know so because I have women in our homes that are on parole and mainly what the parole officer does is collects body fluid and has them check in whether they're working or not working or whatever, they just spend their time with them.

I don't think it's a good use of resources and in regards to a traveling pass, we take our residents all over the country, all outta state to conferences and the traveling pass reminds me of what slaves had to have, this piece of paper that they carried on them to go into town or from one county to the next county.

But that's what a traveling pass represents in my mind, it's the same type of paper slaves had to get from their master when they traveled.

And I'm just saying it real clear.

That's what it feels like to me.

- You sure are saying it clear.

So we're gonna take a deep breath real quick and this is- - Yeah, I know that was pretty heavy.

Yeah, that was pretty heavy.

(audience laughing) - Yeah.

- I'm sorry.

- No no no, it's exactly.

- Listen.

This is Susan Burton.

But it relates, you know?

- This what we needed to hear and so now we're gonna do something, and Ms. Burton, you're gonna participate, in something that's very special to the City Club.

We're about to begin the audience Q and A. I'm Rachel Dissell, the moderator for today's forum on reentry.

We're joined today by Ms. Susan Burton, Malika Kidd, and Dr. Roxanne Coey.

We welcome questions from everyone.

City Club members, guests, students, and those joining via livestream at cityclub.org or radio broadcast at 89.7 Ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to tweet a question, please tweet it @thecityclub.

You can also text the questions to 330-541-5794.

That's 330-541-5794 and our staff will try to work it into the program.

So we're gonna start with the first question.

- Good afternoon.

- Good afternoon.

- [Staff Member] So we have our first text question.

My question seeks to understand how LMM partnered with NERC and ODRC to launch a successful program like Chop for Change, because I work for an organization now that wants to implement a reentry service across Ohio for youth who are incarcerated, but we have encountered challenges with some county and state agencies.

- I feel like this is a little bit of a technical question, so Malika, why don't you take a little bit of a stab at that question, but also you might have to share some information of who this person can get into contact with.

- So before I got the job, they worked together, they collaborated with the Office of Reentry, ODRC, and then I guess they went through the logistics of it all and then they came and toured our organization to see what security measures need to be in place.

So we had cameras set up, we have doors that have kind of an alarm so when they go in they won't run.

We have a bathroom designated just for them so no one else can use that bathroom.

They have their own classroom.

They have these lime green shirts that they wear.

(audience laughing) Jackets.

- [Rachel] And they are beautiful.

- And also, we have other populations of culinary programs but they can't work together in those same classes so we have to keep 'em separate.

- [Audience Member] Oh, ready for my question?

- Absolutely, we're all waiting.

- Okay great.

Ms. Burton first let me thank you for, and I read your book, let me thank you for your awesome witness and for what you continue to do evidencing the undaunted spirit that you bring to this work.

Folks across this country are indebted to you for what you do.

My question is, we've been fortunate here in the greater Cleveland area, across Cuyahoga County, to have a pretty receptive community, individuals and institutions to reentry work.

What would you say to a community, what should they be doing in order to aid even greater the reentry population?

People in this room, the institutions that they represent, what can a community do to make reentry a more promising and effective resource?

- Yeah.

So when Malika was just talking about how they partnered with the ODRC, is that right, ODRC?

- Hm mm.

- Yeah, with ODRC to implement this program, my heart just ached because the women are treated with separation and disdain, so to speak, that you can only go to this bathroom here.

You have to have eyes on you at all time.

You are not...

They are othered instead of being allowed to create this level of accountability and esteem, a level of trust that's built and this way of saying, we love you, we respect your intent to be in this program and so forth, so it kind of hurt for me to hear how they're othered in this time when they're trying to build these skills but that is the Department of Corrections.

That's what they do.

But I don't think it's the most effective way of rehabilitation and building confidence, building esteem and what people need to feel valued.

So the process is devaluing, I guess, while they're learning their skill.

But what we can do in our communities is welcome people back home and extend them this level of compassion, support, and opportunity.

A small opportunity can make such a big difference in the trajectory of someone's life, not only in their life, but in their children's life and in that community as a whole.

So what I wanna say, what I've done since I went on the book tour to all of the prisons, it was heartbreaking hearing women say, "When I leave prison I have nowhere to go," and I knew that, that was my experience.

When I left prison I had nowhere to go.

Nobody welcomed me back in.

Nobody offered me anything.

One of the things the guard said to me the last time I left prison, I said, "I'm going, I'm getting a job," this was when I'm leaving and I'm walking in the rain and I don't have an umbrella and he said, "There's no job out there for you, Burton.

"The only job you'll ever have is inside of a prison."

So you know, people can extend themselves and open up opportunities and make a way for others to come.

What I did after I went on that tour is I created a project here, House at A New Way of Life called S.A.F.E.

S.A.F.E.

stands for sisterhood alliance for freedom and equality and what it seeks to do is to replicate our model on a national scale.

So thus far, we're in 22 states and two countries, well, three countries, USA, Kenya, and Uganda, and we are training people and Malika I'd love to talk to you after this.

We're supporting them to open reentry homes.

We're actually giving them startup funds and resources and technical assistance, because this is wrong what we do.

To put all our resources and money into punishment, prison, surveillance, and suppression, and not put any resources into our communities and fund reentry abundantly, robustly.

Fund the potential that's inside of people, that their lives thrive, cut them a break, cut them a opportunity.

So I probably went on too far.

(audience applauding) One other thing I need to say, I have a dear friend there in Ohio named Deanna Hoskins.

She actually introduced me to you all.

She runs a organization called Just Leadership that supports the building of leadership of formerly incarcerated people.

I need to shout out to her and I need to thank her for all of the work she's done in this space too and for inviting me to this forum.

(audience applauding) - Malika, you wanted to say something?

- Yeah, I would like to say that ODRC has changed their culture so the program has been going on for six years and we have not had any issues, as far as escape or anything.

So they used to come with ankle monitors on, they don't have those ankle monitors on anymore and we're working to partnership with restaurants in a high end restaurant group called Millennial Group here and now we're working to get work release where they get paid to go out, so they get dropped off there.

So they are showing them some level of confidence in them, that they can go out into these restaurants and get dropped off and work all day.

- That's great.

That's great.

I don't mean to be too hard, (audience laughing) but you know, I am Susan Burton and there's a lot of progress that we need to make but I'm happy to see that progress is being made.

- [Malika] There's progress being made here.

- Janice Ford of the League of Women Voters, Ohio Criminal Justice Study and my question is, what part does finding housing play in the reentry puzzle?

- Oh, it's a huge part.

- Biggest.

- It's a huge part.

- Yes.

- So I think everyone wants to answer this.

So talk a little bit about the importance of housing as one of the first steps to reentry when folks leave prison.

- Yeah, housing is one of our, if not the biggest obstacle and I'm trying to temper what I should say and shouldn't say, but I'm gonna say it.

- Say it all here.

- I'm gonna say it.

- [Susan] I wanna say, go on, get free.

- Okay.

Okay.

(audience laughing) Thank you Ms. Burton, and nothing against subsidized housing, but a lot of folks wanna just assembly line folks to low income housing but men and women in the institutions in programs like Chopping for a Change, they're becoming certified welders, cosmetologists, culinary experts, where they're getting horticulture certifications.

People come out and they have the ability to earn a good living wage and so we don't have to redline people to low income housing.

One of the gentlemen that we work with here in Cleveland, he says where they want me to live I don't wanna live, where I'm allowed to live I don't wanna live.

Where I can afford to live they won't let me and he's living in a very nice place in somebody else's name.

So we're just forcing people to stay under the radar so we have to have landlords and property developers really give people an opportunity.

This be in the box really is important and we were able to talk to a group of presidents of apartment associations throughout the state and a little bit nationally and they told us what some of the concerns are and part of it is, do they know how to take care of the property?

Do they have the financial means?

There was a lot of things in that discussion, but people are just not willing to give folks coming home an opportunity so we had a county in Ohio call and they talked to the Office of Reentry and they said, "We have 600 jobs in this county.

"We need people.

We need you to send them here," and I'm like, "That's fine, but you don't have "any landlords that will let them live there," and so if they live in the closest county they don't have transportation to get there.

We've got things.

Everything is so...

It interacts, it's not just one thing for reentry.

We need to address all these issues.

Yes.

Employment.

Yes.

Housing.

Which I think is the biggest thing holding people back.

If you're not stable, if you can't establish some stability, you're still walking in the rain without an umbrella.

And so, yeah, that's...

Okay I'm done.

I'm gonna get off my box for that.

- Housing is definitely huge and once I found out that my husband couldn't be in that apartment with me, he had a family member who was moving out of town, out of state and gave us a condo that he had that had to be paid back taxes on and fixed up, so that's what we did.

We had a woman who went home from our program, we actually hired her at LMM as it's one of our cooks, and she was trying to find housing in that area.

She relocated just so she wouldn't go back to the environment that she was in but the landlord said, well, if she can get a letters of recommendation from us he would let her in.

So maybe some of the landlords can do that and help them get in so we wrote some letters of recommendation and she was able to get that apartment and he seen that she was a good tenant and he's told her if you have anybody else that we can rent to them as well.

- I wonder, I wanna share this real quick.

There was a woman who was released from the hire reformatory for women and was looking for housing and somebody was renting, I think it was like an apartment on top of their garage and she called Roni Burkes who was the warden at ORW and now is the deputy director of reentry, she said, should I tell him that I'm a restored citizen?

Ronnie said, absolutely let them know.

So she went and talked to the person and said, "Hey, I just wanna tell you."

Well, this person is a prosecutor in one of the counties and he goes, "I already know," and his wife said, "Honey, if anybody's gonna give you a chance "we're gonna be the ones to give it to you."

So there are people that are willing, but it's mining them.

Where are they?

It's almost like finding a needle in a haystack.

So there are people willing to extend but just, we need more, we need more.

- Yeah, and we're actually working on legislation.

So we banned the box on the job applications and how do we do that in housing and why, this goes back to where I started the conversation.

Why are we punishing people beyond their sentence and excluding them after, quote, they paid their debt to society, that society continues to want to ban them and push them out.

You know, right now today I can own a house but I might not pass the background check to rent an apartment.

And that's just outrageous.

I applied for a Global Entry.

I've got everything beyond humanly possible, but I'm denied Global Entry because I have a criminal record.

So it's like, it goes on and on and on and sometimes, sometimes Mr. See, you just wanna lay down and give up but then the Harriet in me says, "Uh uh, we gonna stand up and fight."

We gotta keep moving forward.

- Yeah.

It's like a lifelong sentence.

I'm working towards my master's degree, MBA, but I can't get life insurance.

(audience laughing) - [Susan] Life insurance.

Yes.

So I have life insurance with my job but I can't get personal life insurance.

You can't get whole life.

You can probably get accidental or sometimes term, but most times you can't even get life insurance.

- [Susan] That's outrageous.

- It is.

- [Susan] It's so good to be here in this forum with you!

(audience laughing) - We have some work to do and we also have another question.

- All right, hey Ms. Burton, I don't know if you remember me but it's really great to see you again.

My question is about a quote in your book.

So you were talking about you and Dorsey, for anybody who doesn't know who Dorsey is, it was somebody she was worth working with who also had lived experience, and you said, "We speak from the world we knew," and that really stuck with me because we speak, which is present, but the world we knew, which is past tense, and we know that all of us have a story and I just wanted you to speak a little to the importance of sharing one's story and also how that could help you, but also how that could help other people.

- Yeah, there's real freedom and you allow people to understand and know you, but there's real freedom in being open, transparent and sharing your story.

In the past there's been so much shame connected to people who are incarcerated, family shame, self shame, but telling your story frees you and allows you to understand just what happened.

And so Dorsey is someone that helped me along quite a bit when I first started A New Way of Life, I just wanted to help a handful of women and I thought that would be it, but Dorsey helped me expand my understanding and my vision and my goals with the New Way of Life and for my life, period.

And committed in a bigger way.

So where did I see you?

Where do I?

Were you there when I went to the reformatory?

- No ma'am, so me and Margie Glick, we kind of reached out to you about doing this whole thing.

We were the first ones to meet with you.

I was like super cheesy, it was over Zoom and I was like really excited, (audience laughing) the community engagement coordinator.

I don't know if you remember.

It's okay.

- Yeah, but it's important.

Yeah, okay.

It's important that we extend ourselves, that we're open to communicate, that we reach out and that we just put arms around everybody who wants to grow, wants to do good and wants to change.

It takes all of us.

- Ms. Burton, thank you so much.

I'm Dan Moulthrop, we talked before.

You can't see me but thank you so much and we have to close it out.

I wanna thank Rachel Dissell, our moderator, and our panelists, Dr. Coey and Malika Kidd.

Please give everybody a round of applause.

(audience laughing) - [Susan] Thank you.

It's been great being with you all.

- Ms. Burton's book, "Becoming Ms. Burton "From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight "for Incarcerated Women" is for sale in the lobby.

Thanks to our friends at A Cultural Exchange.

I wanna thank them for joining us and our forum today was the annual Charles R. See forum on re-entry, which has been mentioned a few times today.

Charles is present today with his wife, Deb, and they asked that we note their gratitude to all the individuals who contributed to make this forum possible and to our partners at Luther Metropolitan Ministry, especially Margie Glick, Marcella Brown, and Sue Cyncynatus and to everyone joining us here today, both our audience and our panelists.

We would also like to welcome guests at tables hosted by The Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation, Chopping for Change.

Yes!

(audience cheering) (audience applauding) Cuyahoga Community College, the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministries, OhioGuidestone, Oriana House and Towards Employment.

Thank you all for being with us today.

Next week we'll be at the Happy Dog in the Gordon Square District on Wednesday, May 4th in the evening for a free event about the future of democracy in Europe.

Next Friday, we're back here with a Law Day celebration with our friends at the Cleveland Metro Bar Association.

So and we are discussing, specifically, the Constitution in times of change with the honorable Patricia Ann Blackmon, former judge of the Eighth District Court of Appeals in conversation with Ohio Supreme Court Justice, Melody Stewart.

For in-person audience, we have second dessert coming up, a reception right across the lobby, thanks to our friends of Chopping for Change and that brings us to the end of our forum.

Thank you all so much for being a part of this today.

Our forum is adjourned.

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