Solitude

Delegation

Bios

Maya Garza is an attorney in Los Angeles, CA. Maya’s practice focuses on public records act litigation. She is also the General Counsel for Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign, an abolitionist organization that focuses on zealous advocacy on behalf of elderly Black prisoners seeking release. Maya has worked as a mitigation specialist on death penalty and juvenile resentencing cases and, while in law school, successfully represented multiple California lifers at their parole consideration hearings. Maya graduated from UCLA Law, where she specialized in Public Interest Law and Policy and Critical Race Studies. She also received a master’s in urban and regional planning from UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and a BA from the Johns Hopkins University.

Krystal Young is a Philadelphia activist and justice impacted person. The gentrification she witnessed in her Philadelphia community that led her to becoming a lead organizer with the University City Townhomes Resident Coalition.  It was her entire family’s interaction with the criminal justice system that inspired her to become a voice for the voiceless black families trapped within the criminal justice system. 
This inspired her to partner with other organizations like Save the Chinatown Coalition, DuBois Abolition School, Philadelphia Black Lives Matter, Medical centers, hospitals and universities to form some type of security and safety net for Philadelphia communities. As a single mother activist witnessing violence in communities, it has inspired her to begin to create a summer camp for African American youth so they can begin to dream and reimagine their space.

Efia Nwangaza, a South Carolina based civil/human rights attorney and historian, Founding Director
of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination and WMXP-LP Community Radio. She is a veteran of the 1960’s Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC/Atlanta Project), a co-founder of the National Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXG), National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (commonly known as N’COBRA, Black Is Back Coalition for Peace and Reparations (BIBC).
At the UN, she served as the chair of the U.S. Human Rights Network (USHRN-PP/SR) Political
Prisoner/State Repression Working Group and the National Jericho Mvmt to Free All US Political
Prisoners, succeeding Mama Safiya Bukhari. Ms. Nwangaza is a founding member of the Black
Alliance for Peace (BAP), member of the Imam Jamil Al-Amin Network, and the Black Belt Human
Rights Coalition. She is a veteran of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
successful Special Committee to Elect Julian Bond turned historic Atlanta “April, 1966 Black Power
Position Paper” Project, and a proud daughter of Garveyites.

Dr. Avon Hart-Johnson is a researcher, author, and advocate. She serves as the
president and co-founder of DC Project Connect (DCPC. Dr. Hart-Johnson is the
chairperson of the Advocacy in Action Coalition, vice president on the board of directors
for the International Coalition for Children with Incarcerated Parents and is the
chairperson of the Fairview Residential Reentry Center Community Relations Board of
Directors. Her extensive research, conducted in both the United States and the United
Kingdom, presents a compelling argument for how carceral systems adversely affect
families and children. This research has gained recognition in scholarly publications,
research journals, and textbooks.

In 2015 Simone Harris created the Harris Foundation, which was Inspired by the excessive sentencing of her son, Rashie Harris, who was given a Life plus 527 Years Sentence under the Habitual Offender Law (three strike law), for a non-life taking crime.  The Harris Foundation has advocated to abolish the three-strike law, educate and reform our youth, and assist with inmate transitioning support.  She also serves as the CEO for DECIDE an organization created to assure the State of Delaware fairly addresses the long-standing constitutional violations within the criminal justice system. Her radio show, Simone Loves Reality Radio, focuses on criminal justice reform, provides a voice for the voice less – behind prison walls an outlet to share their stories.  Her first children’s book, “A Mother’s Love”, her first produced song “Baby Boy” and “Sorry” were all inspired by the traumatic experience of her sons excessive sentencing.  She is an entrepreneur, and holds an Associate Degree in Health Information, a bachelor’s in psychology and a master’s in education.

Tasseli McKay is a research fellow in the Department of Sociology at Duke University. Her most recent book, Stolen Wealth, Hidden Power: The Case for Reparations for Mass Incarceration, rigorously tabulates the harms of mass incarceration—many of which have been absorbed by women and kept out of sight by their invisible labor—to argue for massive reparations to Black communities. Dr. McKay also worked for ten years on the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering (the largest ever longitudinal study of families affected by incarceration), which resulted in her first book, Holding On: Fatherhood and Family During and After Incarceration (with Comfort, Lindquist, and Bir). She holds a doctorate in social policy from the London School of Economics.

Tomiko Shine is a Cultural Anthropologist with a focus on systemic/institutional identities, culture of racism, generational trauma, and healing paradigms/models. Her ethnographic research over the last ten years on containment, confinement, and imprisonment of people of African descent within an American context eventually led her to the field as the Founding Director of APP-HRC. APP-HRC (Aging People in Prison-Human Rights Campaign) advocates and mitigates for the release of aging men and women incarcerated from anywhere from 30, 40, 50, 60 or more years in prisons across the United States.