“In the closely-knit Venn diagram of Texas’ criminal justice advocacy groups, Maggie Luna is almost always at the intersection.
“While serving a sentence for drug charges at the Lucile Plane State Jail, Luna experienced Hurricane Harvey behind bars. For the first time, the big fans ventilating the already-stagnant dorms stopped. Toilets wouldn’t flush. Shower faucets stayed dry for a week. Phones were cut off and with the kitchen flooded, inmates weren’t fed meals for two days. …
“Her Harvey experience and months at The Women’s Home, which offers resources and affordable housing to women in Houston, after her release inspired her to begin advocating for formerly incarcerated people. While looking to enter the nonprofit sphere, she quickly found a job at a Marriott hotel, folding towels for $10 an hour. Finding safe housing was significantly more challenging.
“‘It was very hard for me to stay sober there,’ Luna said. ‘The places [where] we’re forced to live and reenter society are very dangerous for our mental health or well-being. They want us to come back into society and not do anything wrong, but live desperately.’”
In our 10th anniversary year, JustLeadershipUSA’s work of educating, elevating, and empowering justice-impacted leaders continues and is growing even stronger!
This is going to be a very special time to look back on the past decade of JLUSA’s important work, the 1,600+ leaders we have helped get to the next level in their work, and even more importantly, we will look ahead to the next 10 years and beyond!
We can’t do this without you. We need your support to help us continue to do this work now and into the future. By making a donation in honor of JLUSA’s 10th anniversary year, you are saying to the amazing leaders in our network who represent the 70+ million Americans who have been directly impacted by the criminal legal system, “I see you, and I support you!”
Please give a one-time $100 gift or set up a recurring $10 monthly donation to celebrate JLUSA’s 10th anniversary year, and together we will build a fair and just U.S. Thank you!
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