Day of Empathy lays the foundation for ending mass incarceration

Justice should heal. That's why we joined allies in Frankfort Tuesday for cut50's #DayofEmpathy.

Allies at #cut50 ( a national bipartisan initiative to safely and smartly reduce our incarcerated population by 50 percent over the next 10 years) and The Dream Corps (which brings people together to solve the United States’ toughest problems) hosted a Day of Empathy in Frankfort at the capitol. It was part of a national day of action to:

• generate much-needed empathy for millions of people in the U.S. impacted by the criminal justice system
• lift up the stories of those who have been impacted by the criminal justice system, and
• show legislators that this is about the lives of the impacted people, their spouses, their children, their parents and their friends, crime survivors, and their communities.

In Kentucky, Ebony O'Rea organized many of us and KFTC helped by running rolling grassroots lobby team trainings.

Among other issues discussed with legislators was a push to restore voting rights to people with felonies in their past. Several of the grassroots lobbyists who came out had themselves lost the right to vote.