Founder's Take: Seeing Each Other More Clearly
Yesterday I learned something. One of our team members, a brother who has been with us for nearly a year now, served time in prison. I never knew. I thought of him in the same way that I’ve thought of Claire in the past, or Allie now, or Gabby. I thought of Mike in the same way I’ve thought of Tyler or David or any of the dozens of people we work with, which is to say, I thought of him as one of the bedrocks of the organization. See, Mike is one of the folks that touches nearly every Freedom Library that we build, working with his hands to transform remnants of trees into hope and possibility. And yesterday, as we celebrated a significant grant given to us by the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority (CHEFA), he talked about the time he’d served in prison and what it meant to come home to this work.
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Marking National Poetry Month with poet Reginald Dwayne Betts
Freedom Reads Founder & CEO Reginald Dwayne Betts spoke about the power of poetry with NY1's Annika Pergament to celebrate National Poetry Month.
Shelf Life: Leila Mottley
New York Times bestselling author Leila Mottley spoke to Elle about her most memorable reads, and her support of Freedom Reads.
How a Black Man Went from a 50-year Prison Sentence to Law School
Bernard McKinley has become the first graduate of the Northwestern’s Prison Education Program (PEP) to ever be accepted into a law school. He will attend Northwestern Law School as part of the class of 2027.
How to Publish a Magazine in a Maximum-Security Prison
Journalist John J. Lennon, who is incarcerated in New York, speaks with Wilbert Rideau, an acclaimed prison journalist.
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April 2024 Newsletter
300 Freedom Libraries and Counting
