Freedom Dreams Detroit Justice Center

"The absence of any statistics, like data, history, etcetera around informality is what drove me into getting into it because it was like, these are questions that kept me up at night that I wanted to solve." - Richard Wallace, Founder and Executive Director of EAT - Equity and Transformation

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Richard Wallace is the Founder and Executive Director of EAT and Nicole Laport is the Director of Communications at EAT, an organzation that's been doing something really powerful in Chicago the past several years. They’re organizing people in the informal economy—that includes economic activities that aren’t regulated or protected by the state. As EAT puts it, “These are the bucket boys who we pass on the way to the train every day, the DVD bootlegger at your local barber shop, the person selling loose cigarettes at two for a dollar in front of the local liquor store, and the trans and cisgender commercial sex workers in our communities.” This is a huge part of the economy! And it’s often one that people with criminal records are forced into because they’re shut out of the formal workforce. Very often, work in the informal economy is criminalized, which means it can lead to re-incarceration and extreme poverty. So, EAT saw a need to build power among informal workers and fight to change the structure of the economy itself, and fight the anti-Black racism at its core.---

Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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"We consider ourselves an incubator for transformative justice here in the south. We are committed to really creating a new way of being, of dealing with violence." - Rukia Lumumba, Executive Director, People's Advocacy Institute.



Rukia Lumumba comes from a lineage of Black Freedom Fighters. Her dad was Chokwe Lumumba, former member of the Republic of New Africa and eventual mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She is the Executive Director of the People's Advocacy Institute, co-coordinator of the Electoral Justice Project, and campaign co-coordinator of the successful Committee to Elect Chokwe Antar Lumumba for Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi. She joins Freedom Dreams to describe how she's help build an incubator for transformative justice in the south.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠⁠.

⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠⁠

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"We think that there is a basis for human beings to change, and if I didn't think that I wouldn't be involved in this. I often say I, I don't give this speech to alligators...they're not going to change, and I'd be wasting my time. I do think that humans can change and we have to shift the conditions that make it possible for people who may be leaning toward change to want to actually walk toward each other in a way that hold redemptive possibilities for the nation. - Reverend Nelson Johnson, Co-Founder of the Beloved Community Center.

On November, 3rd, 1979, Reverend Nelson Johnson, Joyce Johnson and fellow members of their Communist Workers Party helped organize an anti-Ku Klux Klan rally and march. Five people were killed that day and others injured. Over 20 years after the Greensboro Massacre, the city convened a truth and reconciliation process designed to unpack and better understand the events of 1979. On this episode of Freedom Dreams, we ask...did it work? 

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DIG DEEPER:

The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Beloved Community Center

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠⁠To support our work click here⁠⁠.

⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠⁠

⁠⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠⁠

⁠⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠⁠

⁠⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠⁠

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"There is not one model or one program that is going to make us safe. There is not one alternative that is going to replace prison. That is not the formula. It's like, what is the whole range of the kind of thing we should do that cumulatively is gonna keep us safe?" - Danielle Sered



Danielle Sered is the founder of Common Justice, an organization that develops and advances solutions to violence that transform the lives of those harmed.CJ operates the first alternative-to-incarceration and victim-service program in the United States that focuses on violent felonies in the adult courts.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. ⁠To support our work click here⁠.

⁠Freedom Dreams Website⁠

⁠Freedom Dreams IG⁠

⁠Freedom Dreams Twitter⁠

⁠Detroit Justice Center⁠

⁠Detroit Justice Center IG

"We can do incredible things from a technological medical care standpoint. Right? Like there's been incredible advances in healthcare and with some of the things that we have in terms of like stopping bleeds and doing all these things right to prolong life. But, you know, I knew that there was a gap in terms of  preventing re-injury." - Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE: Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday

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A doctor in Detroit notices the same patients keep passing through his ER, often with gunshot wounds. He realizes this "golden hour" of opportunity is the precise time to engage patients with a transformative intervention to stop an unnecessary cycle of violence. 

GUESTS: Dr. Tolulope Sonuyi, Founder of DLIVE, Detroit Live is Valuable Everyday & Chuck, a DLIVE member

Learn more about DLIVE @ detroitlive.org

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here.

Freedom Dreams Website

Freedom Dreams IG

Freedom Dreams Twitter

Detroit Justice Center

Detroit Justice Center IG

"What if you can still feel a sense of justice without reaching out to the legal system? What if you still can have access to healing without punishment? What if this person who harmed you can do the hard work to never harm anyone ever again? Would that feel like justice for you? And if so, how can we support you in achieving that goal?" - Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center 

On this opening episode of Freedom Dreams: Season 2, Mike Milton, founder of the Freedom Community Center in St. Louis, Missouri is building a movement of survivors in order to design systems that actually keep us safe, rooted in Black freedom, self-determination and healing.

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Each day at the Detroit Justice Center our team fights to reunite families, lift barriers to employment and housing, and strengthen communities by supporting small businesses and land trusts. We’re building a more equitable and just Detroit, and we need your help. To support our work click here.

Freedom Dreams Website

Freedom Dreams IG

Freedom Dreams Twitter

Detroit Justice Center

Detroit Justice Center IG