Clemency
Since the first of the year the White House has announced several initiatives which when fully implemented will bring long needed help to African American and other minority communities. One of the more significant efforts to help primarily minority families is the President's intent to exercise his unfettered Constitutional right to grant clemency to several thousand people including African Americans and Latinos who were given draconian sentences for low level drug offenses. Law schools and lawyers are helping the Clemency Project 2014 to aid people in submitting petitions for clemency. To obtain information to give to families and advocates for federal prisoners who can benefit from this unprecedented clemency action go to
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2014/April/14-dag-419.html;
or
https://www.alcu.org
Update on the Obama Administration's My Brother's Keeper Initiative:
The Task Force has begun a 90-day process to develop the plans and infrastructure required to implement and sustain the initiative's efforts. They are currently listening and engaging, working with stakeholders across the country to get their feedback on how everyone can all work together to make this initiative a success.
On the day of the launch in February, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum on "Creating and Expanding Ladders of Opportunity for Boys and Young Men of Color" which created a Federal Task Force to provide an assessment of and recommendations on how public and private actors can improve measurably expected educational and life outcomes and address persistent opportunity gaps. To inform that work, the President called for tools that will assess critical indicators of life outcomes for boys and young men of color and online engagement to lift up strategies, practices and programs with strong evidence of improving outcomes.
The Task Force's work began with identifying these critical indicators focusing on five key moments that mark critical junctures on the path to healthy and productive adulthood: early learning and literacy, pathway to college and careers, ladders to jobs, mentors and support networks, and interactions with criminal justice and violent crime. Participating federal agencies are also now beginning to assess strategies, practices and programs to determine how they impact life outcomes for boys and young men of color. This work will inform a report by the Task Force on the progress and recommendations that will submitted to the President.
Simultaneously, ten leading foundations have launched a private sector coalition that seeks to invest at least $200 million dollars over the next five years to find and rapidly spread solutions that have the highest potential for impact. This is is in addition to $150 million in current spending that these foundations have already committed toward this work. These foundations have announced they aim to put in place a strategy and infrastructure for coordination of their investments and additional commitments from a diverse array of actors from other sectors.
The Federal Task Force will pursue collaborative and multidisciplinary approaches to building ladders of opportunity. The White House believes this effort has the potential to teach a great deal about using evidence-based strategies to achieve the universal goals it has for all of the Nation's children.
Adapted from a reprot by Broderick Johnson, Asst. to the President & White House Cabinet Secretary, and the Chair of the My Brother's Keeper Task Force and Jim Shelton iDeputy Secretary of Education and Executive Director of the Task Force.www.whitehouse.gov.
