Leslie Ann Turner is a powerful voice in the fight for change, working tirelessly to dismantle mass incarceration and uplift marginalized communities. As a devoted mother, dynamic community organizer, and co-director of the Mass Liberation Project in Nevada, Leslie is on the frontlines advocating for those most impacted by over-policing and the criminal justice system. In this episode, she dives deep into critical issues like decriminalizing poverty, divesting from the carceral system, and building alliances across communities to create lasting change.
Leslie Ann Turner’s unique perspective, rooted in her commitment to Black Liberation and indigenous West African healing practices, offers profound insights into how true freedom can be achieved for all. Whether through spiritual development or direct advocacy, Leslie shows how liberation for one means liberation for all.
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Paths To Liberation: Breaking The Chains Of Mass Incarceration With Leslie Ann Turner
Leslie’s Journey To Getting Involved
In this episode, I’m honored to have Leslie Ann Turner, a dynamic community organizer, devoted mother, and proud UNLV alumni who is at the university in Nevada, Las Vegas. She’s a policy advocate and a talented photographer and writer. As the Cofounder and current Co-Director of the Mass Liberation Project in Nevada, Leslie brings a profound commitment to the philosophy of Black liberation, guiding people of the African diaspora towards discovering their true freedom through spiritual development and a return to indigenous West African healing practices.
Mass Liberation Project is dedicated to creating movement alliances across communities while uplifting people of color who are directly impacted by over-policing and mass incarceration. Whether advocating for laws that decriminalize poverty or working to divest from the carceral system, Leslie’s unwavering dedication to the historic struggle for Black liberation serves as a beacon for all seeking true freedom, which ultimately leads to liberation for all. Leslie, welcome to the Pshow.
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on. That introduction and reading of my bio, I think I wrote that bio.
I wanted to get everything in there. You’ve done a lot. I want to let people know who you are. I’m going to learn a lot more, and I’d like to start at the beginning. How did you get involved in this work?
When I think about the work, it’s not something that I think about as external, like getting a job, getting involved in something or signing up for something. It’s something that is very intrinsic to who I am from a spiritual perspective because liberation work is spiritual work, especially for Black folks. I was born into this work.
Fighting for justice and doing liberation work is definitely a part of my destiny, a part of why I came on Earth from a spiritual perspective, and I was also born into a family of revolutionaries. My dad was a Black Panther. He was a sergeant at Arms of the Pensacola, Florida chapter of the Black Panther Party, which was profound in his time because that type of resistance wasn’t as popular in the South because of the levels of violence in the South were a lot harsher than in the West.
This was during Jim Crow. I think that I was always exposed to movement, always in community, always thinking about and being challenged around ways that I can change my community and conditions for Black folks. It’s a part of who I am. It’s not like an awakening that I had. I’ve also been impacted in a lot of ways. I’ve been incarcerated multiple times throughout my lifetime, and especially in my adulthood, but also in childhood.
I’ve used those experiences as a way to drive the fact that directly impacted people should have a place at the table in this work and should be leading in this work. It’s a part of who I am as a person to do this work. That’s the story of a lot of Black people because our very existence is resistance. What we say is, “We’re not even supposed to be here.”
I think you’re supposed to be here. I’ve known you for several years, and I have learned a lot about you and your passion for this. I know we’ve spoken about this. It’s in your soul. We call it work, but it’s not work in the sense that people think about it. It’s work that we know that we’re here to do.
Being in the struggle, you wake up and face oppressive conditions, and it’s like, “What are you going to do about that? Are you going to accept being crushed or are you going to fight back?” My orientation to it is I have no choice but to participate in this work. I’m lucky enough to have created an infrastructure and building an institute where I can do this for a living. I did it for fifteen years from a volunteer status. I’ve been doing the work since 2017, off of grants and things like that I’ve raised. I think that, ultimately, the work has to be done. I’m always going to be a part of the trajectory forward, like the movement of people who participate in changing the world for the future. There are a lot of people who’ve participated in that, so I’m just doing my part.
The Mass Liberation Project
I love how we ended your introduction about how this ultimately leads to liberation for all because we’re all connected. Let’s talk about the Mass Liberation Project and how it got started. Also, could you share some of the local work that you’re doing here in Nevada?
The Mass Liberation Project started in 2017. At that time, we were focused on political work. We were focused on the DA’s race in particular, and this was a national strategy around so-called progressive prosecutors. A lot of that work is still being done, but we were part of a movement to elect progressive, more like community-minded prosecutors across the country. We did that in Philly with Larry Krasner. We did that in Chicago with Kim Fox and then tried to do it here in Clark County where our goal was to elect a prosecutor who we believe was more representative of our communities’ needs. That’s where we kicked off.
We were not successful in unseeing the person we were trying to unseat, but it was a huge base-building moment. We are a base building or organization, so we were able to mobilize a lot of formerly incarcerated, directly impacted people to get involved and to see a lane for themselves, like where they could get involved that resonated with their experience. That’s how we kicked off. That was 2017 and 2018.
From there, we’ve been continuing to build our base and look at policy. I think the most important thing we do is we try to improve material conditions of the people on the ground, the people most impacted, the people who are most vulnerable. Those are the folks whose conditions that we look to improve. We do that through a lot of different ways. We do it through mutual aid. We do it through policy work. We do it through mobilizing around elections. There’s a lot of things that we do. Where we started was with the political campaign around the DA’s race.
Programs
Why don’t you share some of the programs that you have? We’ll talk about some of the legislative work you’re doing, but why don’t you share some of the programs you have been able to roll out over the last several years and helping many people affected by incarceration?
One of our biggest programs is our participatory defense hub. Our hub has been operating for many years. We’re in our eighth year. For those who don’t know, participatory defense is a community organizing model in which we fight for our freedom through community. There’s been this notion that if you catch a case, your best chance of beating that case is having the best attorney. There’s still merit in that, but we’re also saying that it’s not just on the lawyer because it’s not just a legal argument. It’s also a community argument in a societal framework that needs to be applied to these cases. That’s what we do in participatory defense. We assist community folks in fighting their cases on the front end.
That’s pretrial. We do that through organizing court support. We create social bio videos and social bio packets that we give to the judge that we focus on humanizing the person in front of them so that they can understand that they’re not just defined by that one thing that they did and by what’s on that criminal complaint. There’s a whole spectrum that represents a person’s life. That’s what we aim to do when we intervene in pretrial cases. We also do post-conviction work, which is the same concept, but we have to exercise different post-conviction avenues. We’ve been successful. We’ve got four people released who had life without parole.
In those four folks, we were able to do that through the pardons board. We’re developing a prosecutor-initiated re-sentencing process. We’ve advocated for people through the parole board to make sure that they have the best chances of getting paroled. We support them through that process. Everything we do is led by the families. I think that it’s important to name it because the families are the ones that do the work. We support them and them, but they very much have the reign. We don’t come in and save anyone. We are not like a legal clinic where you can just come get what you need and leave. It is very much a mutual aid model. You give, you come, get help, but you also give help.
A lot of the families that we work with don’t just work on their loved one’s case. They also work on other people’s cases. We’ve created this community of support, and that is how we’ve been successful. At this point, we’ve saved 1,500 years of time if you combine all of the cases that we’ve worked on over the last many years. That’s on the front end, like fighting their case pretrial and also post-conviction. Someone who was meant to die in prison is now back on the streets, being able to be in the community, do the work, and help other families.
That’s the power of participatory defense. I think that that’s our most important work. A lot of our other work stems from participatory defense because, in those cases, we’re able to notice harmful patterns and trends. Those become bills and policy initiatives that we then activate around and we try to get passed. That’s how we got to our current bills that are going to be in the 25 legislative session. All of those bill initiatives came out of what we’ve seen through participatory defense.
I think it’s amazing that all the hours have been released and that people didn’t have to spend. I have to come from somebody outside looking in, somebody reading this, somebody that is not educated on the carceral system and losing fear, like, “We’re letting these people that are incarcerated out.” I’m going in a little direction. I’ve got a few other questions for you, but I want to go down this lane. Tell me about the people that you have helped and how they’re contributing. How do people who may not be knowledgeable of the system show and humanize people and how did they contribute while being released or helped?
A perfect example, we’re working on a case. His name is Ricky Slaughter. He is serving 12 life sentences plus 59 years. He has pretty much been positioned to never leave prison or to die in prison. The case that he was convicted of is a case where no one died. Someone did get shot. There was bodily harm. It was a home invasion. He was eighteen years old at the time. No one died in that case. For him to have gotten 12 life sentences as a teenager plus 59 years, essentially, which is a life without parole, was crazy. In his case in particular, he’s been incarcerated for twenty years already.
In that twenty years, he’s contributed to other people’s cases. He’s written motions and done legal work from the inside that has freed people while simultaneously working to free himself. That’s a way in which he gives back. He helps us. We talk to him about cases we’re working on. He gives us ideas on things that we can ask lawyers to do, or motions that we can tell that person, “Make sure you file this. Make sure you say this at court to preserve your right to come back on appeal.” He helps us with certain things that we probably wouldn’t think about, so that we can help other people moving forward who are fighting their cases. We have a lot of people that we work with like that, with strong legal minds that help us from a legal perspective.
Simultaneously, he’s a mentor. He’s from a very notorious neighborhood out here, Donna Street. We opened the community center in Donna Street. Shout out to Robert Strawder. We go there and he calls in and he mentors those kids, letting them know about the perils of choosing certain lifestyles and certain choices that can lead to prison that that’s not what they want to do. He tells them his story. He also wrote a children’s book about how you can change things in your community through the legislature.
We use that book as a civic engagement tool, and we start exposing kids who can’t vote yet. They’re children, but we’re planting that seed on how you can move and affect change in your community so that by the time they are of age to vote, they will already be like, “I’m definitely doing that. I know about that. I do want to be civically engaged in my community.” It’s like building that generational muscle around civic engagement. He’s helping us with that.
He wrote a book series that we’re using as materials for that program. These are all things he does from prison. Imagine what he can do in the community if he’s free, able to move around and have access to resources. That’s an example of the reciprocal nature of the work. People give, and then they receive. We’re also working on his case. We’re trying to free him, and we’re trying to make sure that his story is told because no 18-year-old should be given a 12-life sentence plus 59 years. That’s one example.
His name’s Ricky Slaughter. He is at High Desert State Prison. On the other side of that, we have the other Ricky, we have two Rickies, Ricky Cooper. We were able to get him a pardon. He was pardoned a few years ago. He had life without parole. He was able to get out. He’s been out for a few years, and he now goes inside of juvenile hall and talks to those children about basically a lifestyle.
The gangster lifestyle is very much glorified in our community. He expels that myth, like, “There’s nothing to be glorified here. This is the reality of prison.” He did 39 years. He is a part of the Participatory Defense Hub he goes back and he also helps to work on other people’s cases that are post-conviction, that we’re also trying to get out, that are doing life sentences that have done 40 or 50 years.
The premise behind that is that at what point does someone being in prison no longer serve the best interest of justice? That’s what we’re evaluating through the work that we’re doing. We’re saying, “Does it make sense for someone to do 40 years and be 70 years old to stay in prison? Are they truly still a public safety threat? Is there any transformative or restorative process that could allow that person to be back in the community?” We look at what healing has occurred, what transformation, what change people evolve. I don’t think nobody is the same as they were many years ago. Those are the things that we wrestle with and then those are the ways that people who we’ve helped tap back in and they help other people.
Thank you for explaining that. People are not defined by one act, and what you’re talking about humanizes people. It’s not only the people that you’ve helped and people that have been released that are giving back, but you’re also showing how people that are incarcerated are helping others that you’re humanizing the people, both returning citizens, people that have been released, people that are incarcerated and I don’t think purely people on the outside understand if they haven’t been affected how long these sentences are.
We’ll talk a little bit more about the sentencing. However, some of these sentences are so long, and somebody that’s young that is doing all these years and their life is over when they could be rehabilitated, in the community, or getting programs. I think that the programs that you have are helping people understand.
The reason that I wanted you on the show is that I want people to know that there’s good work out there, especially people that don’t understand how people of color are affected because there’s a lot of, I don’t want to use the word ignorance, but I am, a lot of ignorance out there for people that have not been affected by the carceral system. I want to go back to a few other programs that you have. I think there are some important local programs that you have, programs that help local people.
I can talk about the Black Mama’s Bail Out. It is an initiative that we’ve done for the past many years. Every Mother’s Day, we raise funds. We go out and post bales for Black mothers who are inside because the goal is to reunite them with their families. We focus on Black mothers because I’m a Black mother, because we’re Black mothers, but also because Black women are overrepresented in the criminal legal system. Oftentimes when you remove a Black mother from the household, that can trigger so many different things. A lot of times, Black mothers are single mothers.
When you remove a Black mother from the household, that can trigger so many different things. Share on XFor instance, when I went to jail, my son was four months old. My sister had to come all the way out here from California to get him. I had nowhere for him to go. He was at the babysitter. When you lock up a Black mother, a family can have major impacts and that goes across the board. We focus on the most vulnerable, the most impacted, and the person who’s on the lowest rung in terms of the social ladder.
That’s who we focus on. We post bills, bail out Black moms, and work with them. We do participatory defense on their case then we also help them address all of the conditions that contribute to ending up in jail and making it harder for them to thrive. We try to make sure we’re putting resources and energy into those things.
We want people to be in a position to thrive and to live in abundance, not just struggle and not just make it through their case. It’s deeper than making it through their case, although that is a part of it. We invest in the whole person and we try to build. The most important thing is we bring them into movement. When they come into movement, they continue to do the work, continue to grow, and continue to help other mothers the next time, the next year, and the next time around. That’s it in a nutshell.
I think that we’re also doing a fellowship of the Black mothers that we’ve built out, where we’re going to be setting up opportunities for them to get involved in new industries like vertical farming, Doula, being like a Doula practitioner, and opening up the road so that they can have more opportunities to be entrepreneurs and build a life for themselves.
That’s the Black Mothers Bailout program. I also wanted to say that bailing out Black moms is a tactic that we use. It is related to policy. At the same time, we’re bailing out Black Moms. We’re working on policy around bail. When we first started doing this, we had multiple bail bills, and we were able to change the bail system here in 2019 through the Supreme Court, where they issued a ruling. It basically was everything that was in the original bail bill that we tried to pass in 2019.
Everything we do doesn’t happen in the container. We’re not just doing it so that we have to continue doing this every year. It’s a tactic that’s connected to a broader organizing program. We had a whole bail initiative, and we had a lot of bills and policy work that we did around bail. Every year, there are less and less people to bail out because of that work.
Another example is that in 2022, we cleared the city jail of every Black woman who was there at the time. I think it was like 80 people. Simultaneously, in May, we were trying to pass AB 116, which was a bill that decriminalized traffic tickets and made it so people couldn’t get arrested for traffic tickets. The majority of those women were in there for unpaid traffic tickets. We’re not just doing it just to do it. It’s also connected to a broader initiative around policy to change systems. That’s what we did.
We were able to pass that bill AB 116, which decriminalized traffic tickets. You can still be arrested for some traffic violations, but for the majority of them, you can no longer be arrested for them. That’s an example of how Black liberation, we liberated Black mothers, led to the liberation of everyone because now nobody can be arrested for that. That is an example of why we focus on our people. We focus on Black liberation and it impacts everybody. Everybody benefits once Black people are free. I like to tell that story because, to me, that’s a tangible example of what we mean when we say Black liberation begets liberation for all.
I didn’t know I could get arrested for a traffic ticket. Thank you for that. I want to focus on a few things that you spoke about. The gentleman who is incarcerated who is talking to the youth by working and helping the moms, how they can be with their youth, and how important it is that in the whole story, creating community is important and you’ve given many examples of how community is coming together and supporting each other.
Also, what we’re seeing is how it’s supporting the youth by having their moms there, by having mentors that they are going to be coming into society and growing up knowing more and knowing that they don’t have to make the same choices, that they can make better choices. I applaud you for all of the good work that you’re doing. We talked about some other legislation and then we’ll go on. We have one other topic after that, but you were talking about the Second Look Act.
As I mentioned before, a lot of the policy initiatives that we work on come from what we see happening in participatory defense. On the post-conviction side, we saw that a lot of people were doing double and triple life senses because of weapons enhancements. As we did the research, we found that, in 2007, the legislature said that the way that weapons enhancements were operating or are being used in the sentencing structure was unconstitutional. They stopped that practice, basically what it was like if you got 20 years and then they added a weapons enhancement, then that was another 20 years that had to be served consecutive. You do it 20 years to life, get paroled, and then you have to do another 20 years to life on the weapons enhancement.
That’s how all of these sentences were given. In 2007, the legislature said that that was unconstitutional. They changed that practice, but they didn’t go back and re-sentence anyone. They didn’t make it retroactive to say, “The people who were doing triple life census from the 1990s and 1980s, if it’s unconstitutional now, it’s unconstitutional then.” That is a bill that we’re going to be pushing in the 25 sessions to make the changes that were made in 2007 to weapons enhancements, making that retroactive to give people an opportunity to get in front of the parole board.
The other bill that we are going to be pushing is the Second Look Act. It comes from participatory defense post-conviction, where we’re trying to find avenues for people who’ve been down for 40, 30 or 20 years to get back in front of a body, to say, “I’m not that same person that I was when I was convicted,” to have that looked at and to be able to say, “Let’s take a look at what this person has done. Let’s take a look at who this person is now, and let’s weigh that against the likelihood of them committing another crime if they go back into the community.”
The victims are going to weigh in. They’re going to consider public safety. The biggest revelation for me is I was at the pardons board and there was a woman. She was on the weapons enhancement. She did 20 years, and then she had to do another 20 years on the weapons enhancement. She was trying to get the pardon from the weapons enhancement and get out. She had murdered someone.
The victim’s family came on the call. When she was telling her story and everything that she’s healed from all the work she’s done to transform and rehabilitate, it was very powerful. She’s clearly not the same person that she was when she was convicted. She was very young. She was nineteen. It was very moving her testimony. The victims then came on and they were saying that it’s been twenty years and they obviously didn’t want her to get out they felt that. They still wake up in trauma. They still cry every day. They still have to deal with that grief and the pain of losing a loved one and what happened to him. To me, that was an epiphany that the criminal justice system is not giving that family any justice because if twenty years later you’re still swimming in the same grief that you were, you’ve done, you haven’t healed at all, that’s telling me that, “This is retribution now. This is payback.”
It’s like, “What can we do to help that family heal?” Those are the questions that I want to get to, “Can we invest in counseling? Can we do a restorative or a transformative justice process? Can we talk to each other and see, ‘I made a mistake. I was young. I was dumb. This is what happened, but how can I invest in your healing?’”
No healing has occurred in 20 years, and because no healing has occurred, that then is a justification to keep that person in a cage for another 20 years. She ultimately was not pardoned, and I think that is where we are in society. That’s where I think the second look can start heightening those contradictions to say a person can heal from anything, but we have to be intentional about that healing.
Any person can heal from anything, but we must be intentional about that healing. Share on XLife is precious on both sides. The victim’s life is precious, their family’s life is precious the person who is sitting in a cage for 20 years and 40 years, their life is also precious. Where can we come together to effectuate real healing and assess if a person can be back in society outside of a cage, back in community, and maybe could even do more good than they could by sitting in a cell for another twenty years? That’s The Second Look Act.
This legislation has been passed in twelve other states. There are different variations of it. Some versions are only for youth, like people who were convicted between the ages of 16 and 21. You had to have done 30 years. There are different models. Ultimately, it is an apparatus for folks to get back in front of a body and say, “I’m not that same person,” and for them to be given a second chance. That’s the whole premise of The Second Look Act is to take a second look at someone who they are and assess that, which would lead to second chances.
Just talking to you, I’m thinking of the person I was many years ago. Readers, think of who you were many years ago. Are you the same person? We all change. We all grow. I think people need to take that into account. I’ve seen where restorative justice works, where there is forgiveness. We have no control over how people feel, how people think and how people feel. However, I have seen where restorative justice does work, and hopefully, we can get to that healing.
I appreciate you bringing out all sides of the situation because a lot of times people see it from one side, and there’s always collateral damage. When something happens, there are several people. When somebody’s incarcerated, it affects the family and the community. A lot of what you’re doing is bringing change and bringing people back home who deserve to be back home.
We don’t want the community to live in fear. We live in a fearful society where you hear a lot of things on TV that make people fearful about people who are incarcerated, who have been incarcerated. I don’t have any statistics. I probably shouldn’t say it, but I will. I’d say the majority of people who are released do come back.
Abolition
They do contribute to society. They do contribute to their family. There is a learning curve when you’ve been incarcerated for so long, but with family support and community support, people can heal and move forward. I appreciate you sharing. One of the other things that I’ve heard you speak about, and it’s a topic that a lot of people don’t understand, and I still am getting my arms around it. That’s abolition. Can you explain it?
Abolition is a very old principle. We can go back to 1865, the abolition of slavery and how that must have seemed like an unattainable feat to enslaved people. I think about my ancestors on plantations, them getting together and talking and the conversations that they must have had around, “Is there a world where this doesn’t exist, where this isn’t in our existence?”
The fact that they were able to realize that notion, and I think that something that probably seemed far out of reach, I think that we can do that now. Abolition is about creating a world and striving to create a world that doesn’t currently exist for us. Abolition is about the ending of policing, the ending of prisons, surveillance and the courts.
It’s us saying that we don’t need to be surveilled and policed and governed by an outside body. We can do that ourselves. There’s never going to be a time when harm doesn’t happen, but we can lessen the amount of harm that happens and create new ways of addressing harm that don’t create more harm. If something bad happens and you respond to it by doing something worse, then you’re not creating an ecosystem where anyone can grow or heal.
We’re stuck in this hamster wheel. That’s what I think abolition is about. It’s about imagining a world where people don’t kill each other. That people don’t go in schools and shoot up kids like that. People don’t rape each other, wake up and snap and do something harmful to the community. It’s assessing what it is going to take for us to create that. What resources do we need as a community? What things do we need to pour much money into like mental health, housing, and people having access to wealth? What are the things that we need to do to get there?
That is what abolition is about. Abolition is about practice, but most, I think most importantly, it’s about imagining a new existence. It is doing the work. It’s doing the work to dismantle systems and understand that these systems were derived from slavery. The prison industrial complex and the system of policing, all derived from slavery. I think understanding that that’s a historical fact. There’s been a lot of debate around critical race theory and all of these different things.
Facts are facts. These things can be traced back if you do the research. Understanding that all legislation and all of these systems have worked to oppress, how can we undo that? Simultaneously, we have to also heal. We have to be thinking about how do we stop harming each other. How do we intervene earlier? How do we start investing in youth so they don’t grow up to do these types of things? Those are the things that we have to think about, but understanding that abolition happens over time. I’m talking about decades upon decades. This isn’t next month, we’re going to shut down all the prisons. It doesn’t work like that. It is a process of learning and unlearning, doing and undoing, that will get us to a place in society where we can thrive and live in abundance.
It’s been done in other places. This isn’t some made-up notion. There are places where there are no police, and they are fine. There are communities here within the United States where collectively, there’s this apartment complex in Brooklyn where the people, I don’t know if you’re familiar with aren’t you from New York? I think you are, but I don’t remember.
I was born there.
I thought it was the East Coast. There are communities, like apartment buildings and structures in New York, where generations of families have lived for 50 years. It’s one of those situations where generational families have lived there and known each other for so long that they’ve collectively decided they were not going to call the police.
They have not called the police. They’ve all collectively made this alliance that they will rely on each other if anything happens. It’s not to say nothing happens. It’s to say that there are an infinite number of ways in which we can respond when something happens. We don’t have to do what we’re trained to do. We don’t have to do the default, which is, “There was a domestic violence situation. We got to call the police.”
There was a domestic violence situation and now we’re calling all the elders in this community to hold court with this person where we’re going to invest and figure out, “What mental health services are needed, what care is needed? Maybe you need to take a step away for a few weeks.” The community will decide versus the police coming in and taking someone away to jail. There are small collectives of people who are doing this. They’re practicing this so it can be done. The goal of abolition is ultimately for us to reach a place where we can heal and address harm in ways that don’t cause more harm.
The goal of abolition is ultimately for us to reach a place where we can heal and address harm in ways that don’t cause more harm. Share on XWhat is the first thing you think you would do?
In what scenario?
To start this, what is the first thing you would look at or the first thing you would do?
I think the first thing is to look at your interpersonal relationships. That’s where I start. That’s where I think everyone should start because how you handle your loved ones, how you interact with your children, your family members, and your friends- that’s how you’re going to do everything. In your small, private, interpersonal relationships, can you move as an abolitionist? Can you not respond to harm with harm? In full transparency, that was like not spanking my child anymore. I’m not going to respond. He might do something that’s very harmful. I’m not going to then spank you because that’s responding to harm with harm. It’s those little things, practicing, like working that muscle.
You’re getting that muscle going around. What does it mean to be a truly abolitionist? That’s where I would advise people to start. Start with your own community. Start with your family, start with your kids, your coworkers, and the people you work with. There’s a lot of literature that can be helpful. There are a lot of authors who have written about this. There are a lot of collectives that have written about this. You can do some research. You can always start with critical resistance or Angela Davis. Prisons are Obsolete is a classic.
You can start with books about some of the other ways you can address harm, such as transformative justice models and restorative justice models, and see how you can apply those principles to real-life conflict. All starts with you and your loved ones and practicing with your loved ones. There’s also a good book called An Abolitionist’s Handbook by Patrisse Cullors. It’s a newer book, but that book is a good one. it guides you to start with courageous conversations. That is the starting block for abolitionists, like being able to lean into conflict and being able to have difficult conversations with people.
We had spoken about courageous conversations in the past. I want to put out there that when you read this when it’s posted and some of this legislation is passed, maybe you have taken steps to address some of the things that Leslie spoke about. No matter what you do. We’re working on creating a more compassionate world, and you need to take the steps that work for you to make your life easier, avoid conflict, and be the best person you can be. If you choose to become an advocate in whatever is going on in your life, that’s great. Because of what’s happened with Leslie, me and others, we have lived experience and now we’re doing something with it.
It’s up to you what you choose to do. I want to put out there, there’s Prison: The Hidden Sentence book. If you have somebody who is justice impacted, if you need support, there’s Prison Families Alliance, which provides online support and support meetings here for families on the outside and works closely with organizations that are doing good work.
Gratitude
Leslie, I want to thank you much for being here, for providing some information on where to start because I think there’s so much out there that people don’t understand. I’m hoping that this raised some light and planted some seeds so people can start thinking about things. Is there anything that you would like to leave our readers with?
I always like to end things with gratitude. Thank you for inviting me to this platform, and thank you to everyone who’s reading. Hopefully, you all can definitely reach out to me. If you want to connect, I’m on Facebook at Leslie Ann Turner. The best way to reach me is in my inbox. I’m going to continue to stand in gratitude. I think being always grateful for the doors that open for me. More doors will open for me. I’ll continue to move in my destiny and I will continue to be a person on the front lines for liberation for all. Thank you.
I appreciate you. Can you tell people again how they can find out more about you, about your work? How can they reach out?
Mass Liberation Project Nevada. We’re on Facebook. We’re @MassLiberation on Instagram. You can also go on our website, MassLiberationNv.com. You could always reach out to me directly at Leslie Ann Turner on Facebook.
Thank you so much. We wish that everybody has a good day and stay in gratitude.
Thank you.
Important Links
- Mass Liberation Project
- Robert Strawder – Past Episode
- An Abolitionist’s Handbook
- Prison: The Hidden Sentence
- Facebook – Mass Liberation Project
- Instagram – Mass Liberation Project
- Leslie Ann Turner – Facebook
- https://PrisonFamiliesAlliance.org
About Leslie Turner
Leslie Ann Turner is a passionate community organizer, devoted mother, and proud UNLV (University of Nevada, Las Vegas) alumna with a deep commitment to justice and equality. As a policy advocate, photographer, and writer, she brings creativity and advocacy together to drive meaningful change.
Leslie co-founded Mass Liberation Project in Nevada, where she currently serves as co-director. She brings a profound commitment to the philosophy of Black Liberation, guiding people of the African Diaspora towards discovering their true freedom through spiritual development and a return to indigenous West African healing practice.
Mass Liberation Project builds alliances across communities and uplifts people of color directly impacted by over-policing and mass incarceration. Whether she’s fighting for laws that decriminalize poverty or working to divest from the carceral system, Leslie’s dedication to the Black Liberation movement shines as a guiding light for all those seeking freedom and justice. Through her work, she shows that Black Liberation is the key to liberation for all.
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