Daryl Atkinson has been crowned the winner of theGrio’s inaugural Heroes Initiative meant to highlight everyday leaders who support, uplift and move Black communities forward. The attorney and activist from North Carolina has dedicated his life to legal advocacy, fair public policy, and inmate rights. Atkinson joins Michael Harriot to discuss some of the biggest hurdles facing his non-profit organization Forward Justice and highlight some of their recent legal wins. The pair also share statistics about the disparities plaguing the American justice system and talk about what the public can do to help.
Read full transcript below.
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Michael Harriot [00:00:05] Sometimes when I see the chaos and the injustice going on in the world, I can’t help but think, Where the hell is Superman? I mean, his motto is literally truth, justice, and the American way. So where is he? Well, that’s why I want to welcome you to theGrio Daily, the only podcast that will tell you that not all heroes were capes. What’s up, y’all? Welcome back to another episode of theGrio Daily. Today we’re talking about justice and how it looks and how it works. You probably have heard that theGrio recently had it’s Grio Hero Awards, where we awarded not people like the rich people you always see getting accolades for being a philanthropist and an activist. But, you know, the grassroots people that the people who work on the ground, the people who are out there doing the work. And one of them is today’s guest, Daryl Atkinson. Daryl Atkinson is the founder and one of the workers with Forward Justice. And he is one of the recipients of this year’s Grio Hero Awards. And my first question is, when you think about justice, when you think about heroes in the criminal justice system, we like to think of it as, you know, something that’s multifaceted. But I’d like you to tell us exactly what your organization does and how it works.
Daryl Atkinson [00:01:44] Thank you so much for having me, Michael. Yeah, So Forward Justice. We came into existence in the year that Donald Trump was elected president. We’d been in existence since that time, and we are a long policy and strategy center dedicated to advancing racial, social and economic justice. We operate on three kind of intertwined theories of change. We believe W.E.B DuBois was prophetic, that the South is dispositive in this country, that as the South goes, so goes the nation. We believe that some of our most important transformative movements in this country have been led in the South and southern-based movements, and those movements are led by directly impacted people, people who are under the boot of oppression. And what we try to do is also our movement partners, a toolbox of tools that they can use to effectuate the change that they want to see. It could be in the form of movement, building litigation and suing over the right to vote or barriers to the right to vote, or looking to expand the right to vote, the previously excluded groups. It could be the strategic communications and narrative change where we’re trying to redefine the way that we discuss these issues in the way that people think about the issue. Or it could be our other theory in major strategy, which is movement building. Using all of these various strategies and techniques to build a mass movement, to create the people change that we want to see. And so we partner with movement partners in the state, in the region and nationally.
Michael Harriot [00:03:24] So what does that kind of movement building, that kind of reform look like in real-time and on the ground?
Daryl Atkinson [00:03:32] Sure. So, for example, one of our movement partners is the North Carolina Second Chance Alliance, which I’m one of the founding members of. The Second Chance Alliance is a coalition of advocacy organizations directly impacted people, faith-based institutions that have come together to address the causes and consequences of coming in contact with a criminal record. One of the things we do for this coalition is try to advance their policy agenda. So this legislative session, we helped introduce nine different pieces of legislation that dealt with everything from ending the prohibition on welfare benefits to people who’ve been convicted of felonies to criminal record clearance and expanding criminal record clearance for people with records. We also, in 2019, sued the state of North Carolina around their policy of denying people the right to vote because they were on probation and parole. Three of our organizational plaintiffs were part of the Second Chance Alliance. And the Second Chance Alliance wanted us to bring this suit because they didn’t feel like they were having the same level of effectiveness as other organizations. They went to the General Assembly to make their voices heard. So that’s an example of like how we use our skills to assist our movement partners.
Michael Harriot [00:04:58] I always believe that legal advocacy is important. One of the things that, you know, I’ve been kind of thinking about lately, especially with these recent Supreme Court rulings, when we see Clarence Thomas, who was literally put on the court to dismantle affirmative action. John Roberts was put on the court to dismantle voting rights. Amy Coney Barrett was on there to dismantle abortion rights, and they largely succeeded. And it’s because, you know, groups like The Federalist Society and groups like that, they basically have a grassroots organization that raises up justices. They find justices, you know, when they start law school and trained them in their movement to be legal advocates for conservative values. I’ve been thinking about like, what would that look like for us? And like, you basically have the answer, that kind of grassroots legal advocacy that goes from the bottom to the top. You look at North Carolina specifically where, you know, as you know, 22% of the population is Black and 55% of the incarcerated population is Black. And we think about that as just from the perspective of the bottom of the criminal justice system where policing focuses on Black people. But a lot of it is that when you get into the criminal justice system, you don’t have advocates. It’s not just money, it’s access to legal representation, access to people who might can get your criminal history expunged or the charges dropped, or a plea bargain that might be for a lesser charge that might not take away your voting rights. So talk about how your organization, you know, doesn’t just look at the beginning point, but how those issues matter all the way throughout the criminal justice system.
Daryl Atkinson [00:06:55] Sure. I think a lot of it, Michael, is animated because, you know, we try to keep the needs in aims of directly impacted people. So winning a lawsuit just in the courtroom is only a piece of the puzzle. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. We also have to make sure that that legal ruling in the courtroom at the state legislature actually impacts real people’s lives. Right. Is actually having the impact that we intended. We use our legal skills ultimate to address those legal needs, but is to bring that person into the fight. Because once we address their legal need, we want them to become more, you know, self-actualized and awakened to the issues that are happening around them. So they then become an advocate themselves. It’s like we aren’t just trying to feed people fish, we’re trying to teach them to fish so we can continue to build a powerful mass movement. So for example, when we won our initial win on expanding the rights of people of all felony probation to vote in 2022, we just didn’t leave that win in the courtroom. We filed a public records request and got a list of everybody that that applied to, who was impacted by our win. And we phone banked them all. We text blasted them all. We sent them all direct mail so they could get registered to vote. And you know what, Michael? It had an effect out of that 39,000, 40,000 people, we were able to get 33% of their population registered and 16% of them actually voted in the 2022 election.
Daryl Atkinson [00:08:47] Now, the Supreme Court, our North Carolina Supreme Court, took a hard right turn in the midst of this lawsuit. And when we argued the case this February before them, they ultimately ruled against us because they are very much a partisan animal, just like our federal Supreme Court. But what we know is that these people may lose the right temporarily, but we don’t lose the people because our data scientist is telling us 25,000 of that 39,000 gets off probation this year and we already have a plan to get them reregistered so they can impact the electoral. That’s just an example for us. We’re a multidisciplinary shop, we have lawyers, we have organizers, we have narrative specialists, and we believe those three phases of power change in law, policy and practice in a way that builds power for our people, change in narrative culture and values in the way that we talk about these issues and perceive them, and building a mass movement on necessary to create the transformative change that we want to see.
Michael Harriot [00:09:54] I think that’s important, you know, especially the second aspect where you, you know, you contact the people affected by the policy because a lot of what we think of as voter apathy works on the back end, where if you have a felony, you might think, well, I can’t ever vote and you might not even know the specifics of the voter disenfranchisement for felony rules. So you just don’t try. So that’ll have an impact. I’m sure you’ve seen it when a federal court ruled against Jesse Helms’, what, 1992 campaign for intimidating Black voters on just that specific aspect of the law. Right. Like, you know, he was barred from doing that ever again. He had to sign a consent decree because that’s specifically what he did, he called Black voters and said, hey, you know, if you vote, you go, you might go to jail. And it worked. So how did you get into this position, not, you know, the law, but what made you think that this would be an effective and a necessary strategy, an organization that will impact people in your state?
Daryl Atkinson [00:11:02] Yeah, I mean, my life circumstances kind of propelled me in this direction. In 1996, I was convicted of the first time nonviolent drug court, drug trafficking and given a ten-year prison sentence. I spent 40 months in prison on that prison sentence. And while I was there, I was, I guess now, looking back on it, fortunate enough to be sent to a maximum security institution, 60% of the population had life without parole. It was a very dark place as far as where hope was concerned. And while I was there, I met some jailhouse lawyers, one James Meconico and the other Chalmus Wright. They found out that I had a little bit of college education. I was at a couple of semesters under my belt at Tuskegee before I went to prison. And they wanted to talk. And I remembered this scene like it was from a movie, just like it was yesterday. I’m in James’s cell and I’m talking to him about, you know, what education I had. And this big huge guy bust in his cell, and he has a pillowcase of coffee and cigarettes and he dumps them on Meconico’s bed. He says, I need you to work on my case.
Daryl Atkinson [00:12:18] Because what you got to understand, Michael, you know, most people who come in contact with the criminal legal system. In the state of Alabama, you are afforded a public defender and counsel for your direct appeal. But anything after that, you had to find legal representation by your own devices. And as a result, jailhouse lawyers, people inside who knew how to do legal work, were very very powerful. And so the guy is coming to James to get him to work on his case. And James was like, I don’t want your jail money. The guy says, What do you want? In the end, James says, I want you to learn the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Alabama Rules of Civil Procedure, Evidence in Criminal Procedure. And then I need you to go do political education. Will Brother Mufandee over there and after you’ve done some of that, come back and see me now, think about working on your case. And on any given day, not everybody signed up for this, but some brothers did. And on any given day, you could see 35 to 40 men, when yard was called walking to the law library to work on their case. And it would be man shepardizing cases. It would be men going through fact transcripts. It would be men working collaboratively together. And I witnessed James get probably about 12 men out of prison while I was there with him, because they had erroneously, technically violated their parole. But that wasn’t the piece that got. The piece that got me, and this relates to your question, why Forward Justice? Why do the work in this way? The piece that got me that James had instilled in these men was the sense of hope. Men who had stopped pressing their whites. Men who had stopped taking visitations. Because, Michael, when you ask these men how much time they had, they said all of it, because they were never coming home. To see now that they had a sense of purpose, that they had a sense of direction, that they were not hopeless anymore. I said, I want some of that. Whatever that is. If I can use the law as a tool to instill hope, to inspire more leaders to join what I think of as the army of the people who’ve been wronged, then that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my career. And that’s why, you know, we started Forward Justice.
Michael Harriot [00:14:39] You know, we talk about this in the terms of the criminal justice system. But, you know, it’s important and we’ve talked about it on this podcast. I’ve investigated Alabama prisons for over a year, the deadliest prison system in America. It’s deadlier, it literally deadlier than cancer. And so this is not just a legal issue, but what you’re talking about is like saving people’s lives. And because, again, like you said, once they get behind those bars, there is no hope, there is no legal representation. You do not have the right to access the criminal justice system or the justice system of America. And so when you think about this and think about how it can be effective nationwide, what are some things that we as people who watch this who aren’t lawyers, who might not have a grassroots organization behind us, what are some of the things that we can do to effect change like this?
Daryl Atkinson [00:15:39] First thing is, you know, you know, the young folks used to say, get woke, you know, meaning, you know, raise your consciousness to the issues that are happening around us. Right. And then getting in where you fit in can happen in any number of ways because the carceral footprint has impacted every aspect of people’s lives, whether it’s mentoring children of incarcerated parents. If you feel more comfortable with dealing with kids that could be your lane. Whether it’s doing things like helping us at Forward Justice in phone banking, and call in low propensity voters, directly impacted voters, poor voters to get more people registered and get more people engaging in this civic process, it can look like that. And then, quite frankly, Michael, it can look as simple as writing a check or donating to another worthy organization that may be within your, you know, six degrees of separation. So, you know, helping out in getting in this fight can look any number of ways.
Michael Harriot [00:16:44] Yeah, I want to stress that last part. I do. The check part is definitely important. We think about like just like the effectiveness of the topic we talked about earlier, The Federalist Society is because they got a lot of money from people who just have money and donate to affect the law. Like we see the dismantling of affirmative action wasn’t a grassroots movement. A rich dude just says, hey, I am going to take on this issue and fund it. Right. The same thing with abortion. The same thing with the anti-LGBTQ. The same thing with anti-CRT. It takes money. And who we are fighting against is individuals with a lot of money who are funding these issues that take away our rights. I want to thank you for coming on here today. Now, we always leave this show. We always tell them to tell a friend about this show, to download theGrio app, to subscribe on every platform. But we also leave with a Black saying, you know, one of your favorite sayings that people might not have heard, but, you know, we know we’ve heard it from each other. So tell us, what is your favorite saying, your favorite Black saying that you’ve heard and has not made it into the popular culture.
Daryl Atkinson [00:18:04] Man, you putting me on the spot. I don’t know if it’s a Black saying, but it’s the saying that we use during our voter engagement, particularly for justice-involved voters. And forgive me if this is a little long, but I want to give you a little context, because I think, you know it it’ll make more sense that we believe that the way to get justice-involved voters activated was to make this thing kitchen table, right? Meaning that here you are, you get to vote on who the district attorney’s going to be, who the judge is going to be. You get to scrutinize their record the way that they used to scrutinize your record. And the way that I would put it to them was like, you know, there was a great, great, great philosopher named Elmer Fudd who put it this way, Ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun. And now you have the gun of the ballot and you can vote these people out. The very folks who profiled you, who over sentenced, you overcharged you. Now you are the rabbit with the gun and you get the vote those folks out. So I’ll know if it’s a Black thing, but ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun.
Michael Harriot [00:19:18] I think it’s Elmer Fudd saying, but isn’t saying that we adopted because I’ve heard a million times, it ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun and it always seem like the rabbit don’t get the gun.
Daryl Atkinson [00:19:30] That’s right.
Michael Harriot [00:19:30] We want to thank you for joining us and we’ll see you guys next time on theGrio Daily. If you like what you heard, please give us a five-star review. Download theGrio and subscribe to the show and to share it with everyone you know. Please email all questions, suggestions and compliments to podcasts at theGrio dot com.
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