A Knock at Midnight(86)
“It’s great to see you again! Do you have anything prepared for this panel?” he asked. “Like, you want me to cue you up for anything?”
I gave him a blank look before I understood. I was just there to watch, I told him. To learn.
“Are you kidding me?” he said. “You shouldn’t be in the audience. You should be on this panel.”
Which is how I found myself, ten minutes later, onstage at a DNC-related event in a FREE COREY JACOBS T-shirt and ripped jeans, participating in a panel on how to fix our criminal justice system. It seemed everyone on the panel was familiar with my work on Sharanda’s case. I had been so focused on getting my clients free, I hadn’t really thought about how my work and the amplification of her story moved others. I shared my clients’ stories that day, but I also talked about the systemic nature of the problem. There were thousands of Coreys and Sharandas buried alive in America’s prisons.
Watching the panel that day was attorney Jessica Jackson, who, along with the political commentator, author, and activist Van Jones, had cofounded #cut50, a national bipartisan organization dedicated to cutting the prison population by fifty percent in ten years. The next day, we had a phone call to discuss my work with Corey. Sitting in my hotel room, my aching feet elevated on a hotel pillow, I told Jessica that I’d recently quit my corporate job to work on clemency cases like Corey’s full-time. I was halfway through making another appeal for Corey, when she cut me off.
“Can I call you back in like twenty minutes?” she said.
Sure, I told her.
I leaned back in the chair, trying to catch a quick nap before strapping my shoes back on and marching down to attend another event. Virginia Congressman Bobby Scott would be there, and a letter from him would be very helpful. I let my mind wander. I must have fallen asleep, because before it seemed like any time had passed, my phone was ringing again.
“Brittany,” Jessica said, “I just got off the phone with Van. We’re starting a campaign called #ClemencyNOW, and we’ve been looking for someone to lead it. Are you interested?”
“Seriously?”
In twenty minutes, things had gone from zero to a hundred. I’d thought that I was talking to Jessica about raising awareness for Corey—but it turned out that unbeknownst to me, I’d been in a job interview. Van had already talked to her about my work, Jessica said. They believed I was the person they needed to lead their new initiative.
Over the next hour or so, Jessica explained the initiative to me. Essentially, the goal was to put public pressure on President Obama to grant more clemencies in the final months of his term in office. As of July 2016, he’d granted clemency to only 562 people, even though thousands more met his criteria. #Cut50 was asking the president to triple the resources dedicated to the process, and to eliminate a lot of the bureaucratic red tape that slowed it down.
I was intrigued but skeptical. I had no experience as the leader of a large-scale justice campaign. I wasn’t even quite sure what a campaign of this order would look like. On the other hand, I had resigned from ORIX not only to free Corey but also to take advantage of this window for clemency, in any way possible, for thousands of others. Jessica’s offer would provide me with a national platform. I knew I had been effective with my individual clients, but I’d never built a campaign before, or taken on any kind of movement role. Would I be effective?
A few hours later, Van Jones called me himself. I’d met Van once before, also at the White House with Sharanda. But most of what I knew about him I knew from his television appearances, on CNN and elsewhere: that he was a bold leader in the social justice space and dedicated to the fight.
“Brittany, you were able to achieve more victories in half the time, working as an individual than I’ve seen whole organizations manage to accomplish,” he said when he called me. “We need you. The people need you.”
“I just don’t know if I’m qualified to do this,” I said. “This is not where my experience lies.”
“It’s where your experience is going to lie,” Van said, emphatic, his voice rising to the pitch I knew from television. “You’re a brilliant young lawyer, committed to the cause. Our prison system is a five-alarm fire, Brittany. You know this. And you’re the firefighter we need.”
I thought of all the clients I’d worked with up to then. It had been my personal attention that had been so meaningful for them, and that same attention had helped move the wheels of justice. But what if I could take that attention and attach it to a national organization? What if I could make everyone see the deep and senseless cruelty at the heart of our nation’s prisons? What if I could take these people and their families directly to the doors of the White House and make sure that the president himself saw them?
“Okay,” I told Van. “I’m in.”
* * *
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ONE THING YOU should know if you’re ever contemplating calling the former attorney general of the United States: He doesn’t usually pick up. But the day I called, using the card he’d given me that day in his office with Sharanda, Eric Holder happened to be waiting for a call from someone else. His call was scheduled for 4:30, and I called at 4:20. Divine.
Also divine? Mr. Holder was drafting a New York Times op-ed that day, focused on oversentencing and mass incarceration. He was looking for an example, a person whose story could humanize his argument for criminal justice reform. Someone whose plight exemplified the huge cost of our current unjust policies. And I was calling to discuss just such a case.