[kcvl]

2007

Jones, a civil-rights lawyer, is founder and executive director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an innovative nonprofit that made its name working to prevent youth violence and incarceration. In 2005, the center unveiled an initiative that would put it at the cutting edge of progressive activism: Reclaim the Future, a program aimed at ensuring that low-income and minority youth have access to the coming wave of “green-collar” jobs. It’s an idea that’s gaining traction and support, most notably from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who last month invited Jones to join her at a San Francisco press conference and make the case for a national Clean Energy Jobs Bill.

2013

Ella Baker Has a New Boss; Meet Problem-Solver Zach Norris

OAKLAND, Calif. -- For Zachary Norris, the new executive director of the Ella Baker Center, a major turning point in his career came after his first arrest. Handcuffed during an act of civil disobedience protesting a new mega detention center in the area, Norris was taken to the nearby Santa Rita Jail in Dublin. That night, sharing a cell with a crowd of other young black men, he recalled, “I had this sense it was all too normal, too normalized.”

“I’m concerned about public safety and I think it’s important that people know that I have two daughters, and I want them to grow up safely,” Norris said. “But I just don’t think that what we’ve done over the past 40 years has actually made communities safer.”

[Olog-hai]

I read some of the rest of the article about Norris. After he says that little bit of pro-family stuff, he immediately plows into proposing more of the failed problem as the solution.

“What we’re trying to do is build out our grassroots organizing capacity and be in partnership with likely and unlikely allies to move a books not bars, jobs not jails justice reinvestment agenda,” Norris said. …

On the national level, Norris said the Center is working with Justice For Families, Strong Families and other coalitions to plan and develop a national, community-driven research project looking at the multi-generational impact of incarceration on families from an economic and public health standpoint. “In some ways, families unlocking futures was the tip of a larger iceberg and we want to look at the iceberg,” he said. …

Neither of those mentioned organizations are actually pro-family. The so-called “Strong Families Movement” is particularly leftist; their slogan is “All families matter” and they push for Medicaid expansion, sex education, abortion, even promotion of single parenthood and other types of “family” than the real type.