Transcriber:
About two years ago,
I answered my doorbell
to find a postal worker
holding a large, heavy box.
It was a package
from my client, Chris Young.
Chris was being transferred
from a federal prison in Kentucky
to one hundreds of miles away in Texas.
When I slid open the box,
the handwritten note from Chris fell out.
"Please take care of these
for me, Brittany.
I don't want them messed up in the move.
They're all I've got."
At the time I received the package,
Chris was nearly 10 years into serving
a life without parole sentence
from an arrest for drug dealing
at the young age of 22.
Chris and I have a lot in common,
as I do with many of my clients.
We both have big dreams.
We both have mothers
who suffer from drug addiction
that led to their incarceration,
a devastating result of the war on drugs.
Like many people
unjustly sentenced for drugs,
Chris was no kingpin.
Long before steel
dug into the skin of his wrist,
he was handcuffed
by a suffocating level of poverty,
selling drugs on the corner
by the age of 12
to help put food on the table
for him and his brother Robert.
Ultimately, Chris was sentenced to life
as a result of two drug priors,
and with the combined drug quantity
weighing less than three pennies.
Inside Chris's package
were some of his favorite books.
The topics ranged from quantum physics
to philosophy to history
to computer programming.
In prison, Chris had taught
himself how to code
without access to a single computer.
His young mind stimulated
by artificial intelligence and economics.
His cell may have been small,
but his dreams were huge.
His margin notes covered
almost every page of the books.
And clearly outlined were designs
for Chris’s biggest dream:
a groundbreaking mental health app
to help prevent suicides
like those of his brother Robert,
who took his own life at 21
when Chris was just 18.
Seeing Chris's genius
laid out on the page like that,
it took my breath away.
I started to think about how I could help
bring his entrepreneurial spirit to life.
A mind like Chris's was so clearly a gift.
But our society had deemed it worthless.
When we lose sight of the humanity
of those we unjustly sentence,
we lose sight of all of the brilliance
they might bring into the world.
By locking away the potential
and ingenuity of people like Chris
and then failing
to nurture it after release,
we shackle America's future.
In those margin notes,
Chris was looking forward,
beyond prison walls,
towards a fully realized freedom,
which is exactly what we must do now.
Some of the most intelligent people
I've ever met are my clients.
Each one of them with huge dreams
despite inhumane conditions.
As an attorney, working for the freedom
of people like Chris and my clients
has become my life's greatest work.
Their entrepreneurial potential is
exactly what our current crisis calls for
if we imagine the possibilities.
Take, for example,
one of my first clients,
Sharanda Jones.
A single mother,
talented chef, budding entrepreneur.
In the early 90s, faced with the care
for a quadriplegic mother
and the growing needs of her daughter,
Sharanda made a poor decision.
On a few occasions, she transported
drugs for a childhood friend.
Years later, she found herself caught
in a federal drug conspiracy.
Bound and shackled
and carted off to federal prison
to serve out a fundamental death sentence
for her very first conviction,
felony or otherwise.
But Sharanda was so driven and talented
that even a life sentence
could not keep her
from expressing herself through food.
The talent it takes
to make anything edible,
let alone a delicacy,
from what's available in prison
cannot be overstated.
And with a genius for improvisation
that still astounds me,
Sharanda became renowned
for her culinary creations.
She ground corn chips into meal
for her famous tamales,
melted the insides of Oreos to frost cakes
and whipped up a hell of a cranberry sauce
from assorted jelly packets.
Her red hot chicken meatballs
made with Doritos
had the women at Carswell Federal Prison
lined up around the corner
just to get a taste.
Don't ask me how she did it.
When a friend asked her recently
what she put in her mac and cheese,
Sharanda said,
"Cheese."
She guards her recipes with her life.
And the years I spent
fighting to free people from prison,
this is one common quality
I've noticed about many of my clients.
Their unjust sentence
has interrupted and destroyed
their plans to bring
great things in the world.
True liberation must include
a vision for restoring,
investing in and nurturing those plans.
Imagine what people
like Chris and Sharanda,
able to create and innovate
under America's most inhumane conditions,
could do if they were
put in positions to thrive
and not just survive.
One thing is absolutely clear:
we cannot keep rescuing people from prison
and restoring them to poverty.
True freedom is multidimensional.
Systemic change does not only
have to come from Congress
or state legislators
who move with no sense of urgency,
even when human lives are at stake.
It can also come from directly
impacted people, like Chris and Sharanda.
I've been holding this vision lately
of sustainable liberation.
How do we create that?
Sustainable liberation
requires economic freedom,
equity and ensuring
that justice-impacted people
have access to resources
and capital to flourish
and create positive ripple effects
in their communities.
That is true systemic change.
Here's what this idea
looks like in action.
In 2015, President Barack Obama
granted Sharanda Jones clemency.
After serving 16 years and nine months
of her life in federal prison,
Sharanda wasted no
time realizing her dream
of owning her first food truck.
I was a corporate mergers
and acquisitions lawyer,
and I know a good
business plan when I see it.
So I invested in Sharanda,
and I left the rest entirely up to her.
And this summer,
Sharanda launched
her company called Fed Up.
As in, "Fed up with the racially biased
criminal legal system
that steals lives and cages futures."
As in, "Come on through
to Sharanda Jones's food truck,
where your bellies will be fed up
with some amazing food."
An integral part of Sharanda's vision:
the truck will be 100 percent staffed
and run by formerly incarcerated people.
And further illustrating
the breadth of her vision,
Sharanda plans to invest
a portion of her revenue
in the Buried Alive Project,
a nonprofit organization we cofounded
together with my client, Corey Jacobs,
to help free people buried alive
under outdated federal drug laws.
To date, the Buried Alive Project
has helped win the freedom
of dozens of men and women,
unlocking people and potential.
After investing in Sharanda,
I launched the Manifest Freedom Fund,
where we’ve deployed 300,000 dollars
in non-dilutive capital
to justice-impacted entrepreneurs.
We've invested in a trucking company
run by my former client,
called Trustworthy Trucking.
The company is fully employed
by justice-impacted people,
and through our lease to purchase option,
each driver will eventually
have the chance to own their own truck,
maximizing economic impact
and independence.
From our experience in trucking,
we've entered the tech startup world,
working to develop an app
that will help improve
the day-to-day life of truckers
and have an immediate beneficial impact
on the transportation industry
and supply chain crisis.
We want to help build smart cities,
improving life for everyone.
At the Manifest Freedom Fund,
we are building an ecosystem
and partnering with investors
who share a passion for cultivating
the entrepreneurial spirits
of justice-impacted people.
There are so many businesses to support,
like Corey's fintech and merchandising
company that partners with HBCU's.
Or Alfred's food truck in North Carolina.
Or Corvain Cooper’s
cannabis brand, 40 Tons.
And Naz's pink tea company,
both in Los Angeles.
These entrepreneurs served
a combined total of 75 years in prison.
But we must not let those years
be the defining decades of their lives.
Their freedom journey does not end
once they step out of prison gates.
In so many ways, it begins.
Businesses like Sharanda's company Fed Up
protect against recidivism.
Without employment
or support for entrepreneurship,
formerly incarcerated people
are three to five times more likely
to commit a crime than those with a job.
But we're not focused on just keeping
our partners out of prison.
That's an incredibly low bar.
We're focused
on attaining economic liberation,
on providing infrastructural support
for the achievement
of their dreams and visions.
Like all of us, they want to live
fulfilling, meaningful lives,
lives of purpose.
And the beauty of it is investing
in their potential isn't charity.
It's an investment in all of our futures.
Let me take us back for a minute
to those notes in the margins
of Chris's books.
Delivered to me at a time in Chris's life
when imagining freedom seemed to fly
in the face of the impossible.
We refused to stop fighting.
In September 2020, we won a reduction
of Chris's life sentence
through the court.
And earlier this year,
executive clemency further reduced
his sentence to time served.
Chris Young walked
out of prison a free man
and immediately put his genius to work
to launch the tech startup
he dreamed would stop the rash of suicides
plaguing young Black men
like his brother Robert.
Born from his own devastating loss
and created with vision and purpose,
Chris's app is
a profoundly innovative idea
that deserves the highest
level of investment.
With capital investment and support,
we help redeem
the tremendous loss to society
that Chris's incarceration represents
and position ourselves
to benefit from his distinct gifts.
Instead of looking upon
the release of men and women
who’ve been unjustly incarcerated
as a burden on our society,
we should look upon
their untapped potential as a gift
and a tremendous opportunity
for societal renewal.
In order to transform
the criminal legal system,
we have to transform our own beliefs
about formerly incarcerated people
and their futures.
The creativity, innovation and ingenuity
languishing in America's prisons
is the key to transformation
and to a better tomorrow for all of us.
By investing in the ideas and initiatives
of justice-impacted people,
we manifest freedom.
Imagine the possibilities.
Thank you.
(Applause)