Jenipher R. Jones

To the NCBL Board and organization, I bring extensive board and professional experience, all devoted to social justice, liberation, and public interest. However, far more pertinent than roles or the legal complexities of cases, to work within the American carceral system, means to persistently observe and engage a system entirely designed to annihilate marginalized communities, namely Black and Brown people.

The insidiousness of its objectives, machinations, and practices rooted in slavery, are truly revealed, demonstrating the blurriness and opaqueness of so-called constitutionality. Its tentacles of trauma to generations of families, comrades, and communities, the effects of which are untold and immeasurable, convey a pattern that can only be characterized as deliberate.

That said, the principle of self-determination, a value shared with the NCBL is a principle that is applied daily in my work with political/politicized prisoners and prisoners of war, who are often incarcerated due to their work in Black, Indigenous, and other liberation movements. In my view, there is no other way to do this work.