A Conversation with Crime Survivors Speak National Director Aswad Thomas

In 2009, Aswad Thomas was 26 years old and weeks away from going to Europe to play professional basketball. As he left a convenience store he was approached by two young men intent on robbing him and he suffered two near-fatal gunshot wounds to his back ending his basketball career. Today, Aswad is Vice President of the public safety organization Just Safe and the director of Crime Survivors Speak, a national network of over 200,000 crime victims across the country, particularly from communities hardest hit by crime and violence. At Crime Survivors Speak Aswad helps elevate the voices of crime victims in policy debates, which has helped pass legislation increasing crime prevention, rehabilitation and access to victim compensation and trauma recovery. Aswad has been featured in news stories across the country including the New Yorker "Black Wounds Matter, NPR: “Black Men Who Are Crime Victims Have Few Places to Turn”, and the Sacramento Bee: “California's crime survivors must speak out for smart justice”.Learn more about TimeDone at https://timedone.org/Learn more about JustSafe at https://justsafe.org/This podcast is proudly sponsored by the Innocence Project of Florida. Visit www.floridainnocence.org for more information.