JAIL BILL OF RIGHTS

Jaws of Justice Radio investigates how we can achieve justice from a system of laws deeply rooted in economic, social and political inequality.  We want to dispel misconceptions created by the news and entertainment industry, politicians and our educational system. We hope you will listen. Host Bev Livingston speaks with her guest, Lora McDonald, Executive Director of Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity, better known as “MORE Squared”.  Lora McDonald has served as a social worker in metropolitan Kansas City for three decades. In her early career, she worked in a Missouri state prison; licensed foster and adoptive families; and served youth who were street homeless. McDonald’s career evolved to developing and implementing programs, ranging from crisis intervention with adoptive families to creating community gardens; more recently, McDonald was the architect of the Second Chance Program for people returning from incarceration.  While designing Second Chance, she would organize the Kansas City Metropolitan Reentry Coalition in order to address policies that impeded the success of people with criminal histories.  Around the same time, she was introduced to MORE2 and the National Leadership Training from the Gamaliel Network. She has been Ex. Dir of More² since 2012, and during that time, the organization has won many victories, expanded into Kansas, and sustained a significant ongoing public presence through a myriad of issues. Lora McDonald was the lead organizer who beat back a plan to collapse KCPS for an all-charter school model; she wrote the bill and led statewide organizing to win food stamps for people with drug convictions; and drove the campaign that established the first tenant’s rights in Kansas City, Missouri with the passage of Healthy Homes. MORE2 is recognized as one of the leading organizations for police reform in the metro, specifically focused on accountability and transparency in Kansas City, Kansas, and local control of Kansas City Police Department. Bev and Lora will talk about the More² Gubernatorial Forum, Voting Rights for Formerly Incarcerated people and on June 2nd, a Jail Bill of Rights coming up before the legislature in Jackson County for a final vote. Then, Host Keith Brown El will talk with our NEW Host, Justice Johnson, about jails in Jackson County MO and Kansas City MO as we try to keep listeners informed of the changes being made in our local incarceration system. On Jaws of Justice, we examine how to find justice in our society.  Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are.