stories

DeVone Boggan (Founder and CEO of Advance Peace) talks to Zach about his groundbreaking work to reduce gun violence in Richmond, California. With Zach Norris at the launch of Defund Fear on February 2nd 2021.

Jeannette Bocanegra (Executive Director, Justice for Families) shares her powerful story, about teenage prisons and the broken criminal justice system. With Zach Norris at the launch of Defund Fear on February 2nd 2021.

“We were a group of unsheltered women who worked hard to turn an illegal dumping site into a community where we could safely sleep, eat, and provide some stability for our children.”

Anita De Asis Miralle aka Needa Bee is a longtime educator, organizer, activist, creative force and entrepreneur in Oakland. She can’t help but connect the dots between issues and build coalition. She believes in service rather than charity, self-determination rather than dependency, and chopping from the top to empower the bottom. Like thousands of other hard working Oaklanders, she cannot find housing in the Bay Area that she can afford or qualify for. She is currently homeless, fighting alongside others for a Oakland systematically being erased thru economic and cultural genocide. She is the co-founder of Feed The People & The Village; the owner of Oakland’s Original Lumia Lady & The Lumpia Shack; and Program Director of Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute.

“When my brother first became involved in the system, he was not capable of causing the kind of harm that has led me to fear for my life today. Now, he is capable. The costs of that failure are too high for families like mine.”

Marlena Henderson is an advocate for Criminal Justice reform and Mental Health reform. She comes from a family who has been directly impacted by the criminal justice system, a family that tried for decades to access resources designed to intervene and rehabilitate but who were denied those resources time after time. As a victim and survivor of the mass incarceration movement she brings a unique perspective to many of the systems failures and opportunities. Marlena has worked in management, as an entrepreneur, a board member, a champion for equity in education and most recently as an advocate for Safety reform. Marlena is the parent of two teenage boys and several four legged friends.

“Our theory of change is simple. I have two children and [The Office of Neighborhood Safety Program in Richmond] couldn’t be anything less than what they have access to… daily contact and engagement every single day of their life with healthy people, multiple times a day.”

DeVone Boggan is the Founder and CEO of Advance Peace. DeVone served as Neighborhood Safety Director and Director of the City of Richmond (California) Office of Neighborhood Safety (ONS). As Director of ONS, DeVone was responsible for the development, implementation, and management of comprehensive approaches to reducing firearm assaults, preventing retaliation associated with firearm conflict, and transforming the lives of the city’s most lethal young men. DeVone is a national authority on urban gun violence prevention and intervention.