Mark Toney

2004

Mark Toney

Reentry Solutions

Oakland, California, United States

Community Improvement & Economic Development

The Bold Idea:

The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that the number of parolees has risen to 4.3 million and that an additional 630,000 persons will be released from state and federal prisons in the next year. Researchers Christopher Uggen, Melissa Thompson, and Jeff Manza estimate that number of current and former felons exceeds 13 million, which constitutes 6.5 percent of the adult U.S. population, and a staggering 37 percent of Black males. Despite this, few resources have been devoted to develop an infrastructure to support community reintegration or address the institutional roadblocks that prevent ex-prisoners from re-entering their communities in healthy and productive ways.  Discrimination against former prisoners in employment, housing, education and benefits contributes to high rates of recidivism. 

Reentry Solutions promotes the reintegration of former prisoners through community education, leadership development and policy reform.  Based in Oakland, California, it builds organizational networks and initiates statewide reentry justice organizing campaigns in California, Texas and New York – states that account for more than one-third of all former prisoners.

Biography:

Mark has a 20-year track-record of developing leaders, building organizations and creating social change campaigns.  He is receiving his PhD from UC-Berkeley for sociology, and served as the Founding Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality for eight years.  Mark most recently worked as the Executive Director of the Center for Third World Organizing.

In an interview with Echoing Green, Mark talks about starting Reentry Solutions and his hopes for the future.

Moment of obligation: When and why did you decide to start your organization?
Since the late 1990’s, I have believed that job, housing, voting and other forms of discrimination against people who have been incarcerated is the most important emerging civil rights issue of this generation.  As a welfare rights organizer during the past decade, it became increasingly clear that funding for poor families was being misdirected into incarceration, rather than on strategies focused prevention and reentry. Since I was unable to convince the organizations with which I worked to make reentry a priority issue, I finally decided early this year, in partnership with formerly incarcerated people that I have trained as organizers, to launch Reentry Solutions. 

Who do you look up to and why?
As an organizer, I look up to the unsung hero of the Civil Rights Movement, Bob Moses, who left his job as a high school math teacher in Cleveland to become the strategic mastermind behind the voter registration drives that led to Mississippi Summer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party.  Unlike major Civil Rights leaders such as King, Wilkens, or Farmer, Bob Moses avoided personal publicity so that he could organize and develop local grassroots leaders to speak for their own communities such as Unita Blackwell, Hollis Watkins, and Fannie Lou Hamer.  He recruited and trained a multiracial group of SNCC organizers from across the country to come to Mississippi in 1963 and go door-to-door registering poor Black voters.

Snapshot in 10 years: What is your dream of what’s happening?  What impact has your organization had?
In 10 years, the issue of full citizenship rights for formerly incarcerated people will be a major social policy issue within the county, state and federal political arenas.  Reentry Solutions will be providing a wide technical support to the growing reentry civil rights movement.  Reentry Solutions will be partnering with formerly incarcerated people to elevate their own voices by starting local organizing projects around the country; conducting participatory research projects documenting the racial impact of reentry discrimination; develop public policy proposals to enhance successful reentry; and building networks of formerly incarcerated people, faith-based organizations, reentry service organizations, and legal advocacy projects to launch organizing campaigns to win full citizenship rights.

What is in your CD player?
My favorite musician of all time is the prolific jazz composer, virtuoso bassist, and demanding band leader Charles Mingus.  Much of his work reflects the political struggles of the 1950’s and 1960’s, as is evidenced in his liner notes and song titles such as: "Haitian Fight Song", "Remember Rockefeller at Attica", or "Please Don’t Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me".  Mingus had to start his own record label when Columbia Records refused to let him record his controversial lyrics to Fables of Faubus, recorded shortly after Arkansas Governor, Orval Faubus, blocked the doors of Little Rock High School to prevent Black children from enrolling in 1957.

What are a few book recommendations?
Anyone who wants to understand the impact of 20th century institutional racism on communities of color today must read the recently published Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color–Blind Society by Michael K. Brown, et al.  Written to challenge the conservative claim of colorblindness and attack on affirmative action, the authors have amassed an overwhelming body of data to show how the persistence of racism in the job and housing market, education, the criminal justice system, and the political arena continues to deprive communities of color of economic, social, and political capital.

What websites do you go to often (work or personal)?

• My favorite website is adbusters.org (www.adbusters.org), an adjunct to the monthly Adbusters magazine. 
• I’ve gotten great deals on obscure comic books, dvd’s, and other collectibles on Ebay (www.ebay.com).
• I love looking at the New York Times website because it makes feel like I am cheating by reading tomorrow’s newspaper today (www.nytimes.com).

Quick piece of advice for people starting social change organizations:
Starting any organization requires mastering the art of making the impossible routine.  Organizational leadership requires the ability to communicate a compelling vision in which people can see themselves as partners, as well as the skills and dedication to do the wide array of practical day-to-day tasks that are necessary to any start up.