Welcome good listeners to Audio Nuggets, right here in the Mining For Gold cypher. We are joined with Tehra Coles for Episode 21: Defending Justice Against Family Policing.  

Tehra Coles is the Executive Director of the Center for Family Representation, a public defender office in New York City that represents parents in family policing cases in Queens, Manhattan, and the Bronx. 

In this episode, we glimpse Tehra’s journey of discovery. With all the zeal at her command while advocating for families, she realizes that alone, she wouldn’t be able to bring justice to families. 

Using a legal and racial analysis, Tehra explains the necessity in using accurate language to describe what we are doing to families, why using the terminology “the family policing system” is justice doing, and how by using this language, families that are impacted by this vicious and violent institution can be affirmed by knowing that people are listening. 

Tehra shares the commitment of CFR to building a culture that is saturated with the leadership and voices of impacted families. The audience also hears why abolition is the only option, and how CFR and organizations like it are supporting the movement.

Sit back, embrace, and reflect. Tehra leaves us with a call to GET ON BOARD!

Welcome good listeners to another edition of Audio Nuggets, right here in the Mining For Gold cypher!  Get ready…you are about to experience an explosion of nuggets from the Honorable Judge Aurora Martinez Jones in Episode 20: Humanity is Amazing!

Judge Aurora Martinez Jones presides over the historical 126th District Court in Travis County, Texas, where she co-founded the Child Welfare Race Equity Collaborative (CWREC). Currently, Judge Martinez Jones is leading a community effort in a local pilot to Re-Imagine the Child Welfare system. 

Through this episode, listeners experience Your Honor’s embodiment of full humanity, justice and liberation, as she shares with us the ways in which she has supported parents through the most daunting times of their lives with justice-centered representation as an attorney and now as the presiding District Judge.

The conversation showcases how her “empathy faucet” is purpose driven for our children and families, and how she has devoted herself, given of herself, and has received and answered the call to caring for entire communities.

Your Honor leaves the audience with the most heartwarming story that embodies her soul, the story of an experience that changed her in ways that are still being written.  It is the story of literally walking in another’s shoes!  We are grateful to be in community and right relationship with Your Honor. Sit back and listen and absorb every morsel of gold!

Until next time…

Welcome back good listeners to another edition of Audio Nuggets.  We are excited to be joined in the rhythm of the cypher by Cordelia Cranshaw Skeete for Episode 19: A Look Within—Escaping Replacement Culture.

Cordelia Cranshaw Skeete is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, representing the District of Columbia. Despite the odds stacked against Cordelia as an adolescent, she guides others on their healing journey and believes that the journey is just as important as the destination.

Cordelia graces the audience with her liberated voice for abolition of the family policing system.  Cordelia shares her journey of how she came to find the ways she could use her experiences, knowledge, gifts and talents to make an impact for families who are harmed by the family policing system.

The conversation is a truth-telling experience; illuminating the lack of understanding by the family policing system’s workforce of the true depths of trauma and harm that is caused to families by the institution.  Fixing doesn’t work. Families aren’t broken. It’s time to look within and understand the need and desire to replace children’s families.

Cordelia shares her sense of belonging and liberation, her commitment to support others in finding their own belonging through a healing journey, and her deep love, respect, and admiration for her community of Black women. Coradelia leaves parents with the call to never give up. Hold onto hope. And she asks all others to take a good, long look in the mirror…it’s time for a look within.

Until next time…