Honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s Legacy for Criminal Legal Reform

January 16, 2023

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

At EXPO, we honor Dr. King’s legacy by refusing to stay silent about the things that matter for our people. As our colleague Ramiah Whiteside once said, “We shine a light of awareness and truth where others refuse to acknowledge.” We do so by showing up and sharing our stories in spaces where the criminal legal system attempts to strip us of our humanity.

We will not be silent about the racial inequities in the system. We will not be silent about the harms of the system. We will not be silent about the lives of more than 80,000 men and women in WI under the care of the Department of Corrections or the Department of Community Corrections. These things matter – to us and to our community. Thank you Dr. King; your legacy pushes us to never be silent.

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People in our communities without direct experience with incarceration are often ill-informed of the negative, and catastrophic, effects on earnings and employment, physical and mental health, housing and education, and family well-being created and perpetuated by the carceral system. Through our advocacy work in local and state government, EXPO creates space, opportunity, and support for system-impacted individuals to raise their voices about the systemic and institutional harm of the incarceration. In the words of one of our organizers, EXPO’s work “shines a light of awareness and truth where others refuse to acknowledge.”

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