TEN

A BALLOT INITIATIVE?

HE FURTHER I DOVE into felon disenfranchisement, its history and its impact, the more powerful the flame grew inside me to see justice restored. I was constantly interacting with people who were impacted by these policies, whether they were returning citizens coming to the recovery house that I was managing on a daily basis or people I was coming into contact with as I traveled around the state trying to pull together FRRC as an organization. So many of these people were good people who happened to live in a state with repressive laws.

Whenever I thought about how an elected official was able to control life for so many people with just a signature on a paper, it sat heavy in my heart. By 2011, there were an estimated 1.4 million Floridians who couldn’t vote because of a felony conviction (that still included me), and we couldn’t figure out the right way to help them. One way was to petition the governor and his cabinet, including the clemency board, but that had worked against us. We weren’t totally satisfied with the policy that Charlie Crist had implemented, but it was something, and it had allowed over 155,000 people to register to vote. To see that those rights hung at the mercy of whoever occupied the governor’s mansion next and whatever he or she might be feeling was untenable.

Another way to try to accomplish our goals was to work with the state legislature. Trying to get a bunch of politicians to agree on something is daunting, and at one point we worked with a lobbyist to help us understand the way power flowed around the halls of the capitol. It was so complex. In order to even get something to the floor for a vote, it had to get out of various committees. You could do a lot of work, and get real movement on a bill, only to have it die in one committee. It could be the last committee to hear the bill, and it could just languish there because the chair of that committee didn’t put it on the agenda. And if the bill is not on the agenda, it can’t be heard. Once again, it was power concentrated in the hands of a few people who for whatever reason didn’t care to support returning citizen re-enfranchisement.

The final way to restore our rights was a ballot initiative. To pass a ballot initiative you need 60 percent of the vote and not just a simple majority. But still, there were at least 1.4 million people affected by these policies. I was sure that we could find enough directly impacted people, returning citizens, to get five to ten members of their families or their networks to pledge to vote for the restoration of their rights. What would it be like if only half of those people were able to get family members and friends out to vote on their behalf?

Right from the beginning, though, we met opposition. Lots of people told us why we would not be successful. It was too expensive to run a ballot initiative, they said. There was very low public support for the issue. It had been tried, but no real headway had been made, so it had been abandoned after only a few petitions were signed. Slow down, I felt like saying. Talk to me about these issues one at a time.

In that, I took my cue from President Obama, who was rounding out his first term at the time. When he first announced that he was running for the highest office in the land, nobody knew who Barack Obama was. People told him he didn’t have a chance. Obama didn’t spend all his time with the people who already supported him. He went to the people who said he wasn’t qualified and asked them, “Well, why don’t you think I can be president?” Whatever reply they came back with, he came back with his own reply, and a conversation was started. It was through this engagement that he was able to start winning people over slowly, all the way to the point where he got to the Democratic National Convention because a majority of Democrats had said that, yes, he can be the president. He has what it takes.

After Obama got the nomination, then he had to go against his Republican counterpart. More people who questioned his level of experience came out of the woodwork. They ran ads asking America, “Is that who you want, when that call comes at midnight? Is this who you want answering?” Obama continued, however, to not just play to his base. He went to people who did not believe that he could be the commander in chief, and he talked to them. Slowly, but surely, he was able to convince people, or at least have them cast doubt on their own firmly held notions. And in the end, he had more people saying that he could be president than people saying that he couldn’t.

In a similar way, when I heard people telling me what couldn’t be done, that just made me work even harder. When people told me something was not going to work, I asked them to explain to me why it wasn’t going to work. I took in their explanation and used it to help shape my thinking. I was always seeking ways to improve our strategy because, Who am I? I’ve never run a ballot initiative before or done anything like that. I’m just a formerly homeless drug addict from Miami. What do I know about running a statewide operation or the politics involved and all of that? I don’t know what I don’t know.

There were some folks who were just naysayers, and I couldn’t get very far with them. But then you had some folks who were not just naysayers. They were willing to engage in a conversation and be converted. So those were the individuals who I consistently went back to. If you’re willing to show me what you believe is the right way or to explain to me why you think my way is wrong, then I can work with you, because you’re teaching me something. I would actually thank you for destroying some of my thinking. That would force me to go back to the drawing board and be better prepared, so that when I came to you, you were not going to destroy the same thing. Maybe you’d find something else, but now I knew that first thing was solid.

I was especially open to constructive criticism when I could see that my adversary was saying no because I hadn’t presented the issue to them in the right way, at least not yet. They weren’t saying no because they didn’t think it was the right thing to do or because they didn’t believe in the value of returning citizens as human beings. They were just saying no to what I’d presented to them. So, I needed to tighten up my presentation. As I tightened things up, little by little, I’d find a person here and a person there who said you might be onto something.

I did extensive canvassing to unearth all the objections to a ballot initiative to re-enfranchise felons. The most powerful one turned out to be the result of a grisly event that had made national headlines and resulted in sweeping changes in legislation just a few years prior.

Jessica Marie Lunsford was a nine-year-old girl from southwest Florida who had been abducted and murdered. She was taken from her home by a registered sex offender who lived nearby; the details, including the rape and means of death, were beyond heartbreaking. In response, Florida created the Jessica Lunsford Act, which tightened controls on sexual offenders registering within the counties they lived in, such as having them wear electronic tracking devices or even increasing their initial prison sentences. Before long, forty-two states had implemented some form of “Jessica’s Law.”

Around that time, a Quinnipiac poll was taken that showed very low support from Florida voters for the restoration of rights for returning citizens. It seemed that a wide variety of respondents conflated the meaning of “ex-offender” and “sex offender.” The two groups were so thoroughly associated that any further discussion would have to clearly redefine the terms in people’s minds. This was where I thought that switching the focus to the term “returning citizens” would prove to be most useful.

DURING THIS TIME, WE TRIED A LOT OF WAYS TO MAKE FIGHTING FELON DISENFRAN-chisement a more popular issue. FRRC was due to have our next convening, and I wanted to find a keynote speaker who would attract people and make them want to get in that room. A very popular speaker of the day was Professor Charles Ogletree from Harvard. He had a new book coming out that year, Life Without Parole: America’s New Death Penalty?, which he coedited, so I knew we were on the same page as far as the potential overreach of the criminal justice system.

I found out that Professor Ogletree was going to be in Tallahassee around the time of the convening, giving a presentation at the annual gathering of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus. I drove up with a friend to see if we could meet with him. I didn’t have a team of folks to help me snag some A-list personality to speak, and I definitely didn’t have the money to pay for anyone. I just felt if I could get next to Ogletree, I could convince him to be the keynote speaker at our convening.

We ended up missing the event, or rather his speaking portion, but there were still some people milling around. I ran into a lady who had heard me speak at a community center several weeks before. She ran up to me and said, “I got somebody for you to meet!” She introduced me to a lady by the name of Salandra. As it turns out, Salandra was standing right next to her sister, Sheena. I was introduced to both of them. After being introduced, I looked at Sheena and said, “I think I’m supposed to meet you.”

Sheena thought it was a pick-up line, of course. I don’t blame her. But I was not like that. I was still in the business of protecting my sobriety. I just felt overwhelmed when I was in her presence. Sheena and Salandra were there as part of a group called the Black Women’s Roundtable. They were going back to their hotel, which was up a hill. I found myself trudging along after them, and I’m telling you, that was a steep hill. I was out of breath by the time we were halfway (my days of being in top form and playing football were long behind me), but I was determined to get to that hotel. When I got there, I ended up having the opportunity to share my story with Sheena and tell her what I was trying to do.

The same day, we had lunch, and then she left to drive back down to Central Florida. I remember talking to her on the phone her entire way there, telling her I wanted to meet her mom. The funny thing was, I had met her mom a few months before. I was speaking at an event, and her mom was waiting in a line of people who wanted to talk to me afterward. She introduced herself and then went back and told her family about this amazing young man she had met.

When I made the connection with Sheena, I knew that this was the woman I was supposed to be with. I didn’t want to come off as too aggressive, but I was very confident that this woman was supposed to be in my life. The next day, I drove back from Tallahassee to Miami, and then I turned right around to drive back up to Central Florida because I wanted to have dinner with Sheena on Valentine’s Day. On our date, I told her that she was the one. I know that she was a little thrown off because she had been having people describe the man she was going to meet, and I checked all of the boxes. Everything just fit right into place.

Sheena’s birthday was in June. She had heard me sing before, a line or two during our courting phase, so when she invited me to her birthday party, she asked me to perform there. I told her, “No, I won’t sing.” She kept asking me, and I kept turning her down because I had decided that I was going to sing as part of proposing to her. She had no clue.

For the birthday party, her dad came down from Philadelphia, so both her parents were at the party. I took them aside and asked their permission to propose to their daughter. They gave it to me. I then approached Sheena in the middle of the dance floor and started to sing the song “One in a Million You” by Larry Graham. By the time that night had arrived, she knew I was going to sing, but she didn’t know that I was going to propose. Near the end of the song, I got on my knees and produced the ring.

Basically, I told her that I thought God had placed us in each other’s lives to do his work. She had such an amazing story, having overcome so much as a teenage mother, dealing with all kinds of obstacles, to be who she was at the time, and I recognized that. I told her, “God uses broken people, people who have gone through traumatic things to have an impact in their community and society.” I recognized that bringing the two of us together was just the beginning of something that was going to be beautiful—and not just for us. Our number-one priority has always been our community, our world.

Sheena jumped right in. When we started dating, she told me everything I was doing wrong. She called me “the broke organizer.” She told me that she believed in what I was trying to do, but she had all kinds of useful critiques about how I could do it better. I was still using a Yahoo account. She told me about Gmail. She taught me how to use technology to be more organized, to really be able to promote the work I was trying to accomplish. She wrote out a whole mini-campaign plan for me and gave it to me, saying, “If you really want to be impactful, these are the things you have to think about.”

We didn’t have a building or a website or any staff. Sheena was instrumental in helping to make all of that happen. She was not just the organizing director; she was the communications director, the operations director, and the administrative professional. She was all of that wrapped up in the one. Everything she touched made us who we are today. When people look at FRRC, they often comment that we are ahead of the curve with the quality of our materials. Sheena did that.

What she wanted to be, and became, was director of strategic partnerships and relationships and projects. Something she said that has really stuck to me was that we didn’t want to just be in a transactional relationship with our donors. We wanted to be in an authentic relationship, to be able to engage them in such a way that it wasn’t just, Write a check and go about your business. No, we wanted you to be a part of this journey with us. When that happened, that funder, that donor, had a personal buy-in to the work we were doing, and it really helped stimulate strong support for the organization.

I tell folks that my wife has more organizing skills in her pinky than I do in my entire body, multiple times over. We met in February of 2012. I proposed to her in June of 2012. We got married on 12/12/12, by the woman who baptized me as a baby on the US Virgin Island of Saint Croix. And we have been by each other’s side ever since.