Susan Burton, Kim McGill and Marshall McClain

A New Way of Life’s Founder and Director Susan Burton is herself a formerly incarcerated woman who understands the challenges people face leaving prison. After more than 20 years cycling in and out of the criminal justice system, she saw that women coming home from prison faced tremendous institutional barriers: rules, laws, policies and attitudes that operated to deny them access to employment, student loans, permanent housing, public assistance and many other services. Challenging such obstacles in isolation would be a futile exercise. Susan came to understand that real change could only happen through a powerful, grassroots community organizing effort, one that could amass enough political power to bring an end to discriminatory practices, and shift public attitudes in a way that would break the cycle of mass incarceration…and A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project was born.

Kim McGill, an organizer with the Youth Justice Coalition of Los Angeles, discusses recruiting and training young organizers around the issues of the juvenile injustice system, police and prison funding, the school to prison pipeline, what it means to build a movement led by people and communities of color, especially youth of color.
In 2002 Kim helped co-found the grassroots movement Youth Justice Coalition. Kim also serves on the Advisory Committee of “the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth”. Kim is a strong and persistence voice in the struggle for justice for young people of color. Author of PROP 57

Marshall McClain is the president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers’ Association and a Senior Lead Officer for the Los Angeles Airport Police Department. He’s been in law enforcement for over 17 anni. Marshall is one of a handful of African-Americans who head a police union in the United States of America