Two years ago, Tee was a broken woman. Stymied by her struggles, rejected by employers, embroiled in an extended family of poverty and powerlessness, wrapped up in her own grief, and defined by her...
Read MoreIn the US, about 2,000 people are being released today, and every day, from state and federal prisons. When someone is released from the penitentiary, they’re often put outside the prison gates at...
Read MoreThere may be no category of people with more hopelessness directed their way, than people who’ve returned to our community after incarceration. Expected by most to fail, the exclusion is...
Read MoreThe sweet sound of a friendly dispute trickled down our office hallway one recent afternoon. David was trying to give Project Return the credit for the great new job he’d just gotten. We argued...
Read MoreLives are under threat. It is all around, all the time: this ubiquitous, predictable-in-its-unpredictability menace. The awareness infuses people’s waking hours and often haunts their dreams; it...
Read MoreWe may be craving a little constancy these days, while the pandemic swirls around us, while employment is swept out from under people who’ve returned from incarceration, while we worry about their...
Read MoreSomeone getting out of prison right now will likely land at the Greyhound Station on Lafayette, and have no place to go, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. They’ll hear the imperatives about...
Read MoreIt was early March and we had spent the whole weekend composing Project Return’s COVID-19 Preparedness & Response Plan. It couldn’t have been more thoughtful and well-intentioned...
Read MoreDollars and sense were center stage at our Employer Roundtable on July 18th. Middle Tennessee employers – spanning healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality, customer service, and construction –...
Read MoreThe email hit my Project Return inbox, and my first thought was, this is an April Fool’s joke. How else could I explain getting an invitation to the White House for April 1st! It would be the...
Read MoreWith jerky, faltering movements, Jimmie made his way across our parking lot and through our front door. He’s a smiley – and normally very agile – man with a positive outlook on life, but we...
Read MoreOne of the cruelest hopes we may experience in life is the irrational thought that a loved one who is dead may one day return. When your guard is down, in defiance of reality, you fantasize that that...
Read More“Today this man is getting his voting rights back.” My friend Maurice Harris remembers the day he heard a judge make that pronouncement. It was 2008, and Maurice had paid $500 for the cost of...
Read MoreWe all know a 180 when we see one. Those transformations that literally mean going in the opposite direction, that figuratively mean you have turned your life around. From night to day, from a season...
Read MoreThe hard fact is, some people commit multiple crimes and serve more than one sentence, before getting it right. Aren’t they just as human as the rest of us? How rare it is for humans to make a...
Read MoreThis past week saw record-breaking weather conditions in Nashville. The snow, ice and frigid temps caused Tennessee’s governor to declare a State of Emergency, and our Mayor urged drivers to...
Read MoreNashville, like many American metropolises, turned its back on its river for years. Never mind that the Cumberland cut a deep and wide swath through the central city. Never mind that it was an...
Read MoreIt is the stuff of TV drama: a straight-laced, hard-working, law-abiding man reaches a tipping point — he sees that, in the face of terminal illness and the seemingly insurmountable need to...
Read MoreIt’s tempting not to think about folks getting out of prison, returning to our neighborhoods. If you’ve never been to prison, it’s easy to be suspicious and dismissive of those who...
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