Ayanna Pressley's 'Reset' For America
Drug addiction once held Martin Pressley like a vise, and he found himself in and out of the criminal justice system for more than a decade. That meant that he was also in and out of the life of his daughter, Ayanna.
“As [Equal Justice Initiative founder] Bryan Stevenson says, crimes don’t go to jail; people do,” Ayanna, now one of the most influential new voices in Congress, told me by phone on Thursday. “And so, my mother and I we did that time along with my father.”
It has been a year since Pressley became the first black woman that Massachusetts voters have ever elected to the House of Representatives. On Thursday, Rep. Pressley, a Democrat, put forth a new House resolution that uses five principles — shared power, freedom, equality, safety, and dignity — as guides to launch expansive reforms of, as she put in a statement, “a racist, xenophobic, rogue, and fundamentally flawed criminal legal system.” Included among those are lowering the prison population, abolishing the death penalty nationwide, shoring up the American social safety net, and helping those who are confined by improving health care and ensuring their civil rights.
When she spoke to Rolling Stone about the genesis for the idea, she spoke first about her father.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ayanna-pressley-criminal-justice-social-reform-safety-net-warren-912639/