SPEAKERS


FEATURED SPEAKERS: 


Jean Trounstine  

Jean Trounstine is an activist, author and professor emerita at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, Massachusetts.  Her most recent book is Boy With A Knife: A Story of Murder, Remorse, and a Prisoner's Fight for Justice (IG Publishing, 2016).  It explores the true story of Karter Kane Reed and the injustice of sentencing juveniles to adult prisons.  Trounstine worked at Framingham Women's Prison for ten years where she directed eight plays with prisoners.  Her highly praised book about that work, Shakespeare Behind Bars: The Power of Drama in a Women's Prison, has been featured on NPR, the Connection, Here and Now, and numerous print publications here and abroad.  In addition, she has spoken around the world on women in prison, co-founded the women's branch of Changing Lives Through Literature, an award-winning alternative sentencing program featured in The New York Times and on The Today Show, and co-authored two books about the 
program. She published a book of poetry, Almost Home Free, and co-edited the New England best-seller, Why I'm Still Married: Women Write Their Hearts Out On Love, Loss, Sex, and Who Does the Dishes. Trounstine is on the steering committee of the Coalition for Effective Public Safety in Massachusetts. She takes apart the criminal justice system brick by brick for magazines and blogs such as Boston Magazine, Truthout.org, the Rag Blog and Huffington Post. You can follow her on Twitter @justicewithjean.



                Karter Reed

Karter Reed is an activist, advocate,
mentor, and volunteer.  He is a former prisoner, incarcerated from the age of 16 throught 37.  In addition to his work with criminal justice reform, he is a college graduate and homeowner.  He lives in central Massachusetts and travels regularly for speaking engagements and volunteer commitments. 


Dr. Bernard Lafayette

Bernard Lafayette has been recognized as a major authority on strategiesfor nonviolent social change in the world. Emerging as one of the youngactivists from the Freedom Riders, in 1963

he become the Director ofSNCC”s (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) Alabama voter registrationproject.  Lafayette marched with Dr.Martin Luther King in Selma to gain voter rights for African Americans andworked with him until King’s death. After Selma, Lafayette worked in Chicago with members of the AmericanFriends Service Committee on their Open Housing Movement.  It was that relationship that brought Dr.Lafayette and the Quakers together again when inmates at the “Think Tank” atGreenhaven Prison in New York had who had witnessed the Attica riots and were concernedwith the recidivism revolving door, wanted program for non-violence in theirprison.  The result, AVP was conceived withDr. Lafayette as one of the original creators.

Since that first AVP workshop in 1975, Dr. BernardLafayette has gone on to be ordained as a Baptist Minister.  He was the first director of the PeaceEducation Program at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota, and a SeniorFellow at the University of Rhode Island where he helped tofound the Center for Nonviolence and Peace Studies. The Center promotesnonviolence education using a curriculum based on the principles and methods ofMartin Luther King, Jr. 

Lafayette was honored as a Doctor of Humane Letters fromMount Holyoke College, in May 2012. In 2014, The University of Rhode Islandhonored Lafayette with an honorary doctorate in recognition of his lifetimenonviolence leadership for civil and human rights.

”Lafayette is now a professorat Emory University and the chairman of the Southern Christian LeadershipConference, an organization once led by King. He has spent the last fivedecades doing as King instructed, teaching non-violence at home and in 35countries around the world, including to prisoners in California and gangmembers in Columbia.

He contemplated if King's ideaof institutionalizing non-violence has happened in this country.

"No," it hasn'thappened," he said. "You see, violence is a language of theinarticulate, when people don't know how to talk and communicated with eachother."

Whichis why he also went to Ferguson, Mo., to help a new generation findalternatives to violence and defeat those who hate.” By Anna Werner CBS NewsJanuary 19, 2015

Adam Foss  


AdamJ. Foss is a former Assistant District Attorney in the Juvenile Division of theSuffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston MA. Currently, he sits onthe Massachusetts Governor’s Juvenile Justice Advisory Committee and is avisiting fellow at Harvard Law School.  As a fierce advocate for criminal justice reform, he champions theimportance of the role of the prosecutor in ending mass incarceration. Mr. Fossis on the Executive Board of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association andchairs its Community Service Committee.  He is the chair of the CriminalJustice Section Council of the Massachusetts Bar Association and sits on theCriminal Justice Section Steering Committee of the Boston Bar Association   In bothhis professional and personal capacities, Mr. Foss volunteers much of his timeto the community in which he works, including the creation of a diversionprogram for first time juvenile offenders in the Suffolk County JuvenileCourt.  He is also the co-founder of a collaborative effort in Roxburycourt called the Roxbury CHOICE Program, an initiative to turn probation from apunitive sentence into a beneficial relationship with the court, the probationdepartment, and the District Attorney’s Office. Recently two important honors have been bestowed on Attorney Foss. Hewas named Graduate of the Last Decade by his alma mater, Suffolk University LawSchool.  The Mandela Foundationrecognized Mr. Foss as the 2017 Nelson Mandela Changemaker award recipient.  To see more, watch the TED Talk at www.ted.com/speakers/adam_foss.

            Robin Casarjian

Robin Casarjian, M.A. is the Founderand Director of the Lionheart Foundation and its National Emotional LiteracyProjects. She is an educator, public speaker, writer, and consultant. Indeveloping and implementing programming for prisoners and youth-at-risk, shedraws from her experience as director of a school for at-risk adolescents, aswell as extensive experience in education, stress management training,psychotherapy and administration. She is author of Forgiveness: A Bold Choicefor a Peaceful Heart (Bantam, 1992) and Houses of Healing: A Prisoner’s Guideto Inner Power and Freedom (Lionheart Press, 1995), and co-author, with BethanyCasarjian, Ph.D., of Power Source: Taking Charge of Your Life (Lionheart Press,2003)

At the core of The Lionheart Foundation’sNational Emotional Literacy Project for Prisoners is the Houses of HealingProgram, a powerful 13-session rehabilitation curriculum (books, facilitatormanual, and video series) created specifically for prisoners and the formerlyincarcerated. The centerpiece of this program is the book Houses of Healing: APrisoners Guide to Inner Power and Freedom in state and federal prisons as wellas larger county jails nationwide.  Houses of Healing is a researchdriven, cognitive-behavioral, emotional literacy (re)habilitation curriculumdesigned to offer skillful guidance and equip prisoners with the tools toeffectively manage emotions, take stock of and heal the trauma that oftenunderlies criminal behavior, take responsibility for offending behavior, andchange the life-long patterns of violence and addiction in order to buildproductive lives.

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