WE CAN MAKE IT IF WE TRY

The workshop was fabulous. Now having been to dozens of these teachings, this one is in the top three and if The Real Cost of Prisons Project is hosting a gathering in your neighborhood, I recommend you attend. I am not a numbers kind of person; I have an aversion to absolute values. However, Mark Brenner, (holding sole court because Eduardo Velazquez was out of the country), in an impressively organized presentation, delivered the statistics in an engaging and thoroughly comprehensible manner and the timing and content of the passouts almost eliminated the need to take notes. I actually wished it had been longer.

I learned some things I didn't know and I'll have more to say about that later. However, the stellar program content aside, this project bills itself as vehicle to draw activists together into the common cause and I don't want to let the moment pass without saying how really cool it was to put a face on the local fellowship of my hitherto unknown kindred souls.

It's a small valley and we all wear more than one hat. I realized as the day went on that I knew almost everyone in attendance in another context and although we came to the table with diverse agendas, we found much common ground.

Unequivocally a day well spent.