---

A new 501c3 non-profit has landed in Asbury Park.

Entitled, the Asbury Park Transformative Justice Project, founders Jennifer Lewinski, Kris Hlatky, and Derek Minno-Bloom aim to aid those returning from incarceration.

“We put our belief that people are not the worst thing they ever did into action by providing intentional housing, empowering organizing training, job skills and mental health counseling to people of all walks of life returning from prison,” Minno Bloom said in a written statement. “We look to drastically reduce recidivism by bringing an end to the victimization and powerlessness inherent in today’s criminal justice system by using a transformative justice model.”

Among the nonprofit’s first task will be to establish enough funding to employ Lewinski, who currently works as a taxicab dispatcher.

“We hope to raise enough money so that she can stop dispatching cabs (not that there is anything wrong with that) and start being paid to be a community organizer,” the written statement said. “We believe that the best organizers are those who are most affected by those injustice.”

Transformative justice is a three pronged approach to battling current injustices within the justice system, Lewinski said in the 1½- minute long fundraising video [below].

“The first prong is just about educating people about what brings people into the prison industrial complex in the first place,” she said. “The second is creating real community healing with the people affected by crime, and the third is to get people to educate and organize around injustices that incarcerate people.”

While Hlatky and Minno Bloom will volunteer their time during the nonprofit’s first year, Lewinski will serve as its director, working to create a website, obtain a home for the project, and build relationships with community members coming out of prison. She is also the founder of Asbury Park Black Lives Matter.

A part of their mission will be to find community-based responses to violation that do not center in the criminal justice system and to ensure accountability for the formerly incarcerated. Noting that forms of oppression, like racism, sexism, homophobia, ageism, elitism, classism and ableism play a role in the root to cause injustices that exist today.

“We know that the prison industrial complex is a business that has created a demand and we understand that in order to be humane we can not treat humans as commodities,” the written statement said. “They must be considered living beings who deserve justice, dignity, and healing.”

To donate, and for more about the Asbury Park Transformative Justice Project, click here.

———————————————————————————————————

Follow the Asbury Park Sun on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The Asbury Park Sun is affiliated with the triCityNews newspaper.

---