a reflective journal about social action from JustDane
Dear Friends, I hope you were able to join us on April 11th for our 50th Anniversary celebration with Father Gregory Boyle, Elvis and Javier from Homeboy Industries. It was an evening of hope, love and celebration. Father Boyle, Javier and Elvis reminded us of the transformative power of radical hospitality, of forgiveness (of ourselves and others), and of an allencompassing love. It’s what we seek to live out every day at JustDanewhether through our direct services, our advocacy, or our work to serve as an incubator for new ideas and initiatives in our community. In the mid-1990’s JustDane began to focus on the impact of the criminal legal system in our community and state. We created our Reentry Simulation to build community awareness of the challenges facing people as they return home from prison. Recognizing that no parent serves their prison sentence alone, in 1999 we agreed to be the incubator for Family Connections, which took children to visit their moms at Taycheedah prison. Eventually Family Connections added Reading Connections and both became permanent programs at JustDane. This was followed by the creation of our Circles of Support reentry program (2002) and our Mentoring Connections
community-based mentoring program for children impacted by parental incarceration (2004). In 2005, we were selected by the United Way of Dane County to implement their signature initiative, The Journey Home. Per the United Way’s model, the program focused on residency, employment, support and treatment.
In 2019 the United Way facilitated a Journey Home Delegation team to update the plan, incorporating education into the focus areas, including Parenting Inside Out classes offered to participants. It has been a transformational initiative, with the
United Way of Dane County leading the way nationally by investing in reentry initiatives. In 2013 Just Bakery was launched, and in 2017, our formal Reentry Peer Support initiative began, with funding from the City of Madison and Dane County Human Services. In 2012, based on JustDane’s history of convening task forces to study community issues and make recommendations for solutions, the Dane County Board asked us to form a Task Force to study why a de facto encampment had sprung up on the old Don Miller car lot on E. Washington St., Madison. Originally part of the Occupy political movement, the encampment also attracted individuals who were unhoused and looking for community and safety in numbers. The encampment was led by individuals living there, a cooperative community that had created their own governance structure and rules that included no drinking or drug use. Challenges came when police began picking people up off of the street and dropping them at the encampment, often to “sleep it off.” The police told the people living there that, as the property was private property, the police could not enforce any of the rules the encampment residents had created.
Spring 2024