A Community Conversation on Race, Mass Incarceration, and the Private Prison Industry

Grassroots Leadership, in partnership with Huston-Tillotson University and Pi Gamma Mu, will host a community conversation with Nicole D. Porter and Christopher Petrella on Race, Mass Incarceration, and Private Prisons. We are eager to welcome Nicole and Christopher to Austin, to learn from their research, and to dialogue together about how we organize to address these issues locally. See speakers' bios below. 

Light refreshments will be available. Huston-Tillotson University will host the event in the Dickey-Lawless Auditorium from 6:30 pm until 8:00 pm. For more information please contact Grassroots Leadership at 512-499-8111. 

Nicole Porter co-chairs Grassroots Leadership’s board and is the Director of Advocacy for the

Sentencing Project in Washington, DC, Nicole is the former director of the Texas ACLU's Prison & Jail Accountability Project (PJAP). PJAP's mission was to monitor the conditions of confinement in Texas jails and prisons. Nicole’s policy focus is on mass incarceration and state sentencing policies she and recently published a paper on state prison closures. Her research was instrumental in supporting organizing and advocacy in Texas during the 2013 legislative session to close two privately operated prisons. Porter graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a Master's Degree in Public Affairs from the LBJ School. Her master’s thesis addressed exploring self employment as an economic strategy among formerly incarcerated African Americans. Porter received her BA in International Affairs from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She also studied African Politics at the University of Ghana, West Africa.

Christopher Petrella is a doctoral candidate in African American Studies at the University of

 California, Berkeley currently writing a book-length manuscript entitled Courts, Contracts, and Corporate Corrections: The Paradox of the Private Prison State. He is eager to share the findings of his most recent research on racial disparities in private prisons, which has earned significant press coverage, including on Tavis Smiley’s radio broadcast, NPR, and Mother Jones. He's also co-directing a national campaign aimed at bringing transparency and accountability to the for-profit, private corrections industry. Christopher has collaborated with organizations including the ACLU's National Prison Project, Harvard Law School's Institute for Race & Justice, Southern Poverty Law Center, and Prison Legal News. He holds degrees from Bates College and Harvard University.