The Journeys Toward Justice Curriculum is designed to help equip, resource, and train justice-minded African American community organizations - both faith-based and non - who seek to educate and advocate for peace and justice in Palestine and Israel. This curriculum contains a Facilitator Guide and the Student Guide.

It is with much humility, a sense of sacred service and privilege, that The Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, Inc. (SDPC) publishes this study guide to support reading and discussion groups of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by civil rights attorney and author Michelle Alexander.

SDPC’s sacred memory agenda is an extension of our past truth-telling educational, advocacy and activism initiatives. These initiatives include our “bearing witness” methodologies related to Katrina and mass incarceration and resulting in a documentary, commissions and hearings processes.

Bearing Witness is an excellent resource for faith communities, advocacy groups, and all those who are willing to speak with courage and work for justice. As this report makes obvious, the truth about mass incarceration is ugly and inconvenient. But if we turn away imagine this is not our concern, millions more will be lost to this system on our watch.

This Interfaith Resource Guide, reflecting a broad coalition of religious groups and communities, has been developed by the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference , Inc. and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. It includes a collection of reflections, sacred texts, liturgies, prayers, meditations, and policy papers from a diverse group of faith leaders and communities.  We are pleased that this resource will not only serve as a key tool in preparation for the 2016 UNGASS but will be useful in the ongoing discourse engaging the faith community to address solutions to the global drug problem. 

The title of this report, the breach: Bearing Witness, was born and revealed in the moments of spoken word and testimony.   “We survived Katrina; it was the levees that killed us.”  This spoken word of one who had come to share and testify was a prelude to what was to come.