John Horejsi Archives - Read. Think. Act.

(Feb. 12, 2018) Catherine Read speaks with several advocates to look at where their legislation is headed during the 2018 VA General Assembly. February 14 marked “crossover”, which was the halfway point of the General Assembly session. The bills that made their way through the House will “crossover” to the Senate, and the bills in the Senate will make their way to the House for debate and discussion. Additionally, they will take up the Governor’s Budget starting on Monday February 19^th.

SALT

Catherine’s first guest was John Horejsi, director of SALT (Social Action Linking Together ), a network of persons in Virginia embracing the principle that “The justice of a society can be measured by how the most vulnerable members of society are faring and being treated”. Their legislative agenda is very robust, here is a breakdown of how their bills are faring this year:

HB 797: Electronic Visitation for Correctional Facilities

This bill would not allow the prisons to limit in-person visitation, if the facility also offers video visitation as an option. Studies have shown a lower rate of recidivism and higher success rates upon re-entry to society when they have the opportunity to see their loved ones in person.

SB 593: Health Insurance Coverage for Autism Spectrum Disorder

This bill would require Insurance companies to provide medical insurance coverage for children ages 10-18. Currently they are only required to cover children ages 2-6 years old. Passed the Senate and referred to Appropriations.

SB 27: TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Scholarship Pilot Program:

A temporary 2 year pilot program would establish a scholarship fund for students in poverty of up to $4000 per student, should the student meet the requirements. This bill passed the Senate and was referred to House Appropriations. Unfortunately, it’s companion bill in the House (HB 285) was killed, so the fate of this bill does not look promising.
HB 50: School Lunch Shaming

Requires local school boards to develop policies of how to deal with students whose lunch accounts are overdue. They would be required to communicate with parents, instead of shaming the children by singling them if their account it overdue. It would prohibit the school board from having the children perform chores in order to get food. It would also not allow the school to put a sticker or hand stamp on a child whose account is overdue. Passed the House 100-0.

HB 1333: Kinship/Guardianship

This bill would give the needed financial support to Grandparents or other extended family who are raising children who cannot live with their parents. The bill sets forth eligibility criteria, payment allowances to kinship guardians, and requirements for kinship guardianship assistance programs. The bill passed the House and was send onto the Committee for Rehabilitation and Social Services in the Senate.

SB 181: Drivers License, Suspension for non-payment of fines

This bill would repeal the requirement that a driver’s license of anyone convicted of any violation of the law who fails or refuses to immediately pay the fine or cost be suspended. This bill disproportionately affected those in the lowest income bracket. If someone loses their license and cannot get to work, then they cannot ever afford to pay their fines. This bill has passed the Senate and has been referred to House Appropriations.

BRAWS

Catherine’s second guest was Holly Seibold, Founder of BRAWS (Bringing Resources and Aid to Women’s Shelters ). Their mission is to bring dignity and empowerment to women and girls living in shelters by providing them with new, personally fitted undergarments and menstrual supplies. Holly’s group has several initiatives that they were working on this year.

HB 83: Feminine Hygiene Products – No Cost to Female Prisoners or Inmates

Directs the State Board of Corrections to implement a standard to ensure that all women prisoners have access to feminine hygiene products at no charge. This bill passed the House 100-0.

HB 24: Make Feminine Hygiene Products Exempt from Sales Tax

This bill would have made feminine hygiene products exempt from sales tax. A sister bill (HB 25) was put in to make these products exempt from tax during the sales tax holiday each August for back to school shopping. Both of these bills died in the House this year.

FEA

Catherine’s final guest for this week’s show was Kevin Hickerson from the FEA (Fairfax Education Association) His organization advocates to make Fairfax County Schools the best school system possible. They are trying to work with the General Assembly to assist with the teacher shortage, without reducing standards of quality. Kevin spoke about one of their largest initatives, which would allow local schools to increase recess time without having to increase overall instruction time (HB 1419). He also noted his excitement about working with Atif Qarni, the new Secretary of Education under Gov. Ralph Northam. Hickerson noted that having a former classroom teacher at the top of the hierarchy will be a great asset to the Commonwealth.

HB 1419 – Public Schools Instructional Time

This bill would give local school the ability to expand recess without having to increase instructional time. Studies have shown that if students are given more time for unstructured play and the ability to move around, that they have more success in the classroom and are better able to focus on their learning. This bill has passed the House and is moving on the Education and Health Committee in the Senate.

(Dec. 25, 2017) Catherine Read speaks with John Horejsi, Executive Director of Social Action Linking Together (SALT) and Gay Gardner and Kimberly Jenkins Snodgrass of the Interfaith Action for Human Rights (IAHR) to talk about their legislative initiatives for the upcoming year. Catherine inspires her audience to “Go Out and Do Good” during this holiday season by supporting the organizations that work to improve the conditions of those who are marginalized in our society.

In the first segment, Catherine speaks with John Horejsi to talk about SALT’s history and upcoming legislative issues. SALT was founded in 1983 after faith groups came together to solve problems in Virginia regarding food stamps. It took their coalition 3 years to get their issue addressed and resolved, and in the process learned a lot about how to effectively lobby and bring together lawmakers to solve some of the systemic problems in our society. Their work focuses on the most marginalized citizens, who often have no voice in the area of public policy debate. SALT is a multi-faith effort, bringing together Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups who want to work toward change.

Horejsi shares that SALT will often pick two or three issues to focus on in at any given time. They work hard to fully understand all aspects of any issue, and often compromise and bring people together to find optimal solutions. The organization provides fall and spring trainings to faith groups who want to organize and work in their coalition.

For 2018, SALT is focusing on three main legislative issues. The first issue focuses on prison visitation. With the wide availability of video conferencing, prisons wanted to cut in-person visits. Horejsi notes that in person family visitation has been shown to dramatically cut the recidivism rate. In-person visits help connect prisoners to family in a much more effective way, so SALT is advocating for the Department of Corrections to not cut the in person visitation, even if they increase the availability of video conferencing.

The second issue that they are working on is the elimination of Lunch Shaming. This is the practice where schools send home notes with children, often in bright colored paper pinned to their jackets or backpacks, indicating that the child owes money for lunches. This creates a stigma and shames the child. SALT aims to end this practice and require that the school deal directly with the parents on these types of issues, instead of putting the children in the middle of solving the collection problem.

The final issue that will be addressed this year is a Scholarship Pilot Program, where welfare funds from the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) would be allocated to scholarships for college or technical schools, for students whose families qualify. This gives students from poor families, who otherwise might not have the opportunity to seek higher education, an incentive to do well in high school so they could earn a scholarship. This is a way to help lift students up and hopefully break the cycle of poverty in their family.

In the second half of the show, Catherine speaks with Gay Gardner and Kimberly Jenkins-Snodgrass of the Interfaith Action for Human Rights. Their organization focuses on ending prolonged isolation (solitary confinement) in our prison system. They consider solitary confinement and prolonged isolation as torture, as the practice is often over-used or misused in the prison setting. The practice can be emotionally crippling, and can make re-entry to society that much harder. Through their work they found that many inmates wind up with prison sentences that are much more harsh than what they were assigned in the court system. When inmates are assigned to solitary confinement or moved to different facilities, it can often lengthen their prison sentence, but it is not always very clear why these punishments are given.

The commonwealth of Virginia ranks 13^th in the country for use of solitary confinement, so Gardner and Jenkins-Snodgrass would like to see the practice used less frequently. They have also found that the system is not very transparent, so if an advocate is looking for information about a certain case it is often very hard to understand what is happening and why these punishments are being issued. They are working hard to improve this process. IAHR has formed a coalition with SALT, ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia), Virginia Council of Churches, Virginia Cure and NAMI (National Association of Mental Illness – VA Chapter) to address these issues.

As their coalition continues to assess the landscape with the new makeup in the House of Delegates, they plan on identifying partners who can work together with them to push forward more progressive policies in relation to use of prolonged isolation in the prison system. Their goals also include improving transparency and helping inmates successfully re-enter society after paying their dues for the crimes that they committed.