Freedom Agenda
REDA TALEB
"Take a look at any single quality of life indicator, unpack the policies around it, and you’ll instantly see that Rikers Island amounts to the egregious failure of our society to mitigate the harms caused by said policies."
Reda A. Taleb is an award-winning, nationally recognized children’s book author, decarceration advocate, and the proud daughter of Lebanese Muslim immigrants, whose lineage is deeply rooted in generations of farmers from South Lebanon. She’s the Founder/CEO of Dream Catcher Innovations™, and prides herself on being a proximate, servant leader, with a demonstrated history of 20 years of nonprofit experience that spans civic, legal, entrepreneurial, and social justice movements across the United States. She is the Arab American Communities Liason for Freedom Agenda.
Q&A
1.) How are you connected to this movement?
As a decarceration advocate and advocate for children of incarcerated parents, my own lived experience within that struggle had the single most transformative impact on my life’s trajectory. Therefore, that proximity to incarceration grounds my life’s purpose of creating an NYC/world with less cages and more community care.
2.) Why should Rikers close?
Take a look at any single quality of life indicator, unpack the policies around it, and you’ll instantly see that Rikers Island amounts to the egregious failure of our society to mitigate the harms caused by said policies. Now combine several of those life indicators, unpack the policies around all of them, and you’ll instantly see a system of failures that incentivizes creating cages, and caging people at toxic, deeply abhorrent places like Rikers, over creating sustainable, nuanced care, aimed at the upward economic and social mobility of communities disproportionately impacted by incarceration.
3.) What is your vision for a more just and equitable post-Rikers New York City?
Money and resources reinvested in less cages and real community care in every borough.