MOSES, a Madison-based organization committed to ending mass incarceration, celebrated its annual Transformation Celebration and Gala on Dec. 14 at the Brassworks Building of the Goodman Community Center on Madison’s east side.
During the gala, three formerly incarcerated people were presented with awards for their transformative work in the community.
The award recipients were Kingston Robertson, who owns Holy Godz clothing gear; Jessica Jacobs, the Dane County community organizer for FREE (a movement advocating for incarcerated women); and Action Jackson, who owns J.Y.C., a workforce development program providing free landscaping training.
MOSES, which stands for Madison Organizing in Strength, Equality and Solidarity, has been advocating for criminal justice reform for more than 11 years.
MOSES started as a small, grassroots organization of people who had either been incarcerated themselves or had loved ones locked up, and has grown into a powerful organization with a room full of donors for its annual gala.
“I remember being in the basement of First Congregational Church with cold coffee and hard donuts,” said James Morgan, an organizer with MOSES as he looked across the sold-out event.
“MOSES does good work every year,” said Carmella Glenn, who emceed the event. “They are the voices in the background. They’re doing all the hard work in the back rooms. That’s why I respect them so much.”
2023 and 2024 were among the worst years ever for mass incarceration in Wisconsin and MOSES was heavily involved in advocating publicly for change.
The prison population continues to swell despite Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, having run on promises of reducing the prison population.
As of Dec. 17, there are 23,036 people in Wisconsin prisons, nearly 2,000 more prisoners than on the same date a year ago. The prison population only three years ago on that date was 20,022.
Wisconsin is on pace to eclipse the highest prison population numbers from former Governor Scott Walker’s tenure by the end of 2025.
“97% of the people that go to prison are there for non-violent crimes,” Glenn said. “It’s a revolving door of mental health and substance use. The Department of Corrections is being used as one of our biggest mental health institutions.”
Morgan questioned Evers’ leadership on criminal justice reform during a 2023 protest at the Department of Corrections and, during the MOSES gala, others raised questions about the leadership from the governor’s office without being prompted by news reporters.
“I wish we were seeing more movement and more progress out of the governor’s office and the Department of Corrections,” said Linda Ketcham, executive director of Just Dane, an organization that works with formerly incarcerated people. “But these issues are much more in the public eye right now because of MOSES.”
Members of MOSES like Morgan spoke against what he called the “inhumane” treatment of prisoners during lengthy prison lockdowns.
MOSES held vigils, fundraising events and protests over the past year, including a protest inside the lobby of the Department of Corrections headquarters in Madison.
The organization led a public campaign to improve conditions of confinement and demanded the DOC take responsibility for more than four deaths in Wisconsin prisons over the past year.
(Photo by Nicholas Garton)
Focusing on youth education is a key goal for the organization in 2025.
MOSES president Saundra Brown says MOSES is prepared to “really dig in and try to talk to our legislators and our governor to help them understand it’s totally important we look at our kids.”
Kingston Robertson, who was dressed fancily in clothing from his own brand, said that his primary focus is giving back to youth in the community and allowing them to see a path forward in life that does not include incarceration.
“My goal is to make them understand that no matter what we go through, we always have a voice,” Robertson told Madison365. “I just want to be that voice and that visual that they say, ‘We can do this’. I want to be that person who shows them you can be whoever you want to be.”
Youth incarceration in Wisconsin continues to be an issue for advocates of criminal justice reform. A report by The Sentencing Project released earlier this year found that in Wisconsin, 140 individuals who were under the age of 18 at the time of their offenses are serving life without parole or virtual life sentences.
More than half of Wisconsin’s youth serving life sentences are Black, according to the report.
Dane County Circuit Judge Everett Mitchell, who attended the Transformation Celebration and Gala gala, said that MOSES and the award recipients are helping address the root causes of minority incarceration with their community efforts. Mitchell said focusing on child welfare will help stem the tide of youth incarceration.
(Photo by Nicholas Garton)
“We pay a lot of attention to the school-to-prison pipeline,” Mitchell told Madison365. “But I think we really need to focus on the child welfare to juvenile delinquency to prison pipeline. All these traumatized kids come into our system and then they stay in our system.”
Some of the youths people such as Robertson and Mitchell seek to steer away from the system and have parents who are either incarcerated or formerly incarcerated.
Jessica Jacobs is a mother who has experienced incarceration. Now, she advocates for the proper treatment of women in the prison system.
For decades, Wisconsin’s Department of Corrections has performed shackling of women during childbirth. Because Wisconsin does not have a state law specifically prohibiting the practice of shackling pregnant women, the DOC does restrain some women while they are giving birth.
Jacobs helps lead Dane County’s FREE movement, which is advocating for state laws to be passed barring the use of restraints for pregnant women and addressing women’s confinement conditions overall.
“We have a campaign going on with FREE, it’s an anti-shackling campaign,” Jacobs told Madison365. “We’re trying to get the law changed where they can no longer shackle pregnant women while they’re incarcerated in Wisconsin.”
Jackson, who is having a documentary made about his life, has been working in the community to provide job training for people interested in landscaping and lawn care.
One of the largest barriers to formerly incarcerated people is having earning power in the workplace. Jackson is working to train people in the field of landscaping, which will allow them to earn better wages.
“Hard work, dedication and motivation,” Jackson told Madison365 about the basic tenets of his business model. “Keeping the grind on, keeping the pedal to the metal and keeping my vision where it has been from day one. I’m working at making tomorrow greater for our youth and generations to come. So that’s what I focus on for my future is just making sure that the grind and the hustle is still on for those individuals.”
Each of the recipients has been out of incarceration for at least a decade.
“It’s the epitome of what transformation is all about,” Brown said. “They persevered and they didn’t forget from whence they came.”
