Hey, welcome to In The Thick. This is a podcast about politics, race and culture from a POC perspective.

I'm Maria Yiho Rosa. And I'm Juhljosa. And I'm Juhljolovaela.

And joining us in our Harlem studio, the immigrant studio is Leela Martinez.

She's a criminal justice reform advocate. She's a founder of an organization

called Beyond the Box. And yeah yeah she's a graduate from my

alma mater Columbia University. Hey Lela! Hi how are you guys? Well so I actually you know I'm a

graduate of Barnard College of Columbia University, but you actually graduated from Columbia

University, which is how we heard about your story.

Your issue is talking about the criminal justice mass incarceration machine and you've been affected by this personally.

So what's Lila's story?

So I was a young mom.

I was living with my son's father.

He got caught up in the criminal justice system himself, he was selling drugs.

What yours is that we're talking about?

He was arrested in 2000.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

And I wound up a single mom, wasn't working, had no way of supporting myself and my son.

So I became involved as well in illegal activities.

I started finding ways to make money to keep a roof over our heads because my son and

I became homeless. So what were you doing?

I was falsifying checks, falsifying documents,

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