After Incarceration Shoots for the Moon, Lands in Selma (for Now)

“Wherever we are, we engage people all the time.”  

That’s why every Monday, you can find After Incarceration (AI) founder Jose Pineda and his team out on Liberty Street in Newburgh, New York. They distribute water bottles and fresh vegetables to folks passing by, including formerly incarcerated people arriving for meetings with their parole officers.

Because Monday is the report date for individuals on parole, the outreach was originally intended to interrupt negative self-talk, and to serve as a reminder not to bottle up the trauma that is often induced during these meetings. Studies show around 60% of adults have at least one traumatic childhood experience, compared to 97% of incarcerated people. While incarcerated, environmental factors including exposure to violence, solitary confinement, and overcrowding can make reentry even more difficult. Over the last several years, AI has forged additional connections with many of the formerly incarcerated folks who frequent Liberty Street, and the community at large. “We wound up building a lot of relationships,” Pineda said.

So, like clockwork, Pineda and the AI team are outside, rain or shine, summer or winter, every Monday, making connections. Every Monday, that is, with the exception of a week in early March when those connections moved to Alabama. 

Alabama Bound

Pineda’s path to Selma includes his own experiences with violence, incarceration, and solitary confinement. In 2023, he met Nikesha Tilton at a restorative justice training in Florida. Tilton, the director of training at the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation (SCNTR) invited Pineda to take part in the their Kingian Nonviolence training later that year.

Pineda cites the challenges of exiting the carceral system and establishing oneself and one’s relationships anew, noting the “reentry process often treats individuals as statistics rather than people with unique experiences and potential.” When he returned to Selma in 2024, his group included eight formerly incarcerated community members who had all been home for five years or less. Two members of the group, which Pineda brought to Selma through both AI and his former position as the Assistant Director of the State University of New York’s Office of Higher Education in Prison, had been home for less than six months after being incarcerated for 15 and 20 years.

For the 2025 training, Pineda thought bigger. “We’re about to do something that can’t be stopped,” he said.

Engaging Young People at Home

Within the last year, AI began working with emerging adults in Newburgh; their offerings include workshops on Kingian nonviolence based on learnings from the SCNTR. The relationships “moved at the speed of light,” Pineda said — the first workshop with local youth took place in December of 2024, just three months before the recent Selma visit. 

AI had worked closely with the leadership of other organizations in order to be able to work with and forge connections with young people. It started with Our Core, a nonprofit dedicated to fostering personal achievements and community action that uplifts Newburgh’s youth. Their AgriCultural Education program introduces students to food growing and earth stewarding. Our Core provides AI with fresh vegetables for their weekly Liberty Street distributions.

AI also connected with the younger generation through Marc’s Friends, a nonprofit providing support to caregivers who have lost children to violence or tragedy and mentorship programs for youth. Founder Jemika Hall’s son, D’Marcus “Marc” Hooper, lost his life to gun violence in 2018.

Newburgh consistently ranks as one of the most dangerous cities in New York state. In January, the local high school was placed on lockout for 10 minutes after gunshots were fired outside the main campus. Last November’s homecoming game was cancelled following violent hazing allegations. Four teens were shot in 2021, a year that saw a 19% jump in violent crime compared to the previous year (although that statistic could be attributed to the 2020 onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns).

In a 2013 TED Talk that’s been viewed nearly seven million times, educator Rita Pierson explains every kid needs a champion. Studies show that even young children can easily infer what others think of them. AI has become a support system for local youth, offering advice based on their lived experiences, and listening when the young people share theirs. Often, forging a connection is as simple as giving the youth a ride or providing them with a straight answer to a question. 

“What resonates with them is the ability, or at least the idea, that there’s an opportunity to do something when everybody else is saying you can’t do anything right now,” Pineda said. Part of that “something” included obtaining a grant to travel to Selma with the young people. 

In March 2025, Pineda found himself traveling from Newburgh to Selma with an intergenerational group of 12 that included four formerly incarcerated individuals and six emerging adults (four males and two females) aged 14-17. The group attended the SCNTR’s Kingian Nonviolence Conflict Reconciliation and Level 1 Certification.

Beyond Liberty Street

The training, which took place in the week leading up to the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, included teachers, psychologists, a pastor, and MSC staffers. Although they made up a small percentage of the overall group, the emerging adults remained engaged throughout the training, sharing their unique experiences and perspectives on society and violence.

AI’s most recent trip to Selma is proof of Pineda’s commitment to “announce ourselves beyond Liberty Street.” He continues to center the lived experiences of community members affected by mass incarceration (AI often uses a #WitnessOurHumanity hashtag on social media) and emphasize reintegration; moreso, he wants to transform societal norms, beginning with supporting Newburgh’s young people.

“Those are the little things we needed when we were young,” Pineda said. “We know the kind of credible mentoring we needed … if we could have got it in the places [the young people] are at now, we would have survived a difficult time and had a different life.”

In 2024, Newburgh had an 80% high school graduation rate (compared to 86% statewide), and scored less than 25 out of 100 based on U.S. News & World Report’s ranking system. “The school system in Newburgh is not serving the young people in a way they identify as valuable for them,” Pineda observed. Since returning from Selma, AI has been focused on fostering leadership skills in local youths, both in their personal lives and as members of the larger Newburgh community. Two of the young people will intern for AI next year and will assist in co-leading next year’s trip to Selma.

AI’s adult group stayed for the SCNTR’s full five-day training, while the young people completed a two-and-a-half day version (having completed the training previously, Pineda also acted as a facilitator). The youths will continue working with Pineda in Newburgh, and will have the opportunity to help him facilitate next year. They also participated in a series of events marking the 60th anniversary Bloody Sunday, including a church service and march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

During a visit to the Selma Dallas County Public Library, Pineda’s crew encountered a French documentary team. They spent nearly an hour talking about found family, misconceptions they had before visiting the South, and how Selma is a lot like Newburgh. The youth opened up to the film crew and shared some of their personal experiences using the prompt: “If you really knew me, you would know [personal fact].” As with their training at the SCNTR, the youth were engaged, and willing to share some of their own successes and challenges.

Pineda and his colleagues also brought Newburgh’s young people to Montgomery, located about 50 miles from Selma. They visited The Legacy Museum and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park, two of three sites dedicated to honoring the millions of lives that were lost — and continue to be affected by — America’s history of the slave trade, racial terrorism lynchings, segregation, and institutionalized racism. 

One of the emerging adults found their last name among the 100,000 engraved on the National Monument to Freedom, a massive wall within the Sculpture Park that honors formerly enslaved Black people who won freedom after the Civil War. 

“Our kids have brought it back and had meaningful convos about the history of lynching in America with younger [peers], like 10 year olds.” As for the impact of The Legacy Museum, “it made me rageful” — but “everyone should go, or at least know about it,” one young person shared.

Shooting for 30,000 Feet

Several weeks after their trip to Selma, AI hosted a webinar. Featured speakers included three of the adults (Pineda, Demetrius James, AI’s Senior Program Advisor; Kenyatta Emmanuel Hughes, Project Director) and three of the youths who traveled to Selma. Also in attendance was Lisette B. Hughes, Senior Program Advisor, who had traveled to the SCNTR with Pineda previously. 

The statistics shared during the webinar demonstrate the strength of AI’s relationships with the youths (ages 13-22) they have connected with via Our Core and Marc’s Friends, many of whom attended three or more nonviolence workshops.

Sharing their biggest takeaways from Selma, the young people noted how much action folks are able to take within their own communities and among their peers. Two of them commented on how memorable the church service they attended was; one stated he goes to church often, but the Selma service was the best sermon he ever heard. He also expressed how much Selma reminded him of Newburgh — in both cities, he shared, it’s easy to spot street art and murals amongst buildings in disrepair. “I think the entire thing is beautiful, even the broken down buildings. It reminds me of home,” he said.

Looking toward the future, AI hopes to return to Selma with another group of young folks next year. They’d like to partner with an organization that specializes in serving young female-identifying people and can chaperone emerging adult females.

Next year, Pineda also hopes to cross the bridge with dozens of umbrellas containing hand-painted messages of Good Trouble and abolitionism. In the meantime, he’ll continue addressing the harms he and others have endured during incarceration, educating community members on nonviolence and restorative justice, hosting pop-up events, and uplifting Newburgh’s youth. “We shoot for the moon, but we’re good to reach 30,000 feet,” he said.

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