Working with the
community to make a real difference in New Haven and Connecticut.
YUPP Advocacy seeks to address the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration through lobbying, organizing, and innovative legislative advocacy. We work alongside and take direction from those in the community most affected by these issues.
We are always looking for new ways to amplify community activists and advance progressive policy in the Connecticut State Legislature and New Haven Board of Alders. Below are the six projects we're working on this year and two projects YUPP Advocacy led in the 2018-2019 school year.
Unlock
The Vote
Working with James Jeter and other Connecticut criminal justice groups to secure voting rights for Connecticut residents on parole.
Justice
Impact Bar
Helping create a new legal bar association for formerly incarcerated and justice impacted people which will work to bring more justice-impacted people into the legal field.
Prison
Book Drive
Directly empowering incarcerated people both by providing new reading material and up-to-date legal texts with which they can write their own appeals.
Prison
Phone Calls
Working with the criminal justice organization Worth Rises and mothers of formerly incarcerated people to pass a free prison phone call bill in the Connecticut State Legislature.
Police
Accountability
Building database of cases of police brutality in Connecticut. FOIA information on behalf of community activists and those who have been victims of police violence.
End
Solitary
Working with formerly incarcerated people and community activists in the state legislature to end the inhumane practice of solitary confinement in Connecticut
Our work in 2018-2019
Police Brutality
Civilian Review Board
The New Haven community had worked for twenty-years to create an independent panel to investigate police misconduct but faced a slow-walking Board of Alders hesitant to give the panel the power it needed
YUPP Advocacy:
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Met with key members of the Board of Alders and lobbied for community-backed amendments
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Mobilized students to attend local actions
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Testified at an early public hearing
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Produced a 60-second PSA on the issue
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Created media for a targeted door-knocking effort in key aldermanic districts
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Organized a 300 person text-bank targeting a swing Alder
Mass-Incarceration
Just Cannabis
Legalization
With a new Governor, the Connecticut State legislature indicated a new willingness to go further with statewide cannabis legalization, but major bills lacked important restorative justices pieces demanded by the community.
YUPP Advocacy:
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Designed specialized Facebook ads targeting the districts of six swing representatives
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Testified to the Judiciary Committee
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Met with members of the Connecticut State legislature and lobbied for record expungement and sentence commuting.
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Created lobbying literature explaining the community's priorities
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Collaborated with the Yale College Democrats and Students for Sensible Drug Policy