“I am a great father, a good friend, and I love my family,” Ferrell Scott said in a recording from a prison in Pennsylvania.
Scott, 56, is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole on charges of possession and conspiracy to distribute marijuana — a substance that is legal now in many parts of the country.
“I just think there is more to life than me being here for the rest of life … Sometimes I think if you were put to death it would be better because this is harder than death,” he added.
The audio file was published by the Third Strike Campaign, a platform created to showcase the voices of individuals whose lives have been tragically derailed by the U.S.’ “war on drugs.” The campaign was produced by the criminal justice reform groups The Decarceration Collective and the Buried Alive Project.
“The mission is to rescue people who have been buried alive under America’s unfair and unjust three strike drug law,” MiAngel Cody, the lead counsel of The Decarceration Collective, told Cheddar. “It is really easy to get a life sentence in America.”
And while there is growing support across the political spectrum for criminal justice reform, the Third Strike Campaign aims to shed light on — and give a voice to — the real people that continue to suffer everyday from the “tough on crime” justice system and the mandatory sentencing guidelines under three strikes legislation.
Scott, for instance, was denied an appeal in 2014 despite having a clean prison record. He was also not included in the 568 federal drug cases that were granted executive clemency by President Obama — which were, nonetheless, a major victory for justice advocates given that President Bush granted just one drug pardon and President Clinton granted zero, according to the Buried Alive Project.
“The power comes by giving the prisoners a voice,” Mikkel Noe Westh, the CEO of the digital design firm Granyon, told Cheddar. Westh, whose company built the Third Strike Campaign’s platform, added that his engineers were fully invested in the project after hearing the voices of the prisoners and seeing the gross injustice.
Among several others, the site features Troy Lawrence, 44, who is also serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania. “My mind and my spirit our in a new place. I’m ready to be a father to my children,” Lawrence said.
Bonnie Wright, who starred in the Harry Potter film series as Ginny Weasely, the youngest of the Weasely clan and Harry Potter’s love interest, is now an author and sustainability activist with her new book, "Go Gently: Actionable Steps to Nurture Yourself and the Planet," which focuses on how to change your habits to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Wright joined Cheddar News to discuss. "I wrote my book to really help to kind of bring the macro-scale system thinking down to our day-to-day life," she said. "They're actually tangible, quite resourceful, practical things that you can implement in your day-to-day life to just help you connect to these issues and just feel empowered when we feel pretty powerless within this situation."
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The 1993 historical drama 'Schindler's List' tells the story of a Nazi party member who helped thousands of Polish Jewish refugees escape death during the Holocaust. Today, Ukrainians are living a very similar reality as Russia continues to invade, and refugees are fleeing for safety. Oliwia Dabrowska was three years old when she became an integral part of "Schindler's List." You'll remember her as "the little girl in the red coat" representing a symbol of hope. Today she's 32 years old living in Poland and once again representing hope for refugees. Dabrowska joins Cheddar News to discuss her experience and tell viewers how to help.
As TikTok grows in popularity, so does its ad revenue potential. Research firm Insider Intelligence forecasts the app's revenue will likely triple in 2022 to more than $11 billion, putting it past the sales of both Twitter and Snapchat combined. Cheddar News takes a closer look.
Snapchat has launched its first features to help users learn American Sign Language through its lenses and a game. The project was spearheaded by deaf and hard-of-hearing workers. Cheddar News was joined by Austin Vaday, software engineer at Snap, and his sign language interpreter, Jonathan Webb, to discuss the ASL Fingerspelling Lens and how the project came together. “We wanted to find a way to appropriately and properly educate the community so that folks can communicate with people like me using sign language," Vaday stated.
The new Netflix documentary "White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch" dives into how the once apparel retailer used an exclusionary business model, focusing on the "popular and cool kids," to thrive for years until its discriminatory culture and practices led to a consumer backlash. Anthony Ocampo, a professor of sociology at Cal Poly Pomona and former Abercrombie & Fitch employee, and Ben O’Keefe, a social change activist and head of diversity and impact production at Creator+, discussed the film and the retailer's rebranding in light of many allegations brought against it. "I got a job at Abercrombie & Fitch, and I worked there for a couple of weeks. But then when I went back to that same store after the academic year ended to get my job back, I was told by someone, I'm sorry, we can't rehire you because we already had too many Filipinos working at this store," Ocampo said.
