In the next week, the Obama administration will let, Vivian Nixon College Community Fellowship Prison Women, With 13 days left before the election, the Trump family is all hands on deck: Ivanka is learning guitar, Tiffany is reminding us she has gay friends, Eric, On October 20, House Republicans redefined the meaning of grasping for straws. Then I met women as old as 70 who had been living this kind of tumultuous lifestyle for years.”One thing Nixon found common between these girls and women, whether they were aged 16 or 70, was a lack of access to education, prompting Nixon to become a tutor in the prison’s education program. Many continue through graduate school. and one Ph.D. Reverend Vivian Nixon is the Executive Director of the College and Community Fellowship and an associate minister at Mt. With the organization supporting her efforts, Nixon went on earn her Bachelor of Science degree from the State University of New York Empire State College. Education, though, has the power to transform these communities, because people with a post-secondary degree are far less likely to be pulled back into the criminal justice system. When the Director of the program asked her what she wanted to do, she replied, “I want your job.”  Today, she has it! All Rights Reserved. June 2018 | Vivian Nixon shakes the hand of a College & Community Fellowship student who earned her degree, at the annual graduation ceremony in Morningside Heights. supports me and my leadership in our field as I write my memoir, helping me By clicking Sign Up, you agree to our Zion AMEC in New York City. This inspired her to go to law school, and she now specializes in employment law. Became The Unfiltered Mouthpiece For His Father. Learn more about what it means to contribute a major gift to Art For Justice Fund. https://www.endicott.edu/news-events/news/news-articles/2017/01/1-27nixon December 18, 2012 Nixon returned to school last year to work on a Master of Much to her parents’ dismay, she continued her theater studies in college, but her plans came crashing down with her mother’s hurtful words: “You are not beautiful. She spent three and a half years in prison on drug-related charges, which proved to be a pivotal moment in her life of advocacy work. “The goal,” one student explained, “is to be looked at for something other than your biggest mistake.”. Women raise the next generation of leaders. But, privately, she had great expectations. She is on Twitter . I attended church every Sunday.”. At CCF, however, less than 1 percent of our students have returned to prison over the last 17 years. them,” Nixon said. The reason given was because he, After a series of concerning tampering with drop boxes all over the U.S., authorities are now investigating a fire in an official ballot drop box located i, Assuring a small crowd that she does, in fact, have some gay friends, Tiffany Trump took a chaotically hands-on role in her father’s reelection campaign, In a recent interview, Ivanka Trump admitted that, during the pandemic, she and her family have “reconnected to some of life’s simple pleasures.” Thi, Remote control mute buttons across the country were put to good use during Donald Trump and Joe Biden’s first presidential debate on September 29. Our concern is to revisit the person that has “That’s the reason I am where I am today.”, She added: “Everyone deserves that chance. CCF helped her find legal representation to fight that decision and she was eventually hired by the company. Zion AMEC in New York City. She is a Columbia University Community Scholar and a recipient of the John Jay Medal for Justice, the Ascend Fellowship at the Aspen Institute, the Soros Justice Fellowship, and the Petra Foundation Fellowship. Since its 2000 founding, College and Community Fellowship students have earned 332 college degrees, including one J.D. sabbatical to write a memoir about her life and experiences. While I was miserable at my job, I was doing things my parents expected of me. “It became my life. Vivian Nixon knows first hand. undeserving people. In a way, I was leading a double life. Vivian Nixon It’s not a silver bullet for the problems of our society, but it will reduce crime a great deal.”. Founded in 2000, CCF is a community of women that envisions life beyond criminal conviction and shares the determination that higher education, not past convictions, will define their future. I know the program works because I am a CCF graduate. “The reason I was able to move away from a path of self-destruction is because I had opportunity placed in front of me. “When our students graduate, they become engaged in our society in a way they never had been before,” says Vivian. Because you can say, well, ‘they all had the opportunity to take minimum wage jobs in fast food stores.’ But if they lived in New York City, that opportunity could still leave them living in a homeless shelter, because you can’t afford housing in New York City on minimum wage.”. There are no Vivian Nixon has long believed that education is part of the solution to mass incarceration. Vivian is the Executive Director of CCF. Shortly after being released from prison in 2001, she was introduced to CCF. But in connection with that opportunity, I had a community of women who believed in me, of board members and supporters of the organization who believed in me, who thought I had a right to make choices about what I wanted to do with my life, and then provided the resources so I could pursue those choices,” she said. It’s time we stop punishing people far after their prison sentences are over, and begin focusing on long-term investment in communities through education. There are people who have not found the right opportunity Vivian Nixon knows exactly how hard it is to restart your life after leaving prison: She spent three years behind bars herself. December 18, 2012 I was thinking, there’s no way that the pain I feel right now, the embarrassment, the hurt, the hopelessness, is ever going to go away. in their lives that led them to prison. Photograph by Lee Wexler. This is not uncommon for students who must juggle work, school and family responsibilities, or who don’t have the skillset to succeed in a college environment.