EventsCommon Ground
Operation Restoration: Syrita Steib
Featuring Steib and JoAnne Page
Thursday, December 2, 2021 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific
These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.
Syrita Steib, founder and executive director of the non-profit Operation Restoration, joins criminal justice activist JoAnne Page for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Urayoán Noel.
In this Talk
Syrita Steib
Founder and executive director of Operation Restoration, Syrita Steib started the nonprofit to create opportunities for formerly incarcerated women and eradicate the roadblocks that she faced when returning to society after incarceration. Steib wrote and advocated for Louisiana Act 276, which prohibits public post-secondary institutions from asking questions relating to criminal history for purposes of admissions. Syrita has continued to work with advocates in five states to pass legislation to ban the box in college admissions. As a policy consultant for Cut50’s Dignity for Incarcerated Women campaign, she worked on the passage of the First Step Act. The 2020 recipient of the Rubinger Fellowship, Syrita earned her B.S. from Louisiana State University.
JoAnne Page
Criminal justice activist JoAnne Page has more than 45 years’ experience in criminal justice, with the last 30+ at the helm of The Fortune Society. Under her stewardship, The Fortune Society has been recognized by researchers and policymakers as a pioneer in assisting former prisoners reintegrate into society—serving more than 8,000 people annually through programs including ATI, permanent, supportive and scattered site housing, mental health services, education, employment services, substance abuse treatment, counseling, care management, a recovery center, and HIV/AIDS health services. In 2018 JoAnne was honored by City & State New York as one of the top 50 nonprofit CEOs in NYC.
The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we're fortunate to have Dao Strom reading.
Dao Strom
Artist Dao Strom works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020) and its musical companion Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys and Grass Roof, Tin Roof. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder of two collective art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon.
We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨