Local initiative reconnects formerly incarcerated individuals with communities they left

For Mac Hudson, eating together is a traditional way of connecting to community.

“It’s the African tradition from our communal existence,” said Hudson, founder of the equity organization AccessMA.

That cultural legacy is why it’s one of the initiatives at the heart of the program “From Liabilities to Contributors,” which his organization runs, an effort that offers Black and brown community members returning from incarceration an opportunity to give back to the areas they grew up in.

Through the program, Hudson and his team of returning citizens host meals, organize turkey and toy drives and work to distribute cold-weather gear like coats and mittens in an effort to support and rebuild bridges with the communities they left.

“It’s a real communal approach, a real holistic approach to how we restore our community,” Hudson said.

In August, they hosted a back-to-school backpack giveaway. Last month, on Dec. 24, they held a Holiday in the Hood event at the Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, with bounce houses, gift giveaways and other entertainment. He said that effort reached over 500 families.

It’s work that Gloria Bowers, president of the New Academy Estates Apartments in Roxbury, said has allowed for broader support for her community. The Thanksgiving and Christmas offerings that the initiative has run have allowed funds that might have been spent on those efforts to go to other needs in the community.

“They come and they have more than what we can receive. When we couldn’t get our Christmas gifts, they helped us out getting Christmas gifts for not only the people in our development but people outside the development,” said Bowers, who was one of the first partners of the program.

For Hudson, the program is focused on ensuring that, as returning citizens reenter their communities, they can form new connections and rebuild what he called a “true redemptive process.”

“The first place that a person reenters society, when they’re leaving the prison system, is their home and then next is the community itself, right?” he said. “Being locked away for all those years, it’s an alienation from that community [from] which you come.”

Hudson said one resident at Franklin Field, one of the communities in which the initiative operates, said that she had seen some of the returning citizens who participate in the program grow up as “bad little kids,” and marked the change of them now coming back to serve the community.

“She never saw, in her whole lifetime, anyone do what she saw them do: giving back to their community and making sure that their community was alright and good,” Hudson said. “That was something that they needed to hear as young men.”

And it’s about trying to prevent other community members from ending up incarcerated too, said Hudson, who has seen older program participants stop to talk with younger community members about their time in prison and to share a message of, “I don’t want to see that for you.”

“A lot of these folks who participate are relevant to some folks in the streets who still engage in negative behavior,” Hudson said. “By them consistently seeing them doing this and giving this, we can invite them into the process.”

The intergeneration support is an element of the work that Bowers said has stood out to her. She said that having the program run creates an example of what good work can do.

“Other people that have been locked down, locked up, can see the difference too,” Bowers said. “If one can do it, others can do it.”

Hudson launched the program in 2022, months after his release following 33 years in prison.

He got out in September of that year, and by the holidays, he was running the initiative’s first toy drive with Bowers at the New Academy Estates in Roxbury. His story, she said, was an example of what could happen for others in the community and is one of the reasons she got engaged with the program.

“I fell in love with a young man that had been troubled, that wanted to come to a neighborhood — that nobody else comes to — to give back, to help out with the young people,” Bowers said. “We have a lot of troubled young men in the neighborhood.”

In the past year, Hudson said the program has seen significant expansion, with more locations and partnerships where the initiative is focused on connecting returning community members to where they came from.

What started as an effort to run a toy drive at Bowers’ New Academy Estates has expanded to efforts run at other apartment complexes, like Franklin Field Apartments in Dorchester, plus a handful of neighborhood organizations and schools.

As the program has grown, it has expanded offerings from the one toy drive it did in its first year to the host of events and initiatives it runs, additions he said are in part based on the input and engagement from more returning citizens who, as they get involved with the program, offer more ideas of how to serve their communities.

That expansion has also meant a lot to Bowers, as she’s watched others give the effort a shot.

“They’re giving them the opportunity to give back,” she said. “This shows that [the returning citizens] are trying. Because they really don’t have to, they could still just say, I’m all for myself, but they’re not. They want to show people that they have changed. They want to show people that they can make a difference.”

At the heart of the program, is the idea that reentry after incarceration is about more than just physically returning to the home or community someone left.

“They’ve been locked down, locked up so long, until all they know is the four walls that they were in, maybe peep out a window,” Bowers said. “Now, they’re outside, seeing the difference in the world, to see the difference that they could make.”

Hudson said it’s a mission he hopes others can get behind and support.

“Reentry is more than just coming home into our spaces, but how do we exist? How do we reconcile in our own communities to become a part of that community?” Hudson said. “What we’re proving is that this initiative has been working, spreading, and it should receive the proper funding for it.”