1.) How are you connected to this movement?

I'm a mother of a person that lost their life there. My son died on Rikers Island from an inhumane system. My son died from meningitis, something that could have been cured, something that should have not even entered his body. Like I tell everyone, mothers should not live with this pain that I am suffering going on 17 months. Their fathers is dealing with it. Their sisters that suffer the traumas from this most - it's kids that suffer the traumas from the loss of this.

I can't even continue to imagine the things that my son went through being there, and I can't try to shut it out that there's people still there. They're not animals, they're human beings, and they're still there in this place. I'm wounded at heart. I feel like this cause is so, so, so, so close to me, it feels like it became a part of my soul. Every day my mind is thinking, What is the next step? What is the next thing we could do? What can we say? Strategies of thinking a way to get this place closed, because it has to close down.

I tell people I never imagined any human being going here, let alone me. My son happened to go there and die. He just died there because no one cared. He died here because no one had empathy. No one had sympathy. No one sees, the people that walk in here don't even see the people as people. How can I continue to close my eyes, knowing what I'm suffering from, knowing what my son went through, and act like it doesn't exist and put it to the back?

So I'm like a root to this cause. I'm actually speaking at these places that don't have nothing to do with this. And when I speak on it, people are like, Wow. I'm going to keep going until, like I say, it's a little joke, but it's a fact - I'm gonna keep going until I go over that bridge with a group of people that's with me, and we close it down. Because it has to go. It's making too much money that's not invested into my communities. But the investment in the communities is taking away our families and our loved ones.

2.) Why should Rikers close?

Rikers needs to close because it's a building where people are being sent to die. Where people are being sent to be tortured. It's still slavery. They're being sent there to work for no money. They're being sent there to not get any education and to stay away from their loved ones. They're breaking up families and homes and putting them in a place where people are dying. Rikers Island needs to close because people are dying there. It's nothing else to be said.

3.) What is your vision for a more just and equitable post-Rikers New York City?

I want to see more investing in my community. I want to see more afterschool programs. I want to see the things that I grew up on that made me who I am today. I want to see more help in my neighborhood. I don't want to see people coming in and just taken away from us, because that's all they're doing. Even though these young men are in jail, they're taken away from us. They've taken away our doctors, our teachers, our lawyers, our everything. Young boys are being taken away from their mothers and their fathers to be put in this place.

My vision: again, to see that place close, to see more money invested into my community, into my schools, into the stuff for the elderly people, and please, into my medical system. It's just like, in this community, because the people look like me, they don't care. But my positive outcome of this is one day that building won't be there. Everybody will be treated equally, and they don't see people as a color, they just see you as a human. That's literally what I want. I don't want to feel like when I see the police, they're targeting me because of what I look like. I want to be able to see the police and say they're not just going to judge me for that. They see me as a person and they're here to help me. And again, that place where so many people lost their lives closed down.