Everyday Injustice

Meditation, Redemption and the Promise of Reentry In the latest episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald revisits the transformative power of meditation inside prison walls, bringing back longtime meditation teacher Doina Durbin and introducing Doug, a formerly incarcerated man whose life was reshaped by the practice. The conversation moves beyond theory, grounding itself in lived exper...

This week, Everyday Injustice brings listeners a special episode, featuring an installment of the podcast Women Beyond Walls, a series that centers the voices and lived experiences of women directly impacted by incarceration. Rather than relying on stereotypes or abstractions, the podcast foregrounds real stories of harm, survival, and resistance—while asking listeners to imagine what a more human...

Jerry “JD” Mathis on Reentry, Shame, and Finding a Voice On this episode of the Everyday Injustice podcast, host David Greenwald speaks with Jerry “JD” Mathis, an award-winning author, PEN America Writing for Justice Fellow, and formerly incarcerated writer whose work centers on mass incarceration, reentry, and the redemptive power of storytelling. Mathis’ life arc—from decorated National Guard so...

In this episode of the Everyday Injustice Podcast, host David Greenwald is joined by Jeffrey Deskovic, Oscar Michelen, and Andre Brown for an unvarnished conversation about a wrongful conviction case that nearly resulted in a second, devastating return to prison. Brown, who spent 23 years incarcerated for a crime he maintains he did not commit, had his conviction vacated in 2022, only to face the...

On this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Tracy Miller, a veteran prosecutor whose career inside one of the nation’s largest district attorney’s offices ended not with honors, but with retaliation, isolation, and a landmark lawsuit. Miller spent 25 years at the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, rising to senior leadership and building one of the country’s larg...

On this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association, about the mounting crisis in California’s public defense system and what it reveals about deeper structural failures in the criminal legal system. Chatfield explains that public defenders now represent roughly 90 percent of people charged with c...

Choosing Yourself Before Life Forces the Choice On the latest episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Hakeem McFarland, a motivational speaker, wellness coach, author, and the founder of the Choose Yourself Movement, a philosophy built around reclaiming identity, integrity, and purpose in a culture driven by external validation. McFarland’s message is direct and uncompromis...

On this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Shazad Carbaidwala, a longtime volunteer and board member with Prisoner Visitation and Support, a national organization that provides consistent, face-to-face visits to incarcerated people in federal facilities across the country. Carbaidwala has spent nearly a decade visiting people inside prisons, offering something both sim...

Women are now the fastest-growing population in the criminal legal system, yet policy, practice and public understanding continue to lag behind that reality. On this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Stephanie Akhter, director of the Women’s Justice Commission at the Council on Criminal Justice, about why women’s involvement in the system is rising, how their experien...

The newest episode of Everyday Injustice features three powerful voices from Represent Justice’s ambassador program, each sharing deeply personal experiences with trauma, incarceration and healing. Emmanuel Noble Williams, John Medina Jr., and Angelique Todd describe how childhood violence, systemic neglect and survival-driven choices pushed them into the legal system—but also how storytelling and...

On this episode of Everyday Injustice, we sit down with journalist and author Nell Bernstein, one of the nation’s leading voices on youth incarceration and the failures of the juvenile punishment model. Bernstein is the author of Burning Down the House and her newly released book, In Our Future We Are Free: The Dismantling of the Youth Prison. Her work challenges the mythology around “dangerous yo...

For nearly 42 years, Gary Tyler lived with a sentence that was never rooted in truth, fairness, or genuine evidence. Arrested at age 16 in Louisiana and accused of killing a white teenager during a moment of racial violence in 1974, Tyler was quickly swept into a system determined not to find the truth, but to find someone to blame. “I was incarcerated…for 41 and a half years,” Tyler explains, und...

On this episode of the Everyday Injustice Podcast, host David Greenwald speaks with Josh Schwartz and Leon Parker of the Wren Collective, a policy and communications organization working to reform the criminal legal system and strengthen public defense nationwide. The conversation centers on a new statewide study revealing that California dramatically underfunds its public defense system—despite b...

In a new episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald sits down with three formerly incarcerated filmmakers — Dana Dickerson, Heather Jarvis, and Naje “Gigi” Webster — to explore the emotional and systemic realities of life after prison. Produced in partnership with Represent Justice, the conversation shines a light on the women behind the films The Trauma We Carry, It’s Not Okay, and The T...

In this week’s episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Alissa Skog, a researcher at the California Policy Lab, about her team’s new report on California’s expansive re-sentencing policies and their impact on recidivism. Skog explains that California has gone further than most states in reviewing long sentences imposed under older laws, such as Proposition 36 and Proposition...

In this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald talks with former federal prosecutor Jared Fishman, author of Fire on the Levee: The Murder of Henry Glover and the Search for Justice after Hurricane Katrina. Fishman revisits the 2005 killing of Henry Glover by New Orleans police officers in the chaotic days following Hurricane Katrina, a case he investigated and brought to trial early...

On this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Doreena Durbin, founder of a transformative prison meditation program in Texas. A former musician turned meditation teacher, Durbin’s path has been as unconventional as it is inspiring. Her book, An Inner Life: Freedom Is Found Within, and her work behind prison walls share a single message — that peace and self-understanding...

In this episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald speaks with Daniel Forkkio, CEO of Represent Justice, a national organization that amplifies the voices of formerly incarcerated people through storytelling. Forkkio explains that Represent Justice partners with filmmakers, advocates, and ambassadors across the country to humanize those impacted by the criminal legal system and shift publ...

A Conversation with Courtney Teasley On this episode of Everyday Injustice, attorney and activist Courtney Teasley shares her journey from growing up in East Nashville during the crack epidemic to becoming what she calls a “legal disruptor.” Teasley defines this role as going beyond the bare minimum in the legal system—intervening proactively to prevent unjust outcomes before they are sealed by gu...

The latest episode of Everyday Injustice takes on one of the least understood but most destructive aspects of the criminal legal system: fines and fees. Host David Greenwald speaks with Lillian Patil and Tanisha Pire of the Fines and Fees Justice Center about their new report, Imposing Instability: How Court Fines and Fees Destabilize Government Budgets and Criminalize Those Who Cannot Pay. Their...

On the latest episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald sits down with David Gaspar, CEO of The Bail Project, for a powerful conversation about the inequities of America’s bail system. The discussion opens with an exploration of how cash bail disproportionately punishes poor and marginalized communities, while offering little real protection to the public. As Gaspar explains, the system...

Mac Muir, former senior investigator with New York City’s Civilian Complaint Review Board and author of Cop Cop: Breaking the Fixed System of American Policing, joined Everyday Injustice to discuss his years of investigating misconduct and the systemic failures he witnessed firsthand. Muir, who later directed Oakland’s Police Oversight Agency, explained that his book grew out of a desire to docume...

On this week’s episode of Everyday Injustice, host David Greenwald sits down with Adam Clausen, director of Innovation and Social Impact, whose life story embodies both the failures and possibilities of the American justice system. Once sentenced to 213 years in federal prison, Clausen not only found a way to survive the impossible but has since emerged as a national leader advocating for reform a...

Martha Arevalo, executive director of the Central American Resource Center (CARECEN) in Los Angeles, described an atmosphere of fear and chaos as federal authorities escalate enforcement in immigrant communities. Speaking on Everyday Injustice, she said residents are facing armored vehicles, masked officers, and indiscriminate detentions that sweep up people regardless of their immigration status....

In the latest episode of Everyday Injustice, Tony Viola, a former Cleveland real estate professional, shares his story of being wrongly accused and convicted in what was billed as the nation’s largest mortgage fraud case. Viola was indicted in both state and federal court, accused of stealing $46 million, and cast in the media as the architect of a massive scheme that he says never existed. Viola...