Barred Business is an abolitionist, intersectional Black feminist membership organization—founded and led by formerly incarcerated Black women activists, counselors, and business owners. Our mission is to empower marginalized formerly incarcerated people who are disproportionately affected by the U.S. legal system of mass incarceration, especially Black and LGBTQIA+ community members. Based in Atlanta, we have organizational partners across the country.
Though we’re a small organization, we’ve accomplished quite a lot. We began in 2019 to work closely with the National Bail Out (NBO), partnering locally with FAAM (the Free Atlanta Abolition Movement), Atlanta's Black autonomous bail foundation, to disburse over a half-million dollars in NBO funds to bail out Black mamas statewide from pre-trial detention and provide post-release case management and support. In the early days of the pandemic, after the federal Small Business Administration added to its Paycheck Protection Program application two questions about criminal records for all loan applicants, we raised nearly $100,000 for grants to struggling small business owners who were ineligible for government funds because they had been incarcerated. We developed the S.T.A.B.L.E. program—the only residential gender-responsive, LGBTQIA+-positive re-entry program in Georgia designed specifically by and for previously incarcerated Black women. We sponsor the local Google Career Skills for the Justice-Impacted Program and are an Atlanta hub of the Participatory Defense Network, a community organizing model for people facing charges, their families, and communities to impact case outcomes and shift power in the court system.
With support from M4BL Invest/Divest Campaign funds, we’ve begun the Protected Reinvestment Campaign to get the city to divest $3 million from its budget and invest in housing and other resources for residents who are most impacted by mass incarceration. To get the broadest possible support, we’re framing the campaign in terms of public safety. (The earlier “defunding” message resulted in a 2021 increase in the police budget by $15 million.)
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