Paul Light Driving Social Change in Troubled Times

Herb’s Vera story may be familiar to many here. In 1961, he was asked by Louis Schweitzer—the philanthropist who started this eponymous organization and the son of Vera Schweitzer—to find a solution to New York City’s overcrowded jails. Herb visited the Tombs, the notorious jail in downtown Manhattan, and went cell by cell asking people why they we ...

Herb was a listener. He spent time with people incarcerated on Rikers Island and advocated for what they actually needed—aid and access to employment, education, and housing—to keep them out of the system. Even in his last few years, he continued to attend monthly meetings to close Rikers, leading to the historic city council vote in 2019 to do jus ...

As state and local governments scrambled to contain the virus, the punitive policies and practices that have characterized the nation’s criminal legal system became untenable. And as a result, some policymakers enacted measures that advocates have long urged. They released people from jails and prisons, reduced admissions, and took steps to make fa ...