Here's what's happening.

In conjunction with a Youth Community Center in Los Angeles I'm mentoring a marijuana drug prevention film project for a group of wonderful high school students. "Fate Vincent Winslow" was the decided topic.

Fate Vincent Winslow

A 47-year-old African-American homeless man who acted as go-between in the sale of two minuscule bags of cannabis (worth $20 total) to an undercover cop, Winslow was sentenced to life in prison without parole based on other “strikes” that were 14 and 24 years old, respectively, one of which he received was a drug-related charge at 15 years of age. The white dealer in the transaction, who was also identified by the undercover officer, was never charged even though he was found with police evidence; a marked $20 bill.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/27/homeless-life-in-prison-weed_n_6769452.html

I have created a petition for a Fate Vincent Winslow's release through Change.org.

We were able to obtain the court case document from Fate's appeal easily and along with articles, we decided to do a short film to deter youth from marijuana drug use based on Fate. The main objective is to shed light on racial profiling and ridiculous sentencing such as Fate's and many others in an attempt to cause young people to abstain from drug use while we simultaneously advocate for our communities.

I reached out to Fate at Angola (Louisiana State Penitentiary) and the Assistant Warden quickly got involved. He told me he wouldn't allow me to talk to Fate and that he was saying no to any media. He then began a series of untruths that created red flags. Angola recently lost their head warden due to corrupt findings within the prison walls.

I instantly became concerned for Fate after that conversation and begin calling his former lawyers as well as the ACLU for help and answers. I was burdened with a heavy desire to get this man out and others like him. By signing and sharing this petition you and the Obama administration can help; President Obama has already pardoned 2 men with similar sentences during his term. I also wonder were my own rights violated by being denied conversation, with a non-violent offender and how many others rights may have been in an effort to help Fate.

"Obama has now commuted more sentences than any president in almost a century. That said, thousands of inmates remain in federal prison for nonviolent drug charges, many of them holdovers from the draconian sentencing laws that came out of the war on drugs. In 2011, then-Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new clemency initiative, claiming that 10,000 inmates "were potentially going to be released" as a result. But 562 is a far cry from that. And as Mother Jones has reported, dozens more are serving life sentences without parole for marijuana-only crimes, a group of people whom advocates view as an obvious choice for the kind of clemency reform that's been promised. (One marijuana lifer, Ramon Gonzalez, had his sentence commuted...)" http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/obama-just-freed-another-214-inmates

ACLU Blurb

Fate Vincent Winslow was homeless when he acted as a go-between in the sale of two small bags of marijuana, worth $10 in total, to an undercover police officer. During an

undercover investigation in Shreveport in September 2008, an undercover officer approached a white man named Mr. Perdue and Winslow, who is Black. The officer asked Winslow for two dime bags of marijuana worth $10 each and promised a $5 commission for Winslow, who says he accepted the offer in order to earn some money to get something to eat.

Winslow says he bought two $5 bags of marijuana from Perdue and sold them to the undercover officer as dime bags worth $10 each. The undercover officer testified that he witnessed a hand-to-hand transaction between Winslow and Perdue and that he paid Winslow with a $20 bill and a $5 bill. When officers arrested Winslow, he only had the $5 bill on him. Officers found the marked $20 bill on Perdue (the white supplier) but did not arrest him. According to Winslow, at trial, the 10 white jurors found him guilty of marijuana distribution, while the two black jurors found him not guilty (the state of Louisiana does not require a unanimous jury to convict and instead allows convictions by 10 out of 12 jurors). He was sentenced to mandatory life without parole as a fourth strike offender. His prior convictions were for a simple burglary committed in 1984, when he was 17; simple burglary in 1994, when he was 27 (he was accused and convicted of opening an unlocked car door and rummaging inside without taking anything); and possession of cocaine in 2000, when he was 37 (an undercover officer tried to sell him cocaine, which he says he did not purchase)

"Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?"

-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.