Thrive Award Winner: Marilynn

Throughout the spring and summer, you can almost certainly spot Marilynn sitting on her porch with her rottweiler puppy looking over her street. She looks out for the young men and woman who don’t have someone looking out for them, the young folks who learned a how to make quick money before they had a chance to learn anything else.

These young folks serve as a reminder of where Marilynn came from and the work that she has dedicated her life to.

Growing up, Marilynn was in and out of juvenile detention centers for theft. She will be quick to tell you that she was doing all she knew to survive.

She’s from Buttermilk Bottom, an all-Black neighborhood located in central Atlanta where the Atlanta Civic Center now stands. The neighborhood was built on a downward slope and is said to have gotten its name from the backed-up water that had a buttermilk smell. Others think the name comes from the residents who were often too poor to afford sweet fresh milk but instead drank sour older milk and left a smell over the neighborhood.

Regardless of name, the neighborhood was characterized by the deep poverty that plagued it. Marilynn could not count on three meals a day; she could hardly count on one guaranteed hot meal.

If she wanted to eat, she had to steal. If her friends were hungry, she would take more.

“I remember going to jail since I was a kid,” Marilynn said. “My juvenile record was just like my adult record. I went to training school and I went to juvenile maybe three or four times.”

For Marilynn, and many others like her, this was the only way she knew how to survive. As an adult, she was incarcerated eight more times. Each time she came out, she was unable to get a job or a find place to live and turned right back to stealing to survive — leading to another arrest.

Before 2015, job applications could ask whether you had a criminal record. Once you check that box, employers almost always threw out the application. This could mean that from the second you make a mistake, no matter the reason, you are unable to support yourself.

Marilynn changed that.

After leaving prison for the eighth time Marilynn promised herself, she would not repeat her cycle. Through an organization called First Step Staffing, Marilynn landed a job at Manhattan Car Auction making $6.35 an hour, eight hours a week while living in transitional housing. First Step is a staffing organization that helps individuals who have barriers to employment land a job.

It was hardly enough money to live on, but it kept her busy and it kept her fed.

“I kept it and I said I would make the best of it because it was the first job that I had that I can say ‘I’m formally incarcerated.’” Marilynn said. “And I’m happy to say to I have a letter on my wall from President Carter because I was the first person from First Step to take an eight hour a week job and make it over 40 hours a week.”

At the same time, Marilynn had started volunteering at 9to5 Working Women, an organization dedicated to improving the working conditions and ensuring the rights of women office workers in the United States.

The organization was working on the Family Care Act. If a family member got sick, there was no way for a caregiver to take off work – they had to say that they themselves were sick. Marilynn joined the campaign to change this, teach workshops around the city and educating as many women as possible on the Family Care Act.

Some of this education took place at Atlanta Habitat. Marilynn hosted a series of courses for our homeowners to learn more about the Act and what they could do to get legislation passed around it.

While volunteering at Habitat, Marilynn realized that she may have discovered a path to homeownership. She applied to our homebuyer program but was met with that same check box that made everything difficult, her criminal record.

“I said, ‘Well, why can I come here to facilitate workshops but I can’t apply for a house?’ And so I had the conversation with Melissa. She called me and told me, ‘come on over to fill out the application.’” Marilynn remembered. “I filled out the application in June, I think in November I was moving in.”

The Family Care Act passed and before Marilynn could lose momentum, she took on that check box on applications.

Marilynn had worked her way up to Lead Organizer for 9to5’s “Ban the Box” initiative. The goal was to remove questions “related to prior felony convictions from employment applications in the City of Atlanta.”

Through her work, Atlanta became the first city in the south to ban the box and cities throughout the state soon followed.  East Point, Fulton County, DeKalb County, Liberty County, Chatham County, Dougherty County, all banned the box and, in 2015, the entire State of Georgia followed.

Marilynn’s efforts made it all the way to the White House in 2015, when President Obama issued an Executive Order to ban the box on federal applications.

“I have two friends that do some work there, a formerly incarcerated female and male that worked in the White House, that opened the door all the way,” Marilynn stated proudly.

Today, 37 states, Washington D.C., and over 150 cities and counties have adopted Ban the Box.

With all that she had accomplished, Marilynn was eager to keep going. She wanted to help more people like herself who didn’t have anyone fighting for them.

Marilynn founded Women on the Rise to keep women out or prison. She wanted to provide more resources for formerly incarcerated women of color. According to their website, they have served over 400 formerly incarcerated women directly.

Marilynn came across many young women who just needed a little guidance to get their lives back on track. She watched so many of them completely transform when they just had a little bit of support.

Beyond the work Women on the Rise does directly, the organization works to reform the criminal justice system and keep women out of jail altogether.

Women on the Rise has helped launch the #CloseTheJailATL, #CommunitiesOverCages Campaign and passed legislation to close and repurpose the city’s extra jail through a community-led Design Taskforce process. They have worked on developing the Atlanta/Fulton County Pre-Arrest Diversion Initiative through a community-led design process.

Last year, Marilynn retired and passed her company down to the first women she took under her wing.

Although she is proud of the work she has done, she knows there is still so much to be done. So, Marilynn sits on her porch and looks over her street, watching out for any of the young folks who may need her help.

She will provide a hot meal when she can or $20 if she has it. Asking for help is not easy so she tries to make it as easy as she can for those who need it the most.

“If I had never went to prison, I never would be doing the work I’m doing now,” Marilynn explained. “There’s the root cause of why we do things and if you don’t address the root cause, we got to be that familiar face, that revolving door. We do what we do until somebody can help us with the root cause of our issues.”