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mattofthetrees-blog · 6 years ago

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The fight to save our planet has only just begun

Right now it feels like the world is waking up. Right now it feels like there is an appetite for change that will not be sated until the planet is saved. Right now feels like the dawn of a new future of balance between human society and the natural world that sustains our existence. Don't be fooled. Right now, while everything you see on your TV, computer screen and smartphone screams 'change now', there are World Leaders framing mediocrity as ambition and hoping this will blow over so they can put off action for another term and avoid losing support from big business and citizens who will not tolerate compromise to comforts so recently gained. Right now whole countries are going about business as usual with barely a whisper of this 'revolution'. Right now there are people you see in your everyday life whose twitter feeds, Facebook walls and mealtime conversations are bereft of any mention of climate change or biodiversity loss. Do not believe that cheering the ambition for change is enough. Only the keystone has been lain - if left alone it will be buried in the dust of everyday social issues and personal priorities in days or weeks. None of the changes needed have yet been made. No commitments have yet been made, let alone kept. No one who is currently retweeting and publicly announcing their fears for the future has yet felt the bite of the changes to diet & lifestyle that must happen - and soon. Will their resolve hold? It must. The burning feelings we have right now about the absurdity of environmental vandalism, the short sightedness of unsustainable profiteering, the crime of preventable wildlife extinctions, these need to be carried like a torch and used to ignite more and bigger fires of outrage and resolve until the whole world is calling for change and resolved to make sacrifices today to ensure there is a tomorrow for us, our children, and all life on our beautiful planet. Do not think you have done your bit with a tweet and a petition signature. Live the change you know must become the new normal, and use your voice, your vote and your life choices to ensure that world leaders cannot ignore the tide of public opinion and resolve. They must commit to huge and permanent changes to the very tenets of our society in 2020. The opportunities to come together and make those changes are already in the calendar - but leaders must know that nothing short of absolute commitment will be tolerated by their citizens, and that the hardships we must all endure to save our planet are not barriers but steps we all commit to climb together. They must feel pressure, support, urgency and encouragement - not just anger. Perhaps most importantly of all, we need to empower the young and educate the younger. We must not say this is about them and exclude them from the fight. They must learn why change is needed, how we got to this point, and how those changes can be made. They must learn that they are not helpless, that leaders only borrow their power from the people, that life is fragile and precious, and that we must be aware of our impact and live within our means. Don't let the fire die. No rest until we are on the path to a sustainable future. Visit www.ourplanet.com to learn what change is needed and why, and to join the movement for Our Planet. #NewDealForNature #LiveTheChange #2020 #OurPlanet #CBD2020 #shareourplanet #superyear

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usviraltrends-blog · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/a-house-too-far-two-scientists-abandon-their-bids-for-congress-science-2/

A house too far: Two scientists abandon their bids for Congress | Science

Phil Janowicz on the campaign trail earlier this year

Matt Gush

By Jeffrey MervisApr. 27, 2018 , 2:20 PM

When Phil Janowicz and Kristopher Larsen began their campaigns for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, they joined what appears to be a record number of Ph.D. scientists running for national office this year. But in March, after spending months on the campaign trail, the two Democrats—an organic chemistry professor from southern California and a space physics researcher from Colorado, respectively—decided to drop out before a single ballot had been cast in their states.

As scientists, they had learned to listen to their data. And the numbers they were seeing didn’t add up.

Janowicz had spent nearly a year running at full tilt in California’s 39th congressional district. National Democrats are hoping to flip the seat from Republican control as part of a so-called blue wave in November that would give them control of the House. But his polling showed that, under California’s unusual election rules, a crowded field could split the Democrat vote and allow a Republican to retain the seat.

For Larsen, who had spent 5 months actively campaigning in an ultraliberal district while holding onto his day job and a part-time gig as a small-town mayor, the local Democratic Party’s early endorsement of another candidate made it hard for his campaign to gain traction. And he knew he couldn’t raise the money needed to get his message out to the voters of Colorado’s second congressional district.

Despite falling short of their goals, each man received a graduate education in running for Congress. Here are their stories—including some lessons for others who may want to follow in their footsteps.

Phil Janowicz: taking one for the team

Janowicz was an undergraduate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge when he decided to be a college chemistry teacher. That’s why, after earning his Ph.D. in 2010 in organic chemistry from the University of Illinois (U of I) in Urbana, he immediately took a job at California State University (CSU) in Fullerton.

“I love teaching, I love working with students,” he says. “At [CSU], I was still able to continue to do chemical education research, but the primary focus was teaching.”

At U of I, he and his mentor, Jeffrey Moore, developed a new approach to teaching organic chemistry that emphasized conceptual learning over memorization. Janowicz continued that work at CSU, winning a grant from the National Science Foundation and developing a curriculum that would eventually spread to more than a dozen CSU campuses.

Janowicz had always regarded teaching as a form of public service. But after earning tenure in 2016, he decided he could reach more students by leaving academia and broadening an existing collaboration with publisher McGraw-Hill. A few months later, after watching the national election returns, he decided to take his public service to the next level.

“The next morning [9 November 2016], I left McGraw-Hill and started the process of learning how to run a campaign,” he recalled earlier this year. Republican Representative Ed Royce has “been my congressman for many years and I’ve disagreed with him on quite a bit for many years, so I assumed I would be running against him. We had the launch at Fullerton on April 25, and I’ve been running ever since.”

Janowicz was the first Democrat to declare. But the field quickly expanded as national Democrats began talking about flipping the seat. Their optimism was based on the results of the 2016 election: The district voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, and seemed primed to oust Royce, a 13-term incumbent.

Janowicz threw himself into the challenge. He placed himself on a round-the-clock regime of making phone calls to raise money, attending political gatherings in hopes of garnering endorsements, and knocking on doors to introduce himself to would-be constituents. Running as a progressive scientist, he felt his hard work was beginning to pay off. He says internal polls showed him running ahead of pediatrician Mai Khanh Tran, another early entrant on the Democrat side who has been endorsed by the science advocacy group 314 Action, and two multimillionaires who were largely self-funding their campaigns.

But Janowicz’s grassroots strategy became outdated after Royce announced in January that he would not seek re-election. An open seat is normally good news for candidates from the opposing party. But not for Janowicz. Four strong Republican candidates jumped into the fray and the boisterous, unruly Democratic field turned into a potential liability.

The problem was California’s unusual primary rules. In most states, candidates from each major party square off in a primary, with the top vote-getter from each party advancing to the general election. But in California, the candidates all compete in a single primary and the top two vote-getters—regardless of party—move on. That means two Republicans, or two Democrats, could end up vying for the seat.

After Royce decided not to run again, Democrats faced the real risk that, with so many candidates on the primary ballot, none would attract enough votes to finish first or second. Janowicz says his internal polling highlighted that concern: His single-digit tally led the Democratic field, but he trailed at least two Republican candidates. So, on the morning of 14 March, the deadline for filing signature petitions that would put him on the 5 June primary ballot, Janowicz made a gut-wrenching decision.

“I’m a Ph.D. scientist and I understand the math,” he says. “And the math did not look good not just for me, but for any Democrat to finish in the top two. So as a team player and community Democrat through and through, I knew that taking one for the team was the best option for helping to get a Democrat, whoever that might be, through the primary.”

“The whole reason I started this was to switch our district from red to blue,” he continues. “And if I’m going to be part of the problem, then I’m not part of the solution.”

The science vote

Follow our rolling coverage of 2018’s science candidates

Kristopher Larsen: mission aborted

Unlike Janowicz, Larsen had already tasted electoral victory—he’s the mayor of the small town of Nederland in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies—when he decided to throw his hat into the ring. He knew his grassroots campaign might take a while to catch fire. But at least he didn’t have to worry about what was going on with the other party. “This district is so gerrymandered that whoever wins the Democratic primary will win in November,” Larsen says, referring to the practice of drawing district lines so they favor one of the major political parties.

Growing up in Boulder, Larsen says his political activism came from his parents—“old school hippies from the 1960s and 1970s”—and resurfaced after the 2001 terrorist attacks and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, protesting the wars as a graduate student at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, “was a pretty lonely business,” he says. Besides, his research didn’t leave him much time for anything else.

But Larsen rekindled his passion for politics after returning to Boulder for a job as a research scientist at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). “I started volunteering on boards to learn how government works,” he recalls, and was twice elected as a town trustee before becoming mayor in 2016. He also spent 2 years as coordinator for advocacy and science education in the Washington, D.C., office of the American Physical Society. The society wanted to create a grassroots network of members who could respond quickly to political developments—contacting their representative or senator to urge support for pending legislation, for example—and Larsen saw it as another way to hone his political skills.

Larsen knew that Nederland’s tiny population of 1500 wasn’t the ideal launching pad for a seat in Congress. But when Democratic Representative Jared Polis announced in June 2017 that he was leaving Congress after five terms to run for governor, Larsen decided the opportunity was too good to pass up.

“My hope was that, after a few terms for mayor, there might be an opportunity for county commissioner, or as a state legislator,” he says. “So, the timing wasn’t ideal. But I also thought, ‘It’s an open seat. If I don’t go now, will I be kicking myself 5 years from now for not trying?’”

He had already made changes in his work life to make room for politics. At LASP, Larsen manages operations and data systems for several NASA missions, both large and small. “I help build tools that scientists can actually use, and make sure that the instruments are returning all the data we expect.” Before that, however, he was a project scientist on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission and the Cassini mission to Saturn. “I moved away from the research side, the soft money side because I needed more stability to do politics,” he says.

But even that adjustment didn’t free him from the stress that comes with running for Congress while retaining your day job. “During my exploratory period, I sat down every night, looking at the savings I have and trying to figure out how much of it I really want to burn through and how much I needed to pay the mortgage and take care of other responsibilities,” he recalls. “It’s a real issue for someone trying to [run for office] if it’s not their career.”

By the time Larsen was ready to jump in, state party leaders had already anointed another candidate, someone who was well-known in local political circles. A third candidate had the backing of the progressive movement that had embraced Senator Bernie Sanders’s (I–VT) failed 2016 presidential bid.

Larsen felt that his views were equally progressive and that his experience as an elected official gave him an edge over the other two candidates, neither of whom had ever been accountable to voters. However, his bare-bones, grassroots campaign hadn’t taken off as he had hoped. And last month he forced himself to evaluate his campaign as he would a NASA mission.

“We have key decision points, in which we put ego aside and look at the data,” he explains. “In this case, that means looking at the fundraising, at the endorsements, at the volunteer support we have, and the turnouts for the events we’ve been holding.”

The bottom line, he adds, was simple: “Does it make sense to continue? Is there a path to victory?” And when the answer was no, he pulled the plug.

Bitten by the bug

Although they have abandoned their bids for Congress, neither man is leaving the political arena. Larsen has dusted off his original plan, which could mean running next year for a countywide post or the state legislature. Janowicz is helping a state legislator who’s fighting a recall petition and is assisting several candidates running in local races.

Despite his increased activism, Janowicz still makes time for teaching science. The morning after saying a teary goodbye to his campaign staff, he was in the classroom at 8 a.m. listening to CSU students debate the merits of the Keystone oil pipeline and of a cap-and-trade approach to reducing carbon emissions. The assignment is meant to hone the critical thinking skills of the nonchemistry majors taking his introductory course, he says. But it also reflects his growing appetite to engage with the world.

“My love of science and my love of public policy bleed over into all aspects of my life,” he says, confessing that his failed candidacy has probably set him on a new career path. “Once you get bit with the political bug, there’s no going back.”

#Science

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mystlnewsonline · 7 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://www.stl.news/gop-bid-for-control-in-nevada-raises-fear-of-endless-recalls/82327/

GOP bid for control in Nevada raises fear of endless recalls

/February 7, 2018 (AP)(STL.News) —

Nevada’s major political parties are locked in a legal battle over a Republican effort to take control of the state Senate by recalling two freshly elected Democratic lawmakers — a tactic that Democrats warn could undermine the validity of elections across the U.S.

Experts and those from both parties say the move could be the way of the future for the losing side to keep control of influential statehouses. In Nevada, no official reason was given for the recalls, and none was required. Some conservatives have been open about hoping Republicans gain partisan advantage.

Republicans in 2016 lost hold of the Nevada Senate, which Democrats now control by an 11-9 margin. The GOP then circulated petitions to recall two Democratic senators and one independent who caucuses with them.

Republicans gathered enough signatures to launch recall elections of the Democrats, Nicole Cannizzaro and Joyce Woodhouse, who had been narrowly elected the previous year from swing districts in the Las Vegas area.

Democrats launched a counteroffensive. They sued in federal court, arguing the recalls violate the U.S. Constitution. They also persuaded thousands of people who had signed the petitions to withdraw their signatures — likely dropping the petitions below the threshold needed to qualify for the ballot.

Whether the signatures are allowed be withdrawn is at the heart of the case heard in state court Wednesday in Las Vegas.

The attorney for those opposing the recall effort told a judge that allowing people to remove their names from a recall petition protects them from fraud and deception.

“It protects the rights of the voters so they are not duped into signing a petition they don’t believe in,” attorney Marc Elias said.

A ruling could be issued next week, but Judge Jerry Wiese said he expects it to be challenged.

National Democrats fear the Nevada effort, if successful, could become a template for Republicans seeking to hang on to power in statehouses nationwide, especially if the midterm elections this year lead to losses in some of the 68 legislative chambers the GOP controls.

Democrats have drawn parallels to other recent steps Republicans have taken to retain power in the states.

In Pennsylvania, the Republican-controlled Legislature this week threatened to impeach the elected Democrats on the state Supreme Court, who ruled that the GOP had improperly drawn the congressional districts.

In North Carolina, the GOP-led Legislature has tried to wrest control of how the state administers elections from the newly elected Democratic governor.

National Democrats have invested heavily in Nevada to try to undermine the recall and mount legal challenges.

“We are in a new frontier in that they are using the recall statute to change an election,” said Marc Elias, a prominent Democratic election attorney who represented Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But Joshua Spivak, who tracks recall elections and is a senior fellow at the Hugh Carey Institute at Wagner College, said the Nevada case is not that unusual.

He noted that Democrats in 2012 briefly seized control of the Wisconsin Senate after a series of recalls sparked by Gov. Scott Walker’s attacks on public sector unions. While Nevada Republicans have not cited a single big decision like the Wisconsin union vote to justify their effort, Spivak said that’s in line with history.

“It is a feature of the recall to just kick someone out for partisan benefit,” Spivak said.

Lawyers for the recall effort did not return multiple calls for comment Tuesday. They work in the law firm run by Republican Nevada Lt. Gov. Mark Hutchison, whose office said it would not comment on the campaign.

Logan Churchwell of the conservative Public Interest Legal Foundation, which intervened on behalf of the recall, stressed that Nevada law allows recalls and that Democrats are trying to limit voting.

“Nevada places few barriers on the electorate to trigger a recount,” Churchwell said. “It’s curious that the Democrat Party’s attorneys would label such a system and its uses as frivolous when their actions are undemocratic by definition.”

But the state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, has voiced alarm at the recalls.

“There really wasn’t, I think, a legitimate reason for the recalls,” Sandoval told The Nevada Independent news website last year. “So it just kind of escalates the politics, mean-spiritedness politics. I think both parties will now use it on a regular basis, and that’s not what Nevada politics has ever been and that’s not what it should be.”

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This story has been corrected to show that the Public Interest Legal Foundation intervened in the case, not that it filed an amicus brief and that The Nevada Independent is a website not a newspaper.

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI,By Associated Press – published on STL.News by St. Louis Media, LLC (A.S)

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#Control in Nevada #GOP bid #National Democrats #Public Interest Legal Foundation #Raises fear of endless recalls #U.S. Constitution

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juliadecadenet · 8 years ago

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In recent years, with the advance of social media, the deplorable dog and cat meat trades within China, South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia have become a mainstream issue among the international community. No one really associated Taiwan with this trade however and certainly no one on social media was talking about it.

World Protection for Dogs and Cats in the Meat Trade started their own petition demanding Taiwan impose higher penalties to really make a difference and we are so thankful collective campaigning has worked. Yesterday, the country of Taiwan passed amendments to the Animal Protection Act, which will criminalise the slaughter, sale and consumption of dogs and cats nationally. People found guilty of the crime will face hefty fines and jail time. This is a wonderful step in the right direction and motivates us all to keep campaigning.

Here is the story of the Taiwan campaign in more detail

Concerned Citizens From Taiwan Contacted The Charity.

Last year our charity was contacted by a retired army officer from Taiwan who ran a Facebook group where concerned Taiwanese citizens posted photographic evidence of dogs and cats being tortured for their meat. We were surprised to hear this. He explained that the people torturing and eating the dogs were all Vietnamese migrant workers in Taiwan. He said that on average, 180,000 Vietnamese people, mainly young men, were coming to Taiwan each year to work as low skilled labourers and they were the ones killing and eating the stray cats and dogs – often in horrific torturous ways as the pictures showed.

Over the weeks our new friend continued to send us profile after profile, of young Vietnamese men torturing and eating stray dogs and cats, whilst working in Taiwan. With the consumption of dogs and cats being illegal in Taiwan, it was clear the Vietnamese workers did not pay attention to the law, as they posted their conquests on their Facebook pages. With the fine being quite small, only up to £200, it was never going to be enough to deter their ways.

NoToDogMeat Took Action

Over the weeks our new friend continued to send us dozens of Facebook pages with pictures of cruelty, posted by Vietnamese men torturing and eating stray dogs and cats whilst working in Taiwan. With the consumption of dogs and cats being illegal in Taiwan, it was clear the Vietnamese workers were ignoring the law, as they brazenly posted their conquests so publicly on their Facebook pages. The maximum fine of only £200 clearly was not working as a deterrent. In response we decided to help our Taiwanese friends in their campaign by starting two of petitions that people anywhere in the world could sign. Our friend had previously told us that we should try and show the Taiwanese government how strong was the feeling about the weak laws among the international community and that quite possibly, they would feel ashamed.

First of all, our charity’s CEO Julia started this petition to the Taiwanese Council of Agriculture: https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/Minister_BaoJi_ChenCouncil_of_Agriculture_Executive_Yuan_ROC_Taiwan_Minister_BaoJi_Chen_Taiwan_Higher_Penalties_if_caugh/?nKkXXjb

In conjunction, her good friend who lobbies on behalf of the organisation Occupy UN 4 Animals, created this petition, showing the shocking pictures of torture. https://secure.avaaz.org/en/petition/TAIWAN_Government_and_ Parliament_Punish_this_man_and_set_severe_penalties_for_cooking_dogs_cats_alive/

We delivered Our Petitions to Taiwanese Government

Once we had gained a couple of thousand signatures on the petitions, we sent them off, along with photos taken from dozens of profiles of Vietnamese workers, who were proudly torturing Taiwanese stray cats and dogs.

We also attached details of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, which speak of civil society, where governments are being called on to uphold the rule of law. We also printed out UN extracts and paragraphs that described the caring animal welfare ethos of the new UN Agenda. We explained the problem of the Vietnamese workers in Taiwan, as well as asking if the Taiwanese government might help us raise the issue of dog and cat meat torture, to other Asian countries.

We were delighted a few weeks later when we received responses, both from the Office of the Taiwanese President and from the Taiwanese Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan.

The replies can be seen here:

We were surprised to hear that on arrival at the Taiwanese Airport, the Vietnamese workers were actually given hand books and shown videos on how to treat animals properly, as well as being given warnings not to catch or eat dogs and cats. They mentioned that employers of immigrant labourers were also instructed to inform their workers not to eat dogs and cats.

Further Contact from Taiwanese Activists Working With NoToDogMeat

When he saw the replies our Taiwanese friend whose group collects the pictures of the Vietnamese labourers said “but the Vietnamese are still doing it and they are still posting it on Facebook”. Sadly he was right. There were still more and more profiles showing the torture of dogs and cats. We told him we would gain more signatures on the petitions, write a stronger letter informing them that their fine of £200 was no deterrent, and we would send more photos of the profiles of Vietnamese labourers torturing dogs, which we sent off two months later.

Campaigning Works

In light of all this we are of course delighted to discover the latest reforms of the Taiwanese law earlier this week. Firstly, the fine for eating dog and cat meat has risen to £6,500. Secondly, anyone caught torturing dogs and cats can now go to prison for two years and face a fine of £50,000. We think these changes send a message that the Taiwanese authorities mean business. We are hopeful that this will be enough to stop the Vietnamese Facebook posters at least from torturing dogs whilst in Taiwan.

Our plan now is to send reports to the Vietnamese government, showing them the same evidence and details of the new penalties set by the Taiwanese authorities. We will make it clear to them that these changes have been brought about as a direct result of Vietnamese labourers behaving so badly abroad. We hope this might shame and galvanise the Vietnamese authorities into action and to introduce new laws where currently there are none.

We will also send details to the UN Development Program Vietnam, and make the Vietnamese government aware of this and make sure they know about the animal welfare ethos of the new UN Agenda.

Will Dog Meat Be Banned in The Rest of Asia?

As for China and South Korea, the fact is that Taiwan has now set a clear precedent. We can start sending details of the heavy penalties set by Taiwan, to these offending nations, to show exactly what kind of an example they should follow. Already news of Taiwan’s strict new penalties are appearing in Chinese media and, no doubt, in the South Korea too.

In the meantime we would like to say a huge thank you to our dear friend, lobbying organisation Occupy UN 4 Animals for their heartfelt, professional and result-bearing letters to the Taiwanese President and others, and to our lovely Taiwanese friend, the retired soldier, for his continuing activism and his bravery.

Further details about the new laws in Taiwan can be seen here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/taiwan-dog-cat-meat-ban-first-asian-state-sold-consumed-eaten-white-china-a7679526.html#gallery

What Can You Do To Help?

NoToDogMeat runs a partner shelter in China with over 400 dogs and 40 cats and we need your help. We need $20,000 to complete the building of our medical shelter which will run spay and neuter/microchipping and critical care for dogs and cats that are still in danger from the meat trade. Our wonderful partner Mr Zhao who is a vegan has a plan also to run education programmes to local schools. Please help us continue this work.

Please donate today.

Taiwan Dog Meat Ban – Our Role In recent years, with the advance of social media, the deplorable dog and cat meat trades within China, South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia have become a mainstream issue among the international community.

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viralhottopics · 8 years ago

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Gift of freedom: how Obama’s clemency drive tackled aftermath of ‘war on drugs’

Ramona Brant is one of 1,324 people serving long terms for relatively minor drug crimes to be freed by the president but his successor is unlikely to follow suit

Last April, two months after Ramona Brant walked free from prison having served 21 years of a life sentence for a first-time non-violent drug offense, she found herself outside the Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington as a convoy of limousines drew up. A tall black man got out of the central vehicle and greeted her with the immortal words: Hey Ramona, come on, Im taking you to lunch.

I was no good, I couldnt think, Brant recalls. This is the person who used his executive power to say Enough is enough, you can go home now. Then he invites me to lunch. I couldnt believe this.

By the end of lunch, Brant had composed herself sufficiently to make Obama a heartfelt promise. She told him that she would not allow his name to be tainted by anything she did that would send her back to prison.

I will honor you with my freedom, she said. And that is what I have done.

Brant is one of 1,324 women and men who will honor Obama with their freedom long after he vacates the White House in less than three weeks time. Most of them, like her, were serving long prison sentences 395 of them for life for relatively minor drug crimes imposed during the so-called war on drugs.

Brants case was particularly brutal. She had no history of drug dealing when in 1994 she was arrested and charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine valued by the prosecution at $37m. I have never sold drugs at all in my life. Never once.

Yet through association with her violent and abusive boyfriend, who forced her to accompany him when he went on interstate drug runs by beating her and threatening to kill members of her family, she was accused of personally trafficking large amounts of crack cocaine and powder cocaine quantities she says were entirely fictitious.

Those amounts never existed, there was nothing there. They were based on what my co-defendants traded among themselves, and all of that was lumped together and I was held responsible for it.

Even the trial judge as he sentenced her to remain behind bars for the rest of her natural life complained that putting her away forever made no sense. But his hands were tied the sentence was mandatory.

Her former boyfriend remains in prison on a life sentence.

Obama cited Brants case in the long article he wrote last week for the Harvard Law Review looking back on his impact on criminal justice reform. Ramonas case is in many ways emblematic of the problems with overly harsh mandatory sentences in the federal system, he said.

Brant says that she kept her spirits up over 21 long years in the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut, by placing her trust in God. Her prayers were answered last December when she received a letter from Obama saying that he believed in her and was giving her a second chance by commuting her sentence.

To see the letter, and his signature! I just sat there reading it over and over, it was surreal.

Barack Obama escorts Ramon Brant to the Busboys and Poets restaurant in Washington DC on 30 March 2016. Photograph: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images

Multiply that overwhelming joy by 1,324 and you start to get a sense of the human scale of Obamas clemency project. In any future assessment of his legacy, his flinging open of the prison gates to so many victims of the drug war is certain to loom large.

What hes done has been unprecedented, said Kara Gotsch of the Sentencing Project. These people were the victims of policies that trapped them in the criminal justice system for low-level drug offenses these werent the drug kingpins.

One of the strengths of Obamas clemency drive is its power to act as a model for individual states that are responsible for the incarceration of the overwhelming majority of prisoners in America. While there are about 190,000 people held in the federal penal system almost half of them for drug offenses there are close to 2 million under state lock and key.

President Obama has tried to set an example on the national stage, and that is critically important in shifting the needle on what is fair and proportionate. The whole country is looking at this, Gotsch said.

Obamas embrace of commutations comes at the end of a singularly frustrating period for criminal justice reform. A year ago there were high hopes that a bipartisan coalition of forces, from the rightwing Koch brothers to the ACLU, would effect legislative change that would bring freedom to thousands of largely black Americans caught up in the harsh mandatory sentencing of the drug war.

When those hopes were dashed on the rock of Republican intransigence in the House of Representatives, Obama turned to his presidential power to grant clemency without the need for congressional approval. It would be comparatively slight compared with the initial ambition to overhaul the entire justice system, but it would be something.

This is his last shout to try and bring relief to as many people as possible, Gotsch said.

It has certainly come late in the day for the Obama presidency. Until he announced the clemency project in 2014, Obama displayed scant interest in this area indeed during the whole of his first term he granted pardons or commutations to only 23 people.

As recently as last March criminal justice experts were lamenting in the Washington Post that his record on pardons where individuals have their legal liabilities erased as opposed to commutations where their convictions still stand was so poor that Obama could go down as one of the most merciless presidents in history. It was only in 2016 that his drive for clemency really picked up speed, with 1,171 of the 1,324 lucky recipients gaining their freedom in the course of last year alone.

Obamas sudden burst of activity rocketed him from being a no-show on the clemency league table to being a titan among postwar presidents. Many of the reports on his late conversion to commuting and pardoning prisoners have noted that he has wielded his clemency power more times than the previous 11 presidents combined.

That characterization is misleading. Mark Osler, a law professor at the University of St Thomas who set up the first clemency legal clinic in the country, points out that Obama holds such a distinction only if you discount the clemency record of Gerald Ford.

In 1974, the Republican president granted clemency to 14,000 draft dodgers and deserters of the Vietnam war. That was a brave move, Osler contends, given that at the time draft dodgers were as popular as crack dealers are today.

Ford achieved his massive clemency rate by setting up a lean bipartisan operation that could push petitions through with minimum bureaucracy. By contrast, Osler criticizes the Obama clemency project for operating a system of review that is so cumbersome it has gummed up the process.

The professor lists seven consecutive hurdles, spanning four federal buildings, that any prisoner must negotiate to have her or his petition granted: The petition goes from a staff person at the pardon attorneys office to the pardon attorney, then it goes to a staff person at the deputy attorney generals office to the deputy attorney general, then to the staff at the White House counsels office then to the White House counsel, and finally to the president. And people are surprised that the results are so uneven.

As a lawyer who has represented more than 60 petitioners, Osler is keenly aware of the impact of Obamas efforts. For the 1,324 beneficiaries, he said, this was an incredible act of grace. The restoration to society matters, not just to them but to their families and communities.

But he is also keenly aware that the vast majority of more than 30,000 prisoners who have petitioned the president have been denied clemency or are still waiting for an answer. The problem is, I feel like the person after the shipwreck in the lifeboat seeing all the other people in the water.

Ramona Brant knows that feeling all too intimately. Many of her fellow prisoners she calls them her sisters are still incarcerated. There are still too many of my sisters left behind, she says.

Hopes for those people are fading with every day. President-elect Donald Trumps choice for US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has been scathing of Obamas clemency project, denouncing it as an abuse of executive power. The chances of the Trump administration continuing to push for release of low-level drug offenders is slim to none.

Ramona Brant with her two sons, now grown up. Photograph: Brant family

As a way of doing her bit to keep the flame alive, Brant has spent much of the past year since she was released last February traveling the country speaking about the dual scourges of domestic violence and mass incarceration. She uses the power of her personal story to try to influence change.

I didnt just study criminal justice, I lived it. This has been my life and that of so many other women. The system is structured to incarcerate people, black women like me.

Brant, who was a mother of two young sons by her co-defendant and former boyfriend when she was arrested, thinks back on all the precious moments she missed over 21 years in a cell. I missed an opportunity to be a mother to my own children, to watch the first tooth come out, to take them to the first day of school; I wasnt by my fathers side when he died, or there when my mom was put to rest; I missed my first two grandchildren being born. No matter how many pictures you have on your wall they cannot replace the images in your mind, and I have no images.

She was there four months ago, however, at the birth of her third grandchild. She has begun to fill up the void.

She thanks Obama for that. He has given me an amazing gift, and I wish there was a way to express my gratitude. He knows he gave me a second chance, but I dont think he knows the depth of what it really means to be free.