(A Storytellers Collective Feature)
In neighborhoods across the United States, cycles of violence, incarceration, and disinvestment have shaped generations. Yet within these same communities, there are also stories of resilience — stories that challenge us to imagine what becomes possible when people refuse to be defined by their worst act, and when communities commit themselves to the long work of repair and flourishing.
This Chasing Justice podcast episode, produced through Christians for Social Action’s Storytellers Collective initiative, tells one such story: The journey of Jamal Bakr, whose life reveals the devastating impact of systemic abandonment and the transforming power of community, faith, and hopeful resistance.
A Childhood Marked by Violence — and a Turning Point at 13
Jamal grew up in Chicago, where violence was commonplace and survival shaped daily life. As a 5-year-old buying ice cream on a summer afternoon, he witnessed a murder. That moment, he says, made violence feel “inescapable.” At age 13, on his way to school, Jamal was shot in the back by an adult gang member — a moment that shifted his life’s trajectory.
“My mom says I was always smiling,” Jamal recalls. “But after I was shot, everything changed.”
He lost feeling in his legs and began to understand violence not just as something around him, but aimed directly at him.
“I didn’t feel supported… and I didn’t feel safe,” he says. “Joining a gang felt like the only place I could go to be protected.”
Four years later, he was arrested and sentenced to 60 years in prison — a sentence he believed he would never outlive.
Inside Prison: Isolation, Despair, and a Glimmer of Grace
Prison offered no escape from fear. Jamal spent years negotiating conflicts, surviving gang dynamics, and confronting the crushing message that he was irredeemable. At one point, placed in a stripped segregation cell — without even a mattress — he hit a breaking point.
“I sat on the floor and contemplated suicide,” he remembers. “I just didn’t have anything to kill myself with. I prayed, ‘If you can hear me, save me.’”
Soon after, Jamal received a birthday card from a Seventh-Day Adventist church that simply read “Jesus loves you.” It brought him back to a memory of being baptized as a teenager, months before entering prison. Slowly, Jamal made a decision — one he describes as “four steps forward and three steps back” — to leave the gang, pursue education, and rebuild his life from the inside.
Education as Liberation
Jamal threw himself into learning. He completed more than 100 credits, earned a 4.0 GPA, and ultimately received a Master of Arts in Christian Ministry and Restorative Justice, graduating summa cum laude in 2022.
In his commencement address, chosen by his classmates, he reflected on what their education had formed in them:
“We are not the sums of our mistakes. We are not just the sums of God’s forgiveness. We are the sum of a liberative education and a transformative justice.”
A Community That Refused to Give Up
Even with his accomplishments, Jamal still faced nearly 40 more years in prison. Yet his community — family, professors, pastors, legal advocates, and local leaders — worked tirelessly to change that reality. In 2024, during a parole hearing, his former warden testified that releasing Jamal would improve institutional safety. His decade-long record was spotless. His support system was strong. His transformation undeniable.
With a 6–3 vote, the parole board granted him release. His freedom was framed not as the end of accountability, but as the beginning of “the next phase of his reparations” — a life given back to the community.
A Life Replanted in Community
Today, Jamal works at the Firehouse Community Arts Center in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood, serving teenagers and young adults in a community deeply affected by divestment and systemic violence. With gentleness and clarity, he helps young people uncover their gifts:
“What do you want to do with the power inside of you?” Jamal asks his students. “If I can do anything, I can be a mirror—so they see the beauty and talent that’s already there.”
He now designs and teaches curriculum on racial justice, conflict resolution, trauma healing, and spiritual formation. The work gives him “life fuel,” he says, and renews his sense of purpose. Jamal is also clear-eyed about the long arc of change:
“The kids I work with might not see a day without shooting… but their kids might,” he says. “If we’re moving in that direction, then we’re bringing about the change.”
Lessons for the Justice Journey
For younger generations seeking justice — and feeling tired — Jamal offers this wisdom:
“There is a thing called a sanctified no. You saying no to somebody is you saying yes to yourself.”
“Your faith should make you feel defiant. Hang onto that—and let it keep you relentless.”
This is gospel hope: a faith that refuses resignation, insists on restoration, and keeps showing up even when the harvest is beyond our sight.
Why This Story Matters
While Jamal’s release is extraordinary, his desire to disrupt cycles of violence and incarceration is not rare among his peers. More than 100 incarcerated students have entered the same master’s program; only a handful have been released. The rest remain inside a system still shaped more by punishment than by restoration or repair.
But stories like Jamal’s remind us that transformation is possible — when communities rally, when education liberates, when faith awakens defiance, and when we choose not to abandon one another.
