The City

“It’s concerning that Deputy Commissioner Townsend’s removal was a top goal of COBA and this incoming administration capitulated,” said Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda in the Urban Justice Center.

QNS

Before their tree lighting ceremony, Emcees Hannah Towfiek of The Street Vendor Project and Aracelly Cantos of Make the Road New York welcomed street vendors who decorated the tree with summonses they received in the past year alone. “You know we’re in the holiday season,” Towfiek said. “These people are paying for tickets instead of paying for presents to give to their kids or food to put on the table for the holidays.”

Politico

Darren Mack, a co-director of Freedom Agenda, said the current crisis at Rikers, with 15 deaths this year in the city jail system, makes moving forward with the plan all the more urgent. “This is something that survivors of Rikers, advocates and allies have fought for and we believe that definitely the next administration should stick to the plan,” he said. “It’s a human rights crisis. What could be more urgent than that?”

CBS News

"There was also no surprise,” former inmate Darren Mack said. That’s the reaction Mack had after learning another inmate in less than a week died on Rikers Island. Mack said he spent nearly two years on Rikers back in the ’90s, and the former inmate says the conditions were not great. “I recall, like, walking into solitary confinement, and there was, like, a Plexiglas over one of the cells and the cell Plexiglas was covered from top to bottom with feces,” he said.

Queens Examiner

Darren Mack, co-director of Freedom Agenda and a formerly incarcerated activist, has been involved with the initiative to close Rikers Island since 2016. “Every human being should be equal in dignity and rights,” said Mack. “Unfortunately, that is not the case for people who are funneled into New York City’s jail system which is a human rights crisis. Judges and DA’s are sending people to a potential death sentence. “If the Department of Corrections cannot keep people safe and alive, then they should not have people in their custody,” he added.

AMNY

Judges, prosecutors, the Mayor, the Governor, and other elected officials have shown a complete indifference to the lives of incarcerated people, as they send hundreds more New Yorkers each week into the deadly conditions on Rikers and The Boat,” said Darren Mack, a survivor of Rikers Island and co-founder of the Freedom Agenda, which seeks to have all Rikers Island jails closed. “William Brown, Malcolm Boatwright, and fourteen others this year were meted out death sentences by the NYC jail and court system. A system this morally bankrupt, dysfunctional, and neglectful lacks the legitimacy to detain anyone. The only practical and humane solution is immediate decarceration.

NY Times

“The Street Vendor Project organized the hunt, which runs through Tuesday, to promote the city’s street vendors during a tough season: “During the winter, there’s less people outside,” Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, deputy director of S.V.P., told me.

Queens Daily Eagle

“Organized by the Urban Justice Center’s Freedom Agenda, more than a dozen activists, public defenders and members of CourtWatch NYC gathered outside to demand a better system on International Human Rights day... “Every human being should be equal in dignity and rights. Unfortunately, that is not the case for people who are funneled into NYC’s jail system which is a human rights crisis,” said Freedom Agenda Co-Director Darren Mack.