Neon Lights and Civil Rights: Be There and Be ‘All Square’

Queer community member Emily Hunt Turner is a force to be reckoned with. She is a civil rights attorney who worked for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on issues of prisoner reentry, fair housing and housing segregation.

Hunt Turner describes what she witnessed working for HUD as a “public safety epidemic” with the level of discrimination occurring in public housing. Persons impacted by mass incarceration are discriminated against when it comes to housing and other basic necessities. Sometimes, they cannot even live with family because private landlords don’t allow someone with a record to live there. When a man’s record, which was 41 years old, was used legally to evict him and his family in Minneapolis, Hunt Turner felt she was part of the problem rather than the solution.

This experience, along with her time in New Orleans, provided the fuel for the civil rights social enterprise she created called All Square. All Square consists of a delicious restaurant and food truck combination that provides competitive and safe employment for persons reentering society, a fellowship program for people impacted by mass incarceration and an educational pipeline. Their goal is to change the way that criminal records are used and viewed. People who have left prison should be considered “all square,” having done their time, but this is often not the case.

When working with this population, Hunt Turner holds personal accountability and systemic accountability in tension. She acknowledges personal responsibility while knowing that unresolved trauma and systemic factors like lack of socioeconomic mobility can be a driving force of illegal behavior. Therefore, she partners with a trauma-informed mental health group called Creative Kuponya in All Square’s programming.

New Orleans is where Hunt Turner first began to truly see and understand the prison system at work. She recounted seeing what happens during solitary confinement as “unbelievably disturbing and inhumane.” In New Orleans, Hunt Turner met people who she described as “life-changing human beings who espouse wisdom developed during their navigation of unspeakable horrors” who later became her legal mentors.

People who changed Hunt Turner’s life include the Angola Three, Black Panthers who were placed in solitary confinement for decades each due to fear of them organizing a prison uprising because of their affiliation. These men mastered the law from the inside and taught Hunt Turner that there are some things that cannot be learned from books.

This inspired Hunt Turner to increase access to education in prison to reduce the rate of return to prison and improve the quality of life of those impacted by mass incarceration. As a result, All Square provides a Prison to Law Pipeline where incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people have access to paralegal and juris doctorate degrees.

However, the educational pipeline does not ensure gainful employment for those reentering due to stigmatization. Thankfully, Hunt Turner runs a law firm that provides externships to currently incarcerated paralegal and law students. The firm provides civil legal services to formerly and currently incarcerated people to eliminate the collateral effects of mass incarceration.

With America leading the world in incarceration per capita, have you ever wondered why two out of three formerly incarcerated persons are rearrested and more than 50% are incarcerated again within three years? This vicious cycle of persons impacted by mass incarceration reentering the prison system is called recidivism.

People who are unaware of how a criminal record impacts reentry into society may misconstrue recidivism as a moral failure instead of a structural failure and humanitarian crisis. Being denied bare necessities such as employment opportunities, housing, food or healthcare curates the insurmountable challenge of reentry into society for many Americans impacted by mass incarceration. Shifting the goal of incarceration towards rehabilitation can lower recidivism rates by creating a prison-to-work pipeline instead of leaving persons impacted by mass incarcerations with nothing upon release.

In connection to the queer community, for whom identity-based discrimination is amplified in prison, Hunt Turner felt extra compassion for those impacted by mass incarceration due to her upbringing in rural North Dakota, where she did not have positive queer representation. In her work with this population who often feel “thrown away,” she realized she was trying to heal herself since she felt like she needed redemption based on her identity and how a deviant label was attached to it in North Dakota.

In her work, she affirms that we are all human and should treat each other as such, which she and her wife live out by treating everyone as if they are “all square” through the provision of human services and delicious sandwiches.

All Square
4047 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, Minn., 55406
(612) 778-9880
www.allsquarempls.com