Sue Ellen,

1. You are a returning citizen, and only if you claim your citizenship can you have moral force DEMANDING your right to vote. I don’t care what “they” say, you are a citizen…period.
2. We use Formerly Incarcerated, Returning Citizen, Criminal Justice Impacted, ex-felon, and lots of other euphemisms…but regardless of if there is a neat euphemism or not, Felon or Offender locks formers in the prison of language IMHO reducing us to only our worst moments. We may never find the perfect term, but we know it isn’t the “other ‘F’ word” or the “O” word.
3. I don’t think it is wrong to make what we did part of the story, my objection is using language to make it 100% of our story. So, I don’t mind someone mentioning my crime…I committed the crimes, I pleaded guilty, I am responsible…However, I do mind being defined as only my crime.
4. I will think more about a better euphemism, if I think of anything I will let you know :) Let me know if you think of a good one too.
5. You might want to check out my #Bars2Ballots campaign, it is about getting people like yourself your right to vote back and organizing formerly incarcerated and incarcerated people to vote our own self-interest (I did a full podcast episode about it and there is a Medium post that lays it all out…if you need to find the podcast it is on every service and also at the website decarcerationnation.com

Thanks so much for reaching out, always great to meet another formerly incarcerated activist!!!!