Want to learn more about prison abolition? Looking to explore the role of information in the prison industrial complex? Excited to discuss ways we can collectively offer resources to address violence caused by mass incarceration? Join us! The Prison Library Support Network is collaborating with METRO to host PLSN Presents: Abolitionist Futures Series, which will meet quarterly on the second Monday of the month in the evening.
Please join us to learn about the United States’s first public library-sponsored Participatory Defense Hub. Members of the Racine County (Wisconsin) Hub will share their stories of the Hub’s origins and evolution, highlighting the critical need and ongoing successes that drive their work and the broader movement of which it is a part.
Right to counsel is often compromised by excessive public defender workloads and a court and criminal legal system that is deliberately difficult to navigate for those directly impacted by it. Participatory Defense Hubs work to interrupt that dynamic and the broader systems and patterns that drive mass incarceration. Embracing a community organizing ethos, directly impacted families work alongside community members to promote greater accessibility, solidarity, and accountability for their loved ones.
Since its start in the Bay Area roughly 20 years ago, the number of active Participatory Defense Hubs has grown to dozens, spread out across the country. These networks are redefining what public safety looks like; how power is built, sustained, and contested; who receives the representation and respect they deserve; and how justice is experienced and exercised. They are directly challenging the disproportionate exposure of Black, brown, and low-income individuals to criminal legal system involvement, keeping families together, and creating stronger communities.
About our panelists:
Bobby Jesse Ayala
Bobby Jesse Ayala is a community advocate, Certified Peer Support Specialist, and Director of Peer Advocacy for ProSay, supporting people navigating probation, parole, and reentry. Drawing on his lived experience with the criminal justice system, he advocates for criminal justice reform, second chances, and justice-impacted individuals and families.
Bobby is a Core Member of the Racine Participatory Defense Hub, where he helps families and communities build support, prepare for court, and advocate for fairer outcomes. He also volunteers with the Joshua Glover Justice Fund (a Racine Wisconsin bail fund), mentors justice-involved youth, and helps address barriers to education, employment, housing, and personal development.
Through ProSay, he connects people with resources, builds community partnerships, develops individualized success plans, supports commutation efforts, and advances Supervision reform. He is committed to strengthening the Hub’s work, reducing reentry barriers, and ensuring everyone has an opportunity for redemption, growth, and a thriving future.
Marcia Buhler
Marcia brings a background in writing, communications, video production and instructional design to her volunteer work. Over her career she worked as a paralegal, ran her own video production company, and held positions with major area employers including GE Medical Systems and Northwestern Mutual.
After retiring in 2011, Marcia turned to board and volunteer service. In 2021 she became a founding board member of Racine Women for Racial Justice, which empowers Racine-area women to identify, interrupt, and dismantle racism through education, dialogue, collective action, and leadership. That work opened her eyes to the depth of racial injustice in the local criminal justice system.
When a Racine chapter of the California-based Participatory Defense Network was proposed, Marcia joined the new Participatory Defense Hub as a Core member representing Racine Women for Racial Justice. Since 2024 she has taken part in the Hub’s weekly meetings, attended court proceedings, helped promote its work, and produced bio videos that let clients tell their own stories, so judges can see them as whole people rather than only through their charges or convictions.
Nick Demske
Nick Demske is the Executive Director of the Racine Public Library, where he was first hired as a book shelver in 2007. He is also an award-winning poet and movement worker, with more than 25 years in advocacy and activism work. Nick served for 6 years on the Racine County Board and has helped dozens of others successfully run for elected roles in the region. He co-founded the Joshua Glover Justice Fund (a bail fund in Racine), he was instrumental in creating the Racine Participatory Hub program and he is endlessly amazed with the team that runs it.
He is involved in many other transformative justice efforts on the local and national level, including serving on the Transforming Public Safety Steering Committee for the national organization Local Progress. Nick is part of the Plum Village tradition of Buddhism and co-founded a meditation sangha in Racine this past August.
Brittany Lee
Brittany Lee knows that changing a system takes more than pointing out what’s broken. It takes knowing how the system works, understanding who holds the power, and figuring out how to move that power.
As Founder and CEO of ProSay and Executive Chair of the Justice Forward Wisconsin Coalition, Brittany is working to change the way Wisconsin thinks about criminal justice, particularly what happens after someone leaves prison. Her work challenges the assumption that supervision automatically leads to safer communities and asks a more pertinent question: What if the very systems designed to hold people accountable are sometimes standing in the way of their success?
Brittany has spent years working alongside people on probation, parole, and extended supervision, advocating at the Wisconsin State Capitol, and challenging policies that can determine whether someone gets to go home to their family or gets sent back to prison. She brings a perspective shaped by personal experience, policy knowledge, and an understanding that lasting change requires both the courage to challenge existing systems and the strategy to build something better.
But Brittany isn’t interested in reform that stops at telling powerful people what they should do. She’s interested in changing who gets to make the decisions in the first place. Through ProSay, she is building the capacity of people on supervision to understand the rules governing their lives, advocate for themselves and others, and turn individual experiences into collective knowledge. Through Justice Forward Wisconsin, she is helping build a coalition where directly impacted people aren’t simply invited to the table to tell their stories. They are equipped to shape the agenda, influence legislation, and lead the work.
Gwen Scott
I have a background in social work. I graduated from high school at 17, moved to Wisconsin after graduation, and worked various jobs until given the opportunity to go to college at age 30, where I received a degree in social work. I worked with Domestic Violence victims and homeless women and children. I was an educator for over 25 years, then started volunteering with the Racine Participatory Defense Hub.
As a core member, I’ve been trained to be a court watcher. In that role I go to court with family members as a support and observe all the interactions within the entire proceeding to help families show the human side of their lives. We help with Bio packs to the attorney and Judge. I love my role with this group.