Meet the 2023 Citizens of the Year
The Philadelphia Citizen, 12/13/23: “A.Leon Higginbotham, Jr. Social Justice Champion: Robert Saleem Holbrook
Holbrook spent 27 years in prison — including 10 in solitary confinement — for a crime he committed when he was just 16 years old. He was released in 2018 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that life sentences for minors were unconstitutional. Since then, he’s become an advocate for human rights — he recently testified in Geneva before the United Nations Human Rights Committee — and a proponent of abolition, challenging our legal system and the many institutions that fail to serve citizens. He’s the Executive Director of the Abolitionist Law Center, an organization dedicated to ending race- and class-based discrimination in the criminal justice system. Holbrook also teaches Community Lawyering to Prevent Mass Incarceration at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.”