Darren Mack is a community activist and organizer who is the co-founder and co-director of Freedom Agenda, a member-led community organizing group dedicated to dismantling mass incarceration.
Raised in an impoverished neighborhood in Brooklyn, Darren was arrested for being an accomplice to a robbery in 1992 and ultimately served 20 years in prison. During his incarceration, Darren had his life changing moment when he received a letter recounting a distant relative, George Stinney Jr., who in 1944 was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white male jury in South Carolina. George was executed by the electric chair at 14 years old. Intrigued, Darren began reading history, especially as related to race, class, and gender. Several years later, Darren was accepted into Bard College's Bard Prison Initiative, and graduated from Bard College in 2013 with a degree in social studies after his release. He later earned a graduate degree in community organizing and policy from Hunter College. Since then, Darren has worked to dismantle New Jim Crow practices.
He became a member of the Education From The Inside Out Coalition working to remove statutory and practical educational barriers for individuals impacted by the punishment system; advocated for legislation to “ban the box” n college applications; and became involved in the Close Rikers Campaign. His experience on Rikers was covered by Mass Story Lab at The New School and other periodicals. He was also awarded with the very first Lawrence “Larry” Gelber Award for Justice in 2017 by JustLeadership USA.
