Building Pathways Through Second Chances

The ‌Dallas Mavericks linked arms with the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition during Second Chance Month, pulling together policy experts, those who’d walked through the system themselves, and local organizations into a single room.

Last Saturday was the Second Chance Summit, diving into tough topics like barriers to reentry, worries over public safety, job hunts, housing struggles. Those long shadows that follow people even after they’ve left prison behind. The day kicked off with a resource fair where nearby nonprofits showed up in force, connecting folks to support and information, and lawyers stood ready to untangle leftover legal knots.

The Role of Mavs Take ACTION! and The HUDDLE

Next up was the panel called “Rebounding into Promise: Pathways to Successful Reentry and Second Chances”. It fit right into The HUDDLE, part of the Mavs Take ACTION! series that pushes for honesty, unity, diversity, dialogue, listening, equality.

Mavs Take Action! launched in 2020 as the Mavericks’ effort to address racial disparities, promote justice, and drive change in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. Six pillars anchor the initiative: public policy, education, criminal justice, employment, child welfare, healthcare. The ACTION framework breaks into advocacy, communication, training, investment, outreach, noise.

In these gatherings, the Mavericks stir up conversations among team staff, current and former players, community leaders, and everyday people. Topics range across racial equity, pushes for justice, changes in the neighborhood. 

Grounding the Work in Action, Not Optics

Sean Reed opened things. He serves as director of corporate social responsibility for the Dallas Mavericks and Mavs Take Action! and tipped his hat to the Coalition and every community group helping out.

“We’ve had these conversations for the last five years,” Reed said. “We entered this reentry space last year as we partnered alongside organizations like Innocence Project and Justice Partners.”

“We wanted to really make sure that we were in the work before we talked about what needs to be done,” he explained.

That thread ran through everything else. Steering discussions from simple charity to actual access, accountability, structures, the pieces that disappear when returning folks hit walls in their fresh starts.

Why Second Chance Policies Matter for Communities

Mannone Butler, head of programs and partnerships for the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, outlined the timing. April marks Second Chance Month nationwide, and the Coalition places second chance policies high on the list, alongside justice reforms, community safety, and voting access.

“The Social Justice Coalition is a joint venture of the league, the Players Association and the Coaches Association,” Butler explained. “Second Chances is one of our priority areas.”

Another angle caught attention: this work reaches beyond individual lives. To whether whole neighborhoods can thrive.

“When we do second chances right, our communities thrive,” Butler added. “Our communities are stronger. That’s why our economy is strong. Our public safety system is stronger.”

Balancing Policy, Reality and Impact

James Cadogan, executive director of the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition expanded on that in the fireside chat with Mavericks president Ethan Casson, stressing how second chance policies demand both moral clarity and practical strategy. 

Since its 2020 founding, the Coalition has watched the country’s mood on justice swing back and forth. Cadogan urged organizations chasing real change to confront realities and keep pushing.

“If you’re going to be in this business of impact work and change, you have to be realistic,” Cadogan said. “Assess the landscape and figure out what you’re working within.”

He pointed to policies like expunging records, sealing files, removing the box on applications, these cut obstacles without lowering protections. Background checks aren’t the enemy. Problems arise when they block access before seeing the person.

“Nobody ever says it should be unsafe if you do background checks,” Cadogan noted. “But doing a background check later in the process, as opposed to making it a barrier at the beginning, makes a massive difference in the number of people who actually get that job.”

Investing in Future Leadership

The conversation turned to the Justice Leadership Accelerator. A program for young people touched by the system, providing career development through NBA teams and community organizations. Cadogan described it as investing in those poised to lead the future work.

“This is our investment in human capital,” Cadogan said.

For Casson, it came down to intentional actions.

“This work matters,” Casson stated and repeated.

He closed his part with direct words.

“Second chances don’t happen by accident,” Casson declared. “They happen because people choose to invest in others.”

A Personal Story of Resilience and Return

Things got personal when Angelica Zaragoza, founder and executive director of Janie’s Angels, an extension of Girls Embracing Mothers, spoke with Dallas Weekly about the work and her own story driving it; she drew from lived experience, not distance.

“I started out as a participant with Girls Embracing Mothers. I was inside jails, institutions, the majority of my adulthood life,” Zaragoza shared.

A mother of four. Her last time inside ended a decade ago, since then she’s guided other mothers rebuilding bonds with their kids, fostering opportunities even from behind bars.

“One of the main barriers for me through that was addiction and finding my way out, believing that I could get out,” Zaragoza recalled. “One of the things that I work with my moms every day is just when a mom loses her children, she loses her hope.”

Breaking Cycles and Restoring Hope

Eroding belief traps people, Zaragoza believes. Her organization cuts through by entering those harsh spaces. Demonstrating the story continues: in those grim cells, hope seeps away, her group carries that light inside, showing mothers a fall doesn’t end the chapter.

She draws from scars, not theories.

“I’ve been where you are, done what you’ve done, maybe worse, maybe not, but you can do different,” Zaragoza said. “I believe in teaching someone better, they’ll do better.”

Her work sprang from breaking her own chains of addiction and incarceration. Raised in Pleasant Grove, the cycle gripped her because it filled her world.

“I stayed in that cycle ’cause I didn’t know better,” Zaragoza described. “I was from Pleasant Grove. That’s what I’d seen every day. But once somebody invested in me and took time with me and showed me different, I was able to do better.”

The Power of Community Support

That spark came from supporters who refused to quit. She named it after her aunt Janie, the one who protected her family during chaos.

“The reason I named it Janie’s Angels is because I had an aunt named Janie, and she’s the one that kept all my kids together when I was going through my — I call it crap, right? When I was going through the gutters,” Zaragoza revealed. “I never had to worry about CPS because she was there.”

Her aunt did even more. Searching for her.

“She’d always go out to the streets and she’d find me, tell me, ‘Come home. I don’t know why you’re not home,’” Zaragoza remembered. “She never gave up on me. She was my biggest cheerleader.”

Before Janie passed, Zaragoza demonstrated the turnaround.

“I am proud today to say before she passed, she was able to see me doing better, owning a home, and having all my children with me,” Zaragoza said.

Rebuilding Family and Reclaiming Trust

Brittany Barnett and Girls Embracing Mothers recognized her drive from the start.

“Brittany Barnett with Girls Embracing Mothers took the time and she saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself,” Zaragoza mentioned. “She saw that potential.”

Barnett eventually handed over leadership, Zaragoza built Janie’s Angels to help not only girls but entire families.

“I was blessed and honored that she passed the baton to me to create Janie’s Angels and not just serve girls, but serve boys and girls and reunite the entire family behind those walls and in the community,” Zaragoza said.

Her kids carried wounds: pain, betrayal. Returning home didn’t magically heal relationships.

“We don’t come home and just have everything restored,” Zaragoza cautioned. “We have to work for it back.”

Trust proved the hardest to regain.

“That was probably one of the hardest things, was getting that trust back from my children,” Zaragoza admitted. “But I did.”

It required steady choices toward betterment.

“It takes a commitment, a dedication, daily commitment of waking up and saying, ‘You know what, I’m not going to choose that path. I’m going to choose something different,’” Zaragoza outlined.

Her children fueled the effort.

“They still believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself,” Zaragoza said. “They’ve given me the ambition, they put that fire back in me to be who God created me to be.”

Reframing Public Safety and Second Chances

The next panel shifted to neighborhood safety and raw reentry realities. Antong Lucky appeared as president of Urban Specialists, Dr. Porshia Haymon as chief program officer at Café Momentum, Christina Melton Crain as founder and president/CEO of Unlocking Doors.

They began by reframing: many labeled for second chances never got a fair first one.

“A lot of our people who are involved in the justice system never received a fair first chance,” Haymon observed.

At Café Momentum she focuses on youth entangled in the system. Proximity changes perceptions of them. Stories in media, files, numbers alone make it easy to overlook humanity. Their approach counters that, placing kids next to the community through food service, skills training, and genuine connections.

“When I see you as a statistic, when I see the headline, I don’t see you as a person,” Haymon said.

Addressing Barriers Through Opportunity and Policy

Second chances connect directly to safety, she argued. Errors often root in absences.

“Giving a second chance means giving opportunity,” Haymon explained. “Why do people engage in criminal activity? Most of the time, [there is a] lack of resources.”

That includes employment, education, health services, and mental support. Networks that stabilize before cracks form.

“We are engaging in public safety,” Haymon said. “We are thinking about upstream. Too much of what’s happening is we’re waiting on it to get down here, and then it’s reactive. Let’s be proactive.”

Lucky tied it to everyday obstacles that plague people for years. From his own path he described how court fees and licenses complicate returns more than outsiders realize.

“I had a drug case,” Lucky shared. “It took me 10 years to get my license. My license was suspended.”

For those piecing lives together: back payments, driving bans, unresolved court issues block mobility, job stability, steady paths.

“That kind of stuff is a barrier to someone who’s getting their life on track,” Lucky warned. “We need to be advocating for those kind of policies that address that.”

He echoed the need for closeness. Without direct talks with those experiencing it, understanding slips away.

“If you don’t really have nobody who has sat and understood what people are dealing with, what they’re going through, this stuff will be foreign to you,” Lucky said.

Crain added the legal angles. Breaking down expungements versus nondisclosures. Texas has advanced in two decades, she said, but limits persist from politics and misguided risk fears.

“We’ve made great strides with the legislature over the last 20 years in this area, which is terrific news,” Crain said.

Expungements work for no-conviction cases: arrests, dismissed charges, acquittals. Nondisclosures hide records from employers but leave them visible to law enforcement, licensing boards, and certain agencies.

“We encourage people that meet the eligibility in these two areas to try to go forward and get either expungement or non-disclosure, because that’s just going to help your ability to move forward with employment,” Crain recommended.

Yet opposition comes from elections, not evidence.

“It’s political,” Crain stated. “It’s purely political.”

She observed how labor shortages after COVID prompted employers to reconsider barriers.

“We’re in a very different climate than we used to be with the employers,” Crain noted. “The issue is really politics and what people assume is public safety.”

Choosing to Invest in Second Chances

One theme held firm throughout: second chance efforts link to safety, not apart from it. Clearing unnecessary hurdles to housing, jobs, legal peace, and education lets people contribute instead of being excluded.

For the Mavericks this tied into Mavs Take Action!’s broader mission, extending their reach past the basketball court. For the Coalition and local partners it underscored linking policy discussions to those most affected.

Second chances aren’t mere pardons, the summit emphasized. They demand systems: employers open to hiring, policymakers listening, nonprofits prepared, neighborhoods welcoming returns, communities betting on growth.

Zaragoza’s journey showed how one persistent believer can ignite an opportunity, policy discussions made clear it can’t stop there.

And as Casson concluded: second chances avoid chance. They arise from choices to invest in others.