Prakash is Free!
All Charges dropped against Prakash Churaman
After almost eight long years of struggle, Prakash Churaman is free.
This is a momentous victory! A victory for Prakash and his family, for our communities, and for our longer struggle to #FreeThemAll from the clutches of systemic racism and mass incarceration.
Yesterday afternoon, Prakash entered the courtroom expecting to receive a date for his long awaited retrial. Instead, upon entering, he learned that Queens DA Melinda Katz had moved to drop all the charges against him. We know that this was the result of the surging pressure of our movement. Without the sustained organizing of Prakash, DRUM, the Free Prakash Alliance, VOCAL-NY, PSL, Root & Branch, H.O.L.L.A, NAWS-CQ, Dare to Struggle, many other organizations, community activists, and electeds, DA Katz would have moved forward with wrongfully prosecuting Prakash.
Prakash advocated and organized for himself for years from inside jail and prison. He would spend hours studying the law, making calls to organizations and media outlets, speaking up about the criminal punishment system and the conditions at Rikers, and building connections with other Black and brown folks. Nandani, Prakash’s mother, never gave up hope. She served those eight years of punishment alongside her son and never stopped fighting. She took care of her son, and then took care of a movement. Jacob Cohen, Prakash’s first advocate, believed Prakash from the beginning, and lost his job running an arts program at Rikers for his public support of Prakash.
When we first learned of Prakash’s story while he was still in Rikers, it was immediately clear that his experience was a blatant example of the criminalization and systemic racism that young people in our Indo Caribbean and South Asian communities face. We listened deeply to his story and decided to back his leadership, build power, and set right the wrongs that happened to him and other young working class Black and brown folks.
Members threw down hard for Prakash and his family starting at the end of 2020. We were able to raise funds to bail Prakash out of Rikers, organize rallies outside the Queens Criminal Court for over a year and a half, hold speakouts across Queens to have conservations with Prakash’s community, arrange phone zaps to demand the Queens DA drop the charges, strategize around a hostile judge-turn-second-prosecutor who attempted to silence Prakash, bring attention to the corrupt detectives who coerced Prakash’s confession, and do everything possible to make sure nothing in this case moved without intense public scrutiny.
We thank Will Depoo, DRUM’s former South Queens & Racial Justice organizer, who picked up Prakash’s case and built the infrastructure within DRUM and the Free Prakash Alliance, and for his continued support. We share our appreciations for Sherry Padilla and Akash Singh for having carried the work forward, sustained it, amplified it in the media and online, and deepened it within DRUM membership. And our deep gratitude to members who supported Prakash and his family every step of the way.
“I want to give a huge huge thank you to every single person that has ever contributed support to me whether that be on social media or in-person. Thank you to every person that supported me in any way possible.”
—Prakash
This victory also would not have been possible without the efforts of media outlets such as the Working Class Heroes Podcast through whom we were able to learn about Prakash’s case, HellGate for their excellent investigative journalism, the Indypendent, the Queens Daily Eagle, and many others.
After years spent between Rikers, upstate prison, and the limbo of house arrest, Prakash is finally home—for good! The Queens District Attorney and the courts cannot threaten to steal Nandani’s son from her ever again. And, now that he’s removed his ankle bracelet, Prakash will be able to take his own son to the park for the first time.
Prakash and his family can finally move on with their lives. Nothing can erase the years of torture that the Queens legal system put them through, but at least now they can move towards healing and cherish their time with each other.
We all once again bear witness to the world-bending power of what is possible when we organize! Today we celebrate!
We will continue to organize and back the leadership of incarcerated Black and brown people, like Chanel and Veta Lewis, until they are free and we win justice for every single one of them!
Onwards in struggle until we #FreeChanel and #FreeThemAll!
