Our Team & Board of Directors
Human Rights Coalition (HRC) is a Pennsylvania-based grassroots 501(c)(3) founded in 2001 and led by directly impacted people—incarcerated people, formerly incarcerated people, and their families.
Our staff and Board work together to defend human rights, fight for freedom and dignity, and strengthen communities inside and outside prison walls.
Our staff leads day-to-day organizing, programs, and communications.
Our Board of Directors provides governance, oversight, and long-term stewardship to protect the mission and help HRC grow with integrity.
Leadership & Staff
Shakaboona Marshall
Executive Director • Founder
Shakaboona Marshall is a founder of Human Rights Coalition and serves as its Executive Director. He leads HRC’s statewide organizing, advocacy, and movement-building work—centering directly impacted leadership and the power of families. Under his leadership, HRC has advanced accountability efforts, strengthened public education through The MOVEMENT, and expanded campaign work to end human rights abuses and win real pathways home. He also leads the sister’s organization 2nd Chance Voters dedicated to providing re-entry services and civic education to returning citizens.
Juliette Rando
Volunteer Staff
Juliette Rando approaches abolition from a public health lens. She focuses on HRC's legislative work, as well as print and electronic media.
Jackson Kusiak
Volunteer Staff
Jackson Kusiak is an HRC Member, Resilient Activist, and Organizer.
Jerome Hoagie Coffey
Founding Member • Inside Lead Organizer
Jerome “Hoagie” Coffey is an HRC founding member and activist. He is known for his creativity, communications skill, and organizing talent. He is serving a life sentence for a crime he maintains he did not commit and endured 12 years in solitary confinement.
Founding Leader • Financial Director
Nathaniel Grimes
Volunteer Staff
Nathaniel Grimes is passionate supporter and volunteer, studying religion and punishment, Nathaniel holds down the HRC's Prison Abolition Archives and its goal to become a repository that preserves the legacy of our movement more broadly by collecting the archival records.
B.P. Lyles has been involved with the Toxic prisons Campaign since 2020. He brings lived experience. He leads HRC’s Toxic Prisons Program—exposing environmental harm behind prison walls and organizing for policy change and prison closures when conditions threaten human health and life. This work connects environmental justice and criminal justice reform, recognizing that toxic air, contaminated water, and hazardous facilities are human rights violations.
Patricia "Mama Pat" Vickers
Patricia “Mama Patt” Vickers is a longtime prisoner-rights activist, organizer, and founding leader of the Human Rights Coalition (HRC). She co-founded the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration (CADBI) and co-founded THE MOVEMENT magazine, helping elevate directly impacted voices and strengthen statewide organizing. Patricia has advocated internationally, including traveling to the United Nations in Geneva to spotlight life-without-parole sentencing and solitary confinement as human rights violations, and she is the recipient of the 2024 Paul Robeson Lifetime Achievement Award.
B. Preston Lyles
Toxic Prisons Campaign, Program Director
Sonny Parasimo
Toxic Prisons Campaign, Program Manager
Sonny Parasimo is a prison abolitionist, organizer, and HRC member focused on communicating with those on the inside. They work to educate community members about environmental racism and how we can work collectively to combat climate change and advocate for clean water and air for everyone
The team carrying the work—every day.
Message from our Founding Team
Shakaboona Marshall
Patricia "Mama Pat" Vickers"
A Message from our Founder & Executive Director
The Seed of Resistance
The state sentenced me to die in prison. For decades, I was buried in a cage—including twelve years in the crushing silence of solitary. They hoped to break my spirit, but they forgot one thing: You cannot bury a seed. I refused to accept the finality of a Life Without Parole sentence.
Under the mentorship of the late Russell "Maroon" Shoatz, together, we founded the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) from a place of shared resistance. I turned my cell into a headquarters, running a paralegal clinic to teach my brothers that the law was a tool for our own liberation.
We transformed the "forgotten" into a formidable political force. Our movement mobilized 5,000 inmates and their families to fundamentally shift the power of the District Attorney’s office in Philadelphia. When I met with then-candidate Larry Krasner behind the walls of SCI-Graterford, I didn’t meet him as a ward of the state, but as a leader of a movement representing thousands, demanding a new era of justice.
HRC was never just about survival; it has always been about building power to break the system. Today, I finally breathe the air of the outside, but my heart remains with those still behind the wall. We are here to abolish the Prison Industrial Complex, end the torture of solitary, and be the bridge for every person coming home.
Our debt is paid. Our power is reclaimed. The fight continues.
In solidarity and struggle,
Shakaboona Marshall Founder, Human Rights Coalition
A Message from our Founding Leader
When my son was sentenced to die in prison—arrested at age 17 and sentenced to life without parole at 18—my heart broke. I refused to accept that his life was over before it had truly began. For years, I carried the trauma of the abuse he endured while locked in the crushing helplessness of solitary confinement.
From behind those very bars, my son and I refused to be silenced and began to build a resistance. Together with other parents sharing the same struggle, I help founded the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) and launched The MOVEMENT magazine, turning our private grief into a public platform for the voiceless. Despite my shy nature, I became their voice on the outside, publishing the stories of the forgotten to expose the truth of the system.
For decades, I fought for my son and for every person trapped in the machinery of mass incarceration. When he finally came home after three decades, I felt released as well. I often say that for all those years, I was jailed right along with him.
Today, my mission remains the same urgent one. I continue the fight to abolish the torture of solitary confinement and to dismantle the inhumane prison-industrial complex. I’m not just fighting for policy change; I’m fighting to help our people rebuild their lives the moment they finally come home.
In solidarity,
Mama Pat, Founding Leader, Human Rights Coalition
In honor of our esteemed members
Other esteemed members are listed in alphabetical order
HRC is a family and a movement built by people who gave their time, courage, and love to protect others. We honor the members and leaders—past and present—who helped build this organization and pushed the struggle forward.
Beloved mentor, abolitionist thinker and political prisoner Russell Maroon Shoatz was incarcerated for nearly 50 years and spent 30 years in Solitary Confinement. A member of the Black Panther Party and co-founder of the Black Unity Council, he founded HRC and served as a mentor to several HRC founding members.
Russell "Maroon" Shoatz (Rest in Power)
Karen Ali is an activist and longtime member of the Human Rights Coalition. She is the wife of the late Omar Askia Sistrunk Ali, who maintained his innocence yet was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
Karen Ali
A founding member of HRC, Saleem is Executive Director of the Abolitionist Law Center. He has long been at the forefront of campaigns against solitary confinement, incarceration of political prisoners, police violence, and death by incarceration. He was released from prison in 2018 after serving 27 years for an offense he was convicted of as a child.
Robert "Saleem" Holbrook
Andy Switzer is a Courageous and Committed Advocate for the humanity of men and women behind bars. HRC Member, active since 2004.
Theresa Shoatz
Theresa Shoatz is one of HRC’s original members and the daughter of Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, she has organized for prisoners’ rights since a young age, bringing decades of commitment and lived experience to the movement
Andy Switzer
Board of Directors
Shakaboona MarshallBoard Member
Board Member
Jacqui Johnson
Board Member
Deandra “Dee” Johnson
HRC’s Board provides governance and oversight to strengthen the organization’s sustainability, accountability, and mission alignment—supporting staff leadership while honoring HRC’s directly impacted roots.
Patricia "Mama Pat" Vickers"Board Member
Robert "Saleem" HolbrookBoard Member
Board MemberKeir Bradford-Grey
Board Member
Noelle Hanrahan
Board Member
Nakea HurdlesBoard MemberDr. C. Clare Strange
Join the movement.
HRC is a family. If your loved one is inside, if you’ve been inside, or if you believe human rights belong to everybody—there is a place for you here.
Founded in 2001 • Pennsylvania-based • 501(c)(3) • Led by directly impacted people.