Atlanta resident Richeda Ashmeade, a law student and poet, was 12 years old when her father was jailed on cannabis charges, sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 22 years.

It was difficult to grow up with a parent in prison, Ashmeade writes in a letter to President Joe Biden, noting that she’s beaten the odds by becoming “educated, ambitious and empathetic,” which she considers “an act of defiance” in the face of her circumstances.

Ashmeade stars in an emotional PSA from McCann New York, dubbed “The Pen to Right History,” that aims to pressure lawmakers and galvanize the public around criminal justice reform. In addition to her dad, Richardo Ashmeade, tens of thousands of Americans are locked up for nonviolent cannabis convictions. (Some estimates put the number at upward of 40,000.)

“The Pen to Right History” debuts alongside a similarly themed campaign from Ben & Jerry’s, which revives the brand’s clemency message from last spring and zeroes in on Michigan with a plea to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 

“Legalization without justice is half-baked” uses a reference to the brand’s popular ice cream flavor to call for freeing cannabis inmates in that state and beyond.

“As legalization has swept across the nation, those convicted and incarcerated for cannabis possession are glaringly overlooked and continue to suffer from the long-term impacts of the war on drugs,” per the brand’s blog post.

Both campaigns note the systemic ills that put a disproportionate number of Black and brown Americans in jail for low-level weed offenses, with Ben & Jerry’s saying people of color are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.

Writing a wrong

In crafting the pro bono campaign for the Last Prisoner Project, creatives at McCann intentionally centered the hero video around a young woman rather than her jailed father, counter to many advocacy efforts that detail the prisoner’s arrest, sentencing and other details.

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