The Lugos Keep Shining

“Keep Shining!”

shouted Ken Lugo as we separated at the corner of Avenue A and 9th Street at Tompkins Square Park on an unseasonably warm February afternoon. That’s Ken Lugo’s go-to farewell, and it appeared that both he and Amanda, his daughter and Osborne Speakers Bureau member, were shining as they walked arm-in-arm westward across Manhattan.

Amanda and Ken live separately, but in the same Lower East Side of Manhattan neighborhood. Ken’s mother, daughters, and four grandchildren are nearby as well. Ken and Amanda sometimes meet in Tompkins Square Park to enjoy a shared hobby: skateboarding. They are clearly happy to spend time together, catching up, sharing jokes, and working on simple skateboarding tricks.

But just a year ago, Ken’s family found themselves at a more unfortunate intersection - that of the criminal justice system and Covid-19. In March 2020, Ken was planning his return home after being incarcerated since early 2019. He completed all the programs that would make him eligible for release and lined up employment with his painter’s union. With all this arranged, he expected to be back to the Lower East Side by June. But then the pandemic arrived, and Ken wasn’t released as planned.

Families during the pandemic
When the pandemic first began to show up in the United States, Ken was serving his sentence at Hale Creek Correctional Facility in Johnstown, New York, a three-and-a-half-hour drive from New York City. As Covid-19 spread widely and into prisons, “it was tough because we were watching everything… watching [news from] the city, trying to find out what was going on. They didn’t give us any medicine, and we didn’t have any visits.” As part of their safety protocol, NY State had suspended in-person visiting in early March, and Amanda had last seen her dad in person in early February.

With conflicting information and great uncertainty, Amanda and the Lugo family anxiously awaited news of Ken and his return home and were hoping that Covid-19 was not spreading in Hale Creek. The pandemic had already directly affected their family, as Ken’s fiancée, Alexandra, contracted Covid-19 in March 2020 and continues to struggle with symptoms to this day. The Lugo family has good reason to be concerned about Ken’s safety: the Prison Policy Institute found that incarcerated populations were associated with earlier reported coronavirus cases in the spring of 2020, and confirmed cases spiked that summer.

Ken reflected on what things were like as the pandemic began to emerge. “Yeah, it was scary… I believe we [people incarcerated at Hale Correctional Facility] had it in January. I mean, at one point in time, between January and February, it felt like seventy percent of everybody was sick.”

Unfortunately, Ken’s well-laid plan did not survive all the changes that came after the Covid lockdown. Instead of socially distancing at home with family, Ken was stuck in crowded conditions conducive to the spread of the coronavirus. At the same time, the lockdown meant that facilities suspended all educational programs inside prisons, so Ken and his peers had little access to information or anything to do during their days. But finally, after months of confusion, concern, and fear, DOCCS granted Ken’s work release and transferred him to the Queensboro Correctional Facility in September 2020, where he had eight weeks to find employment. Had Ken not been able to find work within the eight-week window, he would have been sent back to an upstate correctional facility to complete his sentence.

Here, though, Amanda and Ken’s wife Alexandra put “the pedal to the metal.” They began reaching out to their contacts to find employment for Ken so he could finally come home and not return upstate to finish his sentence. Eventually, Amanda spoke with Tanya Krupat, the Director of Osborne’s Center for Justice Across Generations. Tanya worked with other Osborne staff who found a position for Ken with Osborne’s Janitorial Maintenance Services. Happily, he began working for Osborne on October 15 and received a work release furlough (5 days out of the facility and two days in the facility), which will continue until May 2021.

“She gave me a glimmer of hope.”

During her father’s incarceration, Amanda was attending Williams College in Williamstown, MA. She finished her last semester at Brooklyn College, and following her graduation, reached out to Osborne because she learned of our direct service work with children and families. At the time, she didn’t know that Osborne did advocacy work through the Policy Center, but after speaking with Tanya Krupat, she was “hooked.” She began attending Speakers’ Bureau meetings. By December of 2019, she spoke at a Brooklyn Borough Hall rally supporting two issues that seek to protect children’s rights to visit their parents in prison and ease the burden of arduous trips to upstate prisons, proximity and visiting. Since then, Amanda has been an active advocate for a fair and compassionate criminal justice system. Amanda is also a contributing member of Echoes of Incarceration, an award-winning documentary initiative produced by youth directly affected by the criminal justice system.

Ken is a proud father. When talking about Amanda’s involvement with the Speaker’s Bureau, he expressed his gratitude and awe, “When she was a child, she told me she was going to save the planet, so I thought she’d be an environmentalist, you know? And here she is fighting for justice. You never know when you are going to find your calling.” ... “I was stuck in Hale Creek for ten months in a six-month program because of the pandemic…. They shut the programs down. And we were sitting in there trying to get out, but she gave me a glimmer of hope.”

Today, Ken works for Osborne’s Janitorial Maintenance Services in a downtown Brooklyn office building. He looks forward to the end of the pandemic and his turn to receive a vaccine, mostly because he misses being able to spend time with his mother as easily as he could previously.

Click here to see a short clip of Amanda and Ken skateboarding in Tompkins Square Park.