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Recovery in the News
Andrés Idarraga ’08
Anne Diffily
Today at Brown
June 9, 2008
Possibly the most dramatic story of any 2008 Brown graduate belongs to 30-year-old Andrés Idarraga, an ex-felon who served six and a half years in Rhode Island’s Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) for selling drugs. An economics and literature concentrator at Brown, he is headed to Yale Law School this fall, where he will focus on defending young people’s access to a quality education.
An immigrant to Rhode Island from Medellin, Colombia, at the age of seven, Idarraga did well in high school but began dealing drugs in his later teens. Incarcerated at the age of 20, he read voraciously in the prison library and was soon tutoring other inmates for their GED exams. Upon his release on parole, he entered the University of Rhode Island, transferring to Brown after one year.
Several years ago, when he realized that under existing Rhode Island law he would be unable to vote until he turned 58, Idarraga became a spokesman for ex-felons’ right to vote upon their release from prison. He teamed with a local voters-rights organization to achieve passage of a state ballot referendum that was approved in November 2006. Idarraga registered to vote immediately.
Idarraga has spoken to many school and youth groups about his journey from drug-dealing to a Brown diploma. On June 9, he joined comedian Bill Cosby in addressing a medium-security graduation ceremony at the ACI. Today at Brown talked with Idarraga in early June.
Why was it so important to you to be able to vote?
When I was incarcerated I read two books that affected me deeply. One was a biography of [the late Supreme Court Justice and civil-rights lawyer] Thurgood Marshall. The other was Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. Both of these men helped to reform their countries – Mandela by securing rights for South Africa’s blacks, and Marshall by representing the plaintiff in Brown v. Board of Education.
Their stories helped me understand my responsibilities as a U.S. citizen. Only through citizen participation can we powerfully create change. When a country starts to exclude certain people from voting, they’re saying those people are second-class citizens. This is why the United States passed amendments during Reconstruction to prevent the exclusion of black males from voting. In the case of ex-felons, we have served our time and returned to lives as U.S. citizens.
Does support for ex-felons' right to vote divide along party lines?
No, this isn’t a partisan issue. In Rhode Island in 2006, a Republican state representative spoke on our behalf in the legislature and helped to get the bill passed. Last year the Republican governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, issued a decree giving ex-felons the right to vote.
When did you decide to turn things around for yourself?
In prison I kept seeing people in the library, reading the newspaper. They invited me to join them. It took me a couple of years, but I did. What struck me was that these inmates read the entire newspaper from front to back, then had long conversations about the news. Also, I had always liked literature, so I read novels – Dickens, Tolstoy, all the great authors. I became a GED tutor. One of my students, a Laotian man, told me I made everything easy to understand. That meant a lot to me.
One day I was watching a Spanish news station in the prison lounge, and it showed a young man swimming across the Rio Grande from Mexico to the United States. But he never made it – he drowned. I was 24 then, four years into my prison term. I thought about my father and other family members who made a similar journey from Colombia. My family had risked their lives to bring me here! I decided that being a criminal was not the way to repay them.
Have you ever encountered overt prejudice?
When I was working on the right to vote effort, I received an angry anonymous e-mail that said: “You came to my country; you broke my laws. Go back to your country with the rest of the filth.” The word “filth” stood out to me. Most immigrants come here and get a job and don’t break the law. Maybe I deserved the potshot because I broke the law, but that is not me now. You have to continue to defy people’s stereotypes through your work and through honest living.
What message do you have for young people about voting?
Voting is the number-one privilege and responsibility of being a U.S. citizen. Do you want to be taken into account, or not? If you choose not to vote, you have no right to complain. I brought my little eight-year-old nephew with me to vote last time. It’s important that he start noticing these things – the concrete manifestations of being a good citizen.
© 2008 Brown University