The author poses with her father as a child. “Even everyday life felt incomplete without him,” she writes.Photo Courtesy Of Richeda Ashmeade-Sinclair
When I was little, my dad was my childhood hero. He made me feel like the world was conquerable. He was the guy who could fix anything and made every family vacation feel endless. He taught me to read and how to defeat fear on roller coaster rides. The warmth of his hugs brightened my worst day as a child.
But then, one day, everything changed.
I was only 12 years old when my hero was taken from my world and sentenced to 22 years and 10 months in a federal prison for a nonviolent, victimless cannabis offense. My father, Ricardo Ashmeade, is one of the countless casualties of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that then-Sen. Joe Biden championed during the height of the so-called war on drugs. The bill’s three-strike laws and mandatory minimums have disproportionately devastated many Black and Brown communities.
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The first time I visited my dad in prison, I cried. I was 12 years old. He looked the same, but everything around us felt wrong. The room was cold, with distance between
