“May 4th was a day I’d been anticipating for some time. That was the day Assistant Attorney General Karol Mason, who heads the Office of Justice Programs in the Department of Justice, publicly announced a new agency-wide policy directing her staff to stop using “disparaging labels” like ‘ex-convict’ and ‘ex-felon’ in all their communications. In a guest post that appeared in The Washington Post Mason urged other agencies and organizations to join her in replacing those old labels with terms like, ‘person who committed a crime and individual who was incarcerated, decoupling past actions from the person being described and anticipating the contributions we expect them to make when they return.’ I knew the announcement was coming because I and other leaders of the formerly incarcerated people’s movement had met with AAG Mason on a number of occasions and had told her that changing the language was one of our highest priorities.”