“Bills Need to be Written by the People and for the People” – Rosalie Flores, Expunge Colorado
“Marijuana has been a part of our lives for as long as I can remember,” recalls Rosalie Flores, Co-Founder of Expunge Colorado of growing up in New Mexico during the War on Drugs and witnessing the systemic injustices that occurred within underfunded, communities of color that impacted so many close to her.
Flores’ journey towards seeking reparative justice is as authentic as it gets, representing true work from the heart. Expunge Colorado is a non-profit designed to provide education, training, consultation, and access to pro bono legal services for record sealing and expungement of eligible criminal cases in Colorado.
Growing up “Real Fast”
Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the nineties, Flores saw the damages of the failed War on Drugs play out around her, seeing poverty compounded by a lack of social support and a poor education system as the norm. “It was really rough,” he recalls of her earlier years, “We experienced some pretty major trauma as youth, and it was pretty devastating. I know more people from high school who have addictions than went to college. We grew up real fast,” she adds.
These early experiences always stuck with her after graduating high school, when she pursued working within the Forestry Service and focusing on environmental issues before moving into a sales role within the natural foods industry where she found great professional success.
When she became a single mother, Flores was forced with the decision of whether to raise her son in Albuquerque to experience the same systemic shortcomings. “When it was time for my son to go to middle school, I knew that the situation in Albuquerque hadn’t changed,” she says, “I moved to Colorado so my son could get a better education.” Flores also saw this as an opportunity to pursue a career in cannabis.
Excited about the opportunity to work in the legal cannabis industry after a youth of seeing the plant and people criminalized, Flores began a role as a sales manager for a cannabis manufacturer with bright eyes and high hopes. “I knew the first week that something was off,” she recalls of this pivotal time that would shape her future.
“I didn’t understand why there wasn’t diversity here,” she explained. Having lived most of her life in New Mexico, Flores had hoped that entering the legal cannabis space in Colorado would be more reflective of the diverse communities she’d grown up within. “I thought it would be different,” she says. Flores remained in this confused state as she witnessed the Colorado industry grow but knew that there were so many people who’d had prior cannabis charges who were banned from participating. She simply couldn’t shake the feeling that something needed to change.
And so started Rosalie Flores’ journey towards reparative justice for the legal cannabis industry.
Is Anyone Actually Doing Anything?
Flores soon plunged herself into a long and detailed learning journey on some of the policy issues affecting developing legal cannabis industries across the U.S. and in Colorado. “I started reaching out to almost everyone in the entire country,” she says, “I became obsessed.” She became familiar with the work of groups like Minorities for Medical Marijuana and the Minority Cannabis Business Association and learned about the concept of social equity as it applies to society as a whole and specifically the cannabis space. “I was hoping someone was doing something, but I knew the barriers were there,” she recalls.
The path in front of her became a bit clearer when she had the opportunity to volunteer at the Opportunity Summit held by the Minority Cannabis Business Association in 2018, which included an Expungement Event & Business 101 session. Hearing of people’s experiences of being unjustly targeted helped her understand in further detail what the various layers of inequities within the cannabis industry are, and the systems and historical events that caused and perpetuated them. “This event was life-changing,” she says, “This is how people get empowered. You give them education and you clear their records.”
Flores’ drive to do something was kicked into high gear when she received a call from Adam Vine, Founder of Cage-Free Cannabis. This national group advocates for equity within the cannabis industry by creating opportunities for people of color and achieving restorative justice. The organization helped launch National Expungement Week, a cross-country event that offers legal relief and wraparound services, such as employment workshops, health screenings, and voter registration to those who have been criminalized for cannabis and other non-violent crimes.
Flores wanted to get involved right away, as she knew that helping people get legal relief would result in immediate changes in their lives. “I knew people who had a record, but I had never known anyone who had gotten relief,” she says, “I went in extremely new and [Cage-Free Cannabis] told us what we needed to do.”
The Foundation for Expunge Colorado is Put Down
Flores met and partnered with Abbey G. Moffitt Hruby and Melanie Rose Rodgers to plan and execute the first record sealing event in Colorado in October 2018. Record sealing doesn’t destroy a criminal record, but significantly limits who can have access to it, whereas expungement typically means that a criminal record is destroyed. Flores, however, notes that neither record sealing nor expungement is true restorative justice as sometimes people with expungements can have unnecessary complications down the road. But, it’s a start.
During that first event, they worked to get the records of eight people with cannabis convictions sealed. The following year after recognizing the importance of these record sealing and expungement events, the Governor of Colorado made a proclamation honoring National Expungement Week within the state.
In 2019, Flores, Moffitt Hruby, and Rodgers helped seal 31 records across seven counties in Colorado. When the pandemic hit in 2020, Expunge Colorado the trio didn’t stop their work. Despite the logistical heavy lift of holding the event online, the group managed to seal the records of 33 cases. Holding this event during the pandemic made the group realize that there were significant opportunities to create a strong infrastructure that makes record sealing or expungement as accessible as possible.
At the 2021 event, they helped 24 people seal their cases, and in December of that year, Flores, Moffitt Hruby, and Rodgers registered Expunge Colorado as a Colorado 501c nonprofit with the hopes to one day offer assistance year round.
The Path Towards True Reparative Justice
What does reparative justice mean to Rosalie Flores? “Repair is giving back to the communities that have been most harmed,” says Flores, “For me, specifically it looks like acknowledging first of the harms that have been done and changing that. It’s the acknowledgment that low income communities of color are targeted and criminalized in a way that affects multiple generations. A criminal record shuns individuals from society for the most part,” she describes.
“The acknowledgment is followed by empowerment. Then, really concerted, focused efforts on how to make that happen,” Flores explains, “That means reinvesting tax revenue to communities for those who have been unjustly targeted.”
Flores notes that she prefers to use the nomenclature “unjustly targeted” rather than “disproportionately impacted”, as it acknowledges that there was intent in the harms caused to targeted groups. “Those communities are now not just consumers there to make cannabis companies profit,” she states, “We have to give [tax revenues] back. In a state like New Mexico with such poor education, reparation is about education on knowing how and if legalization affects them.”
Flores notes that reinvested tax revenues need to focus on providing adequate and accessible education, financial literacy, and mental health resources. “In these unjustly targeted areas, people avoid systems because they’ve been harmed by them,” she notes, adding that legalizing the drugs that have systemically caused people harm is simply not enough.
The Need for a Comprehensive Approach to Legislative Change
The founders of Expunge Colorado have put hundreds and hundreds of hours of work into their education, record sealing, and expungement efforts. Holding non-profit status allows Expunge Colorado to gain funding to help with educational campaigns, providing resources, and holding legal clinics that make the record sealing or expungement process as easy and accessible as possible. Flores notes that the organization is always open to new funding avenues.
“The biggest barrier that advocates and equity representatives really have is that they have to do their work for free to ensure that things are getting done,” Flores states, “When we want to move these bills forward, there is no money behind it. You’re sacrificing your day job just to do what’s right, whereas cannabis companies are paying legislators for listening to them.”
One of Rosalie’s biggest concerns is the rapid rate that large cannabis corporations are moving towards what they deem legislative change without the involvement of those who have been unjustly targeted.
“Corporate cannabis is moving too fast in passing bills, and are going to legislators without consulting communities and advocates,” she explains, “This puts communities into fast-paced mode. You need years and years of planning when bills move forward in order to do it comprehensively. Cannabis legalization requirements are being implemented through a prohibitionist mentality where impacted individuals can’t ever afford to get into the game.”
“These bills need to be written by the people and for the people. Not by cannabis companies and not for profit,” she says.
Expunge Colorado Defines Its Future
Expunge Colorado had a strong hand in the writing and subsequent passing of Colorado’s Clean Slate Act this year, allowing for arrest records that don’t result in a conviction and certain older criminal records to be automatically sealed, starting in 2024.
“There is always a need for petition-based process, so our services will always be needed,” says Flores, “Our next goal is to provide education and self-empowerment pieces going forward. We want expungement to become common knowledge that is shared. We want to get people involved so that people aren’t unnecessarily suffering.”
Flores’ Work Comes Full Circle
Always feeling a tie to her home of New Mexico, and the traditions of the land based tribes and communities that have inhabited the land for centuries, Flores saw an opportunity to take what she’d learned in Colorado, and work towards some improvement in her home state.
In 2021, with the imminent passing of the state’s Cannabis Regulation Act, Flores saw that the proposed language of the bill did not mention equity and recognized that many of the tribes and communities she’d grown up around were not consulted and could be negatively impacted. Flores and a coalition of advocates called The New Mexico Acequia Association helped change that. They ensured that the unique land-based and tribal communities of New Mexico were at least mentioned in the bill as “underserved” and that some protections were in place to protect them from the water theft and misuse already in practice from cannabis producers in the medical program.
Flores now holds a contract with the City of Albuquerque as a Cannabis Equity Consultant, and she is now able to see her efforts come full circle to where she started, allowing her to work towards a better future for her home state.
Advice for Others Who Want to Help with Expungement
We asked Flores what advice she has for people in other cannabis states who want to help move the needle on equity and expungement.
“Learn, learn, learn, learn, learn,” she begins, “Find mentors and learn. If you don’t throw yourself into it and read every possible thing you can read to figure out what is even going on, the current state of affairs, it’s going to be difficult to change it. Meet with legislators who express interest. Get comfortable engaging with the system. It’s hard to do because it’s a failed system,” she goes on, “Accept that we are part of it and that we’re unfortunately taking the brunt of the policies and the need to change them. The system isn’t going to do that for us. It’s about wiping our hands and just getting in the game.”
In closing, Rosalie acknowledged that while she’s working hard, there is still so much to do to bake equity into our legal cannabis industry: “Because we’re talking about equity means we don’t have it. We’re barely scratching the surface in justice, expungements, and equity, but these conversations are happening now and we need to start understanding what they really mean.”
Support Expunge Colorado
BIPOCANN honors the integral work of Expunge Colorado and is grateful for their work so that other states can build on what they do. Support Expunge Colorado by donating or volunteering your time so that no more people need to suffer unnecessarily for what they sacrificed for a plant millions of us freely enjoy.