TARRA SIMMONS MAKES HISTORY

 

                TARRA SIMMONS MAKES HISTORY

Tarra Simmons did not do well in school. When she was 13 years old she became a middle school dropout. There was a lot of violence in her home. “I was around drugs and alcohol all the time,” she recalled.  In 2011 she was arrested three time for selling drugs.

At 15 she had her first child.

Eventually she became the first person in her family to graduate from high school. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing then worked for 11 years as a registered nurse.

But in her early thirties she had a big problem with depression. To cope with it she started taking drugs.

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In 2013 she was working at Burger King after spending 30 months in prison “for drug and theft convictions.”

Tarra is 42 years old. Where is she now? What is she doing?

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This past week Tarra won Legislative office and became “Washington state’s first felon to win legislative office.” Cathy Free wrote in an article in the Washington Post of November 7, 2020. (There are other stories about Tarra in the Seattle Times)

This former prisoner was just elected to the state house in Washington is the headline to the article.

Is it true? How did it happen? “The newly elected Democrat will represent the 23^rd district in Kitsap county about 40 miles outside Tacoma” the article said.

No one waved a magic wand and whispered abracadabra! No fairy godmother floated by. It was not easy. In fact, “It was an uphill road to victory for the former nurse and mother of three.”

After her time in prison she could not find work as a nurse.  Burger King was the only place where she could find a job. She also had “to try to reunify and catch up” with her children.

“It was a really hard time,” Tarra said. “The barriers to succeed seemed overwhelming.”

She decided “to help fight for changes for people after they are released from prison.” That meant applying to law school. With a great deal of help from her friend and mentor, Shon Hopwood, she was accepted at the Seattle University School of Law. Tarra graduated with Honors in 2017.

She is now a Civil Rights Attorney and Executive Director of the Civil Survival Project, a nonprofit that helps former inmates rebuild their lives.

Tarra will now be involved in creating state law. She is “the first ex-con to take a seat in the Washington House” and hopes to work with a view to “reducing the state’s incarceration rate and increasing access to mental health services.”

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