About us
Our mission
We are a statewide group of diverse communities and individuals advocating to build an equitable justice system by abolishing the death penalty in Nevada through public education, media outreach, coalition-building, and grassroots organizing.
Our Staff
Mark Bettencourt
Executive Director
Mark has served the Nevada community working with under-served populations as both an educator and grassroots organizer for over a decade. He has served as a field director for numerous issue advocacy and electoral campaigns. Three of his immediate family members have experienced incarceration and the horrors of the American legal system and lost an uncle to murder, these experiences inform his work today.
Trystin St. Denis
Northern Nevada Organizer
Trystin is a recent graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno, with a degree in criminal justice. Her education allowed her to understand the complexities of the criminal justice system and the reform it needs. Trystin has worked in a range of community organizations, specifically those centered around climate change, people who are unhoused and prison reentry services.
James Allen Jr.
Community Organizer
James brings his first hand experience to his organizing and ministry. Sentenced to death for a crime he committed at 16 in Las Vegas, James spent almost 4 years on Nevada’s death row and a total of 26 years in Nevada prisons. In 2008, James won his freedom from the state parole board. James has spent his time since then mentoring at-risk youth, organizing in his communities to prevent recidivism and mediate community tensions before violence occurs.
Nathaniel Phillipps
Community Organizer
Nathaniel is a community organizer from the historic Twin Lakes neighborhood the son of formerly incarcerated parents, one with a “felony” background, the other murdered in broad daylight on the Las Vegas Strip. In 2015, he facilitated an intensive human rights education learning community across four continents.
Nathaniel earned an M.A. from the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School, in New York City, including a winter term in Johannesburg, South Africa with the Transregional Center for Democratic Studies.