OUR STAFF
Minister
Caliph Muab- El
PRESIDENT OF
WISCONSIN CHAPTER
After being sent to a prison for adults at age 15 and spending 10 of 15 years in solitary confinement at a super maximum facility, Minister Caliph Muab-El emerged like a soaring bird. Muab-El has learned from a long line of teachers and his lineage links back all the way to the Prophet Muhammad. Muab-El is a minister and scholar of the Word, Grand Sheikh and Adept of the Moorish Science Temple of The World, an Imam for Muslims of the Hanafi, Maliki and Shafi’i schools of thought, a Sufi scholar of the Shadulliyyah, Naqsbandi, and Junaydian orders as well as a student of many religions.
While incarcerated, Muab-El essentially turned his cell into a classroom. He received his paralegal license at Blackstone College, and he studied business
Since his release, he has become an ordained Minister through Now Faith International Ministries. Muab-El also became a Divine Minister and Grand Sheikh of the Moorish Science Temple of America. He currently holds the Supreme Grand Mufti and Supreme Grand National Spokesman offices with the M.S.T. of A, as a scholar of Law and Jurisprudence for over 100,000 members nationally. Muab-El is a master historian of various cultures and religions, yet, he considers himself to always striving to be the best student. Muab-El has worked tirelessly to give back and recapture that once caged voice, and he has accomplished a long list of great things in a short period of time. He has been featured on the cover of The Isthmus and Middleton Times, and has been the subject of many articles written about him by many magazines, newspapers and talk shows. Muab- El has also been the subject of dissertations for three scholars of different fields. Muab- El has had a number of television appearances; including a number of news stations, Wisconsin Eye, For The Record, alongside many other programs. Muab-El is a motivational speaker; he has given countless seminars and speeches all over the U.S around the issues of mass incarceration, racial justice and inequality.
Muab-El’s work and positions in the community are many. He has worked with the Special Investigations Unit of the Madison Police Department and Communities
Against Violence. Muab-El has mentored Madison's ten most dangerous ex-offenders, affirming their worth as human beings, helping them integrate, not recidivate, and helping them get jobs, housing, learn human kindness and gauge education. He has served as a courtroom advocate for young men and women, helping to bring greater clarity to their circumstance, in addition to aiding legal counsel with defense strategies. He is a Community Organizer, trained by the best at Gamaliel (accredited for training President Obama). He is Former-Vice President of MOSES, he served as the interim Director of Voices Beyond Bars. He also helps facilitate several other men’s groups around Madison for both incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. Muab-El is also the Co-Founder of Breaking Barriers Mentoring, a local non-profit with a mission to empower youth facing societal barriers by nurturing diverse mentoring relationships and community support. Breaking Barriers cultivates the core talents and interests of youth to maximize their personal potential and create community leadership. Breaking Barrier’s overall goal is to dismantle the school- to- prison pipeline in the Dane County Area through Solid Ground Support Program, which is designed to avert troubled youth from street life, gang affiliation and prison. Through Breaking Barriers, Muab-El has done this work in high schools as well as in the community, and continues to do so up until present. He is also a member of EXPO (Ex-Prisoners Organizing). Recently, Muab-El helped launch a new initiative called the F.I.C. (Focused Interruption Coalition). This coalition has succeeded in getting the support of 11 Alders along with the mayor who pledged 3 million dollars to support the coalition’s 15-Point Plan.
Currently, Muab-El is the President of All of Us or None, a grassroots effort geared towards decarcerating Wisconsin, dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline and ending mass incarceration. He is also one of the lead organizers of Circles of Support in Milwaukee, these are reentry circles providing a safe place for returnees helping them successfully reintegrate back into the community with established lines of support from both the broader community and peers who’ve already made the successful transition.
In his “spare time,” Muab-El runs a community based record label designed to push out positive music with a deep message, a brand of music he calls “Life Music”. The label consists of music from an array of different genres. Muab-El lives in Milwaukee. Muab-El is preparing for the upcoming release of a book he wrote about his life experience and time behind bars.
Brianna
Nelson
CHAIR OF ALL OF US OR NONE
Brianna Nelson is a Community Organizer with All of Us or None Wisconsin. She is also, a Minnesota native, who was inspired by the George Floyd police involved death to get heavily into Community Organizing.
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Brianna Nelson has always had a zeal for her people. She was also an organizer with her church home at Invisible Reality Ministries, where she worked with and alongside Common Ground and MICHA for a couple of years. After the death of George Floyd due to police excessive force, Brianna took her justified anger to the streets of Milwaukee, protesting and chanting “No Justice! No Peace”!
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Since then, Brianna has expanded her scope of focus, starting her own organization for women in activism, called Sister’s Keepers MKE. Her focus is geared towards liberating the voices and leadership of women in activism, as she saw a gaping hole in this aspect of the Justice Movement. Her goal is to also work with women transitioning back into the community from prison. As in Brianna’s own words “These are fresh minds untainted by the perils of society and eager to give back, they deserve a second chance too!”
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Brianna Nelson came from a family of philanthropists and is now working on her museum to continue her family’s legacy of philanthropy. In partnership with super stars like Kurtis Blow and the Universal HipHop Museum she will achieve her goal. Brianna Nelson is the daughter of the late and esteemed Duane Nelson Sr., who was the brother of the iconic late great Prince Rogers Nelson, formerly known to the world as “Prince “or “The Artist”. Duane Nelson was the man behind Prince and was Brianna Nelson’s father, who story she will tell by virtue of this museum.