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Dandelion Rising Leadership Institute: Youth on the Rise

The Dandelion Rising Leadership Institute (DRLI) is close to my heart because of two main reasons:

1. At the age of 19 I was arrested for a murder I did not commit.
2. The way I introduce myself and the program to our students each year.

As an introduction I ask the new students their names and their ages. After I tell them my story I go right back to that first introduction and let them know why I asked: to show them that I was close to their age when I was sent away to do a life sentence for a murder I didn’t commit. I show the DRLI students that I am just now able to speak to them in person at 52 years old. This introduction tends to get their attention.

Once I have their attention I share that I now understand the way I became so subjected to the system. I didn’t know the laws or the depths of the neglect in my community and surrounding areas, and at the same time I became known to the police as a gang member. Nevertheless, I didn’t murder anyone. So I tie the 7-week DRLI curriculum into my personal life story and the personal stories of DRLI students, which include subjects like mass incarceration, police violence, and even fellow students being choked in classrooms by law enforcement officials.

As part of the institute students get a chance to learn through our Know Your Rights training, and to use the skills learned whether it be on campus or at home. These are some smart students! They even have a few campaigns of their own including Students Not Suspects and Students Deserve – fights that strive for decreased policing at schools across Los Angeles.

That’s why I enjoy working with the youth. A lot of them want to know better so they can do better, in particular by understanding their rights. The police profile people when they are looking for a suspect and the person who is arrested and charged might be them even if they did not commit the crime, as was true in my case. When young people are impacted by major stressors such as racism and poverty they can sometimes end up participating in harmful behavior. While DPN believes we must be accountable for harm caused we also believe that the system also needs to be accountable for the environments it creates.

Youth want to understand how campaign work for justice is done. In addition to in-classroom learning, our DRLI students receive the opportunity to intern with DPN staff and participate in LA County Board of Supervisors meetings, Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission meetings, Freedom Harvest wellness events, and supporting our Reform L.A. Jails ballot initiative.

Are you a teacher interested in hosting or a student interested in participating in DRLI? Contact me!

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The Womyn of Success Stories

Feminist Group From All-Male Prison Featured in Recent CNN Film Thrives with Contributions from Committed Womyn

Success Stories, recently exhibited in the CNN documentary The Feminist on Cell Block Y, is a program where young incarcerated men transform their lives by challenging their patriarchy. The film beautifully reveals the struggles of the participants and leaders as we wrestle with our toxic masculinity in prison to build freer more integrated lives. However, the Success Stories team doesn’t only include these men. It also includes visionary womyn whose support make the program possible and have done so since the beginning.

Chantal Coudoux
Prison programs like Success Stories do not survive without support from the outside. They require surgically precise navigation through prison bureaucracy and communication with imprisoned leadership through slender, approved channels. Chantal has been volunteering her time connecting the group with outside resources since 2014 as its Community Liaison. She links graduates with education and employment resources once they parole. She coordinates between the incarcerated directors and the prison administration to bring in outside speakers. She works with Success Stories’ fiscal sponsor, LA-based Dignity and Power Now (DPN), to supply the group with learning aids such as The Mask You Live In, a documentary about toxic masculinity that Success Stories uses in its curriculum.

Taina Vargas-Edmond
Success Stories feminist authenticity is largely built upon Taina’s investment of her time and her story. Her relationships, conversations, and visits with multiple Success Stories directors and facilitators keep the group plugged into womyn’s experiences with patriarchy. As shown in the documentary, it is her generous sharing that enlightens the group to contemporary feminist conversations like those around street harassment and rape culture.

Janice Bonello
Janice led Success Stories’ patriarchy workshops with her friend Chris Siders for three straight seasons in 2015 and 2016. She and Chris were leaders of a feminist club at California State University Monterey Bay when Taina connected them with Success Stories. Janice’s interactive workshops drew participants’ toxic beliefs into the open. She then contested those beliefs by speaking out her personal experience as a survivor of multiple forms of patriarchal violence. Her openness and candor still echo in the group’s antipatriarchy work today.

Patrisse Cullors
The #BlackLivesMatter cofounder and DPN founder was an original supporter of Success Stories, bringing it on as an official project of DPN early in the lives of both organizations. This relationship supplied Success Stories with the budget required to bring in outside presenters and resources. It also brought forth Chantal as a volunteer and offered Success Stories legitimacy in the eyes of the prison which helped it become a state recognized program. DPN has since hired one of the incarcerated men who made Success Stories possible, James Nelson, when he paroled in 2014 after serving 29 years. He continues to work with them as a full time Community Organizer.

bell hooks
The patriarchy workshop Success Stories delivers is largely inspired by the writings of feminist social critic and author bell hooks. Her books The Will to Change, We Real Cool, and All About Love are each quoted throughout the curriculum and in The Feminist on Cell Block Y. Success Stories sees itself as a mediator, relaying her insights to incarcerated men in the common language of California male prisons.

Watch the full documentary here.

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Mission Neglectful

When we at Dignity and Power Now saw Los Angeles County’s Mission Possible website we were floored. How could anyone take a website about the Los Angeles County jails seriously that says they provide “compassionate whole-person care”? The county uses blatant misrepresentation and coopts terms like “social justice” to paint a very un-lifelike picture that shows jails as places of healing. We of course know that is not true. The county made a video to go along with their campaign. So did we. Except we call ours Mission Neglectful.

There have been 6 deaths in the jails so far in 2018 and an average of 25 deaths every year – many due to medical neglect. In the video above DPN Campaign Lead James Nelson acts as a doctor who loves his job because he gets to do whatever he wants – including clocking out and working at other jobs. The script was based on information provided by a DPN source inside Twin Towers who handed over details on medical staff who work several other healthcare jobs while on the clock in the jails, including the psychiatrist whose name is bleeped out in our video. Oh, and the Ellen Wong story is sadly very real too.

DPN Deputy Director of Health and Wellness Melanie Griffin points out the absurdity of DHS Director of Community Health Mark Ghaly’s statement that “there’s a high no show rate to appointments,” saying, “You know, because prisoners just don’t show up.” The DPN source also provided information about how doctors will deliberately try to see prisoners while they’re in court or meeting with their lawyers so they can check them off on their list and send them back to the beginning of the line.

Outside of procedural neglect, Melanie also brings light to systemic abuses like the fact that people in the jails often do not have access to healthcare on the outside, expressing that people won’t be able to get followup treatment for diagnosed aliments and that they were probably caused by unaddressed socioeconomic issues to begin with. In the hiring video spoof Melanie sarcastically states, “But you get the be the doctor that tells them they have cancer.” Fact is, the county should be spending the $3.5 billion they plan to spend on jails on addressing fundamental healthcare in communities. That’s why we support the Reform LA Jails and Community Reinvestment Initiative, a ballot measure that if voted in would require them to do just that.

The Mission Neglectful video is part of a larger episode of the DPN produced show Grassroots with Jayda. The episode also includes a conversation with DPN Board Member and Statewide Health and Wellness Organizer Mark-Anthony Johnson. Watch the full episode below for more insight on the county’s misguided mission and what we’re doing about it.

New episodes of Grassroots with Jayda will stream monthly on Dignity and Power Now’s YouTube channel.

For more on the Reform LA Jails and Community Reinvestment Initiative visit reformlajails.com.

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Witnessing Wellness

Witnessing is a word that gets used a lot these days in social justice circles. Like many of our words that come into fashion, it can be easy for them to lose their meaning and or it can be hard to really figure out what that word looks like in action.

Institutions like jails, prisons, and detention centers are made to hide away and prevent witnessing.

So it felt very powerful to set up outside Lynwood Jail on February 10th and bear witness to the very regular trials, tribulations, and heartbreak that people experience visiting their loved ones inside. It felt very powerful to be able to offer support in the form of food, water, and gifts that support health. We gave out 30 DPN wellness kits with a Rest Easy Tea and a Cleansing Body Scrub. We listened to people talk about their families and what their incarcerated loved ones are going through.

This month we were a small group and without tables to boot. But we were able to connect with a lot of people who are interested in building people power and resistance to caging people.

Most of the folks we spoke to had family inside who were dealing with mental health problems. It was heartbreaking to hear how often that was the case. All the more motivation and fire to fuel the jail fight. LA County’s plan to use billions of dollars to make a jail for mentally ill people are blueprints for tragedy, further heartbreak, and injustice.

Let’s take care of ourselves and each other so that we can keep up the fight.