Voices for Racial Justice CI Report – Final

What has been most instrumenta to your progress?

Voices for Racial Justice advances racial, cultural, social and economic justice in Minnesota. We received funding to elevate the voice and power of people who are currently or formerly incarcerated and their families to develop solutions to the problem of mass incarceration, particularly among men of color. One area where we made significant progress was in developing a shared understanding about the health equity issues endured by incarcerated people. We gathered stories from incarcerated people (many written in their own words) and interviewed family members about health concerns faced by incarcerated people. This research informed a health equity report called Unfit for Human Consumption (see https://bit.ly/2MizqlT), which we have used to publicly raise issues, surface community-led recommendations, and inform future advocacy with the Minnesota Department of Corrections. We describe health in a very broad context in the report, ranging from health care access, to mental health issues, to the environment in prison, to the realities formerly incarcerated people face upon reentry into the community.

Listening sessions we conducted with family members of incarcerated people were critical learning tools that helped us overcoming the inherent barriers of working with people incarcerated. These conversations have taught us a lot about how incarceration affects families. We’ve learned about limitations in visitation policies, a lack of support for families who have grievances with the system, and their fears over the living conditions in prison. Further, these conversations helped surface ideas for what it would really take to end mass incarceration in Minnesota—beginning from the school to prison pipeline. Key policy change recommendations emerged, including ending restrictive visitation policies, ending the practice of solitary confinement, and reinstating the Office of the Ombudsman for Corrections to support families that have concerns. Strong leaders also emerged as a result of these conversations, and several Voices-trained leaders now regularly advocate for changes at the legislature.

As a result of this funding, we were able to experiment with innovative ways for people incarcerated to lead organizing campaigns on their own behalf. We used a train-the-trainer approach through which we trained a small group of leaders by phone and through mailed curricula. Those leaders then trained other people incarcerated, building power from within the system we were trying to change. We found that the act of education and training alone was transformative for shifting power in an institution that has a severe power imbalance—sometimes resulting in abuses of power. We took initial steps to shift this imbalance, which was complicated and sometimes resulted in unanticipated consequences for people incarcerated. This resulted in fits and starts in our relationship with the Dept. of Corrections—ultimately, though, all partners moved forward. We now have an excellent relationship with the new commissioner, have developed formal curricula that will help us reach more people in a cohort-based training model, and plan to hire one of our incarcerated partners to direct this work when he is released from prison later this year.

Key lessons learned

Over the two-year grant period, we experienced periodic breakdowns in our communication with people incarcerated. This happened because of staff transitions, miscommunications with unpaid leaders, and because of the difficulty of communicating within a system that is designed to present barriers. We learned some lessons about the impact these breakdowns had on our incarcerated colleagues. We have always known how important deep, trusting relationships are to incarcerated people, who have many reasons not to trust institutions. Any confusion, lack of clarity, or mixed signals can lead to breakdowns in trust. As we learned this, we shifted how we approached our project. We originally conceived of the project as a base-building effort among partner organizations working to end mass incarceration. Today, our project is entirely focused on centering people incarcerated and formerly incarcerated, as well as their family members, in leading the movement to end mass incarceration. We always knew community-based leadership was important, but this work has fundamentally changed how we have positioned those relationships and designed our solutions.

Another lesson we learned was about trauma and healing. We found that people incarcerated friends, and family members of incarcerated people have been so traumatized by the corrections system that the act of engaging in this work—which they supported and wanted to be involved in—was re-traumatizing for them. This realization brings up many questions about how to build power with this community and to engage them in challenging the institutions that could change outcomes in communities of color. We are thinking creatively about how to protect people’s mental and physical health while they are engaged in work that consistently taxes them. We also think it is important to incorporate training about power and teach people to claim their own power so they can play a role in changing the institutions that have harmed them. Our new training curriculum therefore is deeply threaded with healing justice themes and strategies that emphasize self-care, are grounded in culture and community, and provide pathways to building power in ways that are generative and healing.

Reflections on the community innovation process

The most important element of our process has been inclusivity. In our original plan, the work would be led by community-based organizations; this still happens and is important. The breakthrough we experienced because of this community innovation grant was a deeper understanding and reimagining of the movement to end mass incarceration being led by impacted people. Instead of being focused primarily on advocacy, we now lead with training and listening. We train affected community members in racial justice, healing justice, community organizing, and participatory research practices. This gives leaders the tools they need to augment their lived experience and expertise and lead research, policy, and advocacy efforts that will begin dismantling the mass incarceration system in this country. We believe this is the only sustainable and authentic way to produce lasting change; it also gives affected community members the skills, resources, and relationships they need to overcome other barriers in their lives—whether that be barriers to successfully reentering community or overcoming hardships while a loved one is in prison.

Other key elements of Community Innovation

Training and leadership development are a core component of our process. When affected people have organizing skills, knowledge, and voice, real and transformative change will result. Our incarcerated colleagues have shown great leadership and dedication, attending weekly phone trainings conducted by VRJ staff, organizing with others in prison and with family members in the community, reading materials, and sharing their voices through writing, art, and audio recordings. Through our expanding network, we have learned of issues the public does not see. For example, when our organizers were placed in solitary confinement despite having followed all the DOC rules regarding their training and organizing work, we developed a deeper understanding of the impact of solitary confinement and its subjective use. When incarcerated partners and their families wrote letters sharing their experiences with the health system inside prison, we shared those narratives with decision makers at the state level. Our partners face tremendous challenges both in prison and in the community, and yet they remain committed to organizing because they have seen that it is powerful and life-changing.

Progress toward an innovation

We are closer to a community innovation than we were at the outset of this project. We have more clarity about serious issues that need to be addressed in the short term to improve living conditions for incarcerated people. We also have more clarity about how few people and institutions really understand these conditions. We’re working with the Minnesota Department of Health, for example, to raise health equity issues in the prisons. We’re also very hopeful that our strong relationships with the new commissioner of the Department of Corrections can lead to transformative work over the next four years. As we organize for policy changes, we recognize how important developing a narrative campaign is in changing the perception of people in prison from criminals to human beings. Without that change in perception, the political will to address mass incarceration will be limited. We have also seen that it is important to address conditions inside prison, while working to end mass incarceration. Both are important because most incarcerated people will return to our communities. We need them to be healthy, whole people when they do so, and not be further damaged by their time in prison.

What it will take to reach an innovation?

Continued leadership from affected communities, supported by training and leadership development in racial justice, healing justice, community organizing, and health equity will be the building blocks of the infrastructure necessary to end mass incarceration.

What’s next?

With funds from the Bush Foundation, we have developed a training curriculum that incorporates elements of racial justice, healing justice, community organizing, and health equity. We plan to hire our longtime colleague Kevin Reese when he is released from prison sometime in 2019 to lead training and advocacy with affected communities. Kevin’s leadership will be the next phase of innovation and evolution of this project—he will be able to much more powerfully lead this work from the outside. His first phase of work will be to organize and implement an inaugural training cohort of 10-12 affected people. We expect to begin making more connections on the national scale with the addition of Kevin to our staff and our emerging connection to Race Forward’s prison justice resources.

If you could do it all over again…

If we could go back to the beginning of this grant period, we would root the project in training, leadership and relationship-building with affected communities sooner. While cross-sector work is important for moving change, it cannot replace what we have learned and achieved by centering our work with people affected by mass incarceration. This grant from the Bush Foundation gave us the resources to go through that learning process and we are entering the next phase of this work with a structure that will support a strong prison justice movement-building strategy in Minnesota. This includes a BRIDGE development team that developed our replicable training curriculum, plans for our inaugural training cohort, and ongoing advocacy work on health equity, ending solitary confinement practices, and reinstating the Office of the Ombudsman.