You See LA: Summer 2020
Bryonn Bain selects ten community organizations to support
Scholar, activist, theater director, actor, writer, producer, and spoken word artist Bryonn Bain joined the UCLA Department of African American Studies in 2015, co-directed the UCLA International Human Rights Law clinic in 2016, and joined the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance in 2018. Bain’s work uses the arts and activism to build movements for justice, criminal justice reform, prison education, and abolition. While attending Harvard Law School, he was wrongfully arrested by the New York Police Department, which he later successfully sued. As the founding director of the UCLA Prison Education Program, Bain has drawn on his decades of work in prisons to establish opportunities for higher education, the arts, and research in southern California prisons. He offered us this list of community organizations worth knowing about and supporting.
There has long been a need for a Center for Justice here at UCLA. As we work towards that vision, take a look at ten of LA’s leading community organizations and campus allies collaborating with us — at the UCLA Prison Education Program — on prison education, abolition and mass decarceration.
Check them out and get involved with at least one by offering support and/or resources:
1. A New Way of Life Reentry Project provides housing and support for formerly incarcerated women for successful community reentry, family reunification, and individual healing. The organization works to restore the civil rights of formerly incarcerated people, and empower, organize, and mobilize formerly incarcerated people as advocates for social change and personal transformation.
2. Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) works to end mass incarceration in California. To ensure our communities are safe, healthy, and whole, ARC empowers formerly and currently incarcerated people to thrive by providing a support network, comprehensive reentry services, and opportunities to advocate for policy change. Through grassroots policy advocacy, ARC is dedicated to transforming the criminal justice system so that it is more just and equitable for all people.
3. Underground Scholars Initiative is a student-led organization working to help end the school-to-prison pipeline by creating a prison-to-school pipeline as an alternative while also building community and support systems for folks who have been formerly incarcerated and/or system impacted.
4. The Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) is working to build a youth, family, and formerly and currently incarcerated people’s movement to challenge America’s addiction to incarceration and race, gender and class discrimination in Los Angeles County’s, California’s, and the nation’s juvenile and criminal injustice systems. The YJC’s goal is to dismantle policies and institutions that have ensured the massive lock-up of people of color, widespread law enforcement violence and corruption, consistent violation of youth and communities’ Constitutional and human rights, the construction of a vicious school-to-jail track, and the build-up of the world’s largest network of jails and prisons.
5. Dignity and Power Now (DPN) is working to build a Black and Brown led abolitionist movement rooted in community power towards the goal of achieving transformative justice and healing justice for all incarcerated people, their families, and communities.
6. InsideOUT Writers (IOW) conducts weekly writing classes inside Los Angeles County juvenile halls and jails. The mission of IOW is to reduce the juvenile recidivism rate by providing a range of services that evolves to meet the needs of currently and formerly incarcerated youth and young adults. Using creative writing as a catalyst for personal transformation, these young people are empowered with the knowledge and skills necessary to successfully re-integrate into our communities, becoming advocates for their future.
7. All of Us or None is a grassroots civil and human rights organization fighting for the rights of formerly and currently incarcerated people. The group's current campaign targets California county registrar’s offices and courts believed to be unlawfully triggering the removal of people with conviction histories from electoral rolls — with more than 3,000 eligible voters estimated to have been removed in 2017 in Los Angeles County alone.
8. Project Rebound empowers formerly incarcerated students and those who are impacted by the criminal justice system by advocating for access to higher education and offering support services promoting academic success, holistic development, increased graduation rates, and continued success beyond the classroom. The program was created in 1967 as a way to matriculate people into San Francisco State University directly from the criminal justice system. Since then, hundreds of formerly incarcerated people have obtained bachelor’s degrees and beyond. In 2016 Project Rebound expanded into a consortium of nine CSU campus programs. Project Rebound provides a safe and inclusive space with guidance and mentorship in which students are held to a high standard of academic excellence and community engagement.
9. For Freedoms is a platform for creative civic engagement, discourse, and direct action, inspired by American artist Norman Rockwell’s paintings of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms (1941)—freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. For Freedoms’ exhibitions, installations, and public programs use art to deepen public discussions on civic issues and core values, and to advocate for equality, dialogue, and civic participation. As a nexus between art, politics, commerce, and education, For Freedoms aims to inject anti-partisan, critical thinking that fine art requires into the political landscape through programming, exhibitions, and public artworks. In 2018, For Freedoms launched the 50 State Initiative: the largest creative collaboration in U.S. history.
10. Sankofa.org is a social justice organization founded by Harry Belafonte that enlists the support of today's most celebrated artists and influential individuals in collaboration with grassroots partners to elevate the voices of the disenfranchised and promote justice, peace, and equality. Through art, culture, and media Sankofa.org addresses injustice and creates change at multiple levels.
Bryonn shared with us the video for his most recent song, Racism is a Pandemic:
Bryonn also shared with us this poem:
LESSONS ON LOCKDOWN
By Bryonn Bain and the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) Creatives
______________________________________
I asked a dozen men and women
who all spent time living in prison
what the world needs to learn now
from those who survived lockdown
6 x 8 cell no escape to the yard
Only your mind going beyond bars
Might be surprised by their top ten
Lessons on lockdown inside the pen
1. Waste not, want not
Tomorrow needs what you got
So don’t ever be wasteful today
By throwing what’s useful away
2. Find good ways to use your time
It will serve you, that’s what we find
Make toilet paper into chess pieces
If that releases your soul and mind
3. Be creative - even if you have to
draw with chalk on the sidewalk
Unlock your limitless imagination
and liberate your caged thought
4. Cleanliness is next to Godliness
Clean both your space and your self
Give away whatever you don’t need
You might just feed somebody else
5. Plan your work
And work your plan
Take that project you always
Wanted to do into your hands
6. Be still - like prison makes you
Every damn day against your will
Don’t always got to do something
It’s ok to slow down, stop and chill
7. No negative thinking - let go of the “he said” / “she said” and “they said” that “we said” and don’t you go out your mind, but get outta your head
8. Learn how to be resourceful
From nothing make something support you - use your toothpaste
to hang pictures if you can afford to
9. Recycle whatever you can
Mother Nature can live w/o man
All of us return to dust and sand
But killing the planet is not the plan
10. Last, but not least, striving to survive might ignite major fights
With all those you love in your life
Be ready to compromise every night
Ask yourself: what does creativity do for my family and my friends?
We are all in this together
We are and so I am!
Header image courtesy of Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC)
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