This is a guest post from James King, State Campaigner with the Ella Baker Center.
You know that feeling when someone sees you for who you really are?
In 2017, I met Emily Harris, the Policy Director at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. We started working on an idea to help bring more people home. I told her how I believed everyone should have a pathway to receive equal amounts of “good time” credit earning – to receive equal time off their sentences if they participate in programs.
At the time, I was incarcerated at San Quentin Prison, and it wasn’t every day that someone knocked on my door to hear about my vision for a freer society. Emily saw me then, and trusted my intuition and lived experience.
As she and the Ella Baker Center policy team continued to visit incarcerated people in prisons across the state, Emily began asking them for feedback on this idea of expanding credit earning opportunities. People responded enthusiastically and added their own ideas. We kept talking and thinking about how to make this a viable policy.
Working on policy while inside prison gave me new insight about the process itself, and also about the value I brought, regardless of my incarceration status. I felt supported. I felt seen. My peers at the Ella Baker Center actively worked to ensure that my perspectives and those of my comrades inside were not just included, but central to how they created the policy.
The Ella Baker Center team continued to listen to what we had to say, and sent in draft after draft of the credits and programming bill with the sole purpose of making it better.
I can honestly say this was one of the most supportive experiences I had while I was incarcerated and working with people outside who had more power than I did.
In December 2019, I was welcomed home into a community that saw me.
Building on our collaboration together inside, I launched into high gear as the Ella Baker Center’s new State Campaigner and our coalition pushed for AB 3160 (Stone), a bill packed with ways to increase access to programming and credits for people inside.
Everyone recognizes that 2020 has been a really difficult year, from the global pandemic to the unprecedented visibility of police violence in America. But despite the obstacles that have stood before us, this year–my first full year of freedom–is also the year I, along with my strong, fierce community outside, fought to bring our loved ones inside home.
It has been incredibly empowering to develop this vision and make it a reality.
This experience reaffirmed the value of continuing to prioritize people directly impacted by incarceration, and their experience and perspective on our policy goals. Now, together we are building an exciting new project.
Next year, the Ella Baker Center is launching our new inside/outside policy fellowship program to create space for both currently and formerly incarcerated people to see our vision enacted in real time.
And your support for the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights says yes to the big change our communities deserve. You are affirming that our communities have a right to decide what these changes are, and how they are enacted. You are giving the gift of being seen to someone inside.
Thank you for seeing me.