How Prisoner-Led Organizing Saved My Life
To survive in prison, inmates usually accept a “convict code” that demands toughness and makes us wary of others.
To thrive in prison, I learned to embrace organizing for social change and discovered the rewards in thinking of others first. Contributing to a collective has helped me find deeper purpose in my life, even while serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Like most transformations in our lives, this didn’t happen overnight.
My introduction to organizing was the Black Prisoners Caucus, or BPC, at Clallam Bay Corrections Center in Washington state.