A (3:37)

You tell us in the book that around fourth grade, you realized that writing was your superpower and that you did writing while you were incarcerated. Writing a book and getting all these stories out is a difficult process. What inspired you to write this book and share it with others?

C (3:59)

Yeah, I think that it comes down to, like, this conversation that is representative of, like, many similar conversations that I had in prison. And I was with this friend of mine who pulled me to the side and was concerned about me because I was doing organizing in prison with organizers and activists in the free world. And so they would come to visit me in a visiting room. And one of these people, one of these friends, was a trans person. And prison is a very homophobic and transphobic place. So there was a way in which that these visits were a threat to my reputation in prison, which is, like, kind of important. Your reputation in is, like, connected to, like, your baseline safety in prison. And so as he's talking to me, like, he's talking about this friend of mine in, like, some pretty disparaging terms. And I am just so, like, devastated by the complexity of the situation because on the one hand, I can't stop imagining my friend standing here listening to the way that my other friend was talking about them. And I know that if they heard that, they would be devastated. And the next day they would be on the front line putting their body and, well, being on the line for my friend's freedom. And that was in. What was so hard about that is I just kind of wanted to scream at this person who was, like, disparaging my trans friend and, like, as, like, in the game of drawing lines in the sand, this is who you put on the other side of the line. Like, what I told him was that, like, I understand what you're saying from, like, the standpoint of what you're saying, and it's like, you know, the prison rules and prison culture, but, like, what you're talking about is white supremacy. Like, what you're talking about is everything that I'm against. And. And the thing that was, like, so confusing for me in this situation where I'm speaking to both my friend and my nemesis at the same time is that I was just like, how. And because this person that I'm talking to, like, he's like a radical black man, like, and has put, you know, it all on the line for the liberation and freedom of black people as much as, if not more than I have. And I'm like, how can this man not understand white supremacy? How can he not understand that what he's doing as white supremacy isn't going to help black communities, is ultimately undermining and going to fracture black communities. And so that's where the seed of this book came from. Like, thinking about, like, how to have that conversation with the people I love about the things we believe and why we believe them.

A (7:12)

You use the term white supremacy in the book and you take us through a number of structures and you really illustrate for us what they are in practice and what it means to have these systems be formed by and ultimately support white supremacy. Before we use terms too much, can we start defining them? How do you define white supremacy in the book? And when you're talking with people.

C (7:40)

Now, I wish I had the book in front of me, but I define white supremacy as a. White supremacy is an ideology which has been normalized into a culture, and then the culture has produced a structure that enforces the culture. And what it is is this hierarchy kind of rooted in the Judaic Christian conception of God and Abraham. And it's like this hierarchy where God's at the top. And then there are de. Escalating hierarchies of importance with, like, white men at the top and black trans women at the bottom. And the people at the top hold power of life and death, just like the biblical God held power over life and death. And the people at the bottom are obligated to be in servitude. And so it's. And it's less and it's not. When I say, like, white supremacy, I don't want people to get too caught up in conflating that with white skin. Because, like, as James Baldwin said, white is not a skin color. It's a metaphor for power. And that's why it looks like Chase Bank. So I think that's a very important thing to Understand, so that we can understand that anyone engaging in the practices of white supremacy, of the things that perpetuate white supremacy, is essentially and functionally a white supremacist. Whether they want to be or not, whether they intend to or not, whether they have white skin, whether they have black skin, whether they're Arab, whether they're Russian, right? It's like it's a practice of reinforcing these structures of dominance that are hierarchical. And just by happenstance of history, white men sit at the top right now. But if we dislodged and dismantled that version of white supremacy where, like, old white men, old white capitalist men are at the top, and we don't understand what white supremacy is, and dismantle the ideology that gives rise to the culture, that gives rise to the structure, that gives rise to the reality we live, then someone else is just going to replace them, and we're not going to be happy or satisfied because the people who replace them don't have white skin.

A (10:16)

You give us a number of examples of people thinking they are going to be part of reform or truly believing that they can come in and offer reform within the prison. And they come in with power. They are a free person. They will be leaving when they leave. They come in representing a nonprofit or with permission to do a work workshop, and they put it on. And one of the questions that you invite us to ask is, does the power then get equally distributed amongst all the participants when the. When the project is done? Who holds the most power? Is it fair? How did you start analyzing projects in this way to really see what was going on with power structures?

C (10:59)

Yeah, that's a really good question. How I started analyzing is, like, difficult. I kind of have a mind that sees, like, structures and patterns. And then as I became a writer, that became even more ingrained. But I think the moment that I really started to think hard about that was. Comes from a story of a friend of mine who was sitting. And we were in prison, and we were. I was part of this. This group that would put on, like, plays for the public. And a friend of mine was performing his life story. And, you know, the audience is full of, like, volunteers. It's full of, like, donors. It's full of, like, you know, people in the nonprofit world. And there are these two women sitting in the audience. One is, like, the executive director of the organization responsible for the plays in the prison, and the other's a donor. And they're watching my friend perform on stage. And the whole places move because, like, he's killing it and the woman, the donor, turns to the executive director. Emotional. Linda's like, this is so amazing. She's like moved by my friend's performance and she's edified and she has learned something. And she turns to the executive director and she says to her, how can I support you? And that's like telling. It's like, how can I support you? How can I support your organization, your white led organization? And not how can I support this man who has moved me? Like, this is like, we're essentially talking about like a millionaire who could change any number of lives. But the power of that generated from that performance for her motivated her to support a power structure or the person who was like, not the actual person in need and not the person who had done her the service. And so I started looking at that and you know, that's pretty common, like in all the prison programming. You know, like in these prison programs, the prestige and the funding goes to the organization holding the funding. And the incarcerated people who are the leaders in these programs, who are essentially the people who do the work in these programs are essentially just slave labor. And I'm also like, witnessing that, like, and then, you know, people get out of prison. Like, these programs aren't like supporting the incarcerated people when they get out of prison in any meaningful way. Then perhaps moral support, maybe they have like, friends and they talk and it's like, oh, yeah, it was so great when we were inside. And so I was like, yeah, but where's like the power actually going? And I think that, you know, and I say this is like, not like, as, like not as a harsh judgment or even like as like a harsh criticism of people who are coming in. And like, they mean well, but it's like we have the imagination problem that I talk about in the book, and we have hegemony, which has us doing things that we think are liberatory, that we think are helpful, but they're actually not. And so as I'm thinking about that, I'm like, it's one thing for me, I have the mind for it. It's just, that's my gift. I can see it. But I was reaching for a way for anyone to approach a situation and have a way, a framework, a way of understanding actually doing versus what they think they're doing. So I came up with this numbering system that's part of a power analysis, zero sum power analysis that like, locates the stakeholders at any intervention or in any programming. Like, assigns like a numerical value that represents how much power that stakeholder has. And then like, the numbers added up is like the power in the system. And I generally, like, do a system of 10. And then you run the intervention and you answer the question of, like, how power has moved. And then you represent that movement with the redistribution of the numbering. And then you. And you're looking at, you're seeing, okay, how has power moved? And you're explaining how it moves. And you're explaining. You're also holding yourself accountable to, like, structurally, how has power moved? Not like individually, like, this person has more of this because this is not a individual personal gain. This is a structural gain. This is a cultural. This is a cultural arena. This is a structural arena. So that's where the power needs to move. And so that's why I came up with the system, and that's how I came up with it.

A (16:11)

You talk about how the prison system itself is the opposite of collectivity and of allowing or encouraging prisoners to see their own agency and to have power. You, you talk about how part of the, quote, rehabilitation is about this script that everyone's meant to learn, and they have to learn how to do it and perform it as part of the parole system. And the parole system is another example of the concentrations of power. You talk to us about the people who are on parole boards, and I think it might be surprising in many people to learn that it's overwhelmingly people who are part of incarcerating people in the first place.

C (17:01)

Yeah, I mean, that's actually like. I mean, that's good for me to hear that because I take it for granted that, like, yeah, well, everybody knows that parole boards are full of former prosecutors and former police officers that are former correctional officers. But, like, yeah, you're right, people probably don't know that. And so you have a people with a very particular mindset as being a part of, like, a system that they demand that the incarcerated people before them name as just and like, prosthesize as just and believe it. It's not enough to say it. They need to believe that you believe it. And if they don' believe that you believe it, they're going to deny your parole.

A (17:46)

It's a powerful thing to sit with you. You talk about when you got your sentence, and it was a time that was widely publicized in the presses as being tough on crime. And so sentences were extremely long. And you talked about a number of people who had what should have been fairly short sentences, given how long they were stretching out sentences during the tough on crime era. And they would go for parole and they would be Denied again and again. And so what could have been released in seven years? They were still incarcerated at year 28.

C (18:26)

Yeah, like, when I, and, and, and like, I, I bring that up in the book because I think it's important to understand that, like, my story isn't like, there's a. There's a collective thing happening. This is not just, like, a thing that happened to me. Right. And, like, my case is, like, probably the most palatable given that, like, I actually did commit a very serious crime that, like, most people would say, like, well, yeah, you deserve what you got. And it's important to understand that, like, you know, when I, When I was sentenced, there were, like, men who, like, had been in prison for 10 to 15 to 20 years and didn't even, like, there was one that didn't even get out until, like, a couple months before I got out. And for the last, like, 15, 10 to 15 years of his sentence, it was known that he did not do it. Like, a journalist had revealed that he had not done it. And, like, there were people within, like, the criminal justice system who also were saying, okay, yes, this person didn't do it, but he still was not let out of prison. Like, that's how entrenched these systems are. Even when it is, like, revealed that, like, oh, this person didn't do this thing. This other person did this thing. Right. Like, I think they actually identified the actual person who did the thing. If I, if I. Unless I missed my mark, and he was still in prison for, like, a decade or more after it was widely known that he didn't do it.

A (20:10)

You take us into a conversation you're having with a friend who is trying to be part of reform, and they give you details of a proposed project that the state of California under Governor Newsom is hoping to put into place. And the idea is that billions of dollars of funding would go to end death row and build something else instead. And you say a lack of shining buildings isn't the problem with prisons. I wrote that down because I thought that encapsulated so much of what you're saying in the book. The buildings aren't the problem. And you were sitting with your. Your friend and trying to have a conversation with her that wouldn't leave her hopeless. Because one of the things you point out in the book is if you keep explaining to everybody why these things don't work, then people may stop trying to do reform. But the issue is always, have they done that power dynamic analysis that we went through a few moments ago? If this reform Happens. Where does the power really shift it, if at all? And what you were trying to impress upon your friend was that changing how the funding goes to keep people in prison doesn't fundamentally change the carceral system.

C (21:32)

Yeah, and that's exactly what happened. It was like, in the book, I talk about a concept called the near enemy. And the near enemy, like, comes from, like, this Buddhist philosophy about emotions. And it's like, you know, it's easy to see the far enemy of an emotion. Like, the far enemy of, like, love is, like, hate, or maybe it's apathy, but, like, they're, like, polar opposite, right? The. The far enemy of, like, compassion is cruelty. Right. And so it's, like, really easy to see and tease that out. But the near enemy is much more insidious because it looks like the thing that you're shooting for, but it actually undermines it. And a good example of that is, like, the near enemy of, like, compassion would be pity, right? So, like, pity and compassion can look the same, but one divides you from the person. Like, poor this person, so glad I'm not them. That's like a very. That's a distancing. And one is identification. Compassion or empathy is identification with the person. It's like, but there. There go I, but for God, right? So both people may give the homeless man $5, but they're coming from two different. Two completely different places. And one affirms humanity and the other denies humanity, Right? Like, the near enemy of love could be obsession. Like, the person who's obsessed with, like, a love interest could look similar to a person who loves a love interest. Like, they both buy flowers, they both take them out. They're both very sweet. But we know that obsession is not love, and it actually undermines and smothers love. So those are. So I kind of transfer that framework into, like, social justice frameworks. And we see that happening all the time. We see, like, people are screaming for accountability, but actually, we run into problems with, like, council culture, which is, like, the near enemy of accountability. It looks like accountability, but it actually undermines accountability. You know, we have come to the understanding a long time ago that the people impacted by a problem should be the people talking about and leading the fights on them, because they are the people who understand it. And that's true. And there's a way that a near enemy of that rolls up an identity politics which actually undermines the power and the dignity and the respect at the root of centering impacted voices. And so the plan that you name that Governor Gavin Newsom was trying to execute is called the California model. And what the branding is basically like, we want to be like the Netherlands or Switzerland who have these great prisons that treat people well and rehabilitate well. And ignoring the fact that America is not Switzerland. Like, you know, I forget, I forget the country that America is not like Northern Nordic Europe. And, and even if it were, this idea that what we're going to do is give like billions of dollars to cdcr who has already proven that when we give them money, all they do is double down on the bad shit and it gets worse. So it's like, okay, how's the power moving? Here are the stakeholders. We have the prison, we have the prison system, we have the community, we have incarcerated people and communities, right? Like, let's just lump incarcerated people in communities together. So like, let's say, okay, we have the prison system and you know, and if we're talking about a power scale, a power pool, let's call it, of like 10 points, like prison has the most power in prison. So we're going to give them five. And then we have like the incarcerated people, they have the least power. So let's like give them two. And then, and then we have like the communities that are in the free world that incarcerated people go back to as their family. Let's give them three. Okay, so we're going to institute this thing where we tear down death row, we build this new building and we give CDCR 20 million more dollars a year or along whatever timeline they are giving. It's like, okay, where's the power gone? Let's just say that goes out without a hitch. They tear down death row, they build this state of the art rehabilitation center in one prison that they hope to scale across every other prison. But let's just focus on the one prison right now. It's like, okay, people got off death row, that's good, they're still in prison. And a limited number of people have access to this building. So when you think about, okay, well, how much power have incarcerated people gained from this? Well, structurally none, because it's just one building. And how much power I have communities gain from this. Again, structurally none. Right? Because even if everyone who goes into that building comes out better and doesn't recidivate, it's one building. So that's just a very limited number of people. And so it doesn't rise to the level of structural shift. But now when you come to CDC or the prison, it's like, oh, they have millions, if not like billions of more Dollars, that's structural. Because what we know about CD is about money funneling into CDCR is that is also equivalent to money funneling into correctional guard unions. And we know that correctional guard unions, just like police unions, use that money to lobby legislation, to like, control the policies that arise around their sectors. So you have this system in which prisons are already not very accountable to people, to communities. And they are able to do that because they have lobbyists and senators and representatives offices making that possible. And so now you're giving them more money to do that. So even if they just took the money and was just like, no, fuck it, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do just like we did with this hospital in San Quentin. We're gonna spend X millions of dollars for basically a building that's like office space, right? Because incarcerated people don't see anything but the bottom floor for the most part of that building when it comes to medical stuff. And I remember like walking through that building, like when I left the first floor, it was to like go to like 602, which are like grievances that incarcerated people. If I was going to like 602 hearings or rules violation report hearings, it's like, you know, it was just like officers using the place for office space. So like, we know what they do. We know that they have a branding for why they're doing something like building a hospital, but we know what they actually do with the money. So in that analysis, you see that you've made the prison more powerful and giving them the ability to be less accountable to the promises they've made. And you haven't done. And you haven't done really anything for the incarcerated people or anything that the community, anything for the communities that they're going back to. And when you hold yourself accountable to that numbering system, then you really put it down on paper and look at it and demand of yourself that you explain to yourself how power is moving. That becomes much easier to see. But when you're just looking at it, it's just like a narrative. It's like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. Yeah, people are off death row. That's great. A great state of the art rehabilitation cent. Like, that's great, right? But it's not, it's. That's narrative. That's, that's, that's, that's strategy. That's not actually like what's actually happening in the power dynamic.

A (29:54)

And listeners can find more about that in chapter two. You call it the thought exercise about the Distribution of power. And chapter one is called rehabilitation, the near enemy of personal transformation. That takes us inside. A number of the things that you have been talking about just now in the book, you say the conditions are not, are what we must look to change, not the people in them. Part of what you were required to do while you were incarcerated was do this sort of personal accountability inventory. And you take us into more of that in chapter three, the lie of personal accountability. It is self damaging. Reading that was painful. It was asking you to take at a self level responsibility for things that happened at structural levels. And yet it's a required function of meeting these, these markers of rehabilitation. You, you talk about when we reduce things down to a personal accountability level, we're talking about a survival level, not a thriving level, not a community level. And it's a level of powerlessness. And you talk about the opposite of this would be collectivity and building out a community of care. Can you tell us more about that?

C (31:23)

Yeah, I like how you brought in the power dynamic because I think that personal, what I would call acolytes of personal responsibility, our personal accountability, that is to me, that is, that is a strategy of hopelessness. That is a strategy of like nothing can change, we can't change anything. So this is like, this is the best way to survive. And there have been times in history where that has been true. But I think that where we lose the plot is when we don't recognize like. So for my ancestors, for like people in the civil rights era and like before they were in survival mode, they were in survival mode. And it was the kind of survival where like if we push too hard, we could literally die. Like there could be a genocide out here. And I feel like in many ways we still live with that like epigenetically, we live with that fear epigenetically and don't, don't do enough to recognize that we are not in our ancestors position. And so we cannot just like wholesale adopt their strategies. Right. Because their strategies were survival strategies. And what we want is liberation strategies. They survive so that we could liberate. They sacrifice so that we could be here today to liberate.

A (32:49)

And you talk elsewhere in the book about how really the truth is found in collectivity, in building a community with an intention of care.

C (33:01)

Yeah. Thank you. And so one of the things that I am trying to push people to engage in a conversation about and I hopefully believe is this idea that it's the individual that's going to reap, that's gonna like affect change. Like Puts us in an impossible position. And the position that we need to be in, the position that, like, I have experienced in my life is it's not about finding the solution and be like, oh, this is how I do it, or this is how we do it. It's about creating the community. It's about creating the environment that will inevitably produce the results we want. And that environment is a collective community that, like, cares about each other. That is a collective community that ascribes to the values and frameworks and like, understands the imagination problem and understands the near enemies of change. Like, that collective community would inevitably come up with the answer together. There's no answer that one person can give. In the same way that one person cannot be responsible. Like, one incarcerated person cannot be responsible, even though that's what rehabilitation frames and tries to do. But they cannot be responsible for the failures of society, for the structural failures of society that have funneled them into this prison. And that doesn't mean that there's no accountability for wrongdoing or there's no accountability for harming people. But what it means is that there's accountability on both sides. And in the same way that one person can't hold that burden, one person can't come up with a solution. One person cannot change these systems and structures. So in the same way that we have to think more collectively about what we do when a person commits harm in a community, we also have to get out of this individualism and think collectively about how we create the society we want to live in.

A (35:19)

And you provide some examples in the book with the caveat that you just gave. There's not one answer. There's not one person who's going to come up with the answer that the solutions and the way forward has to be collective work, where there's seats at the table and all voices that are impacted having a say. But one of the examples that you do give is Prison Renaissance and some of the ways it reimagined and rebuilt what a nonprofit could do and what it could mean for the people who participate. We're starting to run out of time. Can you talk a bit about that?

C (35:55)

Yeah. Prison Renaissance came with me, like, looking at rehabilitation programs, like the, like, normalized slave labor practice, like the normalized, like, disempowerment practice of basically making the organization the middleman between people who want to help and the incarcerated people. But, like, all the power either accrues to the organization in order to accrues the state in the form of the prison. And, like, I kind of Recognized, like, before I coined the term imagination problem and imagination solutions, that it was an imagination problem, people were just doing what they thought was possible to be done. And I, and me and my co founders Rahsaan Thomas and Carlos Meza, we formed Prison Renaissance to should build a model that like, shows that another way could be done. Because, you know, once we see an experience that another way can be done, that's like a bell that's like, can't be unrung. And. And then the other reason why we wanted to do it is because, like, for me is like, okay, we have, you know, prison abolitionists, we have prison reformists, we have like anti racist. But in the, in the realm of prison, there was I. What I saw was this movement playing out led by people who were not incarcerated, led by people who for the most part weren't even formally incarcerated. And that felt odd to me because when I think about like, let's say the civil rights, like the equivalent of like, how, how prison work was going on to like, how the civil rights happened would be like, okay, you know, when people marched across the bridge at Selma, like, all the black people stayed home while all the white. While everyone else marched across the bridge at Selma. Like, if you think of that imagery, you're shocked by how absurd that is. But that's exactly what was happening. And in like prison abolition and like prison reform work, it wasn't incarcerated people leading that, and there wasn't a framework for incarcerated people to do any leading in that. So Prison Renaissance was also offering a framework of incarcerated leadership. And then the third thing that we were doing was like, wanting to undermine slave labor. We wanted incarcerated people to enjoy programs but be paid for their labor and the effort that they put into it. So those three things were like our goals and like, we achieved them all. And it changed the way many nonprofits did work in prison. There's like, I know several nonprofits who like, have created programs to make sure that incarcerated people are compensated for their labor. And they jump through the extra hoops to make that happen because it's complicated. We, we figured out ways for incarcerated people to like, to deliver them into like university classrooms, to give talks over the phone. We put on whole art shows, like over the phone and in collaboration with people in the free world just to kind of show people that, like, okay, I understand that one thinking, like, well, how can incarcerated people lead a movement? How can incarcerated people, like, lead an agenda? They're like in there. So I just wanted to show them that, like, you know, like, when we did our live art exhibition in, like, people were, like, amazed, and they were, like, super pumped. And I was like, okay, now I want you to, like, take a minute to take this beat in. Like, we just. We just connected and we did this over this, like, art exhibition. And, you know, we, like, I ran a whole, like, movement workshop, like, over the phone. Like, we did all of that, and your mind was blown. And we could do the same thing in a legislative hall. We could do the same thing in a nonprofit boardroom. We could do. So there's not. There's not a reason, because this is literally just a phone call. There's not a reason why we are not involved in the movement work as leaders, other than we had an imagination problem before this point, but we don't now. And so we got to change the way we do this.

A (40:10)

My final question is, what do you hope listeners take away?

C (40:15)

The thing that I hope listeners always take away is clarity. But my wish is that they take away clarity in a very particular way. Like, for some people, it's understandable that the clearer you get about these systems, the more discouraged you feel. But there's another way to experience clarity. Like, clarity is power. You cannot engage or change a problem that you don't understand or that you don't see clearly. So clarity is power, and power is hope. Power is a real hope, Right? Without power, hope is just an opiate, Right? And so I hope readers leave my book. I hope listeners leave this podcast with a passion and drive for clarity, understanding that clarity is where their power lies. And I hope they leave it. Understanding that, like, clarity is also going to be scary. So it requires courage. And that's a muscle. Clarity is a muscle. Courage is a muscle. And that. And the bigger that courage muscle gets, the more likely you can get to the next step. And that is integrity. That is the integrity to act on that clarity, to have the courage to act on that clarity. Courage is the feeling. Integrity is the. Is the actualization of the feeling of courage. That's the act. And what I promise readers and listeners that if you put those three things together, clarity, courage, and integrity, it equals radical transformation. I have seen it over and over in my life. I have created miracles in my life and in this world with those three things put together. It is not a matter of figuring out the radical transformation. It is those three things together equal radical transformation. And I hope that that's what they take it from the book, and I hope that that is what they take from listening to this podcast.

A (42:09)

Thank you so much for being here and sharing from your book, Ghost in the Criminal Justice Reform, White Supremacy and an Abolitionist Future. You've been listening to the academic life. Please join us.