Pathways – a familiar analogy about the choices and circumstances that shape our lives. We try to follow or create new lines through our known world. Pathways can be mutually exclusive, but they are also intertwined within our shared existence. And in this world, our paths will cross. It doesn’t matter if you have made yourself a million dollar lifestyle with mansions, surrounded by technology, or if you live in a humble home of adobe walls and a thatched roof. The choices we make not only change the way we live our lives but also affect how others carry on as well.

My relationship with words goes back as far as I can remember. I’m a writer from a family of writers – my nonno’s ability to define any word in the dictionary was renowned, my mother is a professional editor who created new space across 5 decades and continues to do so. I took my natural ability for granted. Writing was something I did when asked, but without purpose. I had little recognition of the true power in a well-told story.

I was incredibly lucky that my general education included a plethora of writing classes ranging from poetry and creative writing to...

Four minutes prior to our scheduled interview time, my phone screen lit up with the number I’ve come to recognize as Spoon Jackson’s, calling from the California State Prison. As we talked about our mornings, I placed my phone to the left of the laptop where we would soon be joined by Tim Reed, creator of Tomorrow’s Ken: Portraits of Lives Affected by Incarceration. It was our innovative attempt at a three-way call – or four-way call, if you include the automated voice Spoon calls the “Computer Lady,” who interrupted periodically to remind us we were being monitored and recorded.

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We believe Black lives matter. We believe that racism and white supremacy must be dismantled and rooted out, and that we must build a new and better world. We believe in the power of art and creation to help us imagine that world, and the power of community and solidarity to help get us there. Most importantly, we commit to acting upon these values in everything we do.

We at Justice Arts Coalition acknowledge that we are based on the traditional lands of the Nacotchtank and Piscataway peoples (Piscataway Indian Nation, the Piscataway-Conoy Confederacy, and the Cedarville Band of Piscataway), both past and present. They have stewarded the land through generations. Land holds cultural, historical, and traditional meaning, and we hope this acknowledgment is not the end of our conversation but rather a starting point to reduce intentional erasure and engage in more conversation about decolonizing land relations. Our commitment to liberation and prison abolition is deeply intertwined with decolonization and indigenization. For settlers: as you navigate this virtual space, we invite you to think critically about how your resistance to carceral punishment intertwines with Indigenous rights in the spaces you occupy.

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