Incarceration and Literacy - PANEL DISCUSSION

Chevalier’s, LA’s oldest indie bookstore, has partnered with Pr*son librarians across the country to get books into the hands of incarcerated individuals. To supplement this panel discussion with direct action, Chevalier’s will be collecting donations through the month of November. 100% of proceeds from this fundraiser will go directly to buying and shipping books to the incarcerated community across the country. This event is free, but donations are much appreciated.

America's mass incarceration project relies on out-of-sight-out-of-mind thinking. But, as Angela Davis reminds us, “prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” Life in a cage is the reality of approximately 2 million people in the United States. While it can be easy to lose sight of the humans behind these statistics, our panelists—Ra Avis, Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy, Luis Garcia, Ahmanise Sanati, and Christopher Soto—have been living and working on the frontlines of the fight for change. We invite you to what will be a thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion on literacy in prisons, the possibility & power of art, and how decarceration paves our way to a better, more just world.

For many of us, it’s hard to imagine a life without books—without getting lost among the shelves of a bookstore, without your TBR stack teetering on your bedside table, without e-books, audiobooks, books from your local bookshop, the library, or even, yes, Amazon. We at Chevalier’s don’t think any person should have to live without books. We believe that books bring power, knowledge, community, and joy—and that every human is deserving of these things. In his autobiography, Malcolm X writes about his time in Pr*son in his early twenties. What started as flipping through a dictionary to learn some new words became the education of an intellectual, a leader, and a revolutionary. In his words: “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading opened to me. I knew right there in Pr*son that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.”

ABOUT THE PANELISTS

, MSW, LCSW, PPSC is a social worker who currently works in LAUSD as a counselor with students affected by homelessness, and the foster care and juvenile justice systems. Prior, she established the foundation of her career for over a decade in the LA County J*il system in the mental health department where she started her quest to ensure all incarcerated individuals have access to reading materials, which has now become a passion project she’s committed to seeing through. She’s also a lecturer at UCLA who enjoys doing activism and community work with her husband and two children.

is a writer based in Los Angeles, California. His debut poetry collection, Diaries of a Terrorist, was published by Copper Canyon Press. This collection demands the abolition of policing and human caging. He cofounded Writers for Migrant Justice to protest the detention and separation of migrant families in the U.S. He has also organized with the Cops Off Campus movement and he has worked at Equal Justice USA to end the death penalty. His poems, reviews, interviews, and articles can be found at New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.

directs Cal State LA’s Pr*son Graduation Initiative. He is also the founder of WordsUncaged, a platform for incarcerated artists and writers to engage with the public, through book publishing, art exhibits and digital media. Bidhan has been teaching in prisons since 2013 and currently serves on the board of California Humanities, The Fair Chance Project, and rapper YG’s foundation, 4Hunnid Waze.

, Ed.D., L.C.S.W, is a senior consultant with Advocates for Human Potential (AHP) and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker. With 20+ years of experience in behavioral health program administration, he is an expert in improving community well-being. Dr. Garcia’s passion and commitment are shaped by lived experience of the behavioral health and criminal justice systems. He has used that experience to lend depth to his professional work. In 2022 he was appointed to the County of Los Angeles Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission. He also serves as a core project collaborator for Future IDs, a long-term social engaged art project which investigates how artist advocates can come together to respond creatively to social challenges, instigating meaningful social change. He serves on the Whittier Area First Day Coalition board, a homeless service provider in Southeast Los Angeles. He is also on the Board of Directors of Street Symphony, a non-profit that uses music to build human connections among people in the Skid Row area.

is an award-winning blogger and author. She is a formerly-incarcerated person, a reluctantly-optimistic widow, and a generational storyteller. Ra works in incarceration awareness and grief education, and writes regularly at Rarasaur.com.

Event Venue

Chevalier's Books, 133 North Larchmont Boulevard, Los Angeles, United States