aBOUT THE PARTNERSHIP
Our project partners with Free Minds Book Club & Writing Workshop, a DC-based organization using literacy and creative expression to support incarcerated and formerly incarcerated youth and adults. Working with Lucy, a graphic design major, we created a digital gallery featuring three poetry posters that amplify Free Minds members' voices. The website functions as an online exhibit examining how mass incarceration, a form of structural racism and racial capitalism, operates in everyday DC life, particularly affecting Black and Latinx communities. By showcasing poetry written by incarcerated individuals alongside striking visual design, our exhibit challenges narratives that reduce people to their crimes and demonstrates how creative expression becomes resistance within oppressive systems.
Free Minds' History & Mission
Free Minds was founded in 2002 after co-founder Kelli Taylor corresponded with Glen McGinnis, a young man on death row in Texas for crimes committed at seventeen. Their exchange through books demonstrated how literacy could forge connections and support transformation. His execution in 2000 became the catalyst for Free Minds. Today, the organization serves members in DC Jail, juvenile detention, federal prisons, and during reentry, with 95% of members being African American and 4% Latinx, reflecting how mass incarceration disproportionately targets communities of color in DC. Since inception, Free Minds has reached over 1,500 individuals with book clubs, writing workshops, job training, and advocacy opportunities. We partnered with Free Minds because their work directly addresses how racial capitalism operates through DC's carceral system, extracting value from Black and Latinx communities through prison labor, fees, and neighborhood destabilization.
The Poetry Posters
Our first poster features "Remember Me in Words" by TT, a poem about self-definition set against a radiating black and white design. The poem begins: "Paint my portrait in a thousand words, / In every color of my poetry." TT demands recognition of complexity and refuses simplistic narratives: "Discard every tale you've ever heard / Of the perspectives that misrepresent me." These lines challenge media representations that flatten individuals into stereotypes, narratives that have historically justified mass incarceration policies. Lucy's design, a silhouette fractured by light rays, visually represents both incarceration's violence and transformation's possibility. The second poster features "The Beauty Found in Unexpected Places" by AHA, using spiraling text on blue background. AHA asks "When you look up at the sky, what do you see?" and describes "Beauty at different times of the night and day, in lightness or darkness, it's a place of beauty existing so far away." The circular design requires viewers to rotate the image, forcing active engagement and mirroring the cognitive shift we're asking viewers to make. The third poster confronts family separation caused by incarceration, with an incarcerated father addressing his child: "Daddy is here for you and it might not be in the flesh." The poem navigates grief and love: "I wish I could hug you so our souls could merge / Sorry for my absence." This makes visible how incarceration affects entire DC families and communities, not just individuals.
Digital Gallery Vision & Future Impact
We designed our website as a digital gallery to make this work accessible beyond physical spaces and reach audiences who might not otherwise engage with mass incarceration issues. The online format allows us to include context about Free Minds' work, link to criminal justice reform resources, and create space for reflection. We structured the site to guide visitors through each poster sequentially with accompanying text explaining Free Minds' mission and the broader context of racial capitalism and mass incarceration in DC. To deepen impact, Free Minds could partner with Windows on Death Row, which uses theater to challenge death row perceptions. A collaboration could create staged readings of members' poetry or playwriting workshops, honoring Free Minds' origin in Glen McGinnis's story while expanding advocacy against the death penalty affecting youth of color. Similarly, partnership with the Innocence Project could address wrongful convictions in the same communities Free Minds serves, with members sharing insider knowledge about how wrongful convictions occur and creating testimony supporting reform efforts.
Our digital gallery contributes to conversations about abolition by centering voices most affected by carceral systems. Free Minds envisions "a DC where Black and Latinx communities have abundant access to resources for healing, growth, creative expression, love, and connection" where "mass incarceration no longer exists." This recognizes that prisons don't make communities safer but extract resources from marginalized neighborhoods while failing to address root causes like poverty and trauma. Free Minds demonstrates what becomes possible when we invest in people rather than punishment. Through TT's insistence on being seen fully and AHA's discovery of beauty in constrained circumstances, our posters visualize transformation and resistance. Through our partnership with Free Minds and this digital exhibit, we make visible everyday experiences of racism in DC's criminal justice system while amplifying the creativity, resilience, and humanity of those fighting for liberation.Claude is AI and can make mistakes. Please double-check responses. Sonnet 4.5.