Meet Our Spring Writers-on-the-Edge! Week One
This spring we’re excited to feature a dozen writers and activists who came to Mesa Refuge to focus on transformative work that is creating a more just and equitable world. These change-making alums write about and work on the front lines of economic equity, housing, mass incarceration, immigration, climate, trans rights, identity and culture. In our writing sheds and gardens, they fearlessly map out bold ideas; research and write books and articles; and distill important lessons for growing social justice movements.
As part of our $75,000 spring fundraising campaign, we will introduce you these featured “writers-at-the-edge” each week—letting them tell you how “writing at the edge” fuels their creativity and sustains their work and life.
***
This week, we kick off our spring fundraising campaign with two outstanding featured alums that advocate tirelessly for change in the field of mass incarceration. Meet Gina Clayton-Johnson and Jessica Nowlan, who both work to break the cycle of isolation and trauma experienced by people who have been in prison or who have loved ones in the prison system. Both, in their own ways and through their own organizations and communities, offer healing and resources and build leadership for change in the criminal justice system.
Will you help us to support these courageous writers-on-the-edge today?
Gina Clayton-Johnson, JD, 2024 Resident
“Working at the edge in my life’s project organizing women with incarcerated loved ones looks like persistent expressions of faith in an experiment. What if we could cultivate a community of healing and political activity for millions of the 1 in 4 women who have loved ones incarcerated in the United States?”
Gina is a Black feminist organizer, writer, and founder and executive director of Essie Justice Group, the nation’s leading advocacy organization of women with incarcerated loved ones. She is the central architect of the BREATHE Act, and is a leader on the Movement for Black Lives Policy Table, a founding advisory council member of National Bail Out Collective, and a leading advocate for bail reform in California. Find out more about Gina on her website.
Jessica Nowlan, 2024 Leading Edge Fellow
“Rarely are folks that have been incarcerated positioned as thought leaders, authors, or narrative shifters. My life’s work and the work I did at Mesa is about creating the structures and systems that will allow for the power and brilliance of poor people to be released into the world in all sectors of our society—to reshape it.”
Jessica is president of Reimagine Freedom Center, co-founder of the Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition and a social entrepreneur. Jessica previously served as executive director of Young Women’s Freedom Center, where she created the Freedom Research Institute and launched Freedom 2030, a 10-year strategy to end the incarceration and criminalization of women, young women, and trans people of all genders in California. Find out more about Jessica on her LinkedIn page.
