Planting Justice’s Prison Abolition Work Starts at the Root – KQED

The same thoughts keep running through his mind. That guy sitting in his cell wondering if hes going to outlive his sentence, all the amends he made or wants to makewill he get to see that through? Will he get to be like me and the numerous other people who are formerly incarcerated and are doing great things in the community right now? I think about them and that my voice has to be in advocacy for them.

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eyond the urgency of the San Quentin COVID outbreak, Lockhearts day-to-day work at Planting Justice is about the longterm project of prison abolition, which means working with people to build healthier communities. The definition of that is manifold. It means helping formerly incarcerated people get on their feet through green jobs at Planting Justice, awakening them to a new sense of purpose by building raised flower beds for clients and tending to plants at the organizations nursery and farm. It means teaching about sustainability and food justice in public school classrooms, juvenile detention centers, jails and prisons. It means helping people who live in food deserts start urban gardens. It means handing out free kale smoothies at Castlemont High School during a time when many are going hungry because of the pandemic-induced recession.

If we go in and teach these people how to grow their own food and how to be sustainablethe Black Panther Party got it right, Lockheart says. With no food and no options, [people are] gonna go get it how they can. And unfortunately, thats crime. And crime equals prison. We wanna abolish the prisons, we wanna abolish all these systems, but we first have to plant the seeds of love, trust and sustainability.

Lockheart and his fellow reentry coordinator Diane Williams sow those seeds by helping their colleagues get acclimated to life outside of prison, sometimes in ways people whove never been incarcerated may take for granted. Planting Justice gives former residents, as formerly incarcerated people are called there, clothing and food stipends; Lockheart and Williams help them navigate bureaucratic tasks such as reinstating a drivers license after a DUI. They offer emotional support too. Meditation circles are as much a part of the workday as pulling weeds and watering strawberries and squashes.

Really its believing in them and whatever they bring to the table thats positive, encourage that, says Williams, who brings 40 years of social work and substance-abuse counseling experience to Planting Justice. So much stuff that happened to us as a little kids, we keep recycling it as adults until we process it and move on. So were just helping each other move on here.

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lanting Justice takes a big-picture view of how access to healthy and environmentally conscious practices can help address some of the wounds of systemic racism and mass incarceration. Another one of the organizations projects zooms out even further, addressing the ways the unjust systems that marginalize Black and Indigenous communities began with colonialism.

The organization collaborated with the Sogorea Te Land Trust to give two acres of land back to people of the Ohlone community of Northern California. The Ohlone people arent a federally recognized tribe, nor do they have a land base. Now, two acres of the Rolling River Nursery are an Ohlone cultural heritage site and a space for ceremony.

Williams, who is part of the Native American community and helped organize the partnership, says that Ohlone ideas of land as sacred inform Planting Justices work. Its a love, she says. You cant tell people, Youve got to love this land because its supporting you. No. Its something you have to develop for people whove been separated from the land.

Understanding the history of colonization is the deeper work, echoes Planting Justice media director Ashley Yates. When you control the land, you control the people, you control the resources. And when were talking about BIPOC communities, you understand theres also a disconnect thats intentional because our spirituality and our communities are vested in the earth. We are an earth-reverent people. So when you disconnect people from that, you disconnect people from their power.

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Planting Justice's Prison Abolition Work Starts at the Root - KQED