Democracy Behind Bars

By Kenthy Porter, Founder and Executive Director Democracy Beyond Bars

Political education is at the heart of Democracy Beyond Bars‘ origin, advocacy and continued work to abolish the Prison industrial Complex. Founded in 2023 by incarcerated organizers within California’s prison system, DBB is organized around two central ideas: the first: that incarcerated are central to efforts to abolish the Prison industrial complex; and second: that in order for these incarcerated folks to meaningfully engage and succeed in this struggle, that they must understand the histories, logics, and praxis which inform the abolitionist movement.

DBB’s mission is to center the incarcerated person in the movement to abolish the practice of imprisonment and our nations policy of abandonment. Foregrounding the voices of  those in prison means introducing politics to a community, and a community to a polity, for whom the other often means little.

Bridging this gap meant more than presenting information. To connect the towering ideas of writers such as Kaba and Gilmore to experiences incarcerated people could appreciate, and their advocacy to decision makers in such a way the would have to listen, DBB immerses it’s student-members, and their work, in the world of the political ideas which shape and impact their everyday lives, while grounding them in the political knowledge which informs our movement and experience. Turning their lives into lessons, DBB translates often difficult abstract theories, research techniques and legislative processes into direct experiences through which their members learn and lead collective efforts to palliate conditions effecting every space within the carceral system.

Education, whether experiential or academic, thus remains the bedrock of DBB’s advocacy and community organizing.

At its core, DBB is the effort of incarcerated folks to change a system we fundamentally understand through our own experience, does not work. DBB has sought to connect these experiences with the understandings of the many activists, political theorist and everyday people who have come before us and to whose legacies we are hoping to contribute. At the root of this effort, is the education and appreciation for this knowledge inculcated in each of our members.

DBB’s focus on the political and practical education of its members has allowed it to collaborate wit organizations such as Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Californians United for A Responsible Budget (CURB) and Critical resistance-Los Angeles, to provide sustained real-world educational and advocacy opportunities undeliverable in a traditional class room.

From the California legislature to city planning Committees, DBB’s education and advocacy model has supported organizers as they have worked to defeat and advance state legislation, prevent the expansion of immigration detention, and spread DBB’s unique organizing model.