General

“When was the last time discomfort forced a conversation you otherwise wouldn’t have had?” When this question was posed during a panel discussion at A New Way of Life’s 2023 Justice on Trial Film Festival, Sherrick Enriquez found himself mentally transported back to the trauma of incarceration. Our founder, Susan Burton, noticed his growing discomfort and encouraged him to stay to the end. Sherrick was eventually able to become grounded by healing images of freedom. Susan was intrigued by his engagement with the group, and, after learning more about him, she offered Sherrick a job with A New Way of Life’s maintenance team.

As an expression of gratitude for this opportunity, Sherrick drew a picture of Susan – sketching was his hobby, something to pass the time while incarcerated. Recognizing his talent, Susan purchased his first set of paints which allowed him to develop his craft on canvas. A New Way of Life’s management team also encouraged him to increase his skills as our artist in residence.

Along with his work in maintenance, Sherrick spent hours at our Montebello campus honing his skills. Around this time, Choreographer and Multimedia Creative Storyteller Himmeria Worthman began the process of creating a short film inspecting freedom and expression for formerly incarcerated individuals. Her first thoughts were to focus on dance, but as she toured the Montebello campus, she noticed Sherrick immersed in his work. Inspired by his art and his story, she knew she had discovered a subject for her film.

Exploring movement in brushstroke, process, and storytelling as a catalyst for expression, Worthman’s film, “Endless Echoes Within,” was screened at the Wende Museum in Culver City, CA, August 31st, 2024. When the film ended, everyone in the room felt a fervency of emotion. Just as the production explored physical movement – whether intentional or serendipitous – the audience, too, was moved. Beyond physical freedom, the film touched on emotional and mental freedom as Sherrick shared his journey as an artist, from incarceration to liberation.

Building on this experience, Sherrick has gone on to pursue art as a profession, with his paintings being featured in various exhibits. He recently completed all conditions of parole and is engaged to be married.

While Sherrick’s journey is unique, his ability to overcome the trauma of incarceration and flourish is not. When people are offered the right opportunities to develop their talents and pursue their dreams, success follows. For others like Sherrick, A New Way of Life works tirelessly to provide unique and individualized resources to set them on trajectories that lead to true freedom.

Your donation helps us continue to nurture the potential of people whose talents and skills often go unnoticed and are undervalued.

Please Support our Freedom Work Here

During this difficult political transition, we are writing to celebrate the National Day of Racial Healing. Hosted the day after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it encourages us to speak openly and honestly about the past wrongs of anti-black racism. But it also represents hope: hope for change, and a stand against silence.

The conversation around racism is more important than ever. With the recent flipping of the White House and the House of Representatives, the direction of racial healing is uncertain. The failure of Prop 6 in California, which would have abolished involuntary servitude in prisons, and the passage of Prop 36, which increases sentences for nonviolent theft and drug crimes, sends the wrong message: prison is the solution to our problems. These changes are a step backward, and A New Way of Life will continue fighting for more humane and practical policies.

Beyond Sacramento and D.C., this country has lost something greater: its conversation around racism. The murder of George Floyd at the hands of police brought shock and awareness to America, and the work of our friends at All of Us or None propelled the conversation about racial injustice into nearly every school, business, and university. But in recent years, people have retreated; waves of book bans and new laws targeting discussions of race in the classroom have spread. We also feel it at work – people don’t talk about racism as they used to. This choice to look away is dangerous, and continuing on this silent course will only lead to more incarceration.

In this moment, we must speak with conviction and listen with compassion. The only way to break the silence is to speak up, and discussing the cruelty of mass incarceration is the simplest kind of freedom work. It also requires compassionate listening; this election showed that America’s marginalized groups are not a monolith, and we must bring more voices in.

Despite these challenges, A New Way of Life sees hope. There is hope in the younger generations, who center activism and freedom work for marginalized people around the world. And we see hope in A New Way of Life’s mission: this year, we passed 1700 residents who went through our program, with only 4% returning to prison. Our residents are bringing more energy to these conversations than ever before, and you can find their stories on A New Way of Life’s Instagram. We’ve also been promoting stories from formerly incarcerated people through our annual Justice on Trial Film Festival, which is now in its 14th year.

This may be a trying time, but the memory of Martin Luther King Jr. lives on. We still envision a world where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. Dr. King showed us that racial healing is possible – but we cannot heal in silence.

During Women’s History Month, we want to highlight three individuals that have dedicated their lives to social justice: Angela Davis, Dolores Huerta, and Helen Zia. Each has demonstrated their dedication to pushing for racial equity and inclusion in America.

The first woman we would like to highlight is Angela Davis. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies Departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

As an educator, author, and revolutionary activist, Davis is highly regarded for her civil rights and abolitionist work. In 1972 Davis gave a speech at the Embassy Auditorium in Los Angeles after being acquitted of conspiracy, kidnapping, and murder charges. Davis stated, “Revolution is a serious thing, the most serious thing about a revolutionary’s life. When one commits oneself to the struggle it must be for a lifetime.”

True to her word, Davis has spent most of her life advocating for social issues pertaining to gender, race, class, and abolishing the prison–industrial complex. The prison industrial complex is the idea that imprisonment and policing are a solution for social, political, and economic problems. She is one of the founders of Critical Resistance, an organization that aims to dismantle and challenge the prison-industrial complex. As a Marxist feminist– a variant of feminism that extends Marxism to analyze the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism– she published a book in 1981, ‘Women, Race, and Class’, which examines gender, race, and class in the United States. She continues to be an active revolutionary author with recent releases such as ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement’ which was published in 2015 and examines the concept of attaining freedom in contemporary world conflicts.

The second woman we would like to highlight is Dolores Huerta who is a prominent American labor and civil rights advocate and leader. Though she has had a distinguished career as a social activist and feminist leader, she began her labor activist career after seeing the farm children she taught in the 50s struggle in their studies due to hunger. She got involved with the Stockton chapter of the Community Service Organization (CSO), which led voter registration drives and fought for economic improvements for Hispanics.

In 1962, she founded the National Farm Workers Association– later changed to the United Farm Workers of America (UFW)– alongside César Chávez, a notable labor rights leader. Her time as a leader in the UFW included organizing the union’s grape boycott effort which forced grape producers to improve working conditions for migrant farmworkers.

Hailed as one of the most prominent leaders of the Chicano civil rights movement, she has worked to elect more Latinxs and women to political office and has championed women’s rights.

In 1972, Arizona’s Legislature pushed a bill that denied farm workers the right to strike and boycott during harvest seasons, effectively making it impossible for them to organize. She coined the movement’s famous slogan ‘¡Sí se puede!’ to rally Arizona’s farm workers in an effort to revive morale during unfavorable circumstances. The slogan was later adopted and translated to English as ‘Yes We Can’ by the 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign. She is the founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation which sets out to inspire communities to pursue social justice and she continues tirelessly advocating for the working poor, women, and children.

Our final figure is Helen Zia, an activist, award-winning author and former journalist. According to the Asian Pacific American Institute at New York University, “Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women’s rights and countering hate violence.” Throughout her career, she has advocated for LGBT and Asian American rights and has written multiple books on Asian American issues. In 1982, she came to prominence as an activist for Asian American rights after becoming the public spokesperson and getting involved in organizing a campaign that sought justice for the victim of a hate crime. Vincent Chin—a Chinese American man who was brutally murdered in a hate crime in Detroit, Michigan.

Recently, Zia spoke on the racism Asian American and Pacific Islanders have faced due to the fact that the Coronavirus disease was first identified in China. In a virtual discussion with students of the Taft School, a private Connecticut-based high school, she said, “The pattern of the way Asian Americans are treated in American society throughout history has been to blame, to scapegoat, to target, or to make Asian American and Pacific Islander people as though they are always the ‘other’—never belonging.”

All three of these powerful and courageous women have seen the injustices in their communities and have committed themselves to actively making a difference.

If you would like to learn more about these remarkable women, please visit:
Angela Davis
Dolores Huerta
Helen Zia