Trying to Start a Program in Los Angeles
by Susan Blue

First attempts at action

I first read about Changing Lives Through Literature (CLTL) in the mid 1990s and was fascinated. The program united my interest in literature and social justice in a way that hadn't even occurred to me. But having moved around several times throughout my twenties for various degrees and career opportunities, I didn't spend enough time in one community to get serious about the program until I moved to Los Angeles.

After obtaining Robert Waxler's blessing, I started pursuing a few avenues that made sense to me to start a program in L.A. As liberal as California's reputation is, the southern part of the state is quite conservative, and appearing to be tough on crime is politically in vogue throughout the state. I thought that if I could find someone who was interested in general, he or she would either help me or point me in another direction, and that I could keep talking to the next person and the next until I found someone who would really support the program and could help get it off the ground in the court system.

Since I was new to the community, my first step was to ask contacts at my job whether they knew any judges, district attorneys, or probation officers, since those seemed to be the most likely places to start. Since my personal contacts all led to dead ends, I next began calling various organizations:

1. I called the L.A. Superior Court system and was transferred several times until I ended up with the public relations office, basically. They said that they could fax me a list of judges and their court phone numbers, but that was it. I received the fax, but beginning the task of individual cold call-type phone calls to hundreds of judges didn't seem like the best option.

2. I twice called a reporter for the Los Angeles Times who'd written an article on the program, but she never returned my call.

3. I began keeping track of court-based articles by other reporters at the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Weekly; I kept a list of their names with quick summaries of their articles in hopes that I could reference their work if I ever reached any of them; they too didn't return my calls/faxes or were too hard to track down.

4. I called the California Women's Law Center to see if anyone there might be sympathetic and would pass along a few contacts or ideas. They were sympathetic but said that for legal reasons, they couldn't give me any names.

5. I called the education director at the state women's prison, which is located in the L.A. area. She was interested but said that the best she could recommend was for me to contact my district representative. I asked what volunteer programs they had, thinking that I could start volunteering, get my foot in the door and meet contacts that way, but the tutoring and other educational opportunities are actually very slim, and the few hours during which such programs took place were when I was at work during the week.

6. I called my district representative as she had suggested. The people I spoke with there said they didn't know what to tell me; I asked for the e-mail address for my assemblyperson so that I could at least try to contact him directly. They gave it to me, and I e-mailed him but didn't hear back.

7. I called the office of my L.A. County District Supervisor, Mike Antonovich. They asked me to e-mail them some details so they could get back to me; they followed up by referring me to the city's Chief of Probation, Dick Shumksy.

8. I contacted Shumsky's office; he returned my call promptly but didn't see a future for the program. In fact, he was pretty skeptical that CLTL actually existed and thought that I had probably misunderstood, stating that "nobody would really see this as an alternative to prison."

Our conversation was very cordial, but it was clear that he thought I was perhaps completely insane. He said that they really wanted to be helpful and encouraging to people like me and that nobody doubted the therapeutic value of such a program in prison; but then he repeated that he doubted "anyone would see this as an actual alternative to a state prison sentence" in California, and that the other states where the program was in effect probably didn't actually use it as an alternative to prison either, but rather as a program within the prison.

He recommended either that I get involved in a CBO (Community Based Outreach), or that I "sell [my] wares" and compete for state funding with the other in-prison programs. He also commented that I was looking into this program at the worst possible time, given all of the state's budget problems, and that even the current CBO programs were being curtailed. He ended the call by saying that I shouldn't take the many rejections that were no doubt ahead of me personally, and that he would have someone in his office call me back with some names of current CBO programs. (Someone did indeed call me back with those names and numbers; I haven't followed up with them yet because that would be taking the idea in a different direction, but I'm keeping them on file as contacts.)

9. I called the District Attorney's office and was transferred back and forth between departments countless times. The phone saga ended when I took a chance and called the Preventative Crime Division. The connection seemed unlikely to me, but it turned out to be the best call I made. The director of that department, Carol Baker, got my message and called me back. Her basic reaction to me was that she didn't think the program would work in L.A., but she was encouraging anyway. She outlined one program they've started to "demonstrate some of the pitfalls" that CLTL would face here. She said that a group of African American churches in L.A. County asked the D.A.'s office to create a similar program, since so many males in their communities were in the penal system.

The D.A.'s office agreed, and the program allowed specific individuals to complete their G.E.D. instead of going to prison. They had a hard time getting people to commit to the program, but they were trying. They've had to adapt the program to be a literacy program instead of a G.E.D. program because not enough of the eligible offenders could read. (Thus, she was even more skeptical of a literature-based program like CLTL. She also said that they've run into transportation-based problems - not only because it's difficult for people to get to class but also because many participants don't want to cross into other gang territories. Another significant concern she mentioned is that most judges in L.A. have been "hit with so many diversionary programs that they're a hard group to crack."

She ended the call by asking that I send her more information on the program and saying that she would follow up with me after she read more about it. She also mentioned that I might follow up with the sheriff for involvement while people are in jail before sentencing, but I'm going to wait until I hear back from her with other possibilities before shooting off in that direction.

10. This summer, I decided that I likely would need to know people in order to make in-roads. So I signed up to volunteer at the juvenile detention center in L.A. My paperwork is still being processed, but they expect that I will be able to start this fall.

Note: Susan has since moved away from the Los Angeles area.

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