IN CALIFORNIA PRISONS, fights, stabbings, and murders are commonplace, but this year incarcerated individuals are trying something new — they’re pledging to participate in a season of nonviolence.
Culmination ceremonies are taking place at five different California prisons for incarcerated individuals who pledged to be nonviolent for at least 66 days.
The ceremonies are being hosted by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the Compassion Prison Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to create trauma-informed prisons and communities.
“We had our first culmination ceremony at the Lancaster prison,” said Fritzi Horstman, founder of CPP. “It was beautiful. We did a couple exercises from our trauma-to-transformation workshop, we gathered in celebration sharing pizza, chocolate chip cookies and Capri Sun juice.”
CPP’s main focus is childhood trauma and how it affects the lives of those living and working in prisons.
Horstman has been conducting intensive eight-hour trauma workshops in CDCR prisons for several years. She has been having incarcerated individuals and even correctional officers assemble in circles, asking them to identify the trauma they have faced in their lives. Those who participated in this year’s season of nonviolence are housed at the California State Prison Los Angeles County in Lancaster, as well as Pleasant Valley State Prison, the Central California Women Facility, the Correctional Training Facility and San Quentin Rehabilitation Center.
Choosing peace
“When I asked the question: ‘Who here wants to live in a peaceful world?’ Everyone raised their hands in the prison community,” said Horstman.
Horstman got the idea for 66 days of nonviolence from 64 days of nonviolence, referred to as the Season for Nonviolence, an annual campaign that takes place from Jan. 30 until April 4. It was inspired by the M.K. Gandhi Institute of Nonviolence established in 1998. The season begins on the day of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and ends on the day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.
But Horstman asked pledgers to go two additional days.
“When I asked the question: ‘Who here wants to live in a peaceful world?’ Everyone raised their hands in the prison community.”
Fritzi Horstman, Compassion Prison Project founder
“We feel that it is imperative to do this work for two more days to initiate a habit of nonviolence that will continue to inspire change within our communities, long after this observance, thereby passing on a legacy of peace to future generations,” she said.
According to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes an average of 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. Depending on the particular behavior, it can take anywhere from 18 to 254 days to become a habit.
“We live in a very violent culture, so we need to learn skills and practices that work,” said Horstman.
The season of nonviolence requires participants to reflect on antidotes to all forms of violence. Each of the 66 days is meant to call attention to a new way of practicing nonviolence. Days 1-23 focus on personal change. Days 24-47 focus on interpersonal change, and 48-66 focus on community, according to CPP.
At San Quentin, there are self-help groups like Guiding Rage Into Power (GRIP), HEART, and No More Tears, all of which focus on nonviolence and help individuals develop skills to stop their violence and engage in healthy nonviolent communication.
For physical violence, GRIP teaches incarcerated people how to stop, observe, and process the sensations, emotions, thoughts, and actions that can occur in their bodies during moments of imminent danger. The idea behind this is to prevent blind rage and actions; and for individuals to feel the emotions pass through their body, rather than reacting to them.
Silence can be violence
Passive violence requires more interpersonal reflection. Passive violence can be economic, spiritual, and psychological, according to the HEART program. This requires a different set of healthy relationship skills. According to No More Tears, “silence can be violence.”
At Ironwood State Prison, a riot involving 200 incarcerated individuals and correctional staff sent nine correctional officers to the hospital in February. An incarcerated person was also killed allegedly by three other incarcerated individuals at Kern Valley State Prison.
California prisons are overrun with street gangs who often choose violence over nonviolence. The pain and trauma that ignites this violence runs deep in their histories, beginning for many in childhood, as CPP acknowledges.
But Horstman believes that incarcerated people can stop their violence, if they get to know themselves, and what drives them to violence. She is now encouraging those who went 66 days to set a new goal to go a year without violence.
Brandon Baker is an incarcerated person who helped enroll all of the participants who pledged nonviolence at the Lancaster prison. Baker echoed Horstman’s words when he spoke at the ceremony there:
“We must end child abuse in our society, because the abuse that the men in this room have endured is simply too much,” he said. “I truly believe that when the men and women in prison send a message about trauma, its effects on our brain, body and spirit, and the possibility for transformation, we can end child abuse in our communities, close prisons and transform our society.”
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