Truthout is proud to announce the winners of the second annual Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize. We were astounded by the response this year, and are grateful for each of the many hundreds of essays we received. We regret that we could only select two essays; each piece we read was unique and moving in its own way.
The 2022 winners are Kwaneta Harris, for “Working in Prison Fields Didn’t ‘Correct’ Me, It Revealed the System’s Brutality,” and Colette Payne, for “I Stole to Feed My Family and Was Incarcerated. We Need Resources, Not Prisons.”
The Keeley Schenwar Memorial Essay Prize, awarded to two formerly or currently incarcerated people for essays related to imprisonment or policing, is given in memory of Keeley Schenwar (1990-2020), who was a devoted mother, daughter, sister, friend, writer and advocate for incarcerated mothers. Each year, the selected essays share some of the spirit in which Keeley Schenwar moved in the world (and wrote her own work), a spirit of empathy, vulnerability and resistance. Each winner receives $3,000 and publication in Truthout.
Kwaneta Harris’s essay, “Working in Prison Fields Didn’t ‘Correct’ Me, It Revealed the System’s Brutality,” zooms in on the experience of working in the fields — picking okra and potatoes under the hot sun and the racist, abusive tyranny of guards on horseback — and connects it with the everyday violence that pervades prison life. While Harris depicts the legacy of slavery in present-day incarceration, she reveals how it’s interlaced with state-sanctioned gender-based violence. Through a detailed narrative, she shows that prison is “a system that encompasses the entire range of violence.”
Colette Payne’s essay, “I Stole to Feed My Family and Was Incarcerated. We Need Resources, Not Prisons,” exposes the cycle of poverty that fuels imprisonment. With precision and heart, Payne chronicles her childhood, which was filled with love but also included hunger and homelessness. She shares how at 14, she shoplifted to support her family — and how this was a courageous act of love, which was punished by imprisonment, followed by addiction, followed by more imprisonment. Payne now works to “dismantle punitive systems … encouraging all Black and Brown girls to share their truths and proclaim: Poverty no more.”
Congratulations, Kwaneta and Colette!
We extend our deepest thanks to all who entered this contest. Your stories are powerful and we are honored that you gave us a chance to read them all.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 143 new monthly donors before midnight tonight.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy