Interview of Ellen Stackable, November 01, 2021

Ellen Stackable, interview transcript, November 1, 2021

Martin: I fell in love once I heard about your organization and all that it does - Poetic Justice. For those that do not know, would you mind describing the organization a little bit?

Stackable: We are mostly volunteers. We offer therapeutic and restorative writing to women who are incarcerated. Actually, we have changed that to individuals who are incarcerated in women's prisons because in California, [where their secondary location is], the prison you go to is the gender that you choose. So it has made it a little more complicated there. Oklahoma [where their main location is] is not there.

Stackable: We use poetry as our medium because it is so forgiving. There are no rules. It somehow allows women on the inside who have never written before to move from their heart to their hand to the page; and begin to find resolution and healing from trauma, and even a path forward.

Martin: Do you see that a lot of women who you come into contact with have never really written before?

Stackable: We do. We kind of have two groups. We have ones that have always written and love to write. And then we have way, way, way more who have never written anything in their lives, and probably do not think that they have anything worth saying until they start to write. And then it is just amazing what happens.

Martin: So this seems like a very specific group that you all help. I just want to know what in your past or personal biography led you to feel called to work with this specific population?

Stackable: That is a really important part of it. I grew up hardwired for social justice. My mom was a social worker in urban Denver when I was growing up. She would go to some of the worst neighborhoods in Denver totally unafraid, and come home and tell me stories about it. I think that was part of it. Early on, I remember when I was in ninth grade, I volunteered one summer with Head Start. I was really interested in politics and all that.

Stackable: As an adult, I think I am also hardwired to see those that are being forgotten or rejected. When my youngest brother was diagnosed with AIDS -- this was in the late '80s, early 90's -- that was a point where AIDS was still considered almost like leprosy. I started a group where we would bring home cooked meals to people who were homebound with AIDS. My kids would come. My husband would come. So my kids have all these memories of doing that. And it was really because I thought that their physical needs were being taken care of, but they were isolated. No one is seeing them.

Stackable: Fast forward a bit, I was doing research for my master's at the University of Oklahoma, which I never finished because I hate online degrees. I went down this rabbit trail of research. I ended up seeing how Oklahoma incarcerates more women than anywhere else in the country. I started thinking that "there has got to be a way to help with this." So that led to that. I taught AP Lit and writing as well, so Karen [a mutual friend] and I have that in common. I started looking for a way in. I really had no idea what I was going to do. I thought about a book club. I thought about personal writings, essays. But finding a way into the system was really hard. Eventually, one of my colleagues from where I taught is a hip-hop artist. He was going into the Tulsa County Jail doing spoken word with them, along with several other people, with the men. So I tagged along one night and said "we need to do something for women." There was another spoken word poet there, a woman, who said "yah, let us do it."

Stackable: Honestly we had no idea what we were doing. Every preconception you have, every implicit bias you have about incarcerated women, you let those in the first time you go into the room and they are shattered. It is like somebody throwing a rock at a window. I think that pretty early on, I realized that I loved spoken word, but we needed something that provided more depth and space for them to process. After about a year, the woman that started it with me left, and so we moved more and more towards this model of therapeutic and restorative writing.

Martin: Thank you for sharing all of that. I had no idea exactly how the organization was started. You mentioned that it was so hard to get into the system and that was the first really big obstacle. Does that continue to be an obstacle now? Along with that, what other obstacles do you see currently?

Stackable: I think the biggest obstacle is realizing that learning to speak truth to power in a way that does not allow power to get rid of you. We are in the prisons at their leisure, at their behest. One small thing could shut it all down. One of the things that I have had to work really, really hard on is learning to code switch to speak their language. In Oklahoma, all the volunteer programs are under the chaplain of the prison, whether they are faith-based or not. Which I think is really weird, but there it is. I have had to learn to "yes, chaplain," "no, chaplain." There is this one chaplain in particular, and no matter what I did, he did not like me. I was trying really hard. Finally, one of my students, I was teaching this socio-linguistics class in high school and so I was telling my students about it, and she said "you know, you are saying all the right things but your body is saying something else." Just learning to navigate that.

Stackable: I have worked really hard to build relationships with the chaplains at the facilities, with the wardens, so that we are a known quantity. At first, it sounded like the weirdest thing possible to them. "You want to do what?" and "Why?" and "What church is this with?" and "It's not?" So proving ourselves was hard at first. What I tell people when they are starting Poetic Justice in other places is if you can get your foot in the door, do not ever take it out until you have blown the door off the hinges.

Martin: I love that quote so much. Oh my goodness. You said your mother was a social worker earlier, and I am a social work major. A lot of the phrases and quotes that you have used, I have been like "Oh I need to remember that for class!" I am picking your brain in so many more ways than just for this interview.

Martin: Obviously you have a lot of passion when it comes to this. Not only for serving the women, but also working alongside the volunteers and even building relationships with the chaplains. As simple as this question seems, what does this organization mean to you?

Stackable : No, it is not a simple question at all. I think when I started, no, I think from the very beginning it just grabbed hold of me in ways that I can not even explain. I have learned more about being present and being still in the moment through doing this than I ever could have any other way. When we go into the prison, you cannot bring in your cell phone. You cannot bring in anything like that. And then we try to set a space that is other than the prison. For those two hours, we try to have what several of our volunteers call a sacred space. They do not feel like they are in prison. They do not feel that hierarchy. We do not call ourselves teachers. We are just facilitators. We are just in there with them. I think, for me, that is just a wondrous thing.

Stackable: I think the hardest part about doing this is leaving and realizing that they will not leave. I seldom meet a woman that I think "you need to be incarcerated." It just hardly ever happens. So I mean that has meant a lot to me. I think I have learned a lot from them about resilience and courage. Especially in the last two years when we have all been locked down in different ways, but their lockdown has been brutal and inhumane. And yet, they persist. And yet, they do not give up. And yet, they give back to me. So I think that is a lot of what it has meant to me.

Stackable: Enough so, that after the first two to three years of doing this, I finally switched to part-time teaching. And it became harder and harder. And I had other people tell me this, to come back to students, God bless you guys, but high school students are entitled. Not on purpose, but it is just a self-absorbed time for many high school students. To go from this precious time with these women who had nothing and were willing to open themselves up and give back to me, and then go back to high school students just became harder and harder. And I loved my job. I mean I love teaching and the school that I was teaching in. But finally, I went full-time to Poetic Justice. Two years ago, right before the pandemic.

Martin: I bet that was an interesting transition for sure.

Stackable: It was rough.

Martin: We have talked about your heart and the thought process that you have had going into this. Clearly your call to action and how you put forth change to follow what you believe in and what you are passionate for is so evident. I think that is what makes a leader; not only do they see what needs to be done, but they do something about it. What, if there is any sole experience, or what few experiences, do you believe shaped your leadership style; this kind of brave, going-against-the-grain style of leadership?

Stackable : When I saw that you sent that question, I thought "no one has ever asked me that before." And I really like it. When I was just out of high school, I got involved with a...I had a really profound religious experience and got involved with a group that ended up being very cult-like. The leadership style was basically one person in charge who had absolute authority. He would delegate to other people, but I was never a leader in that group because I think I was considered too rebellious; which now I am glad. The harshness of that leadership style changed me radically to never wanting to be that way. My brother and I kid around that we can smell a bad group a mile away. He is the same way. He works with the poorest of the poor in Tijuana, Mexico. It is that same style of leadership of no hierarchy, and treating each person as someone with inestimable worth.

Martin: As you said, that is not always what culture deems leadership to look like. Do you feel a lot of pushback on your leadership style? Or has anyone ever come in and been like "that is how you are doing this?" or "is that the most effective way?" How was that played out?

Stackable: If I feel pushback, it has been from myself when I struggle with Imposter syndrome sometimes. You know, thinking "could somebody else do this better than me?" I think I have cultivated, from the very beginning, a culture of shared leadership and shared life in our organization that I think is extraordinary. We seldom have volunteers leave unless they are getting a law degree or they are moving somewhere else across the country. I really love that. I really love just sitting and talking to Karen and brainstorming together. I think we probably attract people who have the same style of leadership within them. If we do anything different with the women on the inside, then we should stop doing it. They need to be treated with the same honor and regard that we treat each other with on the outside.

Martin: That was powerful. I will get to this in a little bit, but I think so many people go into interacting with women who are incarcerated or who have been incarcerated and they look at them as though there is something wrong with them as opposed to what has happened to them. In doing that, it is like this one-person leadership where "I am the dictator and I know what is right for you because clearly you do not know what is right for you." I love that you view them as equals.

Stackable: If you think about it, most of them have been on the bottom of the hierarchy their whole lives. It has been real interesting to me because I am a person of faith, and as I watch how the vast majority of churches operate in prison, it is very hierarchical. If you think about "I am going to minister to you," that is hierarchy. It is kind of a false construct because so many women are drawn to some kind of church experience while they are incarcerated, which is very understandable, but I think it will set them up to fail on the outside if they are not careful. Because they assume when they get out, wherever they go to church, they are going to be treated in the same way. That they are going to be treated as special people. That they have been saved and all of these other things. And then they get out and it is not always how the church treats them. I think what is problematic is this whole thing of hierarchy too: "we are better than you." Are you?

Martin: In hearing you speak, and this is my first time ever interacting with you, it seems to me that you were a leader from the start. No matter how that looked like. Does that feel true to you, or was leadership something that you had to grow into a little bit?

Stackable: Oh yah. Yes, I had to grow into it. Even as a teacher, I tried really hard not to have a strong hierarchy in my classroom. Students would call me by my first name. When I was department chair at our school, I did the same thing. I think I was probably a really terrible department chair because I would never tell anybody anything to do. It has been growth for me. After I got the CNN award, they did a week-long Annenberg training, which is kind of the gold standard of nonprofits. That helped me understand more that it was okay to take the lead on some things, and be able to ask people to do this or that. But no, I did not ever grow up seeing myself as a leader.

Martin: As we just talked about not having a hierarchy, sometimes leader in itself, that word, implies that there is a hierarchy. I am sure that word even feels a little bit, maybe not right in this conversation.

Stackable: No, I think it works. I think I have come to be able to embrace that term, and it does not mean that I am putting people on a different level or a lower level than me. As we grow, I want our organization to maintain this culture of community and friendship that it has had from the beginning. That is going to take some work, for sure.

Martin: When one person has that view on leadership, it can leak into those around them. I wanted to focus a little bit on the women. How have you seen them develop, either as a leader through this organization or even just as people? Maybe those are not two different things. What has been your experience with them?

Stackable: Almost, without exception, it has been really powerful and really positive. And we have seen this over time. We started out in the county jail. Those classes are shorter because of the very transient population. It is almost like a trauma triage. They are coming in and they are just bleeding trauma, And you are just trying to help in any way that you can. You may only see them once. You may see them for the whole six weeks.

Stackable: But then, in prison, it is more of a stable population. When we started, we did a ten week class. At the end, we always do an exit survey. Their feedback was "we are just starting to feel like we are healed and healing. Can we have another class?" So then we did an advanced class, which was another ten weeks. The different women who come out really help us now facilitate classes on the inside. One of them wrote a book and published it, and just finished her second book through the pandemic. They are amazing.

Stackable: A lot of them just become leaders within the prison too, in different ways. Some run from that, but they are still perceived that way. And other ones just naturally assume leadership. For women that have life sentences, one of the questions that I ask myself a lot is "do our classes matter to them?" The conventional wisdom of programs in prison is that they are all for people who are getting out, for reentry, so that you lower the recidivism rate. But a lot of women who take our classes may never get out. If you have a forty year sentence and it is violent and you are fifty years old, you are not getting out.

Stackable: What I have seen is that they begin to change the culture of the prison, too. As they reach out, as they help other women. Imagine the drama and the hormones of a middle school full of girls. Even the menstrual cycle is super weird. The prison is like that times exponentially worse. Oftentimes in our classes, who ends up in them are people who would not necessarily relate to each other on the yard at all. They start to find that they have a shared humanity and a shared life. It has been really cool to see women rise up to leadership.

Stackable: After the pandemic, when we were first able to go in person, we started an advisory board on the inside. One of our core values is that they are part of the decision making process. So anytime that we are going to switch a prompt or try something new, we always ask them first and get their feedback. Or if we want to tell their stories outside, we do that only with their permission.

Martin: Hearing you talk about these women, it feels like you see them for who they are; which is people with dignity and beauty and the ability for, which you used this word earlier, resilience. They have this...I mean this is convoluted in that not all of them need to change in the sense that...I guess what I am trying to say is that once they get out, it feels like society has placed this scarlet letter on them.

Stackable: No joke. No joke.

Martin: We do not give them, whether they needed to change or not, we do not give them the permission to do so. There is no grace in the way that we hold them and hold their trauma and what they have been through and their resilience. To have someone like you who works with them and sees them for who they are, I am sure that has been so sweet for them. What does that look like for you to be a leader among women like that, and people like that in general, who feel outcasted by society and let down?

Stackable: I would say the majority of people that are in their lives are either family members, and sometimes not even that, or people that come to minister to them, or guards and different officials in the carceral system. So we look really different when we walk in. We do not look like the "normal." The normal volunteer, I would say, is probably somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, and is very much the stereotype of the church lady. Sadly. So when we walk in, I think they are so grateful. They are like "you came all the way from Tulsa. Why did you do that?" or "you are a professor at a university and you are coming here? You are a professional person?" I think what that does is elevate their worth. When they begin to not only see but believe their own worth, to see themselves as we see them, I think something changes and that will be really powerful when they get out.

Stackable: We have heard from women that get out, they have been more successful even though society puts so many limits on them. We have one woman who is now on our board and she has been incarcerated. She has been trying to get her driver's license back. Evidently in Oklahoma, every time you are stopped with drugs, that puts three years on when you can get your license back. She was stopped four times. So she has twelve years before she can get her driver's license but she has a job and there is no mass transit in Oklahoma City to speak of. She is driving without a license. She goes "I told my parole officer that I was going to do it, that I did not know what else to do. I have a full-time job." He just said "go ahead."

Stackable: Having that inner sense of your own worth and knowing you have a voice and that you have the power to speak and to use your voice, I think, is a better reentry tool than a lot of the training they do in prison for reentry. They will do things like teaching them how to use a forklift. There are just not very many good programs for women. A lot of the women in our class end up going back to school. We had one who left school when she was in fifth grade and she ended up getting her GED and now she is a tutor in the education department. We have another one who got her associate's degree and is working on her second associate's degree.

Martin: I wish everyone could hear these stories and see all that they have to offer, and change the system so that it can embrace all that they have to offer. I did not know about the driver's license; how if you are stopped with drugs in the car, it prevents you from getting your driver's license back for three years. How do you expect them to work? Clearly, this woman knows her worth and she knows that she is going to work. But it feels like the system is failing them.

Stackable: We had another woman get out this summer and the place where she was staying was not a safe place. It was her brother's place, and there were drugs. She is trying to get her daughter back, who is three years old. She went to the parole officer and just said "This is not a safe space. Where can I stay?" And he goes "Well, it is okay to be on parole and be homeless." And she is like "He just told me that I could be homeless." Anyway, she did end up getting an apartment. But you know, so many of them have to work twice as hard. That shows something too, about them, that they do not give up. It would be easier just to go back to prison in many ways.

Martin: Wow. Just to wrap this up: Encompassing everything that we have talked about, clearly you have a micro legacy already established with those that you have come into contact with, whether it be the incarcerated woman or your fellow coworkers and colleagues. You also have this macro-level legacy that is starting right now. You mentioned the CNN Hero Award, I was looking up that you have won countless other awards. You have also been a TedX speaker which is so cool. You have even been recognized with certain positions and awards with the University of Oklahoma. It seems like your legacy is already building, but what do you truly want your legacy to be? Do you feel like you have reached that? Or do you even think about that in all of this?

Stackable: No. I do not think of it because that seems like that would be super weird. On the other hand, I have been working through this Buddhist meditation book, recently. It talks a lot about loving yourself. I realized that it is way easier for me to love other people, even ones that other people do not love, than it is to really actively love myself. That has been an interesting journey for me. Honestly, I want to be remembered as a grace-giver; as somebody that accepts people for who they are and sees who they could become, and believes that they could become that.

Martin: That gave me that chills. I cannot thank you enough for your honesty and vulnerability in this interview. I know that, once again, we have just met, but I already feel changed from this conversation. I cannot wait for my classmates...I wish I could show this video to everyone. Thank you for your time.