The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is now legally required to recognize the needs and identities of transgender prisoners under a new state law took effect Jan. 1.
Growing up, I spent my entire life knowing only one of my grandparents from both sides of my family. My grandmother, Wanda, is the best grandmother I could ever ask for as she has taken care of me like she was my mother. But a part of me always wanted to know more. This year has been full of surprises, and luckily I had the pleasure of meeting my grandfather for the first time ever.
The Trump administration has reversed an Obama-era executive order that gradually diminished the use of private prisons for federal inmates, a decision that reflects more heavily on Trump’s connections with the private prison industry than it does on Trump’s concern for the country’s well-being.
On Sept. 9, many federal and state prisons and county jails became the grounds for the largest inmate strike in U.S. history. The strike was a mass refusal, by inmates across 24 states, to continue to be forced into free labor by the prison system. Small protests in support of the prison strike called the forced labor of inmates a form of modern slavery.