One Step Closer for Justice
By Charles Lindquist
September 10, 2019
It was over two years ago when Kelly Vause, Director of Community Projects at Social Construct, Inc., was inspired by Adam Foss at a speaking engagement at Weber State University. His topic was reform for prosecutors who were filling prisons to maintain their conviction rates regardless of the crime or individual accused. This led Vause to further research the people involved, and the circumstances surrounding the prison pipeline. Based on what she learned and her desire to make a change, she, along with John Lindquist, President of Social Construct, Inc., created Narratives for Justice [N4J]. The premise was that the best way to fight mass incarceration would be to help those at risk avoid ever entering the prison system.
Vause has always believed in the power of stories. During her high school teaching career, her class discussions would focus on how each person had his or her unique story, and that sharing these stories brought forth commonalities as well as an appreciation for differences. If students learned from narratives, then why couldn’t everyone? People can “learn important lessons from the personal narratives of those who [have] already walked the path that many of them [are] on,” Kelly wrote in the introduction to the upcoming N4J publication, originally conceived as My Yesterday, Your Tomorrow.
N4J has gathered and edited enough narratives from volunteers that Kelly is releasing them for publication. She has agreed to terms with Microcosm Publishing, located in Portland, Oregon. The volume remains under a working title, while the subject is secured. This volume contains narratives of youth interrupted, peer pressure, and decisions that led to crime and incarceration.
Microcosm will publish this in a series of zines. Zine format—a book condensed into about half the size of a magazine, hence the word, “zine,” cutting out half of its characters—is much more direct with its approach.
Why a zine? Chris Landry, a zine author, said, “Zines take the profit and fame motive out of artistic expression and focus on communication, expression and community for their own sake. Zines are the one truly democratic art form. Zine writers are the most important writers in the world." Zines force the writer to cut out everything that is not vital. Using zines allows Vause to augment her audience as there is now a physical product to further the conversation online and peer to peer. Vause gets her message out with zines, without foregoing the pursuit of other creative endeavors with the same project, including a more mainstream book deal.
Zines help with Vause’s search for a publisher for N4J as well as by showing she has a viable product. Why not stop with a series of zines? Vause had this answer, “We envision the project as a series of volumes, topic-specific, each one dedicated to exploring some facet of mass incarceration. This would allow readers and educators to use a single volume and choose which topic and which narratives within that topic to study” Rather than breaking them out over a series of zines, Vause would rather keep all of these stories together in one volume so more diverse topics can be explored.
With this publishing success, Vause is working to reach a larger platform for the future of N4J.