our mission
The Vanguard Incarcerated Press publishes hard-hitting news and commentary written by the incarcerated themselves, depicting prison life, human rights issues, and critiques of the criminal legal system.
We seek to expose injustices lurking in America’s prisons, empowering incarcerated voices along the way. We enable these voices to be heard without censorship, creating a community forum where our contributors can engage in civil debate, oppose the brutalities of the carceral state, and challenge the status quo, all in pursuit of systemic change and penal abolition.
our story
The VIP is made up of dedicated professionals who work tirelessly, both inside and outside of prison, to realize radical change in the U.S. prison system and the lives of those held captive within it. Our organization is made up of educators, scholars, journalists, and community organizers, all of whom are committed to providing restorative empowerment and community reintegration opportunities to the incarcerated. We believe that relationships matter, that care, compassion, and accountability matter, and that through purposeful, professional, and productive community relationships, transformational possibilities open up in people’s lives. Prison and criminal punishment systems are built on harmful and abusive authoritarian relationships that work to shame and control the incarcerated, alienate them from their community, and trap them within nearly inescapable measures of structural oppression. We reject the idea that treating people in this way either makes society safer or represents justice; therefore, we identify unapologetically as prison abolitionists. We believe that incarcerated journalism will play a central role in this abolitionist movement. Our organization is dedicated to bridging the gap between the inside and outside, allowing the humanity of our voices to carry that space and return us to the promise of redemption written into our national ethos.
our origin
Founded by David Greenwald in 2022, the Vanguard Incarcerated Press began as a bimonthly newsletter written by and for incarcerated journalists, especially those who found themselves fatigued by the censorship and propagandizing expectations of prison-sponsored incarcerated publications. For aspiring journalists on the inside, breaking into print can be challenging, and writing for prison publications is a common first step; however, institutional publications are often fraught with inside politics and administrative pressure to produce “pro-prison” content, presenting a flowery and disingenuous representation of life on the inside. This reality left countless gifted writers without a voice. The VIP was formed to give these writers a platform to be heard, one dedicated to strict non-censorship.
Dr. Joan Parkin was hired as the VIP Director in January of 2023, bringing with her an expansive network of critically engaged incarcerated writers across the country. Dr. Parkin was the director of Feather River Community College’s Incarcerated Student program for eleven years, which she also co-founded in 2007. During her time there, Dr. Parkin also taught English and humanities courses. Through this experience, Dr. Parkin formed lasting professional relationships with gifted writers on the inside, and in 2020 she published an edited anthology of their work, titled Perspectives from The Cellblock: An Anthology of Prisoner Writings. Many of these writers came with Joan to join the ranks of the VIP, a motley crew of critically engaged contributors.
Over the second year, the VIP went through a phase of self-discovery, as submissions from our contributors began pushing the limits of what we thought we were, testing the organizational concept we had forged up until that point. We found a community of diverse voices searching for a sense of unity amidst vocal descent, contesting and debating the ideas and work put forward by their peers.
In 2023 we formed an inside advisory board, staffed by six of our most invested and capable incarcerated supporters. Holly Davison and Steve Brooks were among this group, proving integral voices in our larger discussion about direction and growth. Working closely with this inside team we began to work out a new organizational identity, who we were, and what we believed in. Through this shared dialog, a unified vision began to take shape.
At the beginning of 2024, we started incorporating inside members as part of our operation, creating three incarcerated editors’ positions on our editorial board. Now our content is reviewed and considered by people on the inside, who lead the decision-making about what goes in the publication and what gets sent back for revisions. We also elevated one of our inside members to a leadership position, making Angie D. Gordon our Special Projects Manager.
Angie is a former student of Joan’s, taking six classes with her over three years (2016-2019), as part of the Feather River College’s Incarcerated Student Program. During this time, they formed a meaningful connection through their shared passion for scholarship and writing. In 2023, Joan invited Angie to join the VIP team. Together, Joan and Angie ushered the VIP into its present form as a hybrid organization, blending professional training and vocational education with the production and publication of incarcerated journalism media content, with Joan and Angie’s partnership at the center of our organization.
Jamel Walker, an incarcerated journalist, was asked to join the advisory board by Dr. Parkin, impressed with the sophistication and journalistic precision of an article Walker submitted on the death penalty in March 2023.
Over the next 12 months, Walker became a leader in refocusing the mission of the VIP into a media group that would distinguish itself from other incarcerated publications. With a strong background in social justice advocacy, Jamel advised that VIP should join the current abolitionist movement, envisioning the recruitment and development of writers working towards radical reform, adopting a prison abolitionist perspective. Walker helped to form our organizational philosophy that the experience and firsthand knowledge of social justice issues affecting the incarcerated place them in an opportune position to write stories that raise the consciousness of our fellow citizens, both free and captive. Walker’s work with the VIP has evolved, and he has proven to be an invaluable contributor, not only regularly contributing to VIP, but also functioning as an inside editor and facilitator to train other writers to produce content for the VIP.
Another early voice and advisory board member was David “Razor” Babb. Founder and former Editor-in-Chief of both the Corcoran Sun and the Mule Creek Post, Razor brought years of experience working with and for the carceral state. Touted by Dr. Parkin as a visionary, Razor has contributed immensely to the VIP, not merely in just his dedication to look always onto the horizon for new ideas and ventures, but also for bringing Dr. Parkin and David Greenwald together, in many ways laying the foundation for the VIP to form.
Why abolition?
In the liminal space between abolition and freedom is where millions of human beings reside, and millions more will come to reside if, we as a community — as a human family — continue to ask the question, “Why Abolition?” instead of asking the more important question, “Why not abolition?” For many in our society, this is a question they dare not ask. This is due to two primary reasons: first, they do not understand what abolition is or what it is not; second, they have been conditioned to believe that a world without prisons cannot exist. On the first point, we abolitionists are responsible for educating our society regarding exactly what we mean by abolition. On the second point, rather than attempting efforts of reconditioning the minds of the people, our efforts will be better spent raising the consciousness of the people adversely affected by the carceral state; because, whether we realize it or not, everyone is affected. One need only look at the recent killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Jeffrey Pretti to understand that we all are affected. Although carceral state actors would have us believe, through the propaganda of their media, politicians, and financial elite, that there is a divide between Black, Brown, and White, we saw on brutal display that white privilege doesn’t go far in this society if you stand in opposition to the carceral state and on behalf of justice for marginalized groups. This is because it is not about white privilege; it’s about class privilege
This is why the carceral state will continue to kill unarmed Black people, and immigrants; they will continue to kill the Goods and Prettis in our society. A sobering statistic everyone should be aware of is, according to Mapping Police Violence, in 2025, the police have killed over 958 people. Of this number, approximately 88% were not Black. This statistic tells us that the carceral state does not only kill unarmed Black people, they kill the Goods and Prettis of our society as well. Thus, when we call for abolition, we are not only calling for the abolition of prisons, we are calling for, in the words of Ruth Wilson Gilmore, abolition as being, not only about the “absence” of systems of oppression, including prisons, but about the “presence” of life-affirming and life-enabling communities in their place. Abolitionists focus on creating communities that refuse to embrace lex talionis as the foundational principle for retribution, the ideology that says: “eye for eye, tooth for tooth, life for life.” Abolition is not just about opening up the prison gates. It’s about living in a society where caring, compassion, empathy, and love permeates the hearts of all our people, where we all have food to eat, clothes to wear, and homes to dwell in instead of competing against each other for crumbs, seeing each other as enemies based on the artificial social constructs of race and class, and being otherized by a system that feeds off division and chaos, so that the rich get richer, and the poor get imprisoned, remain enslaved, and die in service of it. If we can establish the “presence” of a community such as this, there would be no need for prisons. There would be no poverty or harm done because the poor amongst us seek to have their needs for food, clothing, shelter, and happiness met “by any means necessary.” Many may find abolitionism to be a utopian dream. Given the ever increasingly dystopian reality we find ourselves in today, utopia doesn’t seem that bad at all. So… Why not abolition?
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