Felix Sitthivong is a journalist and organizer currently incarcerated in Washington State. He received a grant from Solitary Watch’s Ridgeway Reporting Project to write his latest story, published in Prism, in which he reports on the history, importance, and repression of cultural awareness groups in prison. As the former president of the prison’s Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group, Sitthivong illustrates how these cultural preservation groups build community and create safe spaces for healing. Yet the Washington State Department of Corrections has long claimed these groups were “gangs,” and targeted their deep roots in activism and organizing, sometimes placing their leaders in solitary confinement or transferring them to different prisons. The following is an excerpt from his article, which can be read in full at Prism. — Valerie Kiebala

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For the first time in over a decade, I’m cruising down a highway, windows down, wind blowing in my face. The warmth of the sun is a calming touch on my skin as Freddie Mercury’s voice cuts through the speakers. As Mercury sings his heart out and urges his mom to “carry on,” I let my guard down and relax into the freedom of the open road.

Under normal circumstances, this would be the perfect ride on a perfect day in the Pacific Northwest.

For me, that’s not the case.

My chauffeurs are two armed prison guards. After nearly a month in solitary confinement, I’m being transferred to yet another solitary unit at a prison two hours away, shackled, cuffed, and my future uncertain. My organizing work with Cultural Awareness Groups (CAGs) has struck a nerve with the right (or wrong) people. 

I’m being sent away for trying to build a community—my community.

As the former president of  the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Awareness Group (APICAG) at Washington state’s Clallam Bay Corrections Center and a former senior advisor to the group’s Stafford Creek Corrections Center (SCCC) chapter also in Washington state, I have always sought to continue the rich history and legacy of APICAG. 

CAGs within the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) have a long legacy of resistance, tradition, and love that stretches back at least to the 1970s. 

This community my brothers and I have built gives us a sense of purpose again. We support each other through our personal traumas and when the whole world feels like it’s crumbling—as was the case for me when I lost my mother in 2021. My mother and I did not have the greatest relationship, and the thought of her alone, battling a lifetime’s worth of refugee trauma, drove me to ensure that resources like the APICAG were available for those going through the same struggles—to ensure that nobody else ever felt alone. 

CAGs provide prisoners like myself with a platform for true growth and liberation through cultural preservation, while also building community and creating safe spaces for healing. Our community gatherings have helped me face my personal demons and find peace in my vulnerability, even if only for a short period.

CAGs also offer classes and resources that the DOC does not make readily accessible to already marginalized BIPOC prisoners, especially undocumented and non-English speaking individuals. The community created within these groups offers participants a rare but critical opportunity to be themselves with people who look and sound like they do. CAGs create a space for people to unpack the trauma of incarceration and a life of isolation—a space to feel safe again.

CAGs in Washington State have deep roots in activism and community organizing. In the 1970s, one of the founders of the Washington State Penitentiary chapter of the Black Panthers, Mark Cook, took what he learned as a member of the party and used it to create a group called the Black Prisoners Forum Unlimited. (This was changed from the group’s original name Black Front United, because the DOC refused to allow members to use the word “united”). Cook taught incarcerated people how to advocate for themselves and their communities. His work eventually inspired the founding of the Black Prisoners Caucus (BPC). Important contributions like Cook’s are often overlooked, erased, or forgotten due to a lack of formal documentation behind bars.

My community, APICAG, was founded by Andres Pacificar in the early ’90s at Clallam Bay Corrections Center. Like BPC, APICAG was born out of necessity. At the time, there were no true resources for the growing population of Asian and Pacific Islander (API)  incarcerated individuals, many of whom were non-English speakers and struggling with refugee trauma. Similarly, newer groups such as the Nuestro Grupo Cultural sprung up out of the need for cultural identity resources not offered within the DOC.

Historically, things haven’t always been easy for cultural awareness group members. Not only have we had to survive discrimination endemic to BIPOC and immigrant communities, but we have also had to constantly persevere through generations of administrative attacks and claims that our people are a Security Threat Group (STG). In other words, a prison gang—essentially telling us that the color of our skin and our beautiful cultures are crimes… Read the full article at Prism.