Ivan Kilgore/UBFSF

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Ivan Kilgore has been serving a life sentence in California, during which time he has founded United Black Family Scholarship Foundation, a nonprofit that works with students across the country to train the next generation of freedom fighters. Through that work, Kilgore has established a larger system of interconnectivity, a web of prison advocacy across the country out of the people closest to the problem — his fellow prisoners. 

The movement gained traction after a 2016 protest by incarcerated men and women in several different states on the anniversary of the Attica uprising. Through the demonstration, Kilgore and UBFSF connected with members of the Free Alabama Movement, founded by two men in an Alabama state prison. Members of the newly formed coalition have worked in coordination to move the needle from inside: they’ve documented inhumane treatment by corrections officers and the conditions in which they are forced to live. Their work exposed, among other things, the flippancy with which prison officials were treating outbreaks of COVID inside. 

Kilgore continues to grow his network of “inside orgs.” His story, and the story of his organization, exemplifies an important idiom coined by his advisor Glenn Martin: Those closest to the problem are closest to the solution. A book without the prisoners at the forefront of prison advocacy would, under these terms, be incomplete.