Thank you for attending one of the “Prisons, Universities, and the Public” workshops held at the Merced County Library. Following such a rich and powerful community dialogue, we kindly invite you to submit creative reflections or responses (in the format of your choice) that represent your own perspectives on how California can genuinely address its aspirations to rethink prisons, human caging, rehabilitation, and public safety. By format of your choice, we emphasize “your choice,” and welcome letters, essays, stories, sermons, autobiography, lyrics, poetry, plays, mathematical proofs, aphorisms, definitions, drawings, paintings, lists, notes, Post-its, murals, chalk art, photographs, and any other forms that you feel have the possibility of facilitating your expression of thought and ideas. You might continue a thought you introduced during one of the workshops or draw from a personal story to illustrate your view. You can address the pillars of The California Model directly, though there is no obligation to do so. We seek community perspectives. Once we have received your submissions, we aim to collect them in a publication that can be distributed to many audiences— people concerned with humanity; readers of the general debate on The California Model; Gov. Newsom and state and local politicians; university leaders and the academy, and artist and activist worlds. We encourage you to share this call for submissions with as many people within the local community and throughout the Central Valley you believe will find value in making contributions.
Your submission may be as short as a haiku or as long as a 2,000-word short story. Please submit your original contribution by Sept. 2, 2025 to be considered for publication under the umbrella of this project. Submissions should not include the use of AI.
*if a written format is not possible, we will consider an audio recording of your thoughts
