Dignity & Power Now

Dignity & Power Now (DPN) is a grassroots organization that works towards transformative and healing justice for incarcerated people, their families and communities through health and wellness, activism, leadership building and prison abolition. DPN’s Director Guadalupe Chávez and Deputy Director of Healing and Wellness Melanie Griffin explain their wellness approach.

Let’s make it happen

“Most of the families that we work with, their folks were killed inside [the prisons] by the state. And so then [questions arise about] how you become both your own healer for you and your family and how you also become an advocate and an organizer so that these things don’t happen again and again and again. So, our Health and Wellness Department holds the programs that explore these questions. People can heal by talking, by sharing stories, by making art together, by building community and, also by engaging in organizing and campaign work to whatever level they can. We’re not a service organization period. But yet we provide some services because we know that to get a service from the state, most people don’t want to do that because it comes with a lot of consequence that’s negative to the family or to your psyche, [like] if I call my school counselor and then now all of a sudden the police are at my house. We cut that BS out. We’re like, ‘Hey, you need to talk to somebody. You need to make some art. Let’s make it happen.’ And that’s why people keep coming back.”

—Guadalupe Chávez, Director of Healing and Wellness

Organizing can be a way of healing

“When you have an incarcerated loved one, it’s not just that person that is locked up that suffers. It’s the whole family. We go outside of the jails with a team of volunteers and we have these wellness kits that we put together that have natural medicines, a ‘know your rights’ pamphlet and information about the herbs in the kit. We have water [and] snacks. Sometimes we have hot food and [invite] different healers. We really believe in centering indigenous healing practices. We invite people to learn about the [organizing] work that we’re doing so that they can get involved too. The hope is once they get involved, then they have an opportunity to exercise healing through the organizing by telling their stories at Board of Supervisors meetings and things like that. Organizing can be a way of healing and healing is necessary as a part of movement work.”

—Melanie Griffin, Deputy Director of Healing and Wellness

LACDMH Strategic Plan Points: 1a.1 education, 1a.2 engagement, 1a.3 follow up, 1b.1 housing, 1b.2 kin, 1b.3 purpose, 1c.1 assessment, 1c.2 service coordination, 1c.3 outpatient care, 2.1 real-time crisis response, 2.3 restorative care, 4.2 organizational process, 4.3 organizational outcomes.