Introduction to A Dangerous Woman

A DANGEROUS WOMAN: Exposing the Dark Underbelly of the Nonprofit World and How Cancel Culture Came for Me.

The above photo is of me and Silvia Sanchez and her “date” at what I believe was the first prom to be held at Central Juvenile Hall, Los Angeles in 1999, shortly before Silvia was sent to prison with a sentence of twenty-five years to life. A Night to Remember

I’ve decided to start my Substack journey with the story of my friendship with Silvia Sanchez. It’s part of a book I’ve been writing called A Dangerous Woman: Exposing the Dark Underbelly of the Nonprofit World and How Cancel Culture Came for Me. Silvia was one of my first students in InsideOUT Writers, a creative writing program for incarcerated youth in Los Angeles that I started in the mid 1990s.

I start with our friendship because it speaks to the current situation of cancel culture. It is alarming to see how dissenting voices are being silenced. My vision for IOW was to give voice to youth who would otherwise never have a chance to be heard. IOW played a valuable role in changing perceptions of incarcerated youth. It started simply, with me teaching one and sometimes two classes a week as a volunteer and went to involve many amazing writers such as Mark Salzman, Jesse Katz and Able Salas. I was privileged to edit a book of student writing, along with Mark Salzman, called What We See. The book has made it into the hands of thousands of youth in schools, detention facilities, libraries; and has been used in university courses.

Another dream I had for the program was magazine, the last issue of which included an interview with Stan Tookie Williams shortly before his execution in December 2005.

Cover of the InisdeOUT Writers Magazine, 2005

Nothing that has happened through the years can take away the beauty of how that little program started or the thousands of lives it touched and is continuing to touch to this day. Without a strong foundation, it would not have withstood so many storms.

Back in the late 1990s the youth in juvenile hall were forgotten. It was believed they belonged there, thanks to politicians like Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. We fought against Joe Biden’s support of “exceptionally, exceptionally tough treatment for juvenile “predators.” In a 1998 address, he supported the ability of the court to try “these 100,000 bad kids” in the adult system rather than a separate juvenile system.

Our work in no small part led to changing the laws, trying children as adults. Silvia Sanchez spent twenty plus years in prison because of people like Joe Biden. She was let out thanks to the work IOW and others did to change those laws.

At the time I started IOW, I was forty years old. I considered myself far more a liberal than a conservative, although I have always resisted such labels. I never dreamed that by creating such a nonprofit I would incur the wrath of the powerful liberals who went on to take it over and who canceled me.

I met Silvia in 1996. She was in my first group of eight girls at Central JH. All facing life sentences for serious crimes. I wanted to help them because, although to all appearances it seemed we had nothing in common, I knew what it felt like to be imprisoned and not able to find a way out.

Here is a Los Angeles Times article about our friendship: Sparks in the Darkness

Silvia outside “Omega Unit,” where the girls were housed at Central JH.

I couldn’t dare compare myself and Silvia like that now, saying we are more alike than different. There is no longer any nuance allowed; no interest in the big picture; no judging a person by their character and their actions over the years. It is all down to appearance and words that are used. Accusations made by the State-controlled media or by powerful elite do not require proof.

Back in the mid 1990s, no one was talking about cancel culture. Yes, I was one of those white women who wanted to do some good in the world. I didn’t think about that at all in those days. I just wanted to teach.

It was only later that I learned I should actually be ashamed by my desire to start a writing program, and even though it was successful and went on to help thousands of young people, that I should never have done it in the first place. In fact, the true history of the program was changed and I was struck out as if I had never existed in the first place. The irony, of course, was that the very people canceling me were from the highest cast of white liberal American society.

I was canceled at the end of 2005, long before this whole frenzy had taken hold. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized what had happened to me.

My epiphany came on November 8, 2016, the night Donald Trump became president. After spending more than twenty years in prison, that was the day Silvia was released. I was so excited. So overwhelmed with happiness for her. It was a story I wanted to write about and I approached the Washington Post. I explained to the editor how the story of our friendship over all those years was inspiring; how it crossed racial and cultural boundaries.

The editor really liked the story. However, I was told I was not the person to do it. I was a white woman. She suggested I give her the contact information for Silvia and all my notes and she would find a writer for it. I was aghast. Why would I give all my contacts over? We had been friends for more than twenty years. I knew her better than any stranger ever could. Yet, I could not write about her because of my skin color. I would be “misappropriating” her story. Again, it was as if I did not exist. It could never be our story.

I asked for advice from a Facebook group of 8,000 women writers and editors. This group promises a safe place to share concerns and ideas. In my post I explained what I’d been told and asked if anyone had ideas of where else I could pitch my idea.

I learned that day the stark brutality of cancel culture. When it had happened before, it had been under the table, hidden with excuses. Now, no one tried to hide anything.

I learned there are certain things you can say and certain things you cannot say as a white woman. It doesn’t matter how you actually live your life. It doesn’t matter if any of the people judging you have never even heard of you before that day. They have the right to attack you like a pack of wolves, first, for the sin of being white, and second, for the sin of not following the rules about debasing yourself because of your whiteness.

And if you don’t toe the line, you will be blacklisted.

To be fair, there were a few polite comments at first. But then, the bullying started. I was viciously attacked for daring to suggest I wanted to write such a story. Actually, by doing so, I was silencing Silvia and making it all about me. I was the classic white savior selfishly trying to assuage my white guilt. How dare I promote myself like that? It was sick and disturbing. In fact, I should probably just kill myself because I was so toxic to society.

Not only was I ruining Silvia’s life, the fact that I had started the writing program in the first place meant that I had destroyed thousands of young people’s lives rather than helped them. In fact, by being so selfish, I had taken away the opportunity for a person of color to start a writing program. As a typical white woman, I’d just gone in and hogged everything. What a selfish bitch. I was “pasty-faced” and “plague-ridden.” And…well, you get the idea.

On the history page of the InsideOUT Writers website it says that Sister Janet Harris had an idea for a writing program and invited writer Duane Noriyuki to start it after he wrote an article about her for the Los Angeles Times in June of 1996. But this is blatantly false. I was struck out as if I never existed. Why would this happen.

A few years down the line, and this mentality had taken hold on a nation. No white woman can dare suggest she might want to help anyone. And you certainly can’t use the word “save.”

The Real Story of “The Central Park Karen” comes to mind. Bari Weiss recently published this piece by Megan Phelps-Roper. As Phelps-Roper describes, I too questioned that something wasn’t right about the media narrative. Surely there was more to the story.

Like so many people, I have become disgusted by the lies, the doxxing, the shaming, the hysteria. I cannot believe what has happened to the United States and other Wester nations. How so many have so easily given up their freedom. How friends and family have turned on one another. How fear grips our lives.. We live behind masks, we mask our children, we do not leave our homes. It will not be getting better.

If you say the wrong thing, you will now lose your job, your reputation, your family, and so on. I have never had a problem speaking out. All I care about is that I speak honestly and respectfully, and people can do with it what they will.

So, I start here, on the night of November 8, 2016. The country was on the verge of chaos, angered that this orange man bad had been elected, or so it seemed he would be.

I didn’t vote for Trump. I didn’t vote for Clinton. I found myself thinking Trump was the lessor of two evils. The thought appalled me. Almost all my friends were liberals. I kept my thoughts to myself. I got the courage to write this story on that infamous night. But the story doesn’t begin and end there. It is so much more.

But of course, back in 1995 when Silvia first entered juvenile hall none of this had happened yet. Here is a letter Silvia wrote to me shortly before she left Central Juvenile Hall for prison, I believe it was in 1999. Her letter filled me with so much sorrow. I didn’t know what the future held. I didn’t know that so many years later Silvia would be released and would go on to live a fulfilling life, reunited with her family and with a woman she had fallen in love with while in prison. They are together until this day. Here is a documentary that tells Silvia’s story Gangsta Girls

Dear Karen,

Hello, it’s me, Silvia. I decided to write you this letter to say good-bye. Yes, my time has come. I hardly cry. I haven’t cried for a long time, but today I shed some tears as my friends brought memories of my trial and the last day I got convicted. That was the worst day of my incarceration. I cried like a baby all night long.

I remember my friend Ochoa bringing me a cup of water. I showered right after I came from court and me and Ochoa stood inside the bathroom crying. She was telling me she wanted to do some of my time. Then we had to come out of the bathroom because they had cake and ice cream. It was my 18th birthday but I was too sad to celebrate.

The road is long. It might take me years. I might struggle, fall a couple of times, but I’ll pick myself up. I know I must move on with my life and go to prison. At least then I will know my release date and feel that one day I’ll be home. I’m sad because I’m leaving everybody behind. This has been my home for four years. I grew up here.

Well, Karen, I’m going to let you go for now. Take care and thanks for everything.

                                                                                       Love Always,

                                                                                       Silvia Sanchez

Here are some thoughts I wrote a few years after Silvia left for prison:

Not long after her twentieth birthday, Silvia gave the commencement speech at the Central Juvenile Hall graduation, speaking with eloquence and conviction. When she first entered juvenile hall at sixteen, if anyone would have told her she would do such a thing she would have dismissed them with disdain. Now, I looked at her across the crowd outside the chapel, a tiny twenty year old woman in a cap and gown, talking and smiling with a group of people, and I was so proud and happy for all she had achieved.

I went over and gave her a hug and then she told me the words I had been dreading. “Karen, I’m leaving for prison on Tuesday. I got my clearance, the judge signed my order.”

My first reaction was to say, no, I can fix it, make the judge revoke the order. You haven’t finished your tattoo removal. But I knew that wasn’t what Silvia wanted.

“So I should stop fighting? No more battles?” I said.

She nodded. “I’m ready to go. I mean, it’s not what I want for my life, but I’ve been here long enough.”

Stubbornly, I held on. “But, Silvia, look at your face, your hand. You’ll be in for a long time. I know you’re getting impatient but it’s not going to be better there. And you haven’t finished what you started.”

“Yeah, but they don’t want me here anymore. They want me out. And I’m ready.”

I could see she had closed off the possibility of staying. She wanted to get on with her sentence. She had anticipated it long enough. Sometimes the anticipation of an evil can become worse than the evil itself.

Still, it was maddening. Over a year of treatments and those stubborn tattoos on her face didn’t seem to look much different than they had in the beginning. “It’s because they’re homemade,” the girls had explained to me. “The ink is so concentrated.”

The tattoos on Silvia’s arms had virtually disappeared but the 213 on her fingers was a ghost of its former self, visible still. And then, of course, the unbearable sight that was always there, peeking out from under the orange top, Silvia loves Gerardo, as black as ever, untouched by the laser.

“Won’t it be dangerous to go to prison with that 213 faded so that everyone will know you were trying to get it off?”

She shook her head. “No, it isn’t like that. I’ll be okay.”

So, that morning, under the trees outside the chapel, sipping on bright red fruit punch, Silvia and I said good-bye, with her resigned to her fate and me afraid of letting go. She had been the light in my life, who, without even knowing it, had exposed the dark corners of my heart and made me face the hardest truths about myself.

There were no tears that morning, just a quiet overwhelming sadness. Perhaps, still being young, Silvia thought the story had ended. But that would not be the case. There was never an end. My dearest friend, Private Investigator Casey Cohen had taught me that.

I wish I could say that she lived happily ever after. I wish I could give the appearance that all the loose ends were tied and the future rosy and filled with promise. I wish I could say I slew the dragon and Silvia won her case, was released and lived a full productive life. I wish I could say she met a good man and got married and rode into the sunset.

I wish I could say all those things. But those are chapters yet to be filled. And the odds are against it. Even if Silvia had found her knight and rode off into the sunset, the cold light of day would have followed, just as it had when she sat on the beach, coming down from her high and crying into the rising sun. Pain and pleasure, love and hate, good and bad, we can’t seem to have one without the other. There are always battles to be fought and winning doesn’t necessarily mean killing the enemy.

For now, Silvia languishes in prison. Her appeals have been denied. One day stretches into the next, just as it has done for years already. A life was taken and whether or not justice was served, the fact remains that Silvia did play a small part and so she must pay. Out of this tragedy, Silvia has transformed herself into a person who, if she had remained on the streets, she might never have become. That is the great dichotomy, the twist of fate. Her tattoos were never completely erased. But she tried through the painful process to cleanse her soul. She graduated from high school with top honors and was chosen as valedictorian. Whereas, before she had been silent and submissive, never able to stand up to a man, she now stood before a crowded room, filled with young people who looked up to her, and spoke with courage and conviction.

I pray her words will not be forgotten.

We all hunger for a vision to carry us through, destined as we are to live by faith, not by sight, and to struggle with mysteries beyond our understanding. This means we all share the same, frightening blindness that can cause us to lash out at one another and stumble and fall. Some of us manage to rise above the melee in the most awe-inspiring and courageous ways. Silvia is one such person. Just because she has been locked away and deemed unworthy to live among the rest of us, does not make it right. And just because it is easy to forget her does not mean that we should.

If we do not listen to Silvia and others like her and take their words to heart, then we, as the human race, lose our collective vision.

If only we were willing to admit that we don’t “know” anything, imprisoned as we are within the confines of our own bodies. How much more likely would we then be to show humility and compassion, to reach out and help others when they stumble and fall instead of taking delight in grinding them further into the dirt? How would it be if we opened our minds and learned from unlikely sources; embraced our differences, looked into the eyes and held the hands of those we feared the most?

This “Game of Life,” as the girls in my writing class called it, is not about winning or losing or grasping for a reward in order to prove we are more worthy than someone else. It is about finding our vision and allowing it to lead us forward by faith, from darkness into light, one step at a time.

Thank you for reading. I hope you will continue to do so as I continue my writing journey.