By Community Alliance Staff
Community Alliance readers, advertisers, contributors and supporters are invited to join us for a fund-raiser on June 15. As you are aware, we are experiencing a crisis that threatens to stop us from keeping independent media accessible to everyone. At a time when our most basic democratic values are in peril, we need to join together to ensure that in Fresno everyone can have access to alternative media.
As we continue fighting to persevere, we ask you, our most loyal readers, to help by joining us on June 15 at 5 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Church at 2672 E. Alluvial Ave. for an event in support of the Community Alliance newspaper.
The keynote speaker and recipient of this year’s Mike Rhodes Writer’s Award is Boston Woodard, a jailhouse journalist for decades. There will be a cocktail buffet during the social hour with an opportunity to talk to the speakers and others in the progressive community.
Woodard has been writing about the prison system’s failures and abuses for nearly three decades in both free world and prisoner publications. Woodard’s writing embarrassed and angered prison officials.
For exercising his First Amendment right to define his surroundings he was put in the hole/solitary confinement (administrative segregation), had his mail tampered with, was subjected to verbal threats, had his personal property stolen or destroyed, nearly died from medical neglect and was illegally and adversely transferred from prison to prison.
Woodard has been a contributing writer for the Community Alliance newspaper since 2005. His book, Inside the Broken California Prison System, is a compilation of his articles written for the newspaper while in prison. The book will be available for purchase at the fund-raiser.
Woodard is currently working on a second book about notorious inmates who he met while serving time. Visit the Community Alliance Web site (https://fresnoalliance.com/) and search for “Boston Woodard” to read his articles.
Also featured at the event is Marvin Mutch, a formerly incarcerated prison reform activist and co-founder of both My Brothers Keepers and the Men’s Advisory Council, a prisoner advocacy group that was established inside San Quentin to represent the collective needs and grievances of California’s prisoners.
Mutch served 41 years of an indeterminate seven-year to life sentence for a wrongful conviction suffered in 1975. He was freed in February 2016. Today, he is a criminal justice reform lobbyist.
Purchase tickets in advance for $40 each or pay $50 at the door. Tickets are available online at https://bpt.me/4229826 and on our FB Event Page searchable as Community Alliance June 2019 Fundraiser – Keep Free Speech Alive!
