Interview: Cory Walster of Civil Survival

On October 8th, editor and writer Matthew Cannelora had a chance to sit down with one of his mentors in Justice-Impacted nonprofit work, Cory Walster of Washington State's Civil Survival. Following the introduction are excerpts from the interview. For a transcript of the full interview, minus edits for clarity, please follow this link.

When I was first out of prison, I had a dream of working with the previously incarcerated on prison literacy. I had one name to go on for making my dream a reality--no email address, no phone number, just a name. That man was Omari Amili, and when I finally tracked him down for a phone call, he listened to my dreams and said, “There’s one guy you need to talk to: Cory Walster.”

Within a day I was on a Zoom with Cory, Kitsap County chair for the nonprofit Civil Survival. He welcomed me to his meetings, even though I was across the state from him at the time. He availed me of his time and energy in getting my own dreams to reality. And he also gave me the two most important pieces of advice I’ve heard in this chapter of my life. The first, “Your story is your asset, not your burden.” And second, “If you want people to know you’re doing good work, start doing it.”

Since I started working with Blake Carter, founder of The Blue Cavalry, I’ve wanted to bring Cory’s story and message to the Blue Cavalry audience and readership. Cory is more than a survivor, he’s a thriver. And beyond cheap rhyme scheme, I mean that Cory positively hums with energy and commitment to his passions. He lives and works for his communities--the larger community of Native Americans, his Kitsap Community, and his Community of Justice Impacted Persons.

During the course of our interview, Cory shared a lot of successes that Civil Survival has had. For years, the formerly incarcerated in Washington State could not vacate their records until they had paid their Legal Financial Obligations (LFOs). These were fines imposed by a rubric, irrespective of an individual’s situation. And the interest rates for these fines began compounding as soon as a person was sentenced. So a person convicted of a minor drug crime could walk out of prison with thousands of dollars owed in fines. Getting a job is hard enough with a criminal record--and a person couldn’t get their record cleared until they’d paid their thousands of dollars in fees.

Civil Survival has worked with both sides of the State Legislature to erase the interest rate policy on LFOs. Civil Survival has also worked to get the process for vacating records cleared easier and more feasible for low-level offenders.

In addition to sharing those and other victories of Civil Survival, Cory also shared his own story, a story that ties in to the victories of Civil Survival. For instance, Cory Walster has just recently had his own record vacated. This process was a personal and a policy success for Cory--one that was possible because of Civil Survival and Justice allies, but also because he came to the realization himself that he deserved to have his record vacated.

Please take heart in what you read from Cory Walster. For more information about Civil Survival, please click here to visit their website.

Matthew Cannelora

So if you could, if you wouldn't mind giving... what your title is… what your official official position is, and a quick rundown of what Civil Survival is.

Cory Walster

...I actually have two [titles]. One is statewide organizer. And the other is Kitsap County Game Changer leader. And so I [am on the] statewide staff, and then 10 hours a week [I lead] a county local group, what we call our game changer groups. And what those are, for lack of a better term, they're a support group for formerly incarcerated people.

MC

...And what does Civil Survival do? What's the mission statement, if you will?

CW

...Our mission is to be a formerly incarcerated led organization... We're a nonprofit led by the formerly incarcerated and we have a motto of educate, motivate, liberate. … For our educate portion we do workshops to teach advocacy, to directly impacting people. Our motivate is our game changer groups and we talk about legislation that's coming up, we support each other, we [discuss] housing … we support each other … you know, it's a space where we are centered, where the formula is anchored, is centered [on the Justice Impacted person], which is not the normal thing in society. … And then the liberate portion is when we participate in advocacy days at the Capitol, or virtually, where we teach and take care of directly impacted community members and show them how to make meetings with their lawmakers and go out to have conversations with their elected officials and share their stories with them.

MC

...most of our readers are younger college age, and are not justice impacted. Can you speak in a nutshell to the cyclical nature of being justice impacted? You and I know the cycle, but some people, I think, are under the impression that you commit a crime, you go to prison. You do your time, you get out and everything's done… Can you speak to ... all of the different ways that being justice impacted goes beyond just the sentence and how Civil Survival helps with that?

CW

Yeah, so, you know, it's not just the general public that thinks that. People think that when they catch their first charge as well, you know, they're led to believe that when they're threatened with that exceptional sentence, either take his plea bargain, or you're going to do 10-20 years. People think that, okay, you know, I'll take this, I'll do my time, and I'll be able to get out at the end when it's done, when my sentence is over, and then get back on with my life. That's just not the case. Historically, when we were sentenced, Kitsap County gave some of the highest amounts in legal financial obligations, fines were about $2,500 per case here. And those fines came with a 12% interest rate from the time of incarceration. And also you can't vacate, you couldn't make it your record and tell you're fighting for paid off. And your time didn't even start to be able to vacate your record and tell those fines were paid…They changed [some of those laws][thanks to Civil Survival, ed.], you know, [but] when we get out also the labels that are on us, right?

Once we've been through the prison system we are labeled as inmates, convicts, as offenders as felons. All of those words are used to dehumanize us, and treat us as less than ordinary citizens. We're the only class of citizens that you can legally discriminate against. Other people have laws that protect them. We don't, we can be discriminated against for housing, we can be discriminated against for employment. We can be discriminated against in our children's education. And not allowed to be full participating parents by not being able to, not allowed to participate in classroom activities or we're going on field trips with our children...

And, and that's really, the way the system's designed to work. And then they say that we're, we're not redeemable or we're not reformable you know, back a long time ago, especially meth or crack, or heroin. You know, they, those people that were addicted, those drugs [and people] were seen as throwaway humans and unredeemable. And that's why they tried to bury us. But really, you know, a big part of why this country has incarcerated the highest amount of people is our system is designed to disproportionately affect communities of color and those most marginalized. And it's designed to keep people going back. Whether, you know, I don't think people actively see that, or maybe not everybody intends for us to do that. But there are people that are in power in this country that don't want the poor and they don't want people of color to have a voice.

MC

You spoke quite a bit earlier about the successes that Civil Survival has had. What are some things that Civil Survival and other justice allied organizations are still struggling with? What are some of the big fish that still need to be fried?

CW

There's still a lot to do. One big problem is there's still some folks stuck around the mentality of an eye for an eye, or a you know, a pound of flesh and get 'em; making sure that they get that full pound of flesh. And so that has caused a lot of reforms to not be retroactive which upholds the racist system. And, you know, one thing we try really hard to do with our [legislative] bills is to analyze them through a racial equity lens and make sure that what we're doing isn’t adding to, or compounding a problem that already exists.

MC

You know, [there is] the idea that the justice system is for, you know, punishment, not just rehabilitation. Do you think maybe there's room for kind of a grassroots movement, people that read this article to maybe just start changing their minds and changing the minds of the people around them?

CW

Yeah, absolutely. You know...I often point out, you know, everyone in our prisons, every single person that is in our prisons is somebody whose [going to be someone’s] neighbor, right? They live somewhere in one of our communities, and they have a release date … and how do we want them to return home, more traumatized with more issues, or do we want them to return home, having received care, having received mental health care having received substance abuse care, receiving an education so that they can legitimately support their families with a living wage? Because I want my neighbors to be happy and healthy and I want them to have their basic needs met so that our communities are safer in general. People that are unhoused and people that don't have their needs met, they're in a constant state of trauma or constant state of survival and that can lead to crime and other things. So we really need to think about how we want our neighbors to come home.

----

Later in the interview, Cory opened up about how to tell one’s own story, and how our stories can help us take action in our communities. He also discussed how arbitrary the background check system is, regarding length of time from a given sentence.

In an answer to my final question, if he had one thing to say that I didn’t ask the question for, he said,

“I like to remind people that those words “Offender,” “Felon,” … they're not first person words. They're labels [that] can easily be replaced with something like formerly incarcerated or currently incarcerated. You know, there's other first person words that can be used. Let's not adapt to the system's way of dehumanizing us.”

Please click here for a full transcript of the interview (edited for clarity). And, again, please visit Civil Survival’s website for more information about their organization.