We Are All Criminals is a catalyst for conversations about race, class, privilege, and punishment. One in four people in the United States±—and one in four in Minnesota—carries a criminal record, yet four in four have a criminal history. Our criminal legal system disparately targets Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, and people experiencing poverty, resulting in higher rates and weights of criminal records. It’s no small number of individuals and families affected, and to no small degree: permanent and public criminal records perpetuate inequities in housing, employment, and education all of which precludes millions of people from countless opportunities to move on and move up. We at WAAC use first-person narrative, photography, law, and statistics, to humanize and shift the narratives of crime, privilege, policy interpretation and implementation, and redemption.
Mass incarceration is dependent upon the ignoring and erasure of the human beings we cage. Projects like SEEN challenge that. In collaboration with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, Weisman Art Museum, and the thoughtful and deeply gifted writers and artists on the inside, WAAC disrupts mass incarceration by clearing the pathways for people behind bars to have their voices heard, faces seen, and humanity recognized—and for people on the outside to reckon with the inhumanity of our country’s mass incarceration mass disaster.