This workshop was facilitated at The Fortune Society with people navigating reentry. Together, we discussed the life and execution of Marcellus Khalifah Williams, the violence of the death penalty, and the realities of the system all participants were all affected by. We read his poems aloud, treating them not as evidence or commentary, but as living work produced under conditions of confinement.
The workshop then moved into a collective art-making session, where participants created visual memories of Marcellus Khalifah Williams as a way of honoring his life beyond the state’s narrative. Rather than focusing on spectacle or trauma, the practice centered care, remembrance, and the right to be held in memory on one’s own terms.
This session used visual storytelling as a tool for reflection and agency, making space for grief, anger, and solidarity while affirming that memory itself can be a form of resistance.
