A Just Cause Is No Sacrifice for Kimi Scudder-Gamble by Valerie Shaw, M.PR For 12 years Kimi Scudder-Gamble has been working the streets of Central Los Angeles, intervening in gang turf wars, teaching, counseling and tutoring at-risk youth, serving as a gang expert in L.A. Superior Courts and performing outreach to dozens of men and women incarcerated within California's burgeoning prison population.

She moves as comfortably among the black gangs and factions of gangs in Central Los Angeles as John Brown did among black slaves 150 years ago, helping them to escape from tyranny and bondage, committing his life (and that of his entire family) to the emancipation of slavery.

True to the cause, Brown, a religious zealot, became the best known of the "free state" guerrilla leaders and the subject of legend and lore when, in October 1859, he staged a symbolic, albeit, unsuccessful raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia and was hanged for treason, murder, and conspiring with slaves to rebel.

These are different times, of course, but Kimi Scudder-Gamble is as much an advocate for the unpopular cause of prisoner rights and prison reform as was John Brown in the cause of freeing the slaves. And, with long blonde braids and wide blue eyes, the petite fair-skinned Orange County native is just as unlikely a hero.

Last year, in October, she carried her passion a bit further than Brown, when Kimi Scudder married Ricky Gamble, a black man imprisoned in Central California for a crime, she says, he didn't commit. It is her devotion to Ricky, who is serving 110 years to life, which gives Kimi Scudder-Gamble the will to fight in the most unlikely battle of her previously sheltered life.

"I was raised to be fair," says Kimi, in a diminutive voice so characteristic of unlikely heroes. "When I saw the tape of the Rodney King beating and the subsequent disturbance, somehow I identified, even though I was living a comfortable life in Orange County."

Within days of the riot (or disturbance, depending on your point of view) Kimi Scudder-Gamble found herself touring the scene of urban devastation. But she didn't just look at the ransacked buildings, the blighted and crumpled cityscape; she looked at the people -- their despair, their anguish, their fear.

"At that very moment," says Kimi, "I knew that my life was here."

Then, within weeks, Kimi Scudder had joined the staff at the famed Sheenway School, teaching at-risk youth 12 to 19.

Within a decade she would found a school, Community Restoration Alternative High School, and become one of the most credible and courageous voices within the criminal justice system, in defense of the wrongfully convicted.

I have known Kimi Scudder-Gamble for less than six months, nonetheless I am sure that she is the Joan d' Arc, Princess Diana, Mother Theresa or Erin Brocovich of the Juvenile Justice System circa the 21st Century.

In each case, these sheroes took up unpopular issues and turned them into causes celebre. Paradoxically, their passion turned them into celebrities and the celebrity fueled their passion. Kimi Scudder-Gamble is this kind of diva of the underserved and unrepresented, strengthened by the sacredness of her mission and the belief that she can make a difference.

It has taken her a decade to build the credibility among the gangs of Central L.A. to make a difference, for she is neither a black man nor an ex-con who definitively knows life from both sides of the bars.

It has taken her this decade to build the trust of o.g.'s like charismatic, notorious author, "Monster" Kody Scott, who was a volunteer teacher in Kimi's school, but is now serving two years for violation of probation; Hakim "Psych" Haynes, from the Swans, a Bloods gang, now a youth counselor and anti-violence speaker and Roosevelt Tellis aka Madbone was a youth counselor at the school, helping Kimi's kids get "passes" through rival territory in order to get to school, but today is being held on three strikes charges.

Still, after proving her allegiance, marrying one of their own and committing her life to selfless service, she has detractors, suspicious of her pale skin and "foreign" origin.

Today, Kimi Scudder-Gamble seeks justice for her husband, Ricky, and dozens of other wrongfully incarcerated American prisoners. Just this year she became a certified paralegal in her efforts to represent those without a voice in their own defense.

In this line of work, no day is routine. She might be negotiating a truce one hour, the next appearing in court on behalf of one of her kids. She could be meeting with a parent, foster parent, probation officer or placing another meddlesome call to a far-off warden, insisting that prisoners be given the right to use toilet paper. She could be meeting with top police officials and top gang leaders or coaxing a wanna-be not to join a gang, no matter how alluring it appears.

She regularly visits prisoners, in county jail or state prison and frequently appears in court as a character or material witness.

The only routine she has, these days, is her half-day trek on Friday to visit her husband on Saturday and Sunday for a few scant hours in the visitor's yard -- unless there is a lockdown, as happened recently for over a month, robbing her of even those precious moments of conversation and holding hands. While many black leaders are incredulous and won't so much as acknowledge this unlikely ally in their struggle, Kimi is undaunted and quietly goes about the business of trying to change policy, influence public perceptions and watching her students successfully graduate into a world of freedom and promise.

"…Why do some men choose the underdogs when their credentials entitle them to a seat at the table of upperdogs?" asked Lerone Bennett Jr. in 1968 in his book, Pioneers In Protest. "…An unjust world requires, demands the sacrifice of the Just. The friction [they provide] is necessary for the health of society, which clings tenaciously to the old and the safe."

But for Kimi Scudder-Gamble a just cause is no sacrifice. Like John Brown and so many others before her, it is sheer determination -- with little financial backing and no fanfare -- that drives her to forgo private comfort for the public good.

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For other works by Valerie Shaw please see:

Valerie Shaw
offerings of an urban woman

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