Kat's Story
Kat Walden
Kat Walden isn’t just a Petey Greene Program volunteer alumna; she’s also the former Division Manager in Philadelphia. Both experiences were critical in opening her mind to the issues that incarcerated people face daily.
As a senior at Temple University in 2017, Kat was looking for an internship as a capstone assignment for her major, human development and community engagement. While many of her peers were looking for opportunities in education, she had something else in mind.
“College was really tricky in terms of figuring out what it was that I wanted to do,” Kat said. “It felt like things weren’t really calling me, but it was like, ‘Oh, the time has run out.’”
That changed when she found out about the PGP at a fair Temple hosted. After learning what the program was about, she decided to apply and got in. Unlike the typical volunteer, Kat was able to both volunteer as a tutor at various detention centers around Philadelphia and learn about the administrative side of the organization.
As part of the internship, Kat recruited other volunteers and got the PGP certified as a recognized campus club at Temple. Kat quickly found that she enjoyed both working as a tutor and collaborating with and recruiting other volunteers.
“I wanted to learn more… and the Petey Greene Program was my first in-depth experience with getting to see the criminal legal system.”
Before this, Kat said she felt like she was living in a bubble isolated from these issues. The PGP popped that bubble for her. In fact, after she graduated, Kat applied to join the PGP staff and became a Division Manager.
As Division Manager, Kat continued both managing volunteers and serving as a volunteer tutor herself. She also got an even deeper look into the bureaucratic side of the criminal legal system and how organizations working to support people on the inside navigate these systems.
In this new role, she served as the point person for volunteers who were just starting to understand this system themselves. As she worked more with volunteers and incarcerated learners, Kat realized that while she believed in the PGP’s mission to support incarcerated students, she wanted to do even more to advocate for and organize with currently and formerly incarcerated people.
Around this time, Kat learned that New Orleans was the incarceration capital of the country, and she decided to pack up her things and move to the South. While she didn’t have a job lined up, she still made the leap of faith, knowing that there had to be work to be done in the state.
“I thought that maybe there's a job down there, so I moved, knowing that being able to do that, just picking up and going with no job lined up, was itself a privilege and it was important for me to sit with that,” Kat said.
Soon after moving, Kat started working on the Unanimous Jury Coalition, which aimed to support a ballot measure that would require a jury to be unanimous when convicting someone of a crime. It passed in 2018.
After that success, Kat worked in the Education Program of Operation Restoration, which partners with Tulane University to provide a college education to currently incarcerated women. She also worked with the Power Coalition for Equity and Justice to provide tools to and organize with historically marginalized voters and break down ballot measures across the state of Louisiana.
Since January 2021, Kat has served as the membership coordinator for Law for Black Lives, a Black-femme led organization that gives radical lawyers, legal workers and law students a political home to transform the law and build the power of organizing to protect, defend and advance Black Liberation.
“It's been really beautiful to see the way that folks are wanting to show up for movements,” Kat said. “The people within our network are recognizing and understanding that the law is a tool within the toolbox of building movement. It’s powerful to be part of a group that is unapologetic about its values of movement lawyering, abolition, Black Queer feminism, and anti-capitalism.”
In her new role, Kat helps build Law for Black Lives’ membership base and provides a space for advocates and lawyers to work together to strategize against social injustices. Kat said she credits the PGP with opening her eyes to the need for social justice organizations like Law for Black Lives.
“I think the Petey Greene Program was a stepping stone for me to check in with myself and ask myself what my values are, where’s my political grounding, what is this work and how do I want to show up.”