To provide a safe space for high school students who are struggling with the pain of the prison system and to nourish those students in body and spirit, offering support, community and opportunities for expression.
No one shall have to struggle alone or bear the shame, stigma and sorrow too often connected to those who endure the pain of the prison system.
Our first club began in February 2013 at Venice High School. Since that time we have expanded to create clubs at Los Angeles High School of the Arts (LAHSA), Lawndale High School, LA High in Los Angeles County, and also at Conley-Caraballo High School in Hayward, California and Lumberjack High School in Bimidji, Minnesota. We are working with schools across southern California and other parts of the country, including Washington State and Ohio. POPStheclub.com, Inc., the California public benefit corporation, publishes all POPStheclub.com, Inc.’s students work on a website and in annual anthologies and trains all POPS sponsors and volunteers, providing ongoing support to POPS clubs everywhere and establishing alliances with like-minded organizations.
The Board of Directors of POPStheclub.com, Inc. provides support and mission-based leadership and strategic governance. Day-to-day operations are led by Amy Friedman, Executive Director and an ever-expanding volunteer base.
We sit together, eat lunch together, write, read and tell each other our stories. We listen to guest speakers, we address each other's fears, questions and concerns. We write and perform and publish our stories (on this website, in annual anthologies, on The Good Men Project). We connect with others whose sorrows and struggles resonate with our own, and as a result we build resilience and a sense of belonging.
Research has found connections between parental incarceration and childhood health problems, behavior problems, and grade retention. It has also been linked to poor mental and physical health in adulthood. A recent study by Child Trends makes evident the importance of POPS to all those young people whose lives have been impacted by deportation and incarceration.
Lydia Flora Barlow, Board Chair, has a Master's degree in Biostatistics from the University of Washington. She began her professional work life as an actuary in the financial services industry and most recently was a Senior Vice President of a product group at Symetra, a Bellevue, Washington-based financial services company. Barlow has long balanced her professional life with community work in support of social justice and nonprofits. For more than ten years, she worked as a hospice volunteer, eventually expanding her service to include leadership roles, thus providing her with the strong foundation in nonprofits and board-level management she brings to the board of POPS the Club. Currently Barlow's community work is focused on education. She is president of the board of the Seattle Central College Foundation which recently launched The Seattle Promise, an initiative that covers tuition for thriving fulltime students with financial need. She also founded Fabian's Scholarship which provides financial resources to those currently incarcerated or recently released from prison who seek an education. Barlow's passion for the mission of POPS the Club emanates from her experience in her own community with families of the incarcerated and from personal experience, the incarceration and eventual suicide (while incarcerated) of her "brother," Fabian.
Carol F. Burton, L.M.S.W., BS and M.S.W., Co-Chair and Coordinator of Alameda County's Children of Incarcerated Parents Partnership, advisor for NRCCFI at Rutgers University at Camden and CEO and Principal Consultant for Jeweld Legacy Group. In 2013 Burton received The White House Champion of Change Award for her outstanding work on behalf of Children of Incarcerated Parents. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
Dennis Danziger, Co-Founder, has taught English and Sports Literature in the Los Angeles Unified School District for over twenty years. In collaboration with his wife, Amy Friedman and PEN USA's Pen in the Classroom program, he has shepherded hundreds of students to publish their first essay in the PEN USA Anthologies. Since 2013, he has served as instigator, prompter, and editor of the POPS the Club anthologies and other student writing and as sponsor of the inaugural POPS Club at Venice High. Mr. Danziger's essays have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers. He is a novelist and playwright who currently works closely with Hollywood's Stephanie Feury Theater.
Chaim Dunbar is a poet, speaker, actor and artistic activist. A product of The Juilliard School, Chaim is passionate about liberating men's hearts, particularly in urban communities. He is founder of WeBeONE and Co-founder Dunbar Brand Inc., two media companies dedicated to creating socially responsible, life affirming and entertaining content. Chaim the creator and former host of The People Speak, a conscious open mic event for poets and storytellers at Agape International; he is director of Dirty Me Divine, a one-woman show that empowers women to heal their shame and live their truth; he is the writer and star of a short form poetry film, Where Are the Men, produced by RARE Media. His company, Dunbar Brand, Inc. along with Elevate Films and RARE Media are developing a documentary film, ColorOfLove, a collection of stories celebrating multiculturalism and the diversity of love.
Anastasia Stanecki, Ativist and essayist, Anastasia works in the entertainment producer. She grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and in smalltown Georgia, graduating with a degree in journalism from Oakland University. Anastasia was the first guest speaker at one of the earliest Pops the club meetings--and it was there, she says, that she found her Soul Purpose.
Heidi Tuffias is a family lawyer and mediator whose practice focuses on dispute resolution. Ms. Tuffias graduated from the University of California Davis with a Bachelor's Degree in contemporary history and received her law degree from the University of Southern California Law Center; there she received the National Association of Women Lawyers' Outstanding Woman Law Student Award. While still in practice, Ms. Tuffias is also pursuing a Master's degree in psychology at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She has long been an advocate for the rights of the incarcerated. Through the 1990s, Ms. Tuffias served on and was chair of the Women Lawyers Association Jail Project. She was a mentor with the Los Angeles Barristers Juvenile Justice program, working with juveniles incarcerated at the Dorothy Kirby Center. Ms. Tuffias has served on the Board of the Association of Certified Family Law Specialists and, in addition to being on the board of POPS the Club, is a member of the Family Law Executive Committee of the Los Angeles County Bar Association and the Harriet Buhai Center for Family Law.
Rodney Williams is an entrepreneur and writer. For the past eleven years he has been owner, innkeeper and chef for a 26-room lodging brand with two locations. Prior to his entrepreneurial career, Mr. Williams had a successful fifteen-year corporate career in the healthcare financing/actuarial field, working with the largest health insurer in the country and a respected employee benefits consulting firm. His most recent, forthcoming memoir details his brush with the criminal justice system and his search for identity and justice. As an avid genealogist, Mr. Williams believes the exploration of family history fosters self-confidence, groundedness, and a strong sense of self. His educational background includes a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Mathematics/Economics from Emory University and culinary training at the Los Angeles Culinary Institute.
Madge Stein Woods is involved with several nonprofits working with women prisoners. She is a longtime mentor for women parolees and also sits on the board of R.I.S.E. to Empower. Ms. Woods has worked as a court-appointed mediator. Past president of the board for Action Committee for Women in Prison, she continues to support Christmas gift giving events to women in county jails and prisons in Southern California. Ms. Woods is a native Angeleno, graduate of West L.A.’s public schools.
Amy Friedman, POPS the Club Co-Founder and Executive Director, is the author of several memoirs, thousands of essays, articles and stories and the long-running syndicated feature Tell Me a Story. She works as an editor and ghostwriter and teaches creative writing to high school students involved with POPS the Club and to students at UCLA Extension, The Skirball Cultural Arts Center, Idyllwild School of the Arts and in private workshops. Ms. Friedman's devotion to the families of the incarcerated began in early 1992 when she was married to a man in prison and helping to raise his two daughters. Ms. Friedman is a staunch believer both in freedom of expression and in the power of art to change the world. She envisions a POPS the Club in every high school in the country, and with the spread of POPS the Club, the end of the shame and stigma too often associated both with the incarcerated and their loved ones.
ADVISORY BOARD
Elsa Mendoza, former principal Venice High School, LAUSD
Dr. Raphael Bostic, Professor, Judith and John Bedrosian Chair in Governance and the Public Enterprise
