Unchained Scholars Transforming Social Work: A Documentary about USC’s Student Organization in the Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work
saturday, april 17, session 2
workshop g: 11:30 am - 12:30 pm pst
This documentary features members of Unchained Scholars (US) who have experienced incarceration and have either earned MSW, PhD or DSW degrees or are currently pursuing one at the University of Southern California. The organization began at USC in 2018 and is the only group with a focus on mass incarceration in a graduate school of social work currently identified.
While US began at USC, it’s mission and vision is to mobilize the social work profession to address the criminal legal system as the intersectional vortex of recycling trauma that it is and to dismantle the barriers and collateral consequences created by mass incarceration. US sees people with lived experience of the criminal legal system as particularly attuned clinical social workers as well as agents of change for social justice. They challenge the academic programs to examine gatekeeping practices in multiple ways and to develop policies and practices of openly welcoming and encouraging students with lived experience.
The following people are featured in the documentary: Dr. Genevieve Rimer, Fabiola Quijano, MSW, Heidi de Leon, MSW, Yehudah Pryce, MSW/DSW Candidate, Evan Moore, MWS Candidate, Deirdre Wilson, MSW Candidate and Monique Bingham, MSW Candidate.
The documentary is filmed and edited by Leon Henderson, Jr., with assistance from Gerald Harris, Jr., Langston Ball and Tavishya White.
This 20-minute piece will be followed by a question and answer and discussion period.
meet the filmmaker
Leon Henderson, Jr., was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. He studied communications at Webster University and he desires to tell the stories of normal people few know. He is a photographer, photojournalist, and a traveler turned filmmaker. His background in photography heavily informs his work as a filmmaker. Telling this story, as his debut documentary, is important to him as so many people are impacted directly and indirectly by mass incarceration.
meet the cast
Deirdre Wilson
Deirdre is a USC MSW candidate and Co-Chair of USC’s Unchained Scholars. She was incarcerated for four years and lost custody of her children as a result. Since her release in 2005, she has been involved in the movement to end mass incarceration and have worked to build communities centered around care. A few of the organizations she has been a part of are California Coalition for Women Prisoners, All of Us or None and Ahimsa Collective.
Monique Bingham
Monique is a USC MSW candidate and the Co-chair of USC's Unchained Scholars. She joined this student caucus because she wants to help individuals who are formerly incarcerated. Additionally, she feels great affinity with the other members and finds great support in community with them. Her father spent 20 years in prison and at times she feels like a part of her was chained there with him.
Dr. Genevieve Rimer
Dr. Genevieve Rimer is passionate about using her personal experience as a person with a criminal conviction as a tool to inspire others and to call out injustices particularly within employment, the social work profession and in the halls of academia. What motivates her most is imaging a future where people are able to use lessons learned from poor choices and past mistakes as expertise and experience. She has transformed shame into power and wears redemption on her sleeve.
Fabiola Quijano, ASW
Fabiola Quijano, ASW is a USC alumni, and co-founder of Unchained Scholars. After an 18 year history of complex traumas, drug addiction, and in-and-out of the system, she transformed her life in 2012. Her life experience has turned into strength, courage, and resiliency. Today, she is an associate clinical social worker and the Program Manager of Family Recovery Center a women's drug treatment program in Oceanside, California. She empowers, and instills hope in her community, in her career, and her family.
Evan Moore
I am a first year social work student at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and a member of Unchained Scholars. My background of mental illness and drug addiction has framed in me a desire to work with people who are both formerly incarcerated and suffering with mental health issues. I am also a certified massage therapist and black belt in Tae Kwon Do.
Heidi De Leon, ASW, CADC-II
Heidi De Leon, ASW, CADC-II, is a mom of 3 kids. She identifies as being formerly incarcerated and a former foster youth. Heidi spent 8 years in an out of state prison and three of them in solitary confinement. Her vision is to use her story to help reverse the school to prison pipelines with activism, empowerment and policy change. Heidi is a member of Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC) and the NASW California’s Rehabilitation and Inclusion Counsel. She currently works at Los Angeles Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse as a Clinical Manager. She has worked in Addiction treatment for the past 12 years. She earned her MSW from the University of Southern California in August of 2018 and her BA in Africana Studies from California State University, Dominguez Hills in May 2016. Heidi is a Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Scholar, member of the NASW-CA Rehabilitation and Inclusion Council and alumna of NASW-USC.
Yehudah Pryce
Yehudah Pryce graduated Summa Cum Laude from Adams State University, earning his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with an emphasis in Social Welfare in 2019; he earned his Master of Social Work at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work in December 2020; and he is now working toward a Doctor of Social Work degree at Simmons University. He is a social worker for the Young Adult Court in Orange County, a psychotherapist at the residential addiction treatment center Beit T’Shuvah, and a formerly incarcerated community member who was released in October of 2018 after serving over 16 years in prison for a non-violent robbery that he was arrested for as a teenager. Yehudah is also an active member of the LA DA Accountability Coalition and recently published a report on Criminalizing Victims and Trauma.