The Pickup's Culture coverage is brought to you by Tulsa Artists' Coalition Gallery, 40 Years of Empowering Tulsa Artists. Visit TAC Gallery to see American Highway Revisited by VC Torneden and Melinda Harvey Green, June 5 – 27, 2026.
In a rehabilitation center tucked inside Tijuana, Mexico, women recovering from addiction sit surrounded by watercolor palettes, magazines cut into fragments, scraps of handwritten poetry, and canvases layered with paint. Some are mothers separated from their children, some are survivors of abuse or trafficking. Some are only beginning to confront the weight of years spent in addiction. And for many of them, this is the first time they have been asked not who they were at their worst moment, but who they are underneath it all.
Most people familiar with Poetic Justice know the nonprofit organization through its work in the United States, where workshops centered on creative writing and artistic expression are used in prisons, jails, and youth facilities with groups in California, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma (where it was founded in 2014). But the organization's impact doesn't end there.
For nearly eight years, Claudia Ramírez has operated a Poetic Justice project inside La Esperanza, a women’s rehabilitation center in Tijuana that focuses on intervening prior to incarceration. Ramírez, a drug and family counselor who lives in Mexico, became involved after Poetic Justice Executive Director Ellen Stackable visited the facility years ago at the invitation of Stackable's brother, Victor Miller, a longtime volunteer there.
During the visit, with the help of Ramírez, Stackable led a multi-day creative writing workshop centered on poetry and self-reflection. The women at La Esperanza responded immediately to the experience, and when the workshop ended, it was clear that someone would be needed to continue the program. That's when Ramírez volunteered.
“I’m only one person,” she said with a laugh during an interview, explaining why she now focuses primarily on one facility despite previously traveling among several. As one of the only English speakers involved in the Tijuana project, Ramírez serves as both counselor and bridge between the Mexican rehabilitation center and the broader Poetic Justice network in the United States.