California is a state of immense contradictions. Home to colossal wealth and long portrayed as a bastion of opportunity, it also has one of the largest prison populations in the United States and consistently ranks on the bottom of education indexes. Taking a unique, multifaceted insider s perspective, First Strike delves into the root causes of its ever-expansive prison system and disastrous educational policy.Recentering analysis of Black masculinity beyond public rhetoric, First Strike critiques the trope of the school-to-prison pipeline and instead explores the realm of public school as a form of enclosure that has influenced the schooling (and denial of schooling) and imprisonment of Black people in California.