On Jenny Cudd’s 11 acres in the Texas Hill Country, January 6 is commemorated a little differently, perhaps, than in other parts of the country.
To mark the day when supporters of Donald Trump overran the United States Capitol disrupting the certification of the 2020 election results, the property displayed a sign reading “Happy Patriots Day!”
The property is planned to have five houses meant to help those charged with crimes during the 2021 insurrection get back on their feet after serving time.
Sasha Von Oldershausen, who wrote about this for Texas Monthly, said the property’s location is idyllic.
“Jenny also operates in a bed and breakfast on that property. And as far as the project’s development is concerned, it’s really just beginning,” Von Oldershausen said. “She has plans to build five tiny houses on the property. And when I went there last week on January 6, just one of them had started to be erected. You could see the frame built up. So that’s going to continue development.
“She is hoping to have one tiny home fully finished by Jan. 20, Inauguration Day, and then continuing to develop the property over the coming months.”
Cudd was at the Capitol on January 6, Von Oldershausen said.
“Her version of this story was that she entered the building through open doors, she joined a prayer circle and then left 19 minutes later. She was charged with a misdemeanor and ended up not spending any time in jail,” Von Oldershausen said. “But she says that her experience sort of inspired her to dedicate her life to helping these other J6ers who serve time or are currently in prison, potentially awaiting a pardon from Trump.”
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Cudd has already been in touch with one person who has interest in moving onto the property: James McGrew, a Mississippi man who was sentenced to more than six years in prison for assaulting law enforcement officers that day.
“He’s going to be the first to come to the property after Inauguration Day, [assuming] that he is pardoned, which Trump has indicated he would,” Von Oldershausen said. “It’s unclear whether he intends to issue blanket pardons across all the defendants, but at least among his supporters and within this crowd, there was a sense that he would keep his word.”
Von Oldershausen said as the folks involved in Cudd’s project wait to find out about pardons and continue on construction, they are also thinking differently about prison reform.
“Throughout the night [I was there], and in the mission statement of this project, [there is] a lot of language of reintegration and support and second chances, all things you’d typically associate with a more liberal ideology around criminal justice reform,” she said. “And one of the things that Jenny explicitly told me was that a lot of the folks who never cared about criminal justice reform now do as a result of this situation with January 6 defendants.”
Von Oldershausen visited for a fundraiser that took place on Jan. 6 of this year, and she said several of the people involved in the project have their own histories in the prison system.
“The contractors who are volunteering their time to build these homes both had a criminal history,” she said. “One had been in and out of prison for 14 years on drug and assault charges. The other had served two years on drug charges. And both were sober and advocates for helping people get back on their feet after they’ve served time. So there was a lot of that language there that night.”
