Nor Meekly Serve Her Time...

Hey All,


This may be my last blog post for awhile. I've been pretty ill these past few months, and this last round of antibiotics doesn't seem to be doing much. I may be in the hospital and inaccessible for a few days, if this fever doesn't break tomorrow. I'll still be following up with the individual case work I've started - or will get help doing so - and will post prisoner SOS calls and updates as I'm able to, but I won't be keeping up too well with politics and private prisons, and certainly won't be going to any protests for awhile. I need to gain a few pounds before I go chalking up the town again, too. My hope is to at least prepare a statement for the House Committee on Sentencing meeting, which is on for February 24. If I can do that much, I should be back up and blogging as well.


Friends of Marcia Powell can still log into that site under their own Gmail accounts, by the way - try to keep things looking alive, there, and post updates about our Anarchist/Indigenous bloc comrades. Think of something cool to do for state prisoners for Valentine's Day, too...


Speaking of - Free Marcia Powell was apparently confiscated in the mail room as contraband at Perryville Prison recently. Don't know what blog post it was - my friend just told me that she mailed something in there, and got a letter back from her friend saying they only gave her the envelope. I found that kind of amusing at first - I just dropped below a hundred pounds this weekend, can't keep up with the daily news anymore, and the most fortified institution in the state actually considers me a threat.  

I suppose I should take it as a compliment, but now I'm kind of annoyed, instead. I hope I don't have trouble corresponding with prisoners myself - there are a few I just need to express support to - just to give them comfort - not get them all riled up...I wouldn't necessarily include everything in a letter that I put in my blogs, anyway. In any event, I won't be sneaking in - they'll see me coming. I don't think I have anything to hide. I guess they do, though...

Maybe it's not even me - maybe it's really the "us" that's the threat - the idea of solidarity between women on the inside, and those of us on the outside. We just might even constitute a "gang" - we're all pretty scary, with our chalk and signs. Seriously: this could be a dangerous new alliance forming: Sex Workers, anarchists, union members, food-not-bombers, angry prison moms and wives, families of the wrongfully convicted, people who were recently incarcerated, advocates for prisoners with Hep C, and a few free madwomen like me...we could really cause a ruckus if we can get in one place at the same time.


I'm thinking that Perryville Prison on May 20, 2010, would be a good place and time. We could have our first annual memorial service for those who have died in the custody of the state (jails, prisons, hospitals, etc) on the anniversary of Marcia Powell's death. I think we should ask the governor to issue a proclamation and have a ceremony, like she does to honor other crime victims. In fact, instead of freaking out the ADC by showing up at Perryville, we might work on trying to get a memorial plaque placed at Wes Bolin Plaza. Everyone else has one there - even the state's K-9s killed in the line of duty...including those left out too long in the sun. 

If they don't give us a spot at Bolin Plaza, then maybe we should just take one that day. I have a nice corner already picked out, facing the Capitol, opposite the crime victims' memorial. 

Just something to think about.


We should definitely connect and begin organizing before the Liver Life Walk on March 20 (see post below). I'll try to put together something at my place when I'm not quite so delerious.


It seems fitting to sign off for now with the following article by Vikki Law, remembering Marcia Powell. I thought I posted this already, but I guess I just held onto it closely for awhile because I thought it was so cool. I was pretty blown away to see the company we keep - humbled. It takes a lot more courage and creativity than I think I have to resist from the inside - self-restraint, too. In high school they just threw me out for my mouth (well, and a few other things). In prison they keep you longer. I'd spend my entire sentence in the hole for being too quick to clench my fist or pull out my fighting voice. It'd sure be hard to help anyone from there.

Anyway, I think it's pretty awesome that Vikki's been watching what's going on here with the women in Arizona's prison, and lending her support (and zines!) to our efforts. We've learned a lot from the women whose voices she's helped to amplify, and from her critical analyses of women's resistance in prison. She's been a steady source of encouragement, too, when I've wondered what the hell I'm doing out here and why. This isn't the "career" move most women my age are making (I think my family is finally getting worried about me). 

I actually think I want to write a musical about all this - something like Rent (Linda and I just saw her kid play Roger - he was awesome), only with the music and poetry and history of women's resistance that's already at our disposal...just not all of it has already been told.

Maybe it'll be about women organizing to help a fellow prisoner get lifesaving treatment that's not on the state formulary, or trying to win her compassionate release - something that will address the major issues we've been coming across calling for criminal code revision and sentencing reform, the shredding of the PLRA, and the ouster of legislators like Kavanaugh (Mr. Private Prison) and Pearce (no further comment). Some of those stories are related below.

Wouldn't it be something if Ryan let us in to collaborate with Perryville prisoners on this kind of thing?


Yeah. No chance in hell. I think I might just ask anyway. If he says no, we'll just work it into the script somehow. He makes a pretty good bad guy, I think. He can be the predictable faceless monster of prison bureaucracy, if he chooses to be. Or he can put Dora to shame, and do something remarkable for an old white male cop: help empower poor women. Let them use their voice.


How's that for a challenge? C'mon, Ryan. You must see the potential in this - it's not all bad for you. On some level, even Karyn Klausner has to be tempted to go for that. You guys aren't hiding state secrets anymore. We already know how evil the ADC is...maybe this could help you redeem yourselves.


That, and helping me help Mr. Tripati, could get you on the right track, anyway.


Just thinking aloud, now...my fever's peaking again.  I actually almost went to the ER this weekend, but think I can slide by without them now. Dancing to Bob Marley every morning and Nina in the afternoon seems to help, but so does getting more sleep - my schedule's kind of out of whack, now. I think this is a sign I need to crash for a few days straight.

Save your cards and well-wishes for Mississippi - please help keep the pressure on there, and come up with some other creative ways to work with them. Follow-up with the Kidney Foundation and other patients' rights groups.

Email may take me a couple of weeks to sort through - I've been kind of incapacitated for a week already, so if you need me, call. 480-580-6807.


Back with you all sometime soon. Enjoy the read.

----------------

Nor Meekly Serve Her Time: Riots and Resistance in Women's Prisons

Victoria Law

New Politics (mayfirst.org) Vol:XII-4

Winter 2010: 48

IN 1974, WOMEN IMPRISONED at New York's maximum-security prison at Bedford Hills staged what is known as the August Rebellion. Prisoner organizer Carol Crooks had filed a lawsuit challenging the prison's practice of placing women in segregation without a hearing or 24-hour notice of charges. In July, a court had ruled in her favor. In August, guards retaliated by brutally beating Crooks and placing her in segregation without a hearing. The women protested, fighting off guards, taking over several sections of the prison, and holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours.

Male state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were brought in to suppress the uprising, resulting in twenty-five women being injured. In the aftermath, twenty-four women were transferred to the Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane.

      Three years earlier, male prisoners in Attica, New York, captured headlines nationwide when they took over the prison for four days demanding better living and working conditions. The governor ordered the National Guard to retake the prison; 54 people (prisoners and guards) were killed. The rebellion catapulted prison issues into public awareness, becoming the symbol of prisoner organizing. In contrast, the August Rebellion is virtually forgotten today, leading to the widespread belief that women prisoners do not organize or resist.

      Women prisoners have always resisted. When imprisoned in male penitentiaries and work camps, they refused to obey the rules. When states began housing them in separate facilities, they protested substandard conditions, sometimes violently. In 1835, New York State opened its first prison for women. The environment was so terrible that the women rioted, attacking and tearing the clothes off the prison matron and physically chasing away other officials with wooden food tubs.[1]

      A century later, women continued to protest horrifying prison conditions: In 1975, women imprisoned in North Carolina held a sit-down demonstration demanding better medical care, improved counseling services, and the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards attempted to end the protest by herding them into the gymnasium and beating them, the women fought back. Using volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete, and hoe handles, they drove the guards out of the prison. Their rebellion was quashed only after the state called in over one hundred guards from other prisons.[2]

      Some instances of resistance remain little known outside the prison. Former political prisoner Rita "Bo" Brown recounts that women imprisoned in Nevada took action against the prison's psychiatrist who had been pushing psychotropic medication, even to women who did not need it. One woman died as a result. Her death unleashed the women's anger. The next time the psychiatrist visited the prison, the women threw chairs, tables, and anything they could lift, driving him not only off-premises but also off the job. Not only was the psychiatrist replaced (with the prison's first woman psychiatrist who did not share her predecessor's enthusiasm for drugging patients), but so were the prison's doctor, warden, assistant warden, and other higher-ups in the prison administration.

      The women's action did not make the news. Brown learned of it only after arriving at the prison itself two months later. Former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn also recounted tales of resistance that, were she not outside telling them, would have remained buried behind prison walls. When she first arrived at the Baltimore City Jail in 1985, she quickly learned that she would have to fight for her rights, even those she was entitled to under jail regulations, state law, and the constitution. "As a white middle-class woman, I really hate waiting on lines. I didn't want to. But I had to learn the difference between making that an issue, which no one else there thought was the big issue, and fighting for things that were really important to people. And taking leadership from the women who knew better than I did what was important to resist."

      She recounted that, like many other jails and prisons, the food was almost inedible. "We had been hoping that at Thanksgiving, we would get a piece of turkey, something that was decent," she recounted. "Come Thanksgiving, they [the guards and administration] hand out these, I don't know, they were dinosaur legs! You could break a window with them. And, in this prison, when you come in and you had dentures, they would take your teeth away. So most of the women didn't have teeth. I couldn't eat them with my big choppers and other women couldn't either. We were all furious. We marched out and we threw them all in the garbage and walked out. That was the first little bit of resistance around this issue.

      "So me, with my 'We're going to make a revolution here,' I started talking to my friends. And I said, 'At Christmas, let's do a hunger strike,' or 'Let's throw the trays back at them' or something. And people were like, 'No, we don't want to do that.' And what they came up with, which was much better, was that we should not go to dinner that day. Just not go, and that we should organize the community people that came in, which were a nun, a teacher, a chaplain, and the decent guards to bring food and make a Christmas party. And so we got that. And the whole time I'm thinking 'Oh yeah, this is really revolutionary, a Christmas party.' Well, it was. Because it was saying 'Fuck you. You don't want to give us our rights but we're going to take them in this small way.' It was the most wonderful thing. It was really great."[3]

MORE RECENTLY, WOMEN INCARCERATED in Arizona attempted to protest and draw public attention to the use of cages in Arizona prisons. The only coverage was a short article in the Arizona Republic.[4] The incident might have been forgotten had blogger Peggy Plews not taken on the issue, reprinting the article on her blog, reaching out to other prisoner rights advocates, organizing protest actions, and demanding accountability from Arizona prison and elected officials.[5] Arizona has more than 600 outdoor cages where prisoners are placed to confine or restrict their movement or to hold them while awaiting medical appointments, work, education, or treatment programs.[6] On May 20, 2009, Marcia Powell, a mentally ill 48-year-old incarcerated in Perryville, died after being left in an unshaded cage for nearly four hours in 107 degree heat. Two and a half weeks later, three women at the same prison simultaneously set fire to their mattresses in an attempt to draw outside attention to these conditions.[7]

      Women have also resisted in less visibly dramatic ways. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allows male guards to work in female prisons. Many states do not restrict guards' access to the women, often leading to sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. However, incarcerated women have resisted staff sexual abuse, both individually and collectively. One woman, incarcerated in Ohio during the early 1990s, recounted that a male officer constantly harassed her cellmate. "He'd make nasty insinuations about her breasts and what he would like to do to them and how he would like to do it and what he'd do to her."[8] The guard threatened to place cocaine among their possessions if she or her friends reported his behavior. His threat worked; the women kept quiet about his harassment. One night, he assaulted his victim. Her cellmate and another prisoner heard her screams and found her with semen on her face. Despite their fears, the three filed a complaint with prison officials and later testified before a grand jury, leading to the officer's arrest and conviction. Their actions encouraged other women to resist male guards' abuse of power.

      "It was a funny thing after that happened," the woman stated. "A lot of the nastiness and that vulgarness . . . was seeming to cease a little bit and to ease up a little bit, because they began to get nervous. And more women stood up, and two other officers were escorted off because the women found enough courage to stand up."[9]

      Laura Whitehorn has a similar story from her incarceration at the federal prison in Lexington, Kentucky.
There was this one guard. We called him "John Wayne." . . . He would pat-search us. They're not supposed to put their hands on our breasts or in between our legs, they're supposed to just go around the area. But he grabbed my breasts and squeezed them and so I rammed my elbow into whatever [body part] was nearest behind me. And he tried to lock me up. I was taken to the lieutenant's office.

One of the other dykes on the compound, who was a good friend, saw me. I said, "John Wayne just grabbed my breasts." She brought two others and they all stood outside the lieutenant's office, which is off-limits, and said, "We demand that this be taken seriously." And so they didn't lock me up . . .We then grieved it . . . And we lost. They said he had acted professionally. But the lieutenant . . . took two of us aside and said, "We want you to know that they're making John Wayne watch the training videos over and over again. And they didn't have him at the checkpoint where the most people go through."[10]

      Although the women's actions did not remove "John Wayne" from the prison, it did warn him that his behavior would no longer go unchecked and removed him from working in areas where he could do the most harm.

      Women have also organized collectively to limit male guards' access and abuse. In 1996, 500 women who had been sexually assaulted by guards while incarcerated in Michigan filed Neal v. MDOC. In July 2009, the suit was settled. Male guards were prohibited from entering areas in which women would be partially or fully undressed (i.e., sleeping, shower, and toilet areas). The settlement also provided for a $100 million settlement for the women who had been assaulted and payment of all legal fees.[11]

      Another issue that women have organized around is education. Access to education is particularly important given that women in prison come from the groups least likely to finish high school or attend college: women in poverty, disproportionately African-American and Latina.[12]

      In 1973, Michigan was one of several states that provided basic education programs in male but not female prisons.[13] In 1977, women imprisoned in Michigan's Huron Valley State Prison filed Glover v. Johnson, a class-action suit claiming that prison officials violated incarcerated women's rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment by denying them access to the vocational and educational programs that were available to their male counterparts. When asked what prompted her to file the suit, lead plaintiff Mary Glover stated, "I wanted to go to college." Both she and her husband had been sentenced to prison. Her husband had the opportunity to enroll in both college and vocational programming. Glover, who was sent to the women's prison, did not.[14]

      In 1979, the court ruled in their favor and ordered the state to establish a general education program for women that was the equivalent to the one offered to men.[15]

      The court also ordered that the prison offer a course on legal skills to the women "because skilled women inmates are needed to provide access to the courts." In the court's opinion, although the prison law library met constitutional standards, women still lacked the access to the courts guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause. Male prisoners had a tradition of jailhouse lawyering and thus had developed expertise in utilizing legal resources, but "the women do not have a history of self-help in the legal field; the evidence tends to show that until recently they have had little access to adequate resources."[16] Some of these women, including Mary Glover, took these courses and then went on to file other suits against MDOC (including Neal v. MDOC).

      Women have also organized to defend their access to educational programs. In 1972, radical feminists formed the Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project (SCWPP), the first program to ever offer university courses in a women's prison. In contrast to the prison's existing vocational programs, such as hairdressing, sewing, and office work, the SCWPP offered courses that challenged students to analyze the social issues affecting their lives, such as Women and the Law, Drug Use in U.S. Culture, and an Ethnic Studies course which focused on the historical and sociological perspective on women of color in the United States.[17]

      The project also connected women inside with current events and foreign political struggles. After learning about the experiences of women in Vietnam, women at CIW wrote letters of solidarity to women political prisoners in Vietnam. The letters were not only delivered to the women imprisoned in South Vietnam but also published as a pamphlet entitled From Women in Prison Here to Women of Vietnam: We Are Sisters.

      In 1972, when one of the SCWPP founders was temporarily banned from the prison and the program suspended, students organized a work strike and a sit-in before the warden's office.[18] When the project was barred again in 1973, the students circulated petitions, held work strikes, and met with the administration to protest the project's removal.

      During one of the periods in which the project was banned, a woman who had been at the prison for years observed:

I witnessed something I would have believed [three years ago] was impossible. We had an [illegal] meeting where Black and White were united, under one common cause. There were women there who in the past would never have spoken to each other but here they were standing together, agreeing, touching shoulders. The tone of the meeting was not loud or wild. It was a confident approach to bringing back the workshops. It is something we all want. It was beautiful. We elected a six-woman committee to speak for the group. We are not afraid.[19]

The opportunity to critically examine issues affecting their lives and to challenge prevailing stereotypes built bridges between prisoners who had previously believed they had nothing in common. And, when this opportunity was threatened, these women already had the groundwork to set aside their differences and unite to pressure the prison to reinstate the program.

      Even today, access to education has a tremendous impact on women behind bars, many of whom enter prison with low self-esteem, self-worth, and self confidence after years of physical and/or sexual abuse.[20] Marcia Bunney, incarcerated in California, recounted, "Difficult experiences at school during my childhood and adolescence had left me with memories of loathing conventional education and everything connected with it." The abuse that she had suffered in previous relationships had implanted the idea that she was not smart enough to attend college: "I was skeptical of the idea of returning to school, certain that college was beyond my ability, ready to give up before I had given myself a chance to start."[21]

      However, without the continual discouragement of abusive lovers and with the encouragement of her fellow prisoners and her prison work supervisor, Bunney overcame her doubts and fears about education, earning an associates degree. That was not her only lesson: "Beyond the specific components of the curriculum, I learned many valuable lessons, the greatest of which was that I was capable. After a lifetime of seeing myself as a failure and as inferior, this represented a complete reversal, one that admittedly required effort to accept and absorb."[22]

      How is education linked to resistance? Women with more education are often sought by their peers. Broomhall observed that less literate women rely on others to write their requests to staff members. "They are simply incapable of clear expression," she noted.[23] Dawn, a woman incarcerated in Texas, concurred: "Frequently, I will hear women ask someone to help them write a grievance." She also noted that when a woman writes a grievance about a condition affecting all or most of the women on her unit, others will copy her complaint. "They believe that there is some right or wrong way to fill these [grievance forms] out and that somehow they are not qualified to write on this 'official form,'" she noted. "It's very daunting to some of them."[24]

      Education has also led women to challenge systemic abuses: both the writing skills and the self-confidence that Marcia Bunney gained during her college classes led her to learn to use the prison grievance system to dispute prison injustices. Prison officials transferred her to the Central California Women's Facility where she took advantage of her job as a library assistant and taught herself law. She joined the National Lawyers' Guild, becoming one of five prisoner representatives of the National Steering Committee of the Guild's Prison Law Project. She also initiated contact with an attorney known to be interested in litigating to change prison conditions: "Soon I was organizing the active acquisition of information to support claims of systematically inferior medical care, including the names and particulars of prisoners willing to come forward to be interviewed." In addition, Bunney began educating herself about civil litigation, again drawing on the skills she learned through her college classes: "My strong composition skills were an asset, and I grew adept at drafting clear, concise declarations as a means of documenting the serious medical problems of many women, including several who proceeded to file individual actions for damage."[25]

      During the 1970s, outside activists and organizers recognized that the injustices occurring on the inside were exaggerated mirrors of those on the outside and often worked in solidarity with people in prison to challenge and change prison conditions. Today, although many on the left are alarmed about the trend of mass incarceration, few are making the personal connections with people inside resisting and organizing. Why aren't we connecting the struggles for social justice outside with those on the inside?

      Incarcerated women and their advocates have suggestions on how activists and organizers on the outside can support their resistance behind bars:

• Make contact with women in prison. As a woman incarcerated in Florida put it, "Visits, phone calls, and letter writing are essential. Only with a firm foundation, a strong foundation, can we together be able to build a greater movement."
• Speak out or write about prison issues, especially when they intersect with issues that are considered "non-prison" issues.
• Raise awareness in other creative ways. Activists infuriated by Marcia Powell's death have been placing "Free Marcia Powell" signs in well-trafficked areas, spreading the word not only about her death but also systemic prison atrocities.
• Send literature and news from the outside.
• Participate in support organizations that include the participation and leadership of currently and/or formerly incarcerated women.
• Peer education groups need up-to-date information on health issues and treatments! They also need outside people who are willing to provide services not available (but much needed) within the prison.
• For those connected to universities or other educational institutions: look into setting up a women's studies course or other program within a women's prison that helps articulate and challenge the dominant ways of thinking and the power structure. 

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1. Nicole Hahn Rafter, Partial Justice: Women, Prisons and Social Control, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1990), 17-18.
2. The New York Times, "Women Inmates Battle Guards in North Carolina," June 17, 1975, 18.
3. Laura Whitehorn, "Women on the Margins: Incarceration and Resistance in the Current Era." Left Forum, Pace University, April 19, 2009.
4. Megan Boehnke, "Three Perryville Inmates Set Mattresses on Fire in Goodyear," Arizona Republic, June 7, 2009.
5. In an open letter to the director of the Arizona Department of Corrections, Charles Ryan, Plews asked: "What has the department done to the women who set their mattresses on fire in organized protest? It is my understanding that they are in administrative segregation now (commonly referred to as being put into the hole), and may only receive legal assistance if charged in criminal court; they are on their own defending themselves in internal disciplinary proceedings, even though the outcome could seriously affect the kind and length of time they end up doing in the long run."
6. Arizona Department of Corrections, Chapter 700: Operational Security. Department Order 704: Inmate Regulations. 704.09: Temporary Holding Enclosures. (accessed July 7, 2009).
7. Peggy Plews, "Smoke Signals in the Desert," Prison Abolitionist, June 7, 2009 (accessed July 7, 2009).
8. Patricia Gagne, Battered Women's Justice: The Movement for Clemency and the Politics of Self-Defense (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998), 185.
9. Gagne, 185.
10. Whitehorn. "Women on the Margins."
11. For more on the settlement, see here.
12. Michelle Fine, Kathy Boudin, Iris Bowen, Judith Clark, Donna Hylton, Migdalia Martinez, "Missy," Rosemarie Roberts, Pamela Smart, Maria Torre and Debora Upegui, Changing Minds: The Impact of College in a Maximum Security Prison, 2001.
13. R.R. Arditi, F. Goldberg, Hartle and Phelps, "The Sexual Segregation of American Prisons," Yale Law Journal 82 (1973): 1242.
14. Mary Glover, telephone interview with author, October 12, 2008.
15. Glover v Johnson, 478 F. Supp. 1075 (E.D.Mich. 1979).
16. Ibid.
17. Karlene Faith, "The Santa Cruz Women's Prison Project, 1972-1976," in Schooling in a "Total Institution": Critical Perspectives on Prison Education, ed. Howard S. Davidson. (Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1995), 177-8, 180-181.
18. SCWPP founder Karlene Faith had ended a letter to a prisoner with the word "Venceremos" (literally "we will conquer"), a colloquialism that many activists used to indicate overcoming all obstacles to freedom. However, the guard who read her letter assumed that Faith was connected with a group called "Venceremos," which had claimed credit for an escape from a neighboring men's prison. Faith -- and the program -- was allowed to return to the prison only after a thorough investigation of her background (Faith, "Women's Prison Project,"182-3).
19. Faith, "Women's Prison Project,"185. Faith does not go into detail about what had caused that particular break in the program or what the women had resolved to do in that instance.
20. Caroline Wolf Harlow, Prior Abuse Reported by Inmates and Probationers, special report for the U.S. Department of Justice, April 1999, 1.
21. Marcia Bunney, "One Life in Prison: Perception, Reflection and Empowerment," in Harsh Punishment: International Experiences of Women's Imprisonment, ed. Sandy Cook and Susanne Davies (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999), 24.
22. Ibid., 26.
23. Jerrye Broomhall, letter to author, January 30, 2008.
24. Dawn Reiser, letter to author, February 11, 2008.
25. Bunney, "One Life in Prison," 28-29.

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Author Bio:

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars -- New York City, an organization that sends free radical literature and books to prisoners nationwide, and editor of the 'zine Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison. Her latest book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women, is the result of 8 years of listening to, writing, and supporting incarcerated women nationwide.
http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=174

Tenacious: Call for Art, Poetry, Prose by Women in Prison

Below is the call for submissions to Tenacious , an awesome zine of art and written work by women in prison. The most recent copy (#19) has the story of Marcia Powell's death in it, as told by another prisoner from her yard. Please, friends and family, let the women inside know that we want and need to hear from them - Tenacious is a great way to be heard, and is well worth listening to.  

This next issue coming up will be for Mother's Day. Every woman inside is a mom or a daughter; those relationships are hardly untouched by incarceration. They may have already put great stuff into writing in their letters home - see if there's something you think they should develop or submit as is. The absence of a woman’s mother or child can be as powerful as the presence of one – everyone’s story is valued, whatever their perspective.


Many women use pseudonyms to avoid harassment from prison officials if they have anything critical or controversial to say; they should use discretion if they have any concerns about retaliation, because no one can assure their safety. Vikki Law, who gathers the material and edits the zine, seems to exercise pretty good judgment about that stuff, too.

Some incarcerated women who started by publishing in zines and newsletters have become more widely known and published since then – never having set out to “be” writers or artists or poets in the first place: their mode of expression was formed, in part, by their incarceration as a means of resistance. Marilyn Buck, a U.S. political prisoner and poet, is one who comes to mind who has written about that. Here's the Freedom Archives' link to audio clips from Marilyn's Wild Poppies collection, a tribute CD on which her poetry is read by former political prisoners from around the world. (Browse Freedom Archives sometime - there's great liberation movement stuff there).


Tenacious sells for $2-3 a copy; I think that supports publication and mailing it free to women in prison. Vikki is up on what’s going in here, and offered it as an awareness-raiser and a means to raise our own funds for one woman’s resistance in particular. She sent us electronic copies of numbers 18 (out of stock on the publisher's website right now) and 19 (just out and not on the website yet). I'll be printing up copies and hanging out with all my other abolitionist literature on ASU-Tempe's Hayden Lawn during most lunch hours the first two weeks of the semester (classes begin January 19 - I may hit the campus the previous day, if there are any MLK Day activities going on there.) 

This is me, by the way, if you're looking for me. Arpaio's posse already has my mug shot from Copwatch, so there's no harm putting this out there. Peace.



I'm also trying to stock up on copies of Vikki's book, "Resistance Behind Bars", so folks can browse and nab one from me pretty easily if they want. If the College Anarchists end up tabling around the fountain by the Memorial Union, I'll try to convince them to let me share some of their space there instead. They're an awesome group of people - very thoughtful and politically astute. And anarchists on the whole are most prisoners' best friends.


I have an earnest agenda behind all this, other than my own compa's liberty. We need immediate and sustained attention on the resistance of women at Perryville prison, for their own well-being. Today. We also need to look in on the women in our county jails – not just Arpaio’s. That means creating a less shameful environment that’s inclusive of prisoners’ and their families' voices, getting community members and groups doing more outreach to incarcerated women and their children (the Girl Scouts are even on top of it, folks - no good reason everyone else isn't), and alerting our local and national media that we want to know what’s going on in there. Who are we locking up in Arizona, anyway? Why so many women all of a sudden? At what costs – economic and social? Under what conditions? What happens to their kids?


We need more people to be able to articulate the challenges faced by women in prison, and to recognize and support their resistance to oppression, abuse, and neglect. We try to render them invisible in society, but women in prison have both voice and power. We need to pay attention to actions like those described below by Renee, and the three women who set their mattresses on fire last June. What happened to them? Does anyone know?


That doesn’t mean we should just be looking for hunger strikes and riots among women, though – grievances and lawsuits have been very effective tools of change for women in prison, and need more visibility; some things can be expedited with more public pressure - like Marcia's Law. Charisse Schumate is an example of a woman who resisted by using the legal system and community organizing; she and her fellow prisoners made a difference. That's a story worth printing up and sending to women inside, too.



Women like Renee and those in Tenacious are resisting, too, simply by telling their stories. Even if they aren't exposing state secrets, they are countering the myths and lies out there about them. hey are resisting the dehumanization of criminalization and incarceration. They are bringing home what it means to be a woman in prison in America. The act of making things public, making them visible, takes a great deal of courage - we must read them, respond to what they're saying, and keep asking for more.


This is pretty critical material for Arizonans to grasp right now, so I’m going to do whatever I can to get it into the hands of as many people who might care as possible – from anarchists and ASU students to hospice care providers and groups representing trauma and rape survivors. Listen to these women, and if you have any kind of access help them get their stories out. They need us all to stop and pay attention.

Here's the call for submissions to Tenacious:

---------------------

Call for submissions

Tenacious is looking for articles, poetry and art form women in prison. We strongly believe that everyone has a story to tell, something to share and are in need of someone who will listen and offer some kind of support and/or understanding. It is important to us that women (both in and out of prison) find the  power of their voice. We encourage women to share with us and others in the hopes of educating those in society and empowering other women to take a stand for their rights and the rights of others. Use the power of your voice in a positive way—to educate.

Subjects we are looking for include:

ü      Prison programs (how they do or don’t work)

ü      Mothers educating their children while on the inside

ü      Holding prison officials accountable for their actions or inactions

ü      Observations and applications on prison life

ü      Women prisoners uniting to make a difference

ü      Informing society about prison issues

ü      Sexual discrimination or sexual preference discrimination in your prison

ü      Medical breakthroughs or neglect

ü      HIV, Hep C and other diseases common in prison

ü      Helping your fellow prisoners

ü      Literacy and education

ü      Your job (or lack of a job)

AS YOU CAN SEE BY THE COVER, WE ESPECIALLY NEED ART!!!  Art should be reproducible in black-and-white.

We do not publish individual cases, charges or court experiences. We do not publish religious materials. We also cannot act as liaisons between those in different facilities.

Send submissions to:

V. Law, PO Box 20388,

New York, NY 10009

Tenacious is free to women in prison.

Men in prison: please send 2 stamps to cover the cost of postage.

Those not in prison: your $2 will support sending free issues to incarcerated women across the United States.

The next issue will be a Mother’s Day themed issue, acknowledging that over 80% of women in prison are mothers.

Deadline: April 1, 2010

From Alternet:Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars

By Hans Bennett, AlterNet
Posted on July 21, 2009, Printed on July 22, 2009

"When I was 15, my friends started going to jail," says Victoria Law, a native New Yorker. "Chinatown's gangs were recruiting in the high schools in Queens and, faced with the choice of stultifying days learning nothing in overcrowded classrooms or easy money, many of my friends had dropped out to join a gang."

"One by one," Law recalls, "they landed in Rikers Island, an entire island in New York City devoted to pretrial detainment for those who can not afford bail."

Law shares this and other recollections in her new book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press). At 16, she herself decided to join a gang, but was arrested for the armed robbery that she committed for her initiation into the gang. "Because it was my first arrest -- and probably because 16-year-old Chinese girls who get straight As in school did not seem particularly menacing -- I was eventually let off with probation," she writes.

Before her release from jail, Law was held in the "Tombs" awaiting arraignment. While the adult women she met there had all been arrested for prostitution, she also met three teenagers arrested for unarmed assault. "Two of the girls were black lesbian lovers. In a scenario that would be repeated 13 years later in the case of the New Jersey Four, they had been out with friends when they encountered a cab driver who had tried to grab one of them. Her friends intervened, the cab driver called the police and the girls were arrested for assault." Law notes that "both of my cellmates were subsequently sent to Rikers Island."

These early experiences, coupled with her later discovery of radical politics, pushed Law "to think about who goes to prison and why." She got involved in several projects to support prisoners, which included helping to start Books Through Bars in New York City, sending free books to prisoners. In college, she "began researching current prisoner organizing and resistance," and upon discovering almost zero documentation of resistance from women prisoners, she began her own documentation and directly contacted women prisoners who were resisting. A college paper became a widely distributed pamphlet, and at the request of several women prisoners she'd corresponded with, Law helped to publish their writings in a zine called Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison. Law writes that the zine and pamphlet "heightened awareness not only about incarcerated women's issues, but also women's actions to challenge and change the injustices they faced on a daily basis."

"This book is the result of seven and a half years of reading, writing, listening, and supporting women in prison," Law says about Resistance Behind Bars, noting that each chapter in her book "focuses on an issue that women themselves have identified as important." The chapters include topics as diverse as health care, the relationship between mothers and daughters, sexual abuse, education, and resistance among women in immigration detention. Resistance Behind Bars paints a picture of women prisoners resisting a deeply flawed prison system, which Law hopes will help to empower both the women held in cages and those on the outside working to support them.

Who Goes To Prison?

Since 1970, the U.S. prison population has skyrocketed, from 300,000 to over 2.3 million. According to the U.S. Justice Department, this staggering increase has not resulted from a rise in crime. In fact, since 1993, the prison population has increased by over one million, but during this same period, both property offenses and serious violent crime have been steadily declining. The New York Times recently cited a 2008 report by the International Center for Prison Studies at King's College London documenting that the U.S. has more prisoners than any other country. Furthermore, with 751 out of 100,000 people, and one out of every 100 adults in prison or jail, the U.S. also has the highest incarceration rate in the world. With only five percent of the world's population, the U.S. has almost a quarter of the world's prisoners.

While women comprise only nine percent of the U.S. prison population, their numbers have been increasing at a faster rate than men. As Law documents, "between 1990 and 2000, the number of women in prison rose 108 percent, from 44,065 to 93,234. (The male prison population grew 77 percent during that same time period.) By the end of 2006, 112,498 women were behind bars."

Like with male incarceration rates, women behind bars are disproportionately low-income and people of color. Law writes that "only 40 percent of all incarcerated women had been employed full-time before incarceration. Of those, most had held low-paying jobs: a study of women under supervision (prison, jail, parole or probation) found that two-thirds had never held a job that paid more than $6.50 per hour. Approximately 37 percent earned less than $600 per month."

A 2007 Bureau of Justice study documented that 358 of every 100,000 Black women, 152 of every 100,000 Latinas, and 94 of every 100,000 white women are incarcerated. Explaining this racial discrepancy, Law argues that inner-city Black and Latino neighborhoods are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. She cites a 2005 U.S. Department of Justice study which concluded that Blacks and Latinos are "three times as likely as whites to be searched, arrested, threatened or subdued with force when stopped by the police."

The so-called "War on Drugs" has played a key role in the growth of the U.S. prison population. Law writes about the impact of New York State's Rockefeller Drug Laws passed in 1973, "which required a sentence of 15 years to life for anyone convicted of selling two ounces or possessing four ounces of a narcotic, regardless of circumstances or prior history. That year, only 400 women were imprisoned in New York State. As of January 1, 2001, there were 3,133. Over 50 percent had been convicted of a drug offense and 20 percent were convicted solely of possession. Other states passed similar laws, causing the number of women imprisoned nationwide for drug offenses to rise 888 percent from 1986 to 1996."

Distinguishing women prisoners from their male counterparts, Law cites a Bureau of Justice study which "found that women were three times more likely than men to have been physically or sexually abused prior to incarceration."

Women Prisoners Don't Resist?

The central thesis of Resistance Behind Bars is truly profound. In clear, non-academic language, Law argues that recent scholarship documenting and radically criticizing the increased incarceration rates and mistreatment of women prisoners "largely ignores what the women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances, thus reinforcing the belief that incarcerated women do not organize." Alongside academia, Law also harshly criticizes radical prison activists, arguing that "just as the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s downplayed the role of women in favor of highlighting male spokesmen and leaders, the prisoners' rights movement has focused and continues to focus on men to speak for the masses."

Law gives honorable mention to two books that documented women's resistance at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State: Juanita Diaz-Cotto's Gender, Ethnicity, and the State (1996) and the collectively written Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum Security Prison (1998). Since these two books "no other book-length work has focused on incarcerated women's activism and resistance," writes Law. As a result, Law argues that women prisoners "lack a commonly known history of resistance. While male prisoners can draw on the examples of George Jackson, the Attica uprising and other well-publicized cases of prisoner activism, incarcerated women remain unaware of precedents relevant to them."

Epitomizing the scholarship that Law criticizes, author Virginia High Brislin wrote that "women inmates themselves have called very little attention to their situations," and "are hardly ever involved in violent encounters with officials (i.e. riots), nor do they initiate litigation as often as do males in prison."

To challenge Brislin's assertion, Law gives numerous examples of women rioting and initiating litigation, including the "August Rebellion" in 1974 at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York State. On July 2, 1974, prisoner Carol Crooks won a lawsuit against prison authorities, with the court "issuing a preliminary injunction, prohibiting the prison from placing women in segregation without 24-hour notice and a hearing of these charges," writes Law. In response, "five male guards beat Crooks and placed her in segregation. Her fellow prisoners protested by holding seven staff members hostage for two and a half hours. However, 'the August Rebellion' is virtually unknown today despite that fact that male state troopers and (male) guards from men's prisons were called to suppress the uprising, resulting in 25 women being injured and 24 women being transferred to Matteawan Complex for the Criminally Insane without the required commitment hearings."

Law also criticizes author Karlene Faith, who acknowledges that women resist, but who wrote that in the 1970s, women prisoners "were not as politicized as the men [prisoners], and they did not engage in the kinds of protest actions that aroused media attention." To challenge Faith's argument, Law cites several rebellions that received significant media attention, including one that the New York Times wrote two stories about. As Law recounts, "in 1975, women at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women held a sit-down demonstration to demand better medical care, improved counseling services, and the closing of the prison laundry. When prison guards attempted to end the protest by herding the women into the gymnasium and beating them, the women fought back, using volleyball net poles, chunks of concrete and hoe handles to drive the guards out of the prison. Over 100 guards from other prisons were summoned to quell the rebellion."

In light of the many such stories documented in Resistance Behind Bars, Law argues that "instead of claiming that women in prison did not engage in riots and protest actions that captured media attention, scholars and researchers should examine why these acts of organizing fail to attract the same critical and scholarly attention as that given to similar male actions."

Resisting With Media-Activism

In the chapter "Grievances, Lawsuits, and the Power of the Media," Law observes that "gaining media attention often gains quicker results than filing lawsuits." Among the many organizing victories that were significantly aided by media attention, in 1999, Nightline focused on conditions at California's Valley State Prison for Women. Law explains that "after prisoner after prisoner told Nightline anchor Ted Koppel about being given a pelvic exam as 'part of the treatment' for any ailment, including stomach problems or diabetes, Koppel asked the prison's chief medical officer Dr. Anthony DiDomenico, for an explanation."

DiDomenico was apparently so confident that he would not be held accountable for his misconduct, that he answered Koppel by saying "I've heard inmates tell me they would deliberately like to be examined. It's the only male contact they get." After this interview was aired, DiDomenico was reassigned to a desk job, and as of 2001 he had been criminally indicted, along with a second doctor.

Demonstrating the power of this media coverage, Law notes that the "prisoner advocacy organization Legal Services for Prisoners with Children had been reporting the prisoners' complaints about medical staff's sexual misconduct to the CDC for four years with no result."

Along with agitating for coverage in the mainstream media, women prisoners have also created their own media projects. The chapter titled "Breaking The Silence: Incarcerated Women's Media" documents many important projects. Law explains that these projects are necessary because women prisoners' "voices and stories still remain unheard by both mainstream and activist-oriented media. Articles about both prison conditions and prisoners often portray the male prisoner experience, ignoring the different issues facing women in prison." Therefore, "women's acts of writing -- and publishing -- often serve a dual purpose: they challenge existing stereotypes and distortions of prisoners and prison life, framing and correcting prevailing (mis) perceptions. They also boost women's sense of self-worth and agency in a system designed to not only isolate and alienate its prisoners but also erase all traces of individuality."

Some activist-oriented publications have been receptive and have published prisoners' writings. From 1999 until its final issue in 2002, the radical feminist magazine Sojourner: A Women's Forum featured a section on women prisoner issues which included writings from the prisoners themselves. Law writes that this section, entitled "Inside/Outside" covered many topics, including "working conditions in women's facilities, the dehumanizing treatment of children visiting their mothers, and prisoner suicides.

Law spotlights many different projects. From 2002 to 2006, Perceptions was a monthly newspaper published by and for the women at the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey. Because of censorship from prison warden Charlotte Blackwell, Perceptions was forced to limit its criticism of the prison, but the women published what they could. For example, in one issue, women wrote about how they would run the prison differently if they were in charge. Law notes that "their fantasies revealed the absence of programming for older women and those in the maximum custody unit, emergency counseling and therapeutic interventions and opportunities for mother-child interactions. It also drew attention to the facility's overcrowding and increased potentials for violence and conflict among prisoners."

Tenacious, the zine published by Law, was initiated by women prisoners who sought the help of friends outside the prison to actually publish and distribute it. "Free from the need to seek administrative approval, incarcerated women wrote about the difficulties of parenting from prison, dangerously inadequate health care, sexual assault by prison staff and the scarcity of educational and vocational opportunities, especially in comparison to their male counterparts. Although circulation remained small, the women's stories provoked public response," writes Law.

"Prison officials do whatever they can to strip prisoners of their dignity and self-worth," stated Barrilee Bannister, one of the founders of Tenacious. "Writing is my way to escape the confines of prison and the debilitating ailments of prison life. It's me putting on boxing gloves and stepping into the rink of freedom of speech and opinion."

Arguing For Prison Abolition

When Victoria Law was first introduced to radical politics, shortly after her own stint behind bars, she "discovered groups and literature espousing prison abolition."

"These analyses -- coupled with what I had seen firsthand -- made sense, steering me to work towards the dismantling, rather than the reform, of the prison system." Law's subsequent research has only served to affirm her belief in the need for abolition. She states clearly that "this book should not be mistaken for a call for more humane or 'gender responsive' prisons."

Some readers may view Law's prison abolitionist politics as being abstract or overly theoretical. However, to support her abolitionist viewpoint, she makes the practical argument that prisons simply don't work to reduce crime or increase public safety. She writes that "incarceration has not decreased crime; instead, 'tough on crime' policies have led to the criminalization … of more activities, leading to higher rates of arrest, prosecution and incarceration while shifting money and resources away from other public entities, such as education, housing, health care, drug treatment, and other societal supports. The growing popularity of abolitionist thought can be seen in the expansion of organizations such as Critical Resistance, an organization fighting to end the need for a prison-industrial complex, and the formation of groups working to address issues of crime and victimization without relying on the police or prisons."

Towards the end of Resistance Behind Bars, Law quotes Angela Y. Davis, who is a leading activist intellectual of the prison abolitionist movement. In her recent book Are Prisons Obsolete?, Davis writes that "a major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more human, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners -- calling for less violent conditions, an end to sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing -- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of the prison in our future?"

As if answering Davis' question, Law concludes that while striving for prison abolition "we need to also reach in, make contact with those who have been isolated by prison walls and societal indifference and listen to those who are speaking out, like many of the women who have shared their stories within this book. Because abolishing prisons will not happen tomorrow, next week or even next year, we need to break through these barriers, communicate, work with and support women who are in resistance today."

© 2009 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141474/

Hitting Bottom

Hey friends. I've been quiet for the past week in part because I'm traveling right now, in part because I had to put my laptop in the shop this weekend, and in part because most everything I know that's happening is going on behind the scenes.

But I'm trying to keep up with things. Governor Brewer's schedule for the week of June 15 is here, by the way.

In the meantime I've been reading Vikki Law's book, Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. It's very powerful, not only as a testament to women's capacity to resist oppression, but also as a reference to legal cases, state and federal legislation, and national resources regarding women in prison. It's thought-provoking, heartbreaking, and inspiring. Despite overwhelming odds, brutal retaliation, and being in a position of apparent total powerlessness, these women that society has written off have been fighting for themselves and each other.

Still, it's discouraging to see how long certain issues have been identified yet not resolved - like the sexual abuse and exploitation of female prisoners. I'm not inclined to think you can ever assure an imprisoned woman her safety even under the "best" of circumstances - anyone who does is deluded. Prisons can't operate without violence.

I know a lot of loving parents believe that their drug-addicted child is better off in prison than on the streets. From my experience, though, I have to say that anyone's child is better off in treatment or supported housing than in either the streets or prison, and we should never settle for less. Some families have just been convinced by gurus of 12-step programs and the professional addictions field that advocating for their child with the courts is "enabling" them to stay sick in their addictions, and teaching them to expect to be rescued when they get into trouble.

Well, thank god for my friends and family coming to the rescue when I've made mistakes; I think I learned far more from their love and forgiveness than I ever might in a prison. I know people who think that prison did them some good - I'm not one to speak for their experience. But I believe it's a mistake to assume that when a person develops emotionally and spiritually while imprisoned, the term or conditions of imprisonment were necessarily "good" for them. Many people transcend their incarceration, emerging into freedom as empowered, mature, and forgiving human beings despite enduring years of societal neglect and brutality - like Leanne.

I used to hear the same kind of thing about homelessness, how it could actually be a good thing to happen to a person because such desperation is necessary for some addicts and alcoholics to "hit bottom". Some people used to argue that slavery was good for Africans, too, because it brought them Christianity. Somehow the logic doesn't work when I try to see either argument through, regardless of who it is that makes the case.

Some families take heart in the notion that there's "treatment" available in prison. They are led to believe this by various government entities, not all of whom tell the whole story. According to SAMHSA, there are substance abuse treatment services available in 94% of federal prisons, 56% of state prisons, and 33% of local jails. They don't specify what percentage of the prison population actually has access to those services, however (this report from the National Institutes of Health says that less than 10% of prisoners get the treatment they need), or whether any of those programs are specifically designed for women, trauma survivors, or people who are dually diagnosed with addiction and a major mental illness, like Marcia was. Generic substance abuse treatment just doesn't cut it for most.

So, it means little to me to be told there are "treatment services" available in a given prison or jail setting. For all I know that just means an AA meeting once a week, or a Sunday prayer service for addicts. If such resources are available to some people who can put them to good use, more power to them. But that's the exception, not the rule. I thought Americans decided awhile ago that prison wasn't for treatment or rehabilitation; it's for bad people who need to be punished. Somewhere along the way it became an okay place to send sick people, too.

Some of us do "hit bottom" and find sobriety on our way out; we are the fortunate few. The problem is that most of the time "hitting bottom" involves crash landings, and sometimes the wreckage becomes a fireball before anyone can make it out alive. Addiction and alcoholism wreak such havoc in people's lives, and come replete with their own forms of torment like HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, cirrhosis, brain damage, and the profound despair of a loneliness that no other soul can touch - not as long as the the drug is there. College, career, family, friendships, identity, self-respect - everything a person works for or values can be lost, sometimes irreparably. Addicted and alcoholic women are more likely to be sexually assaulted and otherwise victimized than those who are not. They also often end up in jail for their boyfriends' crimes.

I don't know why we think addicts need any more punishment than they already endure.

We need to stop fooling ourselves: beginning with the recovering community: incarceration is not a therapeutic complement to the kind of trauma an addict - and their family - has already gone through, no matter how many exemplary cases are held up to assert otherwise.

As long as we have prisons, we have a minimal responsibility to assure that those we warehouse there are safe, as healthy as can be, and treated with respect for their dignity and humanity. Before we spend all our energy, resources, and political clout fighting for more treatment services in prison, though, let's make sure there are also options for people on the outside. The same goes for mental health treatment. We created prisons to punish people; they are terrible places. Judges shouldn't have to send sick people away to one in order to make sure they get care.