Victoria Law's Blog, page 2

I Challenged Myself to Read 50 Books by POC This Year

and, with a month to go, not only met, but exceeded the challenge!

At the start of the year, I vowed to read 50 books by people of color. The idea came from an interview with speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson, who talked about how books by people of color tend to be overlooked by publishers and readers alike. If you just find books to read by browsing the most popular shelves at the bookstore, it's easy to fall into reading books primarily, if not solely, by white authors. Of all the children's and YA books that made the New York Times bestseller list last year, for example, only nine percent were by authors of color.

After 11 months of voracious reading, I'm happy to announce that I met my goal (with a month to spare)! I have now read 54 books by people of color this year. (By the time this article is published, that number may be actually 55, depending on how quickly my library holds arrive.) Of the fifty-four, most (37) were by women of color.

At first, it wasn't easy. I rely on my local libraries and budget cuts have left shelves looking a little threadbare. Searching for books by authors of color sometimes proved challenging. But, as the year went on, I often ducked into the library looking for ONE book by a writer of color and walked out with four. Reading all these books by people of color made the absence of people of color and/or other cultures more conspicuous in novels by white authors. I started to think more about how whiteness is often written as the norm and I noticed when physical descriptions were absent from books altogether.

I decided to compile my whole list of 50 books—hopefully it's a resource to other people seeking out writers of color.

You can read the entire list, with some summary, here:
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/my-2014...

or simply go to my 50BooksbyPOC shelf here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list...

Anyone wanna take the challenge with me next year?

5 Black Women in Sci Fi

My latest post on Bitchmedia looks at five amazing Black women in science fiction as
Black Speculative-Fiction Month draws to an end:

http://bitchmagazine.org/post/five-bl...

Would love to hear what other Black women sci fi writers Goodreads readers have to recommend. After all, I don't just read Black speculative fiction one month out of the year.

A Mother Who Wanted to Know When Her Son Would Eat...& a Family Movement Against Solitary Confinement

I'm pleased to announce that my latest piece on Waging NonViolence examines the amazing organizing of family members of people who have spent years, if not decades, in solitary confinement.

At the Security Housing Unit in Pelican Bay State Prison, Johnny spends nearly 24 hours a day locked in a windowless cell. Twice a day, food is shoved through a slot in the door. He exercises alone in a cement yard the length of three cells with a roof only partially open to the sky. He never sees the sun. This has been Johnny’s life for the past 13 years.

The Security Housing Unit, known as the SHU, comprises half of Pelican Bay State Prison in the coastal town of Crescent City, 13 miles from the Oregon border. Prison administrators place people in the SHU either for a fixed term for violating a prison rule or for an indeterminate term for being accused of gang affiliation. Accusations often rely on confidential informants and circumstantial evidence. Hundreds have been confined within the SHU for more than 10 years. Until recently, providing information incriminating others, a process known as debriefing, was the only way to be released from the SHU. Those implicated are then placed in the SHU for an indeterminate sentence. One does not necessarily need to be a gang member to be sent to the SHU; jailhouse lawyers and others who challenge inhumane prison conditions are disproportionately sent to the SHU. Johnny was one of those jailhouse lawyers.

By 2011, SHU prisoners had had enough. They declared a hunger strike, demanding an end to these policies and conditions. Over a thousand people, including Johnny, joined in. Although not the first time SHU prisoners have gone on hunger strike, this particular call came at a time when prison organizing was intensifying. Less than a year earlier, in December 2010, people in a dozen Georgia prisons united across racial lines to go on work strike. Their demands included wages for their labor, educational opportunities, decent health care, nutritious meals and improved living conditions. In Illinois, activists were on the verge of closing the notorious Tamms prison, where men spent years in extreme isolation. Across the nation, lawsuits against inhumane prison conditions were filed — and won. At the same time, an increasing number of people were paying attention to mass incarceration and its effects, questioning the need to lock 2.3 million people behind bars at exorbitant prices. Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow,” which traced the evolution from Jim Crow to today’s drug war policies, popularized the issue.

You can read the entire article, complete with links and photos, here:
http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/...

writing round-up (mid-September)

Now that I've found twitter, I'm actually fairly awful at posting links to my latest works here. So here's a partial round-up of my latest writings:

You’re Old & Out of Prison: What Happens Now? Gothamist, September 18, 2014.

How Many Women are in Prison for Defending Themselves Against Domestic Violence? Bitchmedia, September 16, 2014.

No Separate Justice Campaign Denounces 9/11 Abuses, Waging NonViolence, September 11, 2014.

Privacy Should Be a Right, Regardless of Who You Are, Bitchmedia, September 4, 2014.

Remembering Black Women Killed by Police, Bitchmedia, August 20, 2014.

Will Obama’s Commutation Finally Allow Grandma Hardy and Thousands of Other Drug War Prisoners to Finally Go Home? Truthout, August 20, 2014.

something old, something new...

I forgot to post these (as well as several others) when they were first published. But sadly, neither is old news yet.

Bing Time: What It's Like to be 16 & in Solitary at Rikers

Sixteen-year-old inmate Trevor Mobley was waiting in line for food on Rikers Island when a Correction officer ordered him to back up.

"I told him, 'I'm next to get food,'" Mobley recalled. But the officer continued to demand that he move, eventually writing Mobley a rule violation for disobeying a direct order and verbal abuse. Mobley, who was awaiting trial for drug possession, was sentenced to 60 days in solitary confinement. It was his first month at Rikers Island.

In solitary (known as "the bing" on Rikers), people spend 23 to 24 hours a day inside a small cell with only a mattress and a toilet-sink combination. They are allowed one hour of recreation outside the cell in a small cage. Recreation is offered at 4 a.m., and to take advantage of it the person must be awake and standing by their cell door. Mobley never bothered.

Read the whole story here.

and

Criminalizing Motherhood

On April 29, Tennessee passed SB1391, allowing the prosecution of pregnant women if her fetus or newborn is considered harmed from illegal drug use. Miscarriage, stillbirths and infants born with birth defects could be grounds for criminal assault charges. The woman may be able to avoid criminal charges if she completes a state treatment program.

However, only two of Tennessee’s 177 addiction treatment facilities provide on-site prenatal care and allow older children to stay with their mothers while they are undergoing treatment. Only nineteen offer treatment specifically oriented towards pregnant women. In addition, Tennessee refused Medicaid expansion, excluding many from access to basic medical or prenatal care, let alone drug treatment. Approximately twenty-six percent of people ages nineteen to thirty-nine are uninsured in Tennessee. Even before SB1391 was introduced, the Tennessee Department of Health noted that approximately twenty-three percent of live births in the state received no prenatal care. With SB1391 now law, doctors and medical professionals fear that even more women may avoid seeking prenatal care.

The new Tennessee law made headlines, outraging reproductive rights advocates nationwide. SB1391 is the first law punishing women for their pregnancy outcomes, placing responsibility for a safe and healthy pregnancy solely on the pregnant woman. But SB1391 neither addresses nor punishes the ways in which the legal system endangers mothers, babies and fetuses. When a pregnant woman goes into labor behind bars in Tennessee, she does so while shackled by her wrists and ankles.

You can read the whole post (complete with links) here.

“Trapped in the dark”: Marissa Alexander and how our twisted legal system re-victimizes domestic violence survivors

My latest on Salon.com:

“Why does she stay? Why doesn’t she leave?” These are the questions one hears when talking about people, particularly women, in abusive relationships. These same questions become key points when survivors of abuse defend themselves after years of violence and trauma. These may also be some of the key questions Marissa Alexander will face on Friday as she argues her right to invoke Florida’s “stand your ground” law.

Alexander, a Florida mother of three, made headlines in 2012 when she was convicted of aggravated assault after firing a warning shot to stop her husband from attacking her. Alexander fired the shot into the ceiling, harming no one. She attempted to invoke Florida’s “stand your ground” law, but a pre-trial judge ruled that she could have escaped through the front or back doors of her own home. The prosecutor, Angela Corey, added Florida’s 10-20-Life sentencing enhancement, mandating a 20-year minimum sentence when a firearm is discharged. In September 2013, an appeals court reversed her conviction. Alexander’s trial is scheduled for July 28, 2014. Angela Corey is seeking consecutive sentences, meaning that Alexander faces 60 years in prison if convicted.

Alexander’s case is a stark example of how the legal system frequently revictimizes survivors of domestic violence, prosecuting and imprisoning them after failing to respond to their calls for help. The continued prosecution of Marissa Alexander highlights how the legal system frequently ignores experiences of domestic violence, instead painting the abused person as the perpetrator and the abuser as the victim. But Alexander’s case is no anomaly. Across the country, survivors of abuse face prosecution and long prison sentences, often after failed attempts to seek protection from the legal system. In New York, “Vanessa” was arrested after stabbing her abusive boyfriend while he was choking her. She was not read her rights although the district attorney questioned her at length and took a video statement. She did not see her lawyer until just before her trial, for which she waited five and a half years. She was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 19 years in prison. She has spent the last 10 years behind bars.

Studies have shown that the majority of women behind bars have experienced childhood abuse or domestic violence. In New York state, for example, 90 percent of women incarcerated in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes. Eighty-two percent report childhood histories of severe physical and/or sexual abuse. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision found that 67 percent of women sent to prison for killing someone close to them were abused by that person. In California, a prison study found that 93 percent of the women who had killed their significant others had been abused by them. Sixty-seven percent of those women reported that they had been attempting to protect themselves or their children.

Read the rest(which includes organizing efforts by incarcerated survivors) on Salon.

5 Girl Detectives Who Aren't Nancy Drew

On the 84th anniversary of Nancy Drew's debut (The Secret of the Old ClockThe Hidden Staircaseand The Bungalow Mystery), let's look at five girl detectives who aren't Nancy Drew. They don't have Nancy's wealth, but they're smart and resourceful and, with the help of their friends, still figure out whodunit.

Read more here: http://airshipdaily.com/blog/4282014-...

my newest on Waging NonViolence: Border Crossings Refocus Immigration Debate on Families

In 2007, Elvira Arellano, a single mother from Mexico who made headlines after spending one year seeking sanctuary in Chicago’s churches, was deported. On March 18, she returned to the United States with her 15-year-old son Saul and her four-month-old infant. But Arellano did not return alone. She returned as part of a mass border crossing organized as part of the Bring Them Home campaign.

“Bring Them Home is for people who have already been deported,” stated Dulce Guerrero, an organizer with the National Immigrant Youth Alliance, or NIYA. In 2013, NIYA successfully stopped the deportation of Fredi Alcazar, who had lived in the United States since he was eight years old. In 2008, days before his high school graduation, Alcazar was deported after being in a car accident. Alcazar returned to the United States, but, after being pulled over for a traffic violation, was facing deportation again.

After stopping Alcazar’s second deportation, NIYA organizers wondered, “If we can do that for him, why can’t we do it for others?” So began the Bring Them Home campaign...

150 people decided to risk detention and deportation if it meant being reunited with their family. The crossings took place over four days — beginning on March 10 and ending on March 18.

Miguel Angel Cedillo was one of those 150. He and his family had left the United States to avoid a deportation order. While living in Mexico, they regularly received calls from people claiming to be members of a Mexican cartel. If the family did not pay them, the callers threatened they would kidnap a family member and return them in pieces. Cedillo reported these calls to the local police, who took no action. After a run-in with masked men with machetes during a family picnic, Cedillo and his wife, Andreina Cruz, agreed that Cruz, a U.S. citizen, and their two sons, who were also citizens, would return to the United States in July 2012, even though it meant separating the family.

“We hadn’t seen him since then,” Cruz recalled. Although their five-year-old son regularly speaks with his father on the phone, he does not recognize him in photos.

Then Cruz’s sister told her about the Bring Them Home crossings. Cedillo decided to join the crossings. The couple’s older son, six-year-old Michael, flew to Tijuana to join his father. On Thursday, March 13, they joined the second crossings. After entering the United States, Cedillo was handcuffed and taken into detention. Cedillo and others who crossed as part of the campaign — including Sugey Carrazco, who is five months pregnant — remain at the Otay Detention Center, run by the for-profit Corrections Corporation of America.

For the entire article, see

http://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/...

my latest on Bitchmedia: We Need to Face America's Dark History of Sterilizing People Behind Bars

and not just its distant history, but a history from only two years ago:

On Tuesday, April 2nd, California's Sterilization Prohibition bill (SB 1135) goes before the state's Senate Health Committee. The bill limits sterilization surgeries in all California state prisons, county jails, and other detention centers. It bans sterilizations for birth control purposes—surgeries would be restricted to those with life-threatening medical emergencies and for curing physical ailments.

Is such a bill really necessary? In 2014, aren't we a long way from state-sponsored eugenics programs, either in or out of prison? But prisons are often sites where attacks on women's bodies are allowed to continue with little attention or oversight.

As people outside fight for the right to access birth control under the Affordable Care Act, people inside prisons have to fight to keep their ability to have future children. Last summer, the Center for Investigative Reporting released a damning report that revealed how at over 100 people had been given tubal ligations in California women's prisons from 2006 to 2010 without proper state oversight. The majority of those tubal ligations were ordered by one doctor, Dr. James Heinrich, and his staff. Several people had reported that Dr. Heinrich had pressured them into agreeing to tubal ligations, sometimes when they were actively in labor or on the operating table for a C-section...

It's important to note that this issue goes further than one bad doctor. While Heinrich may seem extreme, his views (and actions) reflect the viewpoint that, because they are imprisoned, women are unfit mothers and should lose their right to parent. We've seen the same attitude held about mothers on welfare--that they are, by virtue of needing welfare, unfit mothers and that they should be sterilized. As late as 2008, politicians have suggested offering financial incentives for poor people to get sterilized. It's also important to note that views about unfit parents, reproductive rights, and sterilizations often have a gender bias: people in California's men's prisons were not pressured into sterilization surgeries in recent years.

Read the entire post (complete with some amazing images dug up by my editor) at
http://bitchmagazine.org/post/why-doe...

Massachusetts Senate Votes for Childbirth Without Chains

Seems like I've been following Massachusetts lately...My latest on Truthout looks at the 30 years of organizing and activism that led to the Senate voting unanimously to end shackling pregnant people during labor and delivery as well as to have standards for pregnancy-related care for people behind bars.

On Thursday, March 20, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously passed S2012, a bill that limits the shackling of pregnant prisoners during labor and delivery. The bill also requires minimum standards of medical care for pregnant women in jail and prison. "There is absolutely no reason to shackle pregnant women," Senator Karen Spilka, the bill's sponsor, told Truthout hours before the Senate vote. "It's unsafe, inhumane and barbaric."

Spilka was not the only Massachusetts lawmaker who thought so. The month before, on February 20, Governor Deval Patrick announced emergency regulations prohibiting the shackling of pregnant women in Massachusetts jails and prisons while they are in their second trimester, as well as when they are in labor, delivery and postpartum recovery...

Both the bill's passage in the Senate and the governor's regulations come after years of education and advocacy by reproductive justice advocates, prisoner rights activists and currently and formerly incarcerated women. In the past, bills prohibiting shackling during childbirth have been introduced in the House and assigned to the Judiciary Committee where no further action has been taken. This year, however, Senator Spilka also introduced her bill, which was assigned to the Public Safety Committee. After a December 2012 hearing, which included testimony from prison justice advocates, reproductive rights advocates and prison birth doulas, the Committee's Vice Chair stated, "It just shocks me [that] this still happens in this day and age."

For a synopsis of those 30 years of organizing leading to this vote, see http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/22...