Victoria Law's Blog, page 8

Our Bodies, Our Stories: Reproductive Health Behind Bars

At the 2012 Allied Media Conference, I sat down with George Lavender from Making Contact to talk about reproductive justice (or the lack thereof) behind prison walls. It aired this week as part of a larger show on reproductive health behind bars.

You can listen to it here.

new article up on Truthout

My latest article, on organizing to stop youth incarceration, is up on Truthout:

While Illinois is closing two youth prisons as a cost-cutting measure, other states are not. Washington State's King County recently passed a $210 million renovation and expansion of its youth jail. Undeterred, activists work to halt the jail. In Baltimore, organizing against a youth jail proves that popular disapproval can derail supposedly done deals.

You can read the full article here.

in my mailbox this morning

was a package from my publisher (PM Press, for those of you who don't know). Inside was a brand-spanking new copy of the 2012 edition of Women's Lives, Multicultural Perspectives in which my chapter on health care (or the abysmal lack of health care)in women's prisons has been republished.

I only had time to flip briefly through the table of contents, but the anthology looks amazing. Definitely look forward to reading it (in between all the other stacks of books I need to get through).

Recent(ish) review of Resistance Behind Bars

While going through old e-mails trying to make sense of my constantly overgrown inbox, I came across a summary/review of the second edition of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women written by APOCLove earlier this month.

You can read it here:
http://apoclove.wordpress.com/2013/01...

And many apologies to Anthony Rayson and the South Chicago ABC Zine Distro for not catching the error in the resource listing. And many more apologies to the Women's Prison Book Project and Boneshaker Books for incorrectly listing them as the zine distro. Hope this hasn't increased the deluge of mail coming from people inside prisons.

Community-Led Relief Efforts in the Rockaways

I spent the second half of December working on an article on community-led relief efforts in the Rockaways for Truthout. I interviewed some amazing people who are doing fantastic and awe-inspiring work while also dealing with their own tragedies and traumas. Some of these have been caused by Hurricane Sandy; others are the result of decades of neglect of low-income communities of color on the peninsula.

In the blur of new year doings and adjustments, I forgot to post a link to the story when it was . I was reminded about it when the site New.Clear.Vision reprinted my piece a couple of days ago.

I got a call from Sharon Plummer, who started the Rockaway Guardians in memory of her son Shawn Plummer who was killed by gunfire this past summer. She was happy with the article and was hoping that the publicity would mean more attention (and support, but perhaps that's too hopeful) for the area. In the meantime, she's looking for an indoor space to continue distributing much-needed supplies to people in the area. She reported that, in January (three months after the storm) many people still lack electricity, heat and hot water.

At the bottom of the article is a list (complete with links) of community organizations leading relief efforts. If you live in the NYC area and want to volunteer, do so! If you live outside the NYC area and want to contribute, donations are welcome (and continue to be greatly needed).

while on the neverending book tour in Seattle

this past November, I met Dede Adnahom. Dede is a mom of three amazing young children. She is also a dedicated activist: she is a founding member of No New Juvie, a grassroots group that fought (ultimately unsuccessfully) the building of a new juvenile prison in Seattle. She also founded Seattle Foreclosure Fighters a community group of Seattle-ites fighting to prevent foreclosure, and Who You Callin' Illegal, a group that is starting to address the intersections of mass incarceration and mass deportation.

Dede is currently facing deportation for selling $20 of crack/cocaine when she was 19 years old. None of her other actions in those ten years seem to matter to the Board of Immigration.

"It's bigger than just me," Dede told me when we talked later that month by phone. And so, to both draw attention to her case and to illustrate the bigger picture that has swept not only Dede, but hundreds of thousands of people into it, I wrote an article which Truthout published this morning.

You can read it here:
http://truth-out.org/news/item/13396-...

And, after you do that, if you can't do anything else, at least sign the letter to Edward Kandler at the Board of Immigration (and urge your friends to do the same):

http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions...

Family Practice: A Q&A with Bitch magazine

Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities co-editor China Martens and I did a short Q&A with Bitch Magazine about family-inclusive organizing. If you don't have a subscription to Bitch, you can read the interview here:

http://bitchmagazine.org/article/fami...

2 radio interviews

Don't Leave Your Friends Behind: Concrete Ways to Support Families in Social Justice Movements and Communities co-editor China Martens & I did a joint interview with The Final Straw, a radio program out of Asheville, NC, which aired this past weekend. You can listen to it on-line here:

http://www.radio4all.net/files/bursts...


In late October, shortly before Hurricane Sandy downed power and communications, I did an interview with The Final Straw about Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women and incarcerated women's organizing that aired in early November. It's archived on-line and you can listen to it here:

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/pr...

music in prison

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published an article on the orchestra program in the women's prison in Alaska.

According to the article:

For the prisoners, the hour-long Saturday orchestra practice gives them a break in their highly structured prison routine. Hilbish said she’s so protective of that hour, she tells people not to visit her on Saturdays.

“The routine is the same, you get up at the same time, everything is the same. With music, it’s going to be different, it’s going to be challenging,” said Coffman, who was convicted in 1997 of stealing marijuana and the murder of the homeowner in Willow, even though she didn’t enter the house. The jury found she was the leader of the people who did, however.

Music gave her “something to focus on besides being unhappy and walking around like a robot,” she said.

Beyond a reward, being in the orchestra gives the prisoners an identity.

“So much of the time in jail, your life is really compartmentalized and very structured, and you have to wear a certain thing and follow a strict schedule, and orchestra is like, ‘Well, I’m a musician,’ and music is a certain kind of freedom, to be able to make music and make music with your friends, so it is really a sense of being free,” Whitfield said.

Today, as I type the last of the submissions for Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison , I open an envelope from a woman in New Jersey's Edna Mahan Correctional Facility who laments the cancellation of the music therapy concerts:

Here in Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, New Jersey, for about twenty years, we have had a program called Music Therapy. The program still exists, but the administration has stopped the music therapy concerts that we put on for the population here. They have not wanted the concerts to continue since 2007, but always was looking for a good enough reason, so in January 2012, they made up a reason which was people were out of control. Yet no one went to lock and no one received a charge. If this were true, there would have been charges written. Administration got its wish and put a stop to the concerts here in the medium/maximum compound. Yet on the minimum compound, they are still allowed to have music therapy concerts which I think is unfair as women who are residing on grounds in the minimum compound are allowed everything and nothing really gets taken away from them.

The sad part is the volunteer who comes here and gives his time to do the music therapy class and put together the concerts was never notified by administration that there would be no more concerts. When he tried several times to set up a meeting with them, they blew him off. Then finally they called him and told him, "There will be no more concerts in the medium/maximum compound" and never answered his question, Why?

Music therapy is where women write poems, songs or words on paper expressing how they feel and what they are going through. Every six months, there was a concert held and the women would get up in front of people and read or sing what they wrote. I loved to sing and slide on my knees in the middle of the aisle and the crowd would go crazy as they loved it.

Now the music concerts that were once performed and were loved by many have come to an end because administration stopped them.

Now, music programs are not a substitute for inadequate--if not life-threatening--health care. (I know that both prisons have atrocious histories of treating--or rather not treating--women with cancer.) Nor are they a substitute for watching your children grow up or taking care of your elderly parents (or grandparents or aunts, uncles or other family members) as they age or any of the other aspects of life that one misses when one is locked up. But, as both the Washington Post article and the woman incarcerated in New Jersey point out, they do mean something to the people inside who are able to participate in them.

music in prison

Earlier this month, the Washington Post published an article on the orchestra program in the women's prison in Alaska.

According to the article:

For the prisoners, the hour-long Saturday orchestra practice gives them a break in their highly structured prison routine. Hilbish said she’s so protective of that hour, she tells people not to visit her on Saturdays.

“The routine is the same, you get up at the same time, everything is the same. With music, it’s going to be different, it’s going to be challenging,” said Coffman, who was convicted in 1997 of stealing marijuana and the murder of the homeowner in Willow, even though she didn’t enter the house. The jury found she was the leader of the people who did, however.

Music gave her “something to focus on besides being unhappy and walking around like a robot,” she said.

Beyond a reward, being in the orchestra gives the prisoners an identity.

“So much of the time in jail, your life is really compartmentalized and very structured, and you have to wear a certain thing and follow a strict schedule, and orchestra is like, ‘Well, I’m a musician,’ and music is a certain kind of freedom, to be able to make music and make music with your friends, so it is really a sense of being free,” Whitfield said.

Today, as I type the last of the submissions for Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison , I open an envelope from a woman in New Jersey's Edna Mahan Correctional Facility who laments the cancellation of the music therapy concerts:

Here in Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in Clinton, New Jersey, for about twenty years, we have had a program called Music Therapy. The program still exists, but the administration has stopped the music therapy concerts that we put on for the population here. They have not wanted the concerts to continue since 2007, but always was looking for a good enough reason, so in January 2012, they made up a reason which was people were out of control. Yet no one went to lock and no one received a charge. If this were true, there would have been charges written. Administration got its wish and put a stop to the concerts here in the medium/maximum compound. Yet on the minimum compound, they are still allowed to have music therapy concerts which I think is unfair as women who are residing on grounds in the minimum compound are allowed everything and nothing really gets taken away from them.

The sad part is the volunteer who comes here and gives his time to do the music therapy class and put together the concerts was never notified by administration that there would be no more concerts. When he tried several times to set up a meeting with them, they blew him off. Then finally they called him and told him, "There will be no more concerts in the medium/maximum compound" and never answered his question, Why?

Music therapy is where women write poems, songs or words on paper expressing how they feel and what they are going through. Every six months, there was a concert held and the women would get up in front of people and read or sing what they wrote. I loved to sing and slide on my knees in the middle of the aisle and the crowd would go crazy as they loved it.

Now the music concerts that were once performed and were loved by many have come to an end because administration stopped them.

Now, music programs are not a substitute for inadequate--if not life-threatening--health care. (I know that both prisons have atrocious histories of treating--or rather not treating--women with cancer.) Nor are they a substitute for watching your children grow up or taking care of your elderly parents (or grandparents or aunts, uncles or other family members) as they age or any of the other aspects of life that one misses when one is locked up. But, as both the Washington Post article and the woman incarcerated in New Jersey point out, they do mean something to the people inside who are able to participate in them.