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.
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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 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
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,
A century later, women continued to protest horrifying prison conditions: In 1975, women imprisoned in
Some instances of resistance remain little known outside the prison. Former political prisoner Rita "Bo" Brown recounts that women imprisoned in
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
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
"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
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
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
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
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
- 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
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,"
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
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.
Author Bio:
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, and mother. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars -- http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/fromthearchives?nid=174
1 comment:
Where is Marcia Bunney now? I knew her when we were children and all the references to her I've found on the internet are old.
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