#freethemny

[supporthosechi]

We're over the moon about this latest Letter Writing resource from Survived and Punished!

Ever wanted to host your own letter writing event but didn't know exactly where to start? Check this out! And if you use it, make a donation to S&P to support their beautiful, necessary work!

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Cyntoia Brown Will Go Free in August, But There Are More Survivors Behind Bars Who Still Need Help

By Victoria Law

Brown isn’t alone. Hundreds—if not thousands—of violence survivors remain behind bars. Grassroots groups across the country have been organizing for years to get them free.

Tennessee advocates, including formerly incarcerated women, are celebrating Brown’s commutation. But they also told Rewire.News that they must continue fighting for other incarcerated survivors, whose names and stories often remain unknown. No one has tracked how many total survivors are incarcerated for self-defense or for acts related to their abuse. What is known is that approximately 33 percent of women have experienced physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner. That rate more than doubles to 77 percent among incarcerated women.

In New York, advocates launched #FreeThemNY, a clemency campaign for abuse survivors incarcerated in New York state. During this past election season, organizers have rallied outside Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s fundraising events, office, and home. Among the survivors who #FreeThemNY has highlighted is 36-year-old Patrice Smith, whose story bears striking similarities to that of Brown.

[berniesrevolution]

IN THESE TIMES

New York Gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon on July 26 unveiled a new platform, #JusticeForAll, to deliver on her campaign promises to stem mass incarceration. The platform calls for an end to: cash bail, the criminalization of marijuana, solitary confinement and the prosecution of children as adults. In her boldest provision, Nixon advocates an expansion of commutations and pardons for survivors of domestic violence who are incarcerated for defending themselves. This is a uniquely feminist measure given that women, especiallywomen of color, are often unable to receive help for domestic violence. Nixon accolades from many activists, but some cautioned that her platform—while far better than that of her opponent, Governor Cuomo—does not go far enough.

Nixon’s plan, which declares that “It’s time for #SchoolsNotJails,” points to the influence of invest/divest strategies reflected in grassroots efforts like the Movement for Black Lives and No Cop Academy. Both campaigns call for money to be funneled away from prisons and policing, and into education, healthcare and other public goods. Nixon has already unveiled several proposals to address the concerns of working-class New Yorkers, including increased investments in affordable housing, education and public transportation. The candidate says her criminal justice platform is intended to decrease state violence against communities that are, in her words, “devastated by a biased and unrelenting justice system.”

In one of the most radical aspects of her platform, Nixon’s parole reforms raise the possibility of extending parole to people who have committed “violent” crimes. This includes permitting the Board of Parole to “evaluate all persons who are over the age of 55 who have served at least 15 years in prison for possible parole release,” even if that person has not completed their minimum sentence. The reforms, targeted at an aging prison population with a very low risk of recidivism, “reflect science and common sense,” Nixon’s chief spokesperson, Lauren Hitt, told In These TImes.

Some argue that, to truly address mass incarceration, it is necessary to advance policies towards rehabilitating—and freeing—people charged with violent crimes. A focus on ending the war on drugs is insufficient, as people charged with drug crimes make up a relatively small segment of the prison population. Activists have long noted that the binary of “violent” vs. “non-violent” charges is itself misrepresentative, as evidenced by the fact that survivors of domestic violence are often criminalized for how they defend themselves, and demonized as “violent offenders.”

Nixon, notably, includes a plank to address this social problem, pledging to increase commutations and pardons for domestic violence survivors who commit “crimes” in self defense. The criminalization of survivors of gender violence is still largely overlooked. Media narratives, as well as policies like former President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative, overwhelmingly depict the victims of police brutality and mass incarceration as young, black and male. While the #SayHerName movement has drawn more attention to black women killed at the hands of police, the concerns of incarcerated women and LGBTQ people are often not incorporated into mainstream criminal justice reforms.

That is changing, however, thanks to the hard work of organizers from groups like Love and Protect, which, in its own words, “supports those who identify as women and gender non-conforming persons of color who are criminalized or harmed by state and interpersonal violence.” The #FreeThemNY campaign, which is “dedicated to freeing criminalized survivors of gender violence held in prisons in New York,” has also shined a spotlight on the issue, and Nixon’s platform reflects the insights of these activists.

Nixon’s platform also takes aim at reforming the bail system. Abolishing cash bail has been a high priority for criminal justice reform activists and organizations in New York, which see growing wealth inequality and mass incarceration as two troubling sides of the same coin. According to the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, a New York City-based organization that pays bail for people who can’t afford it, 45,000 people in New York City are incarcerated per year because they cannot afford bail. The inability to afford bail, coupled with a dysfunctional court system, means that many people will plead guilty to avoid spending time in jail awaiting trial — turning poverty itself into a crime.

(Continue Reading)

[silencingbeyondthebars]

January 28, 2019

#FreeThemAll is a campaign headed-up by Survived & Punished to raise awareness and advocacy for incarcerated survivors of sexual and domestic violence. The goal of the campaign is to mobilize Governor Cuomo to use his clemency power to grant pardons and commutations to women who have been incarcerated for defending themselves against their abusers. Due to racism and what comes to mind for people when they think of “motherhood”, it is usually women of color, living in and near poverty, that end up incarcerated for lengthy sentences for defending themselves against their abuser. They are represented by public defenders who often urge their defendants to take plea bargains because they can see the writing on the wall of the criminal (in)justice system. Once their case has been sentenced, public defense advocacy comes to an end. In order to get public attention for their cases, grassroots organizing becomes the best (and usually only) form of advocacy available for incarcerated sexual violence survivors.

Survived and Punished has started an overarching campaign for incarcerated survivors in New York to support and incite political action, in the form of pardons and clemency. The #FreeThemAll campaign urges Governor Cuomo to use his clemency power for commutations. A commutation of sentence is a reduction or elimination in sentence ordered by a Governor through executive power. In a commutation of sentence, a person is not absolved from a conviction, but their sentence is reduced or eliminated.

The vast majority of people in women’s prisons and many in men’s prisons are survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Survivors are criminalized while attempting to navigate dangerous conditions of abuse and coercion. Prisons and detention centers perpetuate cycles of violence through the “abuse to prison” pipeline and because they are themselves sites of systematic gendered violence.

How to Get Involved (and ways I have gotten involved)

Sign Petitions for Commutation:

Brandy Scott: bit.ly/CommuteBrandy Tammy Garvin: bit.ly/CommuteTammy Stacey Dyer: bit.ly/CommuteStacey Christina Martinez: bit.ly/CommuteChristina Rae Harris: bit.ly/CommuteRae

Support the #FreeThemNY PostcardPalooza Campaign starting in June 2019.

Contact the governor; call Governor Cuomo directly at 1-518-474-8390 to express your opinions, as a constituent and NY citizen, that these women deserve to have their sentences commuted. 

[laprogressive]

#RT @ColorOfChange: Black survivors of abuse are criminalized and locked up behind bars at alarming rates. In New York, @NYGovCuomo has the power to grant clemency to all survivors of abuse. Join us and @survivepunish, in demanding Gov. Cuomo #FreeThemNY https://t.co/iY7kn7O2u9

#RT @ColorOfChange: Black survivors of abuse are criminalized and locked up behind bars at alarming rates. In New York, @NYGovCuomo has the power to grant clemency to all survivors of abuse. Join us and @survivepunish, in demanding Gov. Cuomo #FreeThemNY https://t.co/iY7kn7O2u9

— Sharon Kyle (@SharonKyle00) February 2, 2019

via Twitter https://twitter.com/SharonKyle00 February 02, 2019 at 12:23AM

[beatrixlockwood]

Who’s on the neighborhood advisory councils for the borough jails?

Last week, I noted that I was looking into who is serving on the Neighborhood Advisory Councils weighing in on the jail expansion plan. A couple of days ago, I got a response from the Mayor’s Office with more info. Below is the list they provided. Each of the groups has already begun meetings, except for Manhattan which will commence later this month, per the Mayor’s Office.

Bronx 

In addition to several community members, there have been representatives from:

Community Board 1

Bronx Defenders

SOS Bronx

Bronx Connect

Latino Pastoral Action Center,

Queens

 In addition to community members from Kew Gardens (Kew Gardens Civic Association) there have been representatives from:

Community Board 9

LaGuardia Community College

Queensborough Community College

Life Camp

Queens House

Fortune Society

Hour Children

Brooklyn

In additions to community members from Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Brooklyn Heights Associations there have been representatives from:

Community Board 2

JustLeadership USA

Brooklyn Law School

Gangstas Makings Astronomical  Community Changes (GMACC)

Lippman Commission

Atlantic Avenue BID

Manhattan

In addition to Chinatown community members (Confucius Plaza, Smith Houses, Hamilton Madison house and Chatham Towers)  there have been representatives from organizations such as:

Smith Houses

Hamilton-Madison House

Chatham Towers

Community Board 1

Community Board 3

Chinatown Partnership

Chung Pak

Chinese- American Planning Council

Street Corner Resources

READING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE BEAT

DA RACE: Queens DA Richard Brown will not seek re-election this fall. The announcement sets the stage for the first competitive primary for Queens district attorney in decades. Related: For district attorneys and sheriffs, “tough on crime” is becoming a liability. The Appeal looks back on 2018 as the year organizers put their attention on elections that typically haven’t gotten much attention, but that have huge effects on how the criminal justice system functions. The best example is, of course, Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s progressive DA, who during his first year on the job has made significant changes to how all kinds of crimes — both non-violent and violent — are prosecuted. Related: Could the borough get its own Krasner? A number of progressive candidates are already throwing their hats in the ring, including Tiffany Caban, Lorelei Salas, Jose Nieves, Rory Lancman and Gabe Munsen.

JAIL EXPANSION: Mariame Kaba went on Democracy Now! to discuss the NYC jail plan. In an interview with Amy Goodman Friday, Kaba (aka @prisonculture) advocated for the #NoNewJails approach to closing Rikers, arguing that replacing the jail complex with new facilities completely misses the point. The Mayor, she said, only came out against closing Rikers after massive pressure from organizers, “who did not say, ‘Close Rikers and open up a bunch of decentralized jails.’ That was not the demand, OK? It was ‘Close Rikers and decarcerate.”

CRIMINALIZED SURVIVORS: Cyntoia Brown will be released in August. This week, Tennessee Gov. granted full clemency to the sexual trafficking victim who killed a man who paid her for sex when she was just 16 years old. She has already served 15 years behind bars. Background: For a good backgrounder on her case, read this from The Appeal. In her own words: Here’s Brown’s full statement on her clemency. And also read this: There are thousands of Cyntoia Browns. Some of them are here in New York. Since 2011, Gov. Cuomo has granted clemency to just 12 people — zero in 2018. #FreeThemNY advocates are calling on him to do more.

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS: After Hurricane Michael, a prison town in South Carolina struggles to get back on its feet. The New York Times looks at how the town of Marianna is recovering from the 2018 storm, which forced hundreds of inmates to relocate to a facility in Yazoo City, Miss., more than 400 miles away. I’ve been following reports about disaster preparedness in jails and prisons for a few months, and have read about Marianna before, in the news and on online prison forums. When Michael hit, families were left wondering where their loved ones ended up, and were working together to crowdsource reports of evacuations and conditions in prisons. Another disaster: Two sheriff’s deputies let mentally ill patients drown in a jail van during a flood. This devastating story was missed during the hubbub about prisoners eating food during the government shutdown.

GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN: Clickbait aside, the shutdown did have a real impact on both staff and inmates in federal prisons. Among them: family visits canceled during the holidays, terminally ill patients denied compassionate release, fewer mental health resources, reduced programming, and more.

ELSEWHERE: Across the country, locking people up who can’t pay fines is standard practice. These “modern-day debtors prisons,” where defendants can be imprisoned for months at a time simply for not having enough money, are especially common in declining southern towns but can be found all over the U.S. The New York Times talked to some of those who’ve experienced them. “I thought, Because we’re poor, because we’re of a lower class, we aren’t allowed real freedom,” one of them said. “And it was the worst feeling in the world.”

JAIL EXPANSION: Los Angeles County is rethinking its $3.5 billion jail plan. After months of community opposition, members of the LA County Board of Supervisors will reconsider their plan to retrofit an immigration detention center as a women's jail on toxic land in Lancaster. Justice Leadership USA celebrates the news in a press release: “We have organized as members of the Justice LA campaign, led by directly impacted communities, and we have gathered research making the case to stop the construction to avoid the deep generational harms that would come with this $3.5 billion dollar jail expansion.”

VOTING RIGHTS: Amendment 4 went into effect in Florida this week. Massive numbers of people flocked to government buildings to register to vote on Tuesday, the first day Amendment 4 expanded voting rights access to formerly incarcerated people who completed their sentences. “I just thank God for this day,” one man told the Sun Sentinel after registering. “I’m a different man now.” Related: New Yorkers who voted for the first time in 2018 had similar responses, as I reported in November. “I felt like my citizenship had been legitimized,” one man who voted for the first time after serving his sentence told me.

INSPIRATION

A resource hub on transformative justice. I am certain that Transformharm.org will become an invaluable resource to me as I continue to do solutions-based reporting on mass incarceration and its impacts. Do not miss this resource, compiled by Mariame Kaba (aka @prisonculture), which contains tons of useful information about abolition, transformative justice, community accountability, and more.

City Bureau is training and paying community members to record public meetings. The nonprofit launched Documenters.org last week, a project to creating a robust and centralized public record for Chicagoans. It will provide essential info on city and county meetings to the public daily, in part by enlisting the help of the public in collecting this information. I would love to see a journalistic project like this for the courts. 

WHAT I’M RESEARCHING

Do you have experience or expertise that could help me answer these questions? Please reach out at beatrixlockwood [at] gmail.com.

How many people on parole in NYC each year are violated for “associating with a known criminal?”

What are the unique pathways that land women in jail?

What is the racial and gender breakdown of who pays bail in NYC?

[rapeculturerealities]

In 2018 the group kicked off #FreeThemNY, a campaign calling on Cuomo to use his clemency power to free survivors of gender-based violence held in New York prisons. On its website, the campaign is lobbying for four incarcerated women, and it says there are many others with similar stories who it believes should have their sentences commuted.  

Smalls, one of the women spotlighted by the campaign, is incarcerated at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women. She is serving a 15-year sentence for first-degree manslaughter.

“Just send my mom home,” Smalls-Williams said in a tearful appeal to Cuomo.

Cuomo is seeking his third term this year. He is challenged by Cynthia Nixon, the former “Sex and the City” actress who has cast herself as the progressive alternative. She has pledged to pardon and commute the sentences of survivors of domestic violence and rape who are incarcerated for acts of self-defense.

read more

[supporthosechi]

So much love and appreciation to everyone who came out and joined us for our letter writing event last night, co-hosted by our dear comrades Survived & Punished New York and Red Light Reader.

The evening was filled with food, and stories and meeting new comrades and catching up with old friends. Together we wrote 77 letters to criminalized survivors of violence and incarcerated sex working people.

Many thanks to Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center for hosting and providing space, and for always affirming sex working organizers and events.

Cheers to Esther, Alyssa and Red for the photos capturing this event with their beautiful photos!

[supporthosechi]

Join Moms United and Northside Transformative Law Center for a dinner, panel and facilitated discussion, in a fully accessible location, about the ways in which moms, overwhelmingly poor moms and disproportionately moms of color are criminalized out of abusive/coercive circumstances. This includes legal theories of "failure to protect", as well as accountability laws in which a person in charged for the actions of others, often their abusers. More broadly, this is about the ways in which poverty, abuse and trauma are addressed within punishment systems rather than with supportive resources--and will continue as such until we begin to dismantle those systems and commit to fully resourced communities, whole person healthcare. The panel will feature Alexandra Chambers of the Free Shantonio Hunter Campaign, Monica Cosby of Moms United, Tanya Gassenheimer of Shriver Center on Poverty Law. We'll be joined by loved ones of moms who are pre-trial and post-conviction, punished for the actions of abusers, grieving separation from children and facing the possibility of decades in prison. Invited guests also include domestic violence advocates, members of the public defender's office, the state's attorney's office and the probation and parole board and YOU. Co-sponsored by Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Chicago Community Bond Fund, Circles & Ciphers, Justice for Alisha Walker/Support Ho(s)e, Love & Protect, The Women's Justice Institute - WJI, Westside Justice Center. Fully accessible, free street parking, all ages welcome plus optional childcare. Dinner catered by @Spirit & Soul Catering 

[supporthosechi]

Statement from our comrades Survived & Punished NY:

Cuomo Denies Clemency to Criminalized Survivors of Gender Violence

For the eighth straight year, Governor Cuomo has refused to use his clemency power to combat the rampant criminalization of efforts to survive sexual and domestic violence. Survived and Punished NY denounces the governor’s decision to double down on his inaction, effectively abandoning incarcerated survivors of gender violence.

Over the past year, Survived and Punished NY has corresponded and visited with dozens of criminalized survivors—people caged because their efforts to survive sexual and domestic violence were criminalized—as part of our #FreeThemNY campaign. We have compiled 15 criminalized survivors’ stories, with new stories coming in. These fighters agreed to take their stories public as part of a collective demand for recognition of their dignity and their right to survive.

Governor Cuomo could free these people today; indeed, he has indicated that his office would take a very close look at clemency applications for domestic violence survivors. Under the New York Constitution, Cuomo has the sole discretion and virtually unlimited power to grant clemency—either in the form of a pardon (erasing a criminal record), or a commutation of a sentence (reducing the length of a sentence so as to release someone earlier). After granting the first and only commutation of his eight-year tenure to a criminalized survivor, Valerie Seeley, in 2016, Cuomo’s Counsel said the governor “absolutely” planned to keep using clemency for criminalized survivors, and explained that his office had created a domestic violence “subgroup” because “we know that [survivors] have historically been incarcerated for domestic violence.” In the meantime, Cuomo continues to cast himself as a champion for survivors, for women in general, and for criminal justice.

Yet when it comes to criminalized survivors, Cuomo continues to be MIA. On New Year’s Eve, Cuomo granted a total of 29 clemencies—22 pardons and 7 commutations. This is wonderful for these individuals, their families, and their communities.. Yet none of the 29 clemencies benefited incarcerated survivors of domestic violence. Of the 29, only four women were pardoned, and not one woman received a commutation. This flies in the face of the fact that Black, Latina and Native women, as well as transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) people, are the fastest growing populations in prison, all disproportionately affected by gender violence and mass incarceration. For survivors, women, and TGNC people, Cuomo’s cold shoulder to clemency contradicts his cultivated public image as a “champion” for gender and sexual violence.

In fact, Cuomo has no grounds on which to call himself a “champion” of anything related to criminal justice reform. Daily, there are close to 200,000 New Yorkers under correctional control, including 50,000 in prison and 27,000 in local jails (most because they cannot afford bail). Even compared to Republican governors, Cuomo is failing survivors, specifically women and TGNC people. This month, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam granted clemency to Cyntoia Brown—who, at 16, was doing survival sex work and killed a client  in self-defense—after years of pressure from organizers and her family. Also this month, Ohio Governor John Kasich granted clemency to Thomia Hunter, who killed her abusive ex-partner in self-defense. Kasich and Haslam—both Republicans with regressive criminal justice records—have recently outperformed Cuomo.  In addition, it is worth noting that between 2011 and when he left office last month, Governor Jerry Brown pardoned 1,332 individuals. Despite having promised in 2015 to broaden the availability of clemency, Cuomo’s actions are paltry in comparison to his peers. Cuomo has still only commuted 19 sentences in eight years.

For Cuomo, clemency appears to be a way to brand himself in opposition to Trump and cast himself as a so-called progressive. Pardoning immigrants facing deportation appears to be the predominant theme in Cuomo’s clemency grants, which Cuomo positions as a rebuke to Trump’s “war on our immigrant communities.” Survived and Punished celebrates that some are spared deportation as a collateral benefit of Cuomo’s public relations campaign, but Cuomo’s thirst for national headlines (and possibly national office) has not translated into concrete benefits for criminalized survivors. Perhaps, if principle alone isn’t enough, Governor Cuomo should do more than pay lip service to the #MeToo movement and diversify his headline-seeking by taking action against gender violence as well.

Criminalizing survivors "disappear[s] them into the system," ensuring they no longer exist in the mind of the public. Cuomo reinforces this disappearance and disposability by abandoning survivors to the criminal punishment system, often condemning them to relive the gender violence in prison. His actions indicate that he views survivors as categorically undeserving of clemency.

We are watching Governor Cuomo. We demand that he keep his promise on clemency and use this power to free criminalized survivors—not next New Year's eve—but now, and continuously throughout the year.

Survived and Punished (S&P) is a national collective that organizes to decriminalize efforts to survive domestic and sexual violence, support and free criminalized survivors, and abolish gender violence, policing, prisons, and deportations. S&P has affiliates in New York City, Chicago, and California statewide. Follow us here.

[supporthosechi]

From Peepshow Podcast: Episode 38 is our first episode of 2019! 

This week we feature an interview with Red, a New York City-based Marxist/feminist community organizer sex working art historian. Red’s organizing efforts sit at the intersection of art, politics, and labor. In addition to a discussion of the prison industrial complex as it relates to sex work politics, we talked to Red about the work they have done curating the art exhibit Whores Will Rise.

For the news segment, we invited back Kate D’Adamo to talk about the clemency granted to Cyntoia Brown’s, how we got here, and organizing around similar cases.

Listen here: http://peepshowpodcast.com/peepshow-podcast-episode-38

[supporthosechi]

Proud to have joined Survived & Punished NY for a light board action on Tuesday, September 11th, 2018 at Foley Square to demand the immediate release and sentence commutation of our incarcerated comrades. 

Visit freethemny.com for more on how to support and get involved in the fight to free criminalized survivors! 

[supporthosechi]

On Sunday June 10th we led a “Sex Work 101″ talk for Survived & Punished NYC! We discussed intentional, accurate, nuanced language and how to support criminalized survivors who have also traded or sold sex. Survived & Punished comrades asked thoughtful and excellent questions, made us feel supported, and we collectively brainstormed ways to become active in demonstrating solidarity with sex workers and survivors. 

[supporthosechi]

We rallied alongside our comrades in No New Jails NYC this morning!

We believe in police and prison abolition, full stop. One of our organizers, was proud to have been in community with Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center and Survived & Punished New York in crafting their respective statements of solidarity with the No New Jails NYCcoalition!

There will be no comprise with the racist, whorephobic, anti-poor prison plans now, or ever!

This is a sex worker’s issue. It has long been time to demonstrate unapologetic support and solidarity with our incarcerated comrades toward a world free from caging.

[supporthosechi]

Join our comrades No New Jails NYC for their No New Jails City Council Public Hearing TOMORROW! We'll be joining the gathering directly before the hearing!

We will be meeting in City Hall Park from 8:00-9:30am to lift our voices alonside those going in to share statements, rage and community love. We will give each other strength!

[supporthosechi]

Coming up on Saturday Sept. 14th in NYC! Join our comrades Survived & Punished New York for this teach-in about visiting folx on the inside!