#supportprisoners

[supporthosechi]

Updates from LeLe during this on-going pandemic:

Red spoke with Alisha on Friday (3/13), and LeLe said Decatur is going on lockdown.

All in-person visitation has been cancelled, and video visits are tentatively going forward, but that it is unclear if GTL tech staff will be allowed into the prison for technical support and administration of video visitation. LeLe also mentioned that the GTL staff were working on installing a video visitation kiosk on unit but that she doesn't know what the ETA for it going operational will be.

As of now, Red and Aaron have a video visit with LeLe scheduled for this coming Thursday evening.

LeLe said no one she knows is sick, and that she and those she's talked with on unit are being proactive and buying soap at commissary (the hand sanitizer they are offered at commissary has no alcohol content, which means it's virtually ineffective).

As of an email we got from LeLe today (3/15):

All activities have been cancelled (including educational classes, other certification courses, and their Shakespeare rehearsals) except for Chow and Gym, but she said the COs said those are next to be cancelled too.

They're currently only being allowed two 20 minute phone calls a day.

We'll keep you updated on what Alisha wants shared! Right now, we're asking our community to please share and circulate these resources and demands:

https://transformativespaces.org/2020/03/15/chicago-covid-19-hardship-and-help-page/?fbclid=IwAR1jMaGUJkkJ2H59zR-NNr7giEbCyB07pRysTyEs6t_6umNJm826rgdAnOg

https://chicagobond.org/2020/03/13/open-letter-to-cook-county-regarding-covid-19-and-cook-county-jail-protect-public-health-through-decarceration/?fbclid=IwAR2iolu-IAnh2Y1DI7Nf0bP4puJfMZqc8to3kj92avkuFU5rCVUqJSUF320

bit.ly/33mW2Ie

[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]

Join Love & Protect for a conversation with Andrea Ritchie, LaSaia Wade, and Eisha Love!

RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1183516328417662/

Andrea Ritchie will lead a teach-in based on her latest book, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, a timely examination of how women of color experience racial profiling, police brutality, and immigration enforcement. Placing individual stories in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, it documents the evolution of movements centering women of color’s experiences of policing and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it. She will be joined in conversation by LaSaia Wade, Executive Director of Brave Space Alliance, and Eisha Love, a young Black trans woman who was criminalized for self-defense. This event is part of Love & Protect’s Building Towards Freedom series, which seeks to raise awareness around criminalization of survival and the need for racial and gender justice movements to make their campaigns and spaces more inclusive to trans and gender non-conforming people. This event is free and open to the public. Food will be provided. The space is wheelchair accessible. For more accessibility and childcare needs, please email loveandprotect@gmail.com. Co-sponsored by: DePaul University African & Black Diaspora Studies Center for Black Diaspora Critical Ethnic Studies at DePaul The Department of Latin American and Latino Studies-DePaul University DePaul University LGBTQ Studies Program DePaul lgbtqa student services DePaul Women's Center DePaul Women's and Gender Studies Cabrini Green Legal Aid Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration Support Ho(s)e Collective (Justice For Alisha Walker)

[supporthosechi]

Alisha’ latest art piece, created for Domestic Violence Awareness month. 

This was her first attempt at drawing people she said. It received 2nd place in a prison wide completion at Decatur Correctional. No, the irony and heartbreak of a prison hosting a DV Awareness poster contest was not lost on Alisha or us. She was told she received 2nd place because the drawing of her survivor had “too large of breasts.” 

We are so incredibly proud of Alisha for continuing her pursuit of art and creative expression. Please visit her amazon wishlist to send more art and drawing instruction books that she’s requested: http://a.co/ewyWkXX

Visit Survived & Punished for more resources and toolkits on how to support criminalized survivors. 

[supporthosechi]

Alisha Walker is a 25 year old sex worker from Akron, Ohio. In January 2014 when she was 19 years old, Alisha was attacked by a client, Alan Filan, in his Chicago home. Filan had become angry when Alisha refused unsafe services, punching her in the face before grabbing a knife from the kitchen. Alisha managed to wrestle the knife from Filan, stabbing him. Filan was found dead in his house three days later.

Alisha was arrested and charged with second-degree murder despite no physical evidence being recovered. At her trial, the prosecutor portrayed Alisha as a manipulative criminal and spoke disparagingly about her profession. A jury convicted her of second-degree murder, and Alisha was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Alisha is in prison for self defense and because sex workers are treated as disposable. As groups like Support Ho(s)e and the Sex Workers Outreach Project assert, sex work is work, and sex workers have a right to safe working conditions, bodily autonomy, and self defense.

The group Support Ho(s)e Chicago has rallied around Alisha, organizing rallies and providing emotional and material support. Alisha’s legal team is appealing her sentence. Her supporters are asking people to join in a petition drive and letter-writing campaign to Illinois governor, Bruce Rauner and to send messages of support to Alisha.

TAKE ACTION!

Sign the petition for Alisha here: https://www.change.org/p/bruce-rauner-clemency-for-criminalized-survivor-alisha-walker

You can access information for letter-writing and other ways you can support Alisha at https://twitter.com/supporthosechi or at https://www.facebook.com/StandWithAlisha/

[supporthosechi]

Sex Worker, Capacious Heart, Revolutionary Gestation

What it gets you:

Knowing the enemy and which is the weaker sex.  “I have been around men for too long” to be taken advantage of ever again.  She can be afraid and she can be wrong, she can be beaten and, apparently, caged, but only for so long.  There is no further margin of error, and the learning curve which takes some of us decades, an entire adulthood, or longer than a lifetime, seems to have been eclipsed.  She knows which COs beat their wives, sleep around, are powerless in their state-sanctioned power (nearly all), are powerful in their understanding the tenuousness of their position in this microcosm of social control (perhaps one or two; they’ll resist the least when their backs are literally up against the wall).  She knows what they do behind the barbed wire, bulletproof plexiglass, office doors, and cell walls.  The white officers are simply reproducing constructions of whiteness well-remembered from the outside world, playing a part which is now one with their identity, worldview, and even faith.  The Black and Brown officers are no longer confusing to her, either.  They are “dogs,” “rottweilers,” and she speaks to them in the language she knows they understand: “grrrr...arf arf arf!”  Hers is a look reserved for a special kind of dismissal—ain’t got time for any of that, where time is the main currency and there is at once an endless supply (inside) and an unfair and diminishing ration for all that ought to and must and will happen (outside).  The keepers are the animals here, they’re the underclass.  It gets you knowing who exactly is the enemy, clear as day and without exception, only degree of danger.

Long arms and longer lashes.  The tighter the confines, the harder fought the power; the more stifling the controls, the brighter burning the heroine.  Boredom and confinement might make you forget, for an instant or far longer, that you are a person and a (wholly undernourished) soul: bring your tired dramatics and petty relationship games to this woman at your own peril.  Clout is making sure you’re last in the food line, you don’t get your linens cleaned, no one speaks to you for days on end, commissary is suddenly out of necessities, or, should you press the issue, something more...corporal.  For the keepers, the stick being out of the question as the State still has the upper hand (at least regarding the body) in here, the carrot becomes the only recourse.  If the women officers have any pretense of heart or shred of empathic dignity left in their traitorous beings, then perhaps they appreciate friendship, being considered “on the level,” it makes their jobs less drudgerous and may make their sleep easier, allowing them to forget the despicable business in which they are engaged, that is, reproducing patriarchy and gender- and race-based enslavement at the behest of a master which would just as soon throw them beneath the same wheel, given a reason or opportunity.  The officers who share this happenstantial biological commonality with the inmates are subject to the false-but-never-saccharine wiles of women with relatively little to lose through momentarily suppressing their rightful hatred to exchange a pleasant word.  The men, as mentioned above, remain men.  A coquettish flip of the hair, a knowing batt of an eyelash, drawing upon the playbook which once extracted remuneration for services, all the same affects, gestures, tones, and caresses—literal as well figurative—operate in this universe.  You get a reminder of what you are capable of.

Grown up in the face of every incentive not to be.  If it seems incongruous to have it noted, as someone closer to forty than thirty, by a 24 year-old how much they feel they’ve grown, then just imagine being that 24 year-old and saying as much.  It’s difficult, to say the least.  It’s banal, and simply untrue, to assume that this place makes one “grow up fast,” or whatever other cliches might originate in the minds of creatives and content makers who have no firsthand (or even secondhand, as the case may be) experience.  People don’t grow up because they’re caged, threatened, starved, deprived, oppressed, discriminated against and criminalized; people can be every damn one of those things before they ever up inside, continue to be them during, and emerge again being equally so with the added albatross of a record which will hound their every move like a shadow.  Any growing up occurs due to the person themselves, and perhaps the company they keep and how they keep it.  The incentives not to grow are many: avoiding hurt when those you care for—inside and out—disappoint you, living up to what is expected of you by your keepers, trying to find some bliss in ignorance, making it easier to pick up where you have left off when you get back out, the last of which might make it seem like less time has passed and less has been stolen from you while inside.  So grow up at your own peril.  Forge relationships, cling to them and give them meaning, be hurt when disappointed, try to learn, and steel yourself for the next one while remaining open to its possibilities.  See through the whims and weaknesses of professional race and class traitors and bend them as much as you are able to keep yourself safe and in some relative modicum of comfort.  Be ready not to accept but to command the reality into which you will reemerge, not soon enough, but soon.

What it damn well doesn’t get you:

The culture you want, and that which you learn you need.  There is no one to show you what to read and how to read it, no matter how much time there is to do it.  There were no performances, no theater, movies, concerts, readings, galleries before entering, and there certainly are none here.  There is the vacuum of somehow better understanding how little you had and got to do before you entered, and how much more there must be outside of which you’re only dimly aware.  She played the cello, drew bow to strings and felt the resonance of the body against her hands and throughout her body.  She’ll act in Shakespeare, desperately absorbing the lines totally divorced from context or instruction, perhaps just the way they were designed to be learned those centuries ago.  She’ll defy every empty, self-contradictory platitude which holds that this is a place of rehabilitation rather than one of class control and publicly sanctioned extension of slavery.  All the culture she ought to absorb on the other side of this experience should reinforce that her life was worth living, and thus worth defending.

Automatically radical, all our prayers to the contrary.  The prayer is perhaps one for silver linings which cannot exist without tailors to sew them in.  Everyone who enters prison should become Mumia or Angela or Huey or Marissa or a Soledad Brother or Sister, dismantling the system brick-by-carceral-brick from within and then from without.  But that ain’t how it works, any more than Black and Brown and poor white folks don’t become cops or workers organize and seize the means of production.  Class consciousness takes on an entirely different register when your class is prisoner, and no longer discriminates, or at least in quite different valences, according to where you’ve come from and what you know.  The responsibility of political education in this case falls to two white people from working-to-middle class backgrounds, who struggle to keep the lights on but will not go hungry, and will likely only be in front of judges on behalf of others or standing between vulnerable co-conspirators and aggressors.  If my heart sinks when she confuses communism with totalitarianism, it soars when she instantly comprehends what seems to take so many so long: this place does not need to exist if workers take care of each other, fighting alienation and distance from one another.  You can understand there is a better way far before embarking on the journey of figuring out how to achieve it.

What it takes from you:

Every damn thing it can.  It’s nearly limitless, and almost unchecked, and very few (though some very motivated) have a care in the world about it.

What you keep from it:

Your heart, stupid as that sometimes sounds.  If you make your heart inviolable to it—this almost insatiable, disgusting beast of punishment—eventually it seems like it gives up, which should give anyone who has ever needed it, hope.  I wonder if she sees in my watery eyes the reflection of the heart she has protected from it.  I wonder if she knows the unconscionable strength that has been required of her, or if it has become routine and does not mandate the same force of effort.  It actually doesn’t matter either way, at least not for the purpose of this brief guide.  What I see is a heart which has protected itself, so I am forced to conclude that is what you keep from it: you let it control your movement, your sleep, your diet, your communication with the outside world, your relationship to the inside world, because you have to.  You keep your love and the sense—nay, the certainty—that you’ll overcome and supersede it the moment you pass through to the other side of the barbed wire and evil brick for the last time.  It’ll be high heels and the life you now understand, if there was any doubt previously, that you deserve.

-AH

(This is the 6th visitation reflection from AH, from a visit on 1/3/2018.)

[supporthosechi]

Visiting; a new year.

We drove through snowy desolate bullshit to see our friend on January 3rd.

Thankfully our visit lasted for over 4 hours and the heat was working in the visitation room at Decatur. Our conversation was stream of consciousness, chaotic, excited, it later morphed into reflection and pause while we imagined things to come. She had a lot of news for us, as we had for her.

Shakespeare auditions and rehearsals are on the horizon. Alisha is beside herself with happiness over this. She is determined to act this year, and if they let her, also perform cello. She’s vying for the “lead horny guy” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she says, Lysander. I know this play well but all of us get stuck on his name. We list off all the characters and count them trying the account for each and it occurs to us how absurd and hilarious this activity it. We’re talking Shakespeare inside. Dope. We laugh.  

There’s some pain too though, but it’s coupled with a resoluteness. Alisha has just (again) separated from her partner. So-and-So had become whorephobic and jealous, not wanting LeLe to write to pen pals who might offer some monetary security. LeLe put her foot down: “If she can’t handle this small hustle while I’m in here, how the hell is she gonna be when I’m at work outside?!”

This lead into a discussion where she outlined the way in which other folx inside have been latching onto drama in the face of boredom or lack of control, constant picking at each other, getting people “sexuals” (the term for getting a ticket or citation for suspected sexual activity). But beyond this, the social minutia, the rumors etc, have been freaking Alisha out, and as a result she’s been isolating herself from others. In talking about tickets we started to discuss her active grievance writing against a number of COs who have been continually harassing her. She caught a goddamn ticket on Christmas. These sorry assholes wrote her a ticket on Christmas! She elaborated by listing their names and aggressive behaviors. She said the Black and Brown COs (like cops on the outside) exhibit worse behavior toward inmates. This really infuriates and depresses Alisha, and we talk about the way that white supremacy and abuse of authority creep into people (specifically cops/COs/detention workers etc). The political climate is confusing and terrifying to her, she brings up hearing about Trump and the Kim Jong-un bickering and threatening each other, she asked, very seriously,  if we would be safe in NYC, because the North Korean leader had alleged his warheads would reach the east coast. This was a truly bizarre moment, very surreal.

We then discussed Cyntoia Brown’s case, LeLe wants to send words of love and support and is frustrated by the lack of rights prisoners have with regard to writing to one another. She also can’t write her cousin jay because the warden has deemed he isn’t “immediate family.” We talk hunger strikes in North Texas prisons, the heating going out in Tennessee detention centers. I tell her about other prisoner actions planned around MLK Day. I’ve told her about DRIVE (DEATH ROW INNERCOMMUNALIST VANGUARD ENGAGEMENT) long ago but it never ceases to be such an amazing example of inside organizing.

This spurns a whole take-down of complaints about prison policy. Apparently Mp3 players are going away, the prison will be moving to tablets, which means no more buying music. The only option will be a very expensive Pandora subscription for $32 a month. Alisha has already said fuck that. She’ll stick to her radio. There are still no college classes being offered. The COs we ask on our way out are less than unhelpful about timelines. The only functioning program is the dog grooming work and it has an exceptionally long waiting list. Alisha can’t get work. Which means she can’t earn days. This climate has cause rumors to circulate. Rumors about time served laws, for every 1 day you get 7 back? No one at the prison has been able to confirm anything to her.  

In 11 days, it will be the half-way mark before parole. This means it will have been a full 4 years of incarceration for LeLe. Her birthday in also upcoming on February 11th, she’ll be turning 25 years young. This prompted us to recount how we found out about her case, and we all shared this moment of shaking our heads in disbelief. She’s family now. We have big plans for a new campaign launch on her birthday. She’s excited for our collective actions to come.

Then came the rush of “freedom plans.” Tattoos, movies, swimming, choreography, fashion design, this intense creative energy, travel, take out a goddamn credit card! We laugh as we brainstorm all the possibilities. She’s committed to organizing, and as she calls it, “giving back.” “I wanna be in the streets with y’all. I wanna show them I won’t be broken. I wanna free people.”

Her creative energy is palpable. She was able to release property to us, a poster, which won second place in the DV Awareness month poster competition the prison held. The irony was not lost on all 3 of us. Second place because, the survivors breasts were too big. “I made her too thick like me, and they haaaaated that, but it was too fire not to place.” On the poster are the words strength, support, Survived & Punished, Black & Pink, among others.

We update her about Sherri, her momma, having to send another letter to the warden about visitation. The prison still hasn’t reconsidered Sherri having access to visits to be with Alisha. We talked about communism, socialism and anarchism. A lot. (insert tilted laugh/cry emoji)

Her former pimp is now in Cook County she tells us, Alisha celebrates his comeuppance. I’m conflicted. I hold her hand, happy that she feels like he can’t access her in any way, but devastated another person has been added to the county’s cages.

It was around this time that one of the counselors walked by, she’s notorious for backing up COs, always siding with prison, and never believing Alisha or her fellow prisoners when they challenge the tickets or try to file counter statements.  

LeLe asked for a full run-down of the December 17th actions for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. We reported on the vigils in Brooklyn and in Chicago. We shared that her poem was read in both cities to mourn and express collective rage. We talked about rallying for Yang Song and how the NYPD was responsible for her death.

As our visit drew to a close, Alisha shared that she was really beginning to see her priorities come into view; she could feel her own personal growth. She nodded decidedly, saying that she knew what she was about. She used the words solidarity, supported, loved and powerful to describe her various states of feeling. We hugged a lot. We blew kisses. And we were back out into the frustrating landscape of nothing.

-Red 

[supporthosechi]

This weekend we got to celebrate with Alisha as she nailed her performance in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream! This year she acted instead of playing cello in the band! (She tried to do both, because of course she did.)

We'll have visitation reflections as soon as we can...though it was an amazing performance, the COs and Warden were in extra terrible form for this visit. We all dealt with the painful reminders of what prison is (isolating, regulating, surveillance, violence, etc) even on a rare day of artistic expression involving folx both on the in/outside.

Alisha and her fellow performers/prisoners were truly inspiring in their rendition of this play. We are so thankful to have been able to travel from NYC and Chicago to see these performers light up that stage.

Here's to more plays and no more prisons.

[supporthosechi]

New Campaign for Clemency

On Monday, February 12th we will be beginning a new online campaign for Alisha with the help of Survived and Punished and folks from Barnard Center for Research on Women - BCRW. We will celebrate Alisha's birthday this coming Sunday and the next day launch into a petition and letter writing drive demanding clemency for LeLe.

This couldn't come at a more crucial time for Alisha. She is being targeted for harassment by COs and her mother Sherri is still being barred from visitation. Alisha constantly challenges tickets she is given, writes grievances and reports on her harassers. For this she is consistently re-targeted.

Stay tuned for how you will be able to help circulate petitions, write the IL governor and continue supporting Alisha and other criminalized survivors.

[supporthosechi]

Just got off the phone with Alisha & Sherri!

We got some good news, LeLe is doing alright and expects to be off of "D Grade" in just four days! That means she'll be able to spend normal commissary amounts, receive and send electronic correspondence, and make regular phone calls again!

LeLe let us know that they received word that programs are coming back to Decatur starting January 1st. She's not sure what they'll offer yet but is hoping for college classes, though admittedly she says she'll "take any and everything that they offer." Programs mean contracts, and contracts can mean reduction in time inside--so this is exciting news on a couple of fronts. Especially since the State is still delaying its response to Alisha's appeal.

She's also celebrating her love's birthday today! She was in good spirits to hear from friends and family and of course had tons of positive words and encouragement for us (because she's always concerned first and foremost with her fam).

She sends her love to SxHx folx and everyone on the outside who's keeping her in mind.

(image via SWARM; credit SWOU Sex Worker Rights Festival, Glasgow 2013)

[supporthosechi]

Decatur Correctional is withholding medical care

We heard from Alisha earlier today. Decatur's medical unit is refusing to give her a blood test to screen for the cause of severe joint pain and swelling she's having for no damn reason. Offering her advil only, not approving doctor visits even tho she's paid to see one. She described unbearable pain when speaking to Red on the phone today. We are beyond enraged. We may be asking folks to call the warden soon if Alisha hasn't been given an appointment for blood work by the end of the week.