Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women

Join Resistance Behind Bars author Victoria Law for a reading and discussion on women's acts of resistance and organizing behind prison walls.

Although the dramatic increase of women in prison has led to a growing interest in female incarceration, the voices and actions of the women inside often remain unheard. How are women inside challenging and organizing against prison conditions? How can activists and organizers on the outside support their actions and resistance?

What Does the Left Need to Know about Prison?

Placated by TV-cop-show justice, worried about economic survival, most of the U.S. Left – like the U.S. mainstream – ignores the ongoing reality of prison in the lives of poor people and revolutionaries, alike. Yet prison in this country is the basis for the creation of new forms of increasing government/corporate control. The prison system has already played a critical role in ensuring that popular rebellions, like those of the mid-20th century, do not occur again.

In Chapel Hill or Asheville? I'll be facilitating discussions in both cities at the end of March:

Thursday, 3/25, 7 pm
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Howell 104

Friday, 3/26, 3:30 to 5:30 pm

an excerpt:

In 2002 a group of women at Oregon’s Coffee Creek Correctional Facility set out to create a zine to stir discussions about the female prison experience, including motherhood, sexual assault, and poor health care. Without access to photocopiers, computers, or other equipment, they needed someone on the outside to coordinate the effort.

They found Vikki Law, who has been involved in prison activism since the mid-1990s, when she started a books-for-prisoners program in New York City.

Women make up about 7 percent of the U.S. prison population, a small (but growing) group that’s nearly always lost amid the male-centric coverage of overcrowded prisons and worsening conditions.

Invisible, then, are acts of resistance by incarcerated women, a colorful history explored by prison abolitionist Victoria Law in the progressive journal New Politics.

I did an interview with Joan Brunwasser of OpEd News recently. Here are parts one and two of what looks to be a three-part interview:

Part One

and Part Two

and Part Three

Title: "Are We There Yet?"

Date: Monday, March 1, 2010

Time: Doors open at 7:00PM / Panel will start promptly 7:30-8:15PM (w. 15 min. Q&A).

Where: La MaMa La Galleria / 6 East 1st Street b. Bowery & 2nd Avenue

Participants: K. Savage, Vikki Law and Kimberely Mackenzie

Moderator: Joyce Manalo, Curator of ArtUp

The event features the companion pop-up solo exhibition of new work by K. Savage with a reception and a panel in response to Women’s History Month.

Issue #19 includes:

• the tragic death of a woman left in a cage in 107 degree heat
• the abuse of a 70-year-old woman in the California prison system
• descriptions of life in an Alaska women's prison
• discrimination and prejudice in a Florida prison
• a thought-provoking essay on child sexual abuse
• a corpse gets peppersprayed (I kid you not!)

To get a copy, send $2 in well-concealed cash or a check made out to V. Law, PO Box 20388 New York, NY 10009.

Because my website has been down, I wasn't able to post this earlier, but even a week and a half later, it's still worth noting (and celebrating):

from Free Battered Women:

It is with great joy that we announce that another domestic violence survivor has been released on parole from state prison!

Many of you know Margaret Moore who has been a leader at the California Institution of Women within Convicted Women Against Abuse.