- Okay, welcome to the 25th
Annual Rose Sheinberg lecture.
25 years ago, Richard and Jill Sheinberg,
Jill Sheinberg is here,
came all the way from Utah
to hear the program today,
we're so honored to have her,
but Richard and Jill
wanted to do something
to honor Richard's Aunt Rose.
Rose was a graduate of
NYU Law School in 1950,
and that was a very different time
for progressive people, for women.
There were virtually no
people of color in NYU.
You think there are none now,
there were really none then.
When I was here, there was
one black kid in my class.
That's a different experience.
Anyway, they had a vision,
and there were two
aspects to their vision.
One was the focus.
They wanted a program that focused
on the cutting edge issues
of gender, race, and class.
And second, it was a
vision about structure.
They didn't want to
just create an endowment
that was controlled by the university,
or controlled by the faculty,
they wanted to create a
structure that was controlled
by the students,
because they appreciated the students
were more cutting edge
than aging faculty or the
administration, whatever.
It's rather run by self
perpetuating group of students,
and I want to acknowledge
the students who are now
on the self perpetuating committee.
The graduating class is Miriam Marks.
Is Miriam here?
There in the back.
Nola Searle,
Nola here? May be off
getting ready for dinner.
And Kayla Vinson,
Kayla's been on the committee
for several years now,
because she's in a joint degree program
that keeps her here for
more than three years.
Our new students are two
L's Will Hughes, and Sam.
Right here.
And so we'll be sending out an invitation
inviting 1 L's to apply to be
part of the ongoing committee,
and to pick next years lecturer.
The faculty on the
committee are Alina Das,
who's not here because she's on leave,
and probably off representing
immigrants some place.
Melina Healey, me, and Naomi Sunshine,
who's been on the committee
for several years now
and as lawyering faculty,
and is now and the
future will be the chair,
because I retired to become Emeritus.
In addition to having students
run the committee and pick the lecturer,
we've looked to sponsoring
groups of students
to help us think about things,
and to encourage people to come.
They're mostly listed in the program.
In addition to the groups
listed in the program,
late arrivals are AFC, SALSA, PILSA.
I think this is the biggest group
of sponsoring organizations
that we've ever had
for a Sheinberg lecture.
It's either the product of the time,
or the power of our speakers.
I think it's probably both.
The past lectures, which
are in back of the program,
are a very, very impressive group.
All but one of them are women.
All but five of the 24
are people of color.
All but four are not lawyers.
So, you see that Sheinberg's vision
and the structure of the
process has produced,
what I think has been an
extraordinary program.
Past lectures from recent
years are available
on the Sheinberg website.
I'll confess I sometimes
go back to look at them
because they're so good,
and if you haven't seen them you should.
The introducers, which we
used to list in the program,
are equally impressive,
and we've stopped listing them
because we can't fit them all in,
and have a small program.
But you can find them on the website.
Our introducer this year is Joey Mogul,
who I just met a few minutes ago.
Joey's a 1997 graduate
of the CUNY Law School,
an activist, an organizer,
an author, a teacher,
and there's some stuff
about Joey in the program,
and you will learn more in just a minute.
But, I want to emphasize the fact
that he's a CUNY graduate,
that she's a CUNY graduate.
I was involved in the advisory committee
that set up the CUNY Law
School before it existed,
and taught there, and worked there,
and worked with CUNY graduates
for many, many years.
And, this is heresy, in the halls of NYU,
where I've been since 1965,
but CUNY is the best place,
(snaps)
the best law school in the country.
Shout it out to the CUNY students,
I think there's some CUNY students here.
Yea! CUNY Students.
It's the best place to learn
to be a movement lawyer,
of any law school in the United States.
And NYU has a lot of virtues,
but CUNY, if that's your
question, CUNY's your answer.
So, I want to welcome Joey as
a CUNY Law School graduate,
and somebody with
interesting things to say.
(audience applause)
- Thank you very much, I
can't agree with you more.
(audience laughter)
CUNY in the house.
Alright. Good evening.
It is such an honor and privilege
to be here today to introduce
to you, Mariame Kaba.
And while I am thrilled to
be able to introduce you,
because you are one of the
most smartest, savviest,
most principled organizers
I have had the joy
of working with.
- [Mariame] Excellent choice.
(audience laughter)
- It is a daunting task to do this,
and I have spent days getting ready.
Because, Mariame has
done so much amazing work
over decades of time, in
so many different areas,
on a vast number of issues.
It's hard to catalog one's mind around all
that she's build and accomplished.
And its also, for me personally,
I wanna get it right,
because I madly respect,
love, and adore Mariame Kaba.
As for titles, Mariame has many.
She's an educator, who's deeply committed
to education for all.
Popular, academic and scholarly,
and like Rose Sheinberg,
she will not let any institution tell her
what she can teach, or preach,
despite serious personal cost to her.
She's a writer, a
researcher, an archivist,
a curator, and just
within the last 18 months,
she's authored a book
entitled "Missing Daddy",
a children's book about a child
who's parent is incarcerated.
And she co-created a guided tour,
mapping the lives and work
of black women activists and artists
on Chicago's south side called
"Lifting as they Climbed".
She's also a ginormous fundraiser,
who in this past year
alone raised over $300,000
with Michelle Duster
and Nikole Hannah-Jones
to build a monument to Ida B. Wells
on the south side of Chicago.
(audience applause)
Mariame is a guru when
it comes to social media.
She regularly tweets, Facebooks, and blogs
sharing her wisdom, her insights,
and her wicked sense of humor.
If you haven't checked it out,
she's PrisonCulture, check her out.
The fact is, so many
people have been influenced
by her, moved by her,
that's there's an entire
hashtag called #mariamtaughtme.
And there's several Mariame-isms
that you should check out.
But, beyond all that,
Mariame is an organizer,
and not just any organizer, but
an organizer extraordinaire.
She has spent the last three
decades fighting violence,
police, state, interpersonal,
and civilian violence.
In fact, one of the the first
demonstrations she organized
was right here in Battery
Park in the 1980's.
She was a teenager at the time,
when she and other youth were organizing
against police violence,
and they wanted Chuck D, right?
Chuck D. to come speak.
- [Mariame] Oh god, don't
say this story please.
(audience laughter)
- One thing, you didn't
think I was listening
in that car ride, but I was,
one thing lead to another,
and someone listed Chuck
D. as a speaker on a flyer,
when no such arrangements were made.
So, as you can imagine,
for at least those of
you that know Chuck D.,
people turned up.
So Mariame and her fellow
organizers were overwhelmed,
freaking out, they had no idea what to do,
and they had no permit
for this rally whatsoever
in Battery Park.
But Mariame, being Mariame, stayed sane,
made some calls, her
sister made some more,
and low and behold, Chuck D. showed up
for that demonstration.
Dare to dream people, dare to dream.
(audience laughter)
But as an organizer for social justice,
Mariame is deeply invested
in building collective power,
and creating containers for people
to come and struggle together,
recognizing that we all
have different strengths,
and talents, and we can't all do anything,
but if we create space and
place to come together,
we can and do tremendous
transformative things.
And as part of Mariame's
commitment to social justice,
she's deeply invested in supporting
and encouraging youth organizing.
She's devoted serious time, energy,
and resources to nurture and mentor youth,
by ensuring there's spaces for them
to grow and be in leadership.
And this was certainly
the case with the creation
of We Charge Genocide,
a group that was formed
in the Spring of 2014.
After the tragic death
of Dominique Franklin,
known as Damo, a young,
black man from Chicago.
Damo passed away when he
was unnecessarily tazed
by Chicago police officers.
They tazed him when were chasing him,
and they were chasing him
because he stole a bottle
of vodka from a Walgreens.
That's how he died.
Damo's friends were devastated,
their grief was palpable,
and Mariame, who was friends,
and worked with so many of them,
racked her brain to try to figure out
how to help them in their
desperate time of need.
And that's when she devised the plan
to send an all youth of
color delegation to the U.N.,
to raise racist police violence.
against youth of color in Chicago.
And Mariame intentionally and deliberately
named the group We Charge Genocide,
after the historic 1951
petition to the U.N.,
authored by William Patterson,
documenting the racist
state violence in the US.
Mariame was well aware that the
name would be controversial,
but she was not interested in sugarcoating
the racist violence in
the U.S. for others.
Page May, who later
started Assata's Daughters,
currently in Chicago,
was one of the first members
of We Charge Genocide,
and she drafted a shadow petition
to the U.N. Committee Against Torture,
documenting police violence
against youth of color.
And then others, some of Damo's friends,
and several others,
young, middle aged, old,
came together to form We Charge Genocide,
and raise enough funds to
send eight youth of color
to the U.N. Committee hearings
on the U.S.'s compliance with the
convention against torture
in October of 2014.
It was the first time an all
youth of color delegation
went to present issues
to the U.N. Committee.
The We Charge Genocide
delegation traveled to Geneva,
and they were amazing.
Courageous, fearless,
speaking truth to power,
and at the final hearing of these hearings
in Geneva, Switzerland,
in response to the U.S.
government's misrepresentations
about police violence in the U.S.,
the youth stood up, they locked arms,
and they held a silent
protest in the U.N. chambers.
It was an uprising that captured
the attention of international media,
and it brought new meaning to
the whole world's watching.
Weeks later the U.N.
Committee Against Torture
issued it's findings,
citing Damo by name, which
is historic and remarkable.
And the Committee noted its concerns
about police violence against
African American and
Latino Youth in Chicago.
That never would have happened
without We Charge Genocide and Mariame.
Words cannot describe
the energy, excitement,
validation this entire experience had,
and it propelled We Charge Genocide,
with Mariame's guidance,
to join the campaign seeking reparations
for the Burge torture
survivors in Chicago,
making it the most successful,
intergenerational, multiracial campaign
I've had the great
privilege to be part of.
But, throughout it all,
Mariame is a luminary,
and a true visionary,
who writes, organizes,
and exposes the systemic
anti-black racism of the
Prison Industrial Complex,
and she's a loud and proud abolitionist.
She continually pushes us
to think of alternatives
to policing and incarceration,
in order that we can live in a world
where we are all safe
and free from violence.
I, personally, have been influenced
by your thinking and writing
about abolition and
transformative justice.
And as you know, it served
as a source of inspiration
for The Reparations Ordinance in Chicago.
So, just a little bit of background.
Can I just ask who's heard of Burge
in the Chicago Police torture cases?
Okay, Imma be quick.
Over the course of 20 years,
former Chicago Police
Commander John Burge,
and white detectives under his command,
were responsible for torturing over
120 black men and women
on Chicago's south side.
It was racially motivated
physical violence
that was used to extract confessions,
that then secured scores
of wrongful convictions,
and the death sentence for 11.
After decades of litigation, organizing,
and investigative journalism,
exposed this racially motivated
patterned practice of torture,
and years were spent,
and continue to be spent,
in trying to get the
police torture survivors
out from behind bars.
We also, including myself,
spent so much time trying to seek
the criminal prosecution of the officers.
And while doing so, we were only thinking
of the few tools in
the narrow, limited box
that our law provides us in this country.
And when we so focused on
prosecution of the officers,
we were not thinking of ways
that we could come together
to meet the material needs
of the torture survivors themselves,
most of whom had never received
any financial compensation
for the torture they endured,
let alone any psychological
counseling or healing services,
despite the emotional scars
they still endure and cope with.
It was then, after Burge,
ultimately, years later Burge
was convicted in Federal Court,
not for the torture he committed,
but for perjury and obstruction of justice
for the lies he told when denying
he and others engaged in torture.
Now many people think that
is the ultimate victory
that we could have.
Burge was ultimately, the
torture ring leader, convicted.
But what I can tell you is
that it was a hollow victory,
because it did nothing to
meet the material needs
of the torture survivors,
and that's when a group
of us came together
and we formed a group known as
the Chicago Torture Justice Memorials.
And we started off by
thinking about how we would
create public memorials to
capture the racist torture
and violence in the Burge Torture Cases.
And it was part of that
process that I then drafted
a reparations ordinance of behalf of
the Burge torture survivors,
answering the call put out by Stan Willis,
a member of the National
Conference of Black Lawyers.
The Repatriations Ordinance and campaign
was a new abolitionist demand
for accountability and redress.
It was one where we were
seeking to meet their needs,
without pouring any time or energy
into the fatally flawed
criminal legal system.
In the poetic words of Mariame,
it was a physical embodiment
of making black lives matter.
Later in the fall of 2014.
(alarm rings)
Sorry, I'm going long, I'll keep it quick.
As the local election season was underway,
we were building necessary
aldermanic support
for the ordinance.
We got half the city council involved.
But, we did not have a
well developed campaign,
and we lacked a strategic plan
to figure out how we were
going to leverage the election
that was currently going on for Mayor,
and aldermanic candidates to get
the reperations legislation passed.
So Mariame, despite all her
other work and obligations,
jumped into the fray.
She devoted countless numbers of energy,
hours, wisdom, and talent to
developing our ground game.
She reached out and mobilized
scores of supporters
to join the campaign.
She initiated city wide teach-ins,
created curricula called "Teach Burge",
helped educate people about the cases,
and get them to reach out to Mayor Emanuel
and demand he support The
Reparations Ordinance.
She was the inspiration behind sing-ins,
rallies, demonstrations at city hall.
She created something she
called Reparations Sunday,
recruiting some of the
biggest churches in Chicago
to preach and organize about
The Reparations Ordinance.
The reality is, Mariame breathed new life
into the campaign for reparations
for the Burge torture survivors,
and there's no question that
we never would have passed
that legislation without Mariame.
And so what did that legislation include?
It included the creation of
a 5.5 million dollar fund
to provide financial compensation
to the torture survivors.
The creation of a community
counseling center,
now named the Chicago
Torture Justice Center,
on the south side of Chicago,
which provides services
to the torture survivors,
their family members, and
all police violence victims.
The legislation provides that
all the Burge torture survivors,
their families, as well
as their grandchildren
are allowed free enrollment
in Chicago city colleges.
The legislation prescribes and now
all 8th and 10th graders
are receiving education
and a curriculum about
the Burge torture cases.
Every single year to all
8th and 10th graders.
The legislation created
an official apology
from the City of Chicago for the torture,
and the creation of a public memorial,
although we still have a fight
on our hands to make that happen.
With the passage of the
reparations legislation,
Chicago became the first
city in the United States
to provide reparations
for racially motivated police violence.
We made the City of Chicago
provide money to survivors
and services it was not
legally obligated to do.
It was historic.
So, now you're going to hear from Mariame
about all of the work she's doing
on behalf of women and girls,
and how she is merging organizing
against domestic violence
and sexual violence,
with prison abolition,
rejecting the idea that
prosecution makes women safe.
And you're going to hear about
the campaign she's initiated:
Free Them New York.
It's now time for all
of us to get involved.
So there's so much more I can say,
and there's so much more I could describe.
I could be up here for
the rest of the time,
but I'm going to give it
over to Mariame, okay?
(audience laughter)
I'm going to give it over to
the Ida B. Wells of our time.
(audience laughter)
To the Ella Baker of our time,
And...
- [Mariame] Oh no
- To the Beyonce of social justice.
(audience laughter and applause)
- So please, put your hands together,
give it up for Mariame.
(audience applause)
- Okay.
Can somebody who knows how to manage this
show me how to get this
into the PowerPoint
which came so late?
Thank you.
I'm going to start without it.
Thank you.
Hi everybody, hello.
Thank you for taking
time to come out today,
on a Thursday evening,
to be part of, thank
you, to be part of this.
Thank you.
Yes, there we go.
I don't do PowerPoints,
and I really hate them,
but I thought I should try
to make them for today,
and I'm gonna let do it's thing.
Thank you.
In order to move the thing
forward do I just click on?
I just use one of these
little arrows, right?
- [Woman] Yeah, exactly.
- Okay, great. Okay.
So, thank you all again
for inviting me to be here,
I want to thank the Sheinberg family,
I want to thank Professor Sylvia Law,
and also all of the other members
of the coordinating team for this event,
and for inviting me to be part of it.
I wanna tell you first and foremost,
I don't do photos,
so if you're taking any
photos of me, don't.
I'm happy to have you take audio,
if that's what you really want to do,
but you also don't have to do that,
but feel free.
It's really again an honor to be invited
to give this lecture,
which commemorates the
legacy of Rose Sheinberg,
and I didn't know anything about Rose,
until I was invited to give this lecture,
and 'cause I'm a researcher by training,
I ended up spending a whole lot of time
falling down the rabbit
hole of the internet
researching her life and work,
and I really could not be more honored
to be an inheritor of her legacy.
So, thanks to the family
members who are here today
representing her,
and her life and the work that she did.
I want to thank my friend, and my comrade,
and my colloquial inspiration, Joey Mogul
for taking time to be here,
and to introduce me this evening.
I'm even going to forgive
the Beyonce reference.
(audience laughter)
Which I absolutely hate.
But I'm going to forgive it for tonight.
Joey came from Cornell to do this,
I really appreciate it.
I also think Joey should be
up here getting this lecture,
so that's a gentle nudge to
the coordinating committee
if you're trying to think
of who to invite next.
So, I'm going to talk a little bit about,
the title is Free Them All:
Defending the Lives of Black Criminalized
Survivors of Violence,
is the works I'm going
to talk to you about
the work I'm doing around
criminalized survival.
That's work I've been
doing for many, many years,
and I'll focus on that as opposed
to some of the other stuff
that I do on a regular basis.
So, in 1978, Assata Shakur,
who had been incarcerated
on Rikers Island,
wrote about her experience
of being incarcerated there,
in an essay that's it's titled
"Women in Prison: How It Is With Us".
I don't know how many of you
have ever read that essay,
but if you haven't you
should take a look at it,
it's really relevant and
a good essay still today.
So, here's a quote from that essay:
There are no criminals here,
at Rikers Island Correctional
Institute for Women, only victims.
Most of the women, over 95%,
are black and Puerto Rican.
Many were abused children.
Most have been abused by men,
and all have been abused by the system.
There are no big time gangsters here,
no premeditated mass murders,
no godmothers, there are
no big time dope dealers,
no kidnappers, no Watergate women.
There are virtually no women here charged
with white collar crimes
like embezzling or fraud.
Most of the women have drug related cases.
Many are charged as accessories
to crimes committed by men.
Major crimes that women
here are charged with
are prostitution, pick pocketing,
shoplifting, robbery, and drugs.
Women who have prostitution cases,
or who are doing quote fine time,
make up a substantial part
of the short term population.
The women see stealing, or hustling,
as necessary for the
survival of themselves
or their children,
because jobs are scarce,
and welfare is impossible to live on.
One thing is clear, American capitalism
is in no way threatened
by women imprisoned
on Rikers Island.
So, that except from that essay is,
I don't think you would
be stunned if you went
into Rikers today, and you
saw they types of people
who end up behind bars there,
you would see, kind of,
the relevance of the words
that she authors, right?
You would see so many women in there
because of the drug trade,
you would see so many women in there
because they are being
brought up on charges
usually related to some
person they've been with.
You would see a lot of
people who are suffering
from various forms of illnesses,
including mental health issues.
You will see a population of
people that is not so different
from the population that
Assata talks about in 1978.
In the short excerpt,
she explains how prison, and welfare,
and de-industrialization,
combined to manage and
control women of color,
and particularly black women.
She illustrates how
racialized and gendered
survival methods have been criminalized.
Since the late 1970's,
criminalization has been the way to deal
with social problems in the U.S.
produced by racial capitalism.
Criminalization is
simply like the wind now
for black people.
Only noticed when there's
a hurricane or tornado,
otherwise barely remarked upon,
mundane, and routine part
of the climate so to speak.
What I know to be true is
that criminalization orders
black life in the United States.
It is the constant specter
hovering over our existence.
And this criminalization is
the reality for many people
of color, and in particular
for black people,
who are survivors of violence,
and the fact that those
violences are things
they confront daily,
and are treated as though
they are inherent pathologies
should be of no surprise to
most of the people in this room.
So, some of you may have come to an event
that we held here in NYU some,
I think, last year at some point
that was focused on a young
woman named Bresha Meadows.
Bresha Meadows was 14
years old in July 2016,
when she used the gun that
her father had brandished
for years against her and her family,
terrorizing and abusing them,
to allegedly shoot him in his sleep.
Bresha had long learned
to fear her father,
who repeatedly made threats to kill her,
and her family.
The evidence of her
father's abuse could be seen
in police reports, orders of protection,
faded bruises, stories from neighbors,
and rumors of sexual violence.
On more than one occasion, though,
Bresha escaped.
Each time she was returned
to her house of horrors,
and the last time she
ran to her aunt's home.
Her aunt is a police officer,
but she could not protect her niece.
The state didn't actually protect Bresha,
instead the state was her abuser.
She was jailed for over a year
as she waited for a trial,
which was scheduled on May 22, 2017.
As prosecutors waited to decide
whether they would charge
a 14 year old girl as an adult,
in order to be able to
ask for 25 years to life
for first degree murder.
During that time that
she was incarcerated,
she was repeatedly
placed on suicide watch.
We know what detention does to
people who are grown people,
but detention for children
is actually form of torture.
In January 2017, as Bresha
was being transferred
to a mental health facility,
a private one for evaluation,
Marissa Alexander,
Marissa Alexander was
throwing off the shackles
of her ankle monitor after
two years of house arrest,
and an additional three
years of incarceration.
Marissa's tortuous journey through
the criminal punishment
system began in 2010,
when she was confronted
by her estranged husband
in her home after having just given birth
to her third child,
a little girl,
nine days earlier.
Menaced by a man who
admitted in a deposition
to having abused every woman
he'd been partnered with
except for one,
Marissa used a gun that
she was licensed to own,
and fired a warning shot
into the air to ward off
her abusive husband.
For this, a jury of her so-called peers
found her guilty of aggravated
assault with a deadly weapon
in a 12 minute jury deliberation.
It was that deadly weapons charge
that prosecutors used to recommend
that Marissa be sentenced
under Florida's 10-20 law to
a mandatory minimum sentence
of 20 years.
A judge who had previously ruled
that Marissa was ineligible
to invoke stand your ground as a defense,
because she didn't appear afraid,
said that his hands were tied by the law,
and ratified the 20 year sentence.
Both Bresha and Marissa,
a black girl and a woman,
are part of the U.S.'s legacy
of criminalizing survivors
of violence for self defense.
And this is particularly true for women,
and gender non-conforming people of color.
Especially, black people in the US,
who are seen as inherently threats,
who are never vulnerable,
who cannot be afraid,
who are always aggressors,
and who's skin is weaponized
making it impossible
to be considered victims of violence.
As we've been saying for years,
as I've been saying for years,
women and gendered non-conforming people
seem to have no selves to defend.
In her only interview that Marissa gave
after her sentencing,
she said "This my life I'm fighting for.
This is my life, and it's my life,
and it's not entertainment,
this is my life.
If you do everything to get
on the right side of the law,
and it's a law that does not apply to you,
where do you go from there?"
Black women and girls in the United States
have long sought
protections from the state
for interpersonal violence,
while simultaneously organizing
against the violence of state power.
Black women and girls
unique vulnerabilities
have led to demands for state protection,
even as we've been actually
the subjects of state violence.
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, who was
referenced earlier by Joey,
and is a real touchstone of mine,
is one of the earliest black
women activist intellectuals
to take up black women's
physical and sexual vulnerability
as public concern.
She was motivated and
galvanized into activism
but her life long concern with protecting
black women and girls.
The case that she made against lynching,
which people know her for,
was not simply that
white people were lying
when they said that they were
primarily targeting black men
as rapists,
but that it was also
that the sexual violence
against black women and girls was ignored
and covered up by those
very same white people.
For Wells, and the black club women
of the 19th and early 20th centuries,
state protection was considered
a right of citizenship,
which they did not have,
but sought and wanted.
Black women, though,
are more often then not
targets of state violence,
and when and if we are ever protected
by the punishing state,
the costs are very high indeed.
In some cases,
what we call the gendered
paternalism of the state,
which is term coined by
lesbian and radical feminists
of the 1970's,
uses black women as pawns to cement
and reinforce racialized criminalization.
So, in the cases, for example,
where you'd have black
women who are going in
for orders of protection
in a domestic violence case
who then refuse to testify
against their abusers in court,
you have prosecutors turning
on those black women,
sometimes incarcerating
them until they agree
to go ahead and prosecute the
person they want to go after
for a domestic violence case.
A perfect way of thinking about
gendered paternalism within the law.
Over the years, however,
the contradictions of demanding protection
from the state that also
targets and kills us
have proved irreconcilable.
It's easy to understand why
the oppressed and marginalized
want the criminal punishment system
to apply the laws equally,
that's totally understandable that people
within the system are fighting for that
and would like that.
Everyone wants accountability
when they experience harm.
But, we have to contend with the fact
that the system that we currently have
is never going to indict itself,
and that when we call for
and demand more prosecutions
and punishment, this only
actually serves to reinforce
a system that really
must itself be indicted.
Baldwin teaches us the law
is meant to be my servant
and not my master, still less
my torturer and my murderer.
To respect the law in the context
in which the American negro finds himself,
is simply to surrender his self respect.
There have been endless hours, and days,
and months, and years of
activist energy expended
in reaction to and reinforcement
of this corrupt system.
We have to ask, as
Doctor Nancy Heitzeg has,
why is the vision of justice
so narrow and carceral,
demanding arrest, trial, and
punishment without cease.
She adds, stop asking for justice
from the system that is killing us.
Demand abolition, and then demand more.
For many years now, my
work has focused on ending
criminalization and the
prison industrial complex.
However, I came to that
work through my activism
and organizing around
gender based violence
as Joey mentioned before.
It was in college that I began
what has now been a decades long journey
to find ways of addressing
violence outside of the state,
especially racialized gender violence.
And I should make clear
though, at the very beginning
how I defined violence
against women and girls,
trans and non-trans.
I use a definition developed
by the Argentina coalition Ni Una Menos,
and violence against
women as they define it
has many facets.
It is domestic violence,
but it's also the violence of the market,
the violence of debt,
the violence of capitalist
property relations,
the violence of the state,
the violence of discriminatory
policies against
lesbian, trans, and queer women,
the violence of state criminalization
of migratory movements,
the violence of mass incarceration,
and the institutional violence against
women's bodies through abortion bans,
and lack of access to free healthcare,
and free abortion.
Yes, free abortion on
demand, all the time.
Okay, we'll put that out there.
People do not say that anymore,
when actually people were
saying that in the 70's
all the fucking time.
(audience laughter)
We've gotta be care, no.
The more careful you are,
you've limited yourself already,
the right isn't going to
give you what you want.
They're going to give you what they want.
So your job is to want
a hell of a lot, right?
And fight like hell for it.
Okay, so keeping it moving.
So, I adopt a comprehensive
and multifaceted
definition of violence
against women and girls,
which demands equally comprehensive
and multifaceted responses.
For years I've been working with others
through my participation in Incite!
Women and Trans People of
Color Against Violence,
and most recently with
Survived and Punished
to act in solidarity with criminalized
survivors of violence.
Through my current work
with Survived and Punished,
I look to the histories
of mass collective defense
for inspiration about how
to enact this solidarity.
So, I wanna show you if
possible, a short clip
of a video.
But I think it's pretty not loud,
I don't know what's been going on with it,
so we'll try,
about the story of Joan Little.
How many people know who Joan Little is?
Some of you here, yeah.
All of you should.
Her case is a very important law case,
and we'll just talk in a minute about it.
- [CeCe McDonald] Joan
Little was a black girl
who grew up in a small town called
Washington in North Carolina.
In 1974 she was 20 when she was arrested
for shoplifting and breaking and entering.
Serving time in the Beaufort County Jail,
she was sexually assaulted by
a guard, Clarence Alligood.
In self-defense, she took the ice pick
he was threatening her with,
and stabbed him.
She escaped, and he was
found dead in her cell.
Joan was charged with first degree murder,
which carried the possibility
of the death penalty.
Joan's case became a national cause
for prisoners rights advocates,
feminists, people advocating
against the death penalty,
and for racial justice.
The Joan Little defense
committee raised over $350,000
for her bonds and legal fees,
and protests about her case
were widespread and global.
After a five week trial,
the jury made up of both
black and white people,
deliberated for less then 90 minutes
before acquitting Little.
It was the first time a
woman was acquitted of murder
on the grounds of self-defense
against sexual violence.
- [Angela Davis] Joan
Little's trial is important
and the real import is
that they demonstrated
that people can collectively generate
the kind of power that
can be earthshaking,
that can change lives,
that can change society.
- [Cece McDonald] Today,
there are many people
like Joan Little,
prosecuted because they
defended themselves
from sexual violence, domestic violence,
racists and transphobic attacks
still in prisons all over the U.S.
Please go to the Survived
and Punished website
to learn about these cases
- So, I wanted to say first and foremost
that I'm very excited to be able
to actually show this video,
even though it's so low,
but, Hope Dector who's here,
who's part of BCRW,
Barnard's Center for Research on Women,
made this video, edited the
video along with Dean Stade,
who some of you also may know,
who's a lawyer and law
professor and does a lot of work
on issues around transformative
justice and abolition.
The person who was narrating
it was Cece McDonald,
who some of you may know of
because Cece was criminalized
for defending herself from
a transphobic violent attack
that happened in Minneapolis.
She ended up having to go to jail,
to prison for 19 months in a men's prison,
and talked a lot about what
that experience was like.
When Free Cece campaign came up
and came into being around her case,
people were initially
wanting to fight to move her
from a men's prison into a women's prison,
and Cece told people prisons
are unsafe for everyone.
I'm staying here, right?
That that wasn't going to
be playing into that at all
and decided that she would
just make due her time
where she was.
So, we're really luck
to have Cece be a part
of making that particular video
and supporting that work.
So,
okay I don't know what's going on.
Whoever was helping me put the slideshow
back on please.
(audience laughter)
I'm really tech, I don't
know what's going on.
Thank you.
So, while State vs.
Joan Little, thank you,
is noted for being the first time a woman
was acquitted of murder on the grounds
of self defense against sexual violence,
it's wider impact and
legacy was it's powerful
reflection on the
interconnections of racism,
sexism, and economic inequality.
You know, Joan was in prison, in jail,
awaiting her next trial,
because she had stolen
some stuff that she needed
for survival,
then while in jail,
she then gets assaulted
by the prison guard,
she defends herself by using
an ice pick to kill him,
she's on the run for several days,
and she turns herself in,
and it's really important
as a scholar, activist,
and former political
prisoner Angela Davis wrote
in Ms. Magazine in June of 1975,
she says, those of us, men and women,
who are black and or people of color
must understand the connection
between racism and sexism
that is so strikingly
manifested in her case.
Those of us who are white and women
must grasp the issue of male supremacy
in relationship to the
racism and class bias,
which complicate and exacerbate it.
The Joan Little case is the only example
that we hae in the U.S.
history of a mass mobilization
against state violence
against a black woman.
The only one.
So, I think that's both a
shameful and sad reflection
of how little our lives are valued.
But, also, really
interesting to think about
what galvanized that many
different kinds of people
to come together to fight
for this woman's life.
So, there's a lot that's
interesting about the organizing
around Joan Little.
Mainly, feminist organizers
turned the politics
of violence and safety on their heads.
They made state violence,
rather than state
protection from violence,
the target of their organizing efforts.
They underscored the race,
class, and sexual dimensions
of violence and safety,
they put women of color at the center
of the anti-violence movement
for a brief moment in history.
They showed the ways in
which the state compounded,
rather than alleviated violence
in the lives of marginalized people.
This brings me to the work
of supporting and fighting
for the lives of
criminalized survivors today,
in America, in this current
moment that we're in.
African American women
are two times more likely
to be incarcerated than
their white counterparts,
that has been shrinking,
it used to be three times
about six or seven years ago,
now it's about two times more likely.
Does anybody want to guess as
to why that rate is shrinking,
the now two times more
versus three times more?
Why are more white women
being incarcerated now?
- [Male] There are more...
- What?
- [Male] There are more of
them to incarcerate for...
- There have always
been more of them than,
but why now, why do you think?
What's going on right now?
- [Woman] The opioids.
- Yeah, the opiod crises
is actually making it
so a lot more poor, rural,
white women are coming
into the system than ever before, yeah.
So, young black girls are suspended
from school at six times the rate
of their white female peers.
We know that that causes
often to a push out,
which leads again indirectly
to criminalization.
You will also want to add
to that the increased risk
of poverty, violence, and sexual assault,
and it's clear that black
women and girls are too often
made targets in both
interpersonal and state violence.
There's a dearth of data about
gender non-conforming people,
and trans people in men's prisons.
People who identify as
lesbian, gay, bisexual,
or transgender we know are
incarcerated at twice the rate
of American adults who
do not identify as LGTBQ.
16% of transgender and gender
non-conforming respondents
to a national survey had
spent time in jail or prison,
in comparison to about 5%
of all american adults,
with higher rates for
transgender women, 21%
then transgender men, 10%.
According the ACLU, nearly 60% of people
in women's prisons nationwide,
and as many as 94% of some
women's prisons populations
have a history of physical or sexual abuse
before being incarcerated.
These numbers are high because
survivors are systemically
punished for taking action
to protect themselves,
and their children
while living in unstable
and dangerous conditions of violence.
Survivors are criminalized
for self defense,
for failing to control abusers violence,
for migration, removing
children from abusive people,
being coerced into criminalized activity,
securing resources
needed to live day to day
while suffering from economic abuse.
Our work at Survived and
Punished is in the lineage
of the lesbian and radical feminists,
who's politics found their
expression in collective defense,
a term coined by historian Emily Hobson,
and who adopted an organizing
strategy of opposition
to U.S. state violence.
These were feminists who used the politics
of collective and mass
defense to challenge
the intersections of gender based violence
and racialized criminalization.
These are feminists who
would say in the words
of former political prisoner, Susan Sachs,
my feminism does not drive me
into the arms of the state,
but even further from it.
Survived and Punished
demands the immediate release
of survivors of domestic
and sexual violence
and other forms of gendered violence
who are imprisoned for survival actions,
including self defense,
failure to protect, migration,
removing children from abusive people,
being coerced into
acting as an accomplish,
securing resources needed to live.
Furthermore, we demand
that these same survivors
are swiftly reunited with their families.
This is really important,
because typically over the years,
especially on the left,
when we think about defense campaigns
we usually mount defense
campaigns for people
we see as dissenters
and political prisoners.
And often, the people who are
survivors of gendered violence
are not seen in that same light
of political prisonership.
That's actually new,
because in the 1970's,
a lot of survivors of
gender based violence
were seen also as political prisoners,
and people created and
mobilized defense campaigns
in support of their lives.
That is partly what we are doing
through Survived and
Punished and other formations
that exist around the country.
How does it look in practice
to demonstrate our solidarity
for criminalized survivors of violence?
For many of us we've
created defense campaigns
for criminalized survivors
like Marissa and Bresha
to fight for their freedom.
And those cases we happen
to be pretty successful.
As part of the defense campaign work
that I've been involved in,
and that others have been involved in,
we've been willing to put
ourselves on the line publicly.
We take direct action.
So, before my concluding remarks,
I'd like to show a very short video
of an action co-organized by Lifted Voices
and my organization Project Nia,
to dramatize the plight of Naomi Freeman,
a criminalized survivor
of domestic violence
who killed her abuser in self-defense,
and was jailed for months while pregnant,
awaiting trial in Cook County.
- [Woman] We have gathered here tonight,
as we do every year,
in solidarity with our fallen.
All of those consumed by
the generalized violence
incited by the state.
Under these conditions,
we are forced to fight
for the simple right to life.
At this intersection of
of ICEE, the FCC prison,
and the Chicago Stock Exchange,
we bring flowers in memory
of all those taken from us.
We connect the dots,
and like these flowers,
indistinguished symbols
of our love for justice.
As we lock arms in love
we embody and strengthen
those before us inspire within us,
and repeat their words firm.
It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
Tonight, we also join hands to assure
that Naomi Freeman be
released from Cook County
because no fight for freedom
should ever be criminalized.
This year of organizing and
action has shown this city
that it's people are
and will continue to liberate ourselves,
because it is our duty
to fight for our freedom.
(electronic music)
- So, what you just saw there was
people who were putting
their bodies on the line
to raise awareness about
interpersonal violence
and it's intersection with state violence.
We were also commemorating
those who we've lost
over the course of that year,
this was in December of 2015,
and we were trying to
invite people to learn more
about Naomi's plight and her case,
and to donate money to the bond fund
of the people who put
their lives on the line,
their bodies on the line,
in order to be able to
raise bond for Naomi
to be freed from prison,
from jail, sorry.
She had a $350,000 bond,
and so we were trying to
raise money to get her out.
By that point she had already
been in jail for six months,
she was seven months pregnant,
she had lupus,
she was having a lot of
issues while at the jail,
and we were able to raise the bond
to be able to bond her out.
She was bonded out on December 23rd,
two days before Christmas,
to spend time with her family,
and also to be able to fight
for her case free, right?
You all know that you're much
more likely to be convicted
if you're being held in jail,
than if you are if you
actually can fight your case
from being out,
while you're actually out on bail,
so we really wanted that for her.
By September of 2017, Naomi's
first degree murder charge
was reduced to involuntary man slaughter
with 30 months for probation,
and a requirement that she visit
a mental health professional monthly.
And really, this only happened because
of community organizing,
and because of collective defense.
They would have railroaded her.
She would have been in for life,
I have no question about that whatsoever.
She had a public defender,
not a private attorney,
she was a poor black woman,
you know, three kids,
it just was not going to be for her.
She would end up being one of the cases
we'd be fighting for after incarceration.
You know, I'm an abolitionist.
I hate the idea of people being mandated
to mental health confinement,
or mental health treatment,
I see that as other form of carcerality,
but in this case, Naomi and her
family were happy to take it
as opposed to being in a
cage for 25 years to life,
which is what she was facing at the time.
So, the deal that got
worked out with prosecutors
because of community pressure,
ended up being much to her benefit
as opposed to what she
was experiencing before.
So, if somebody can come back
again and help me, please.
Thank you.
This is the last time
you'll have to do it,
because I'm not doing any more videos.
I appreciate that.
So, I went to think of the work that
my comrades and I are engaged in
as a form of what Christina
Sharpe has called wake work.
We are employing a
particular form of care,
and in our own way we are,
as Christina puts it quote,
"keeping and putting breath
back into the black body".
This is the work that allows
us to move into a future
that would be a better
future than the current one,
the current present that we are living in.
And as I heard Saidiya Hartman
say at an event celebrating
Christina's book called
"In the Wake" last year,
"care is the antidote to violence".
I would add that care
and attention to the wake
is how we make a way out of no way.
I mentioned before, I think,
Joey mentioned before,
that I'm here back in New York now,
after having been in Chicago for 20 years,
having organized in Chicago
with people like Joey
and many other amazing
organizers, and lawyers,
and other folks to try
and transform the city
from the kind of neo-liberal
hell zone that it currently is,
to something better.
And I have to say that over the years,
we've been pretty successful at doing
what we were hoping to do.
We got rid of a horrific prosecutor
through our Bia Nina campaign.
Rahm is not going to run again,
which my god, God's helped
us, we are so happy.
(audience laughter)
You know, like, we got reparations
for police torture survivors.
You would think, right,
that we're like, what's
going on in Chicago?
You know, I have to say that
what's going on in Chicago
is that people work together much better
than they do here in New York.
I'm from New York,
I grew up, I was born and raised here.
People in New York think they've
got everything figured out
really, really well.
People hate working together.
Most people are actually
busy tearing each other down
as opposed to building up things together.
That's the organizing
culture of this city.
And, it's something I experienced
when I was a teenager organizing here,
and when I was in my 20's organizing here,
so it's not a shock to me.
I'm back now here,
and what we're doing in New York
through Survived and Punished New York
is to actually try to
create a forward thrust
to try to force the Governor
of this goddamn state,
which I don't know why their
electing this man again,
but whatever,
that was a little commentary moment,
but I have to say it.
(audience laughter)
What the hell is wrong with people?
But anyways, so this guy
is going to be the governor
for however long he's
going to be the governor,
and we are continuing to make a push
and demand that he free
criminalized survivors
that are currently in New York prison.
The governor has unlimited
powers of clemency.
Clemency, as you know, has two parts:
pardons and commutations.
He's made about 160 to 170 pardons,
most of those pardons are three
people who committed crimes
when they were 16 and 17 years old.
I mean, give me a break, you know?
Like, pardon all those people
instead of just like 1/16th.
Okay, he's been in office
now, what, eight years?
He's commuted 12 sentences
in that entire time.
He's released one criminalized
survivor of violence,
a domestic violence survivor
named Valerie Seeley.
So, Survived and Punished
New York is making a push
to insist that he free people.
That he free criminalized survivors,
that he free everybody.
He's got 51,000 people in his prisons
right now in New York State,
he could free all of them if he wanted to.
That's the power that the executive has
to use clemency without
any sort of limits, right?
So, what the governor's
office is telling us
every time we bring this
up is that there are rules.
There are rules, we gotta
figure out the rules.
You all know this, lawyers,
And future lawyers.
(audience laughter)
You're really concerned with the rules,
and the laws and all this.
The laws were friggin' made by them.
They made the goddamn rules.
They created the office in 2015,
they said they were going
to free all these people,
they made stupid criteria
that make no sense,
and then the turn around and say
we can't do anything because
we've got our criteria.
Our thing is, you can
free anybody you want
at any time for any reason.
We don't actually abide by your rules,
that's lovely that you have them,
but you can do this.
So, we are making a push right now
through the Free Them New York campaign,
you can find information about it at
freethemnewyork.com.
You also got some postcards that, I think,
Julie was passing out to you
for those of you who can sign it,
put your zip code on it.
We're mailing a bunch of postcards to him.
October's our escalation
month on this campaign.
We are going to be harassing him,
we've already been doing direct actions
and other things to get
the Governor's attention.
We have their attention now.
We were able to work with Cynthia Nixon's
campaign to get Cynthia Nixon to take on
one of our demands as a
campaign platform thing.
So we've been doing a lot
of the quote typical work
you gotta do to move
the outside inside game.
I will say this,
there are plenty of lawyers in New York
that have signed up for this stupid thing
that he has put together that's supposed
to be this pro-bono effort to help people
in prisons fill out clemency forms,
and applications that are
like this friggin' high.
He's got all these
lawyers working on this,
and these poor lawyers,
who keep putting in all this effort,
sending it to them,
and then it's like a black hole.
There's no response,
their people aren't getting out,
nothing is happening.
So, I have lots of respect for lawyers,
Joey will tell you I do, you know,
some of my best friends are lawyers.
(audience laughter)
But, like, it's not going to work
in the little one application at a time,
would you please do this?
You have to have an outside game,
and you have to have
outside people pushing
so that your one
application gets a hearing
and that actually lubricates
the wheels of justice
towards something better
than what we currently have.
So, you can help us by calling him,
we're going to have a phone
blitz on October 23rd,
we're going to be doing a workshop
that I'm co-facilitating
on the 16th of October
at the New School.
We get more and more
people to know about this,
and be asking questions about this,
and be part of this campaign.
We're going to free people from prison,
and that's really important,
and we gotta use every lever,
so this is one of them.
So, I'm gonna end my
remarks by just reading you
a short clip of a poem by
one of my favorite poets,
the name is Jane Cortez.
And her work, her words really encapsulate
why I think we have to continue to fight
for justice everywhere,
and really how we can,
and the poems titled "There it is",
and heres a part of it:
And if we don't fight,
and if we don't resist,
and if we don't organize and unify
and get the power to
control our own lives,
then we will wear the
exaggerated look of captivity,
the stylized look of submission,
the bizarre look of suicide,
the dehumanized look of fear,
and the decomposed of repression,
for ever and ever and ever.
And there it is.
I just think we have got
to be fighting much harder.
We are in the midst of
a moment in our history
of deep, deep peril.
We've been here before.
We've always had these moments,
but right now we have a
outright supremacist in power,
who is by no means going
to listen to people
with decorum ideas about
how we're going to do shit.
We are gonna have to throw down
in ways that I don't think
people yet are comfortable doing,
I certainly don't think white people are.
And, I'm gonna say this because
this is how we got here,
white people are responsible
for this mess we're in,
and you're gonna be the ones
who are gonna help get us out of it.
And, I think you just,
and your gonna have to use
all the means, and all the
tools, and all your energies
and every bodies gotta be involved.
This is not a moment for bystanders,
this is not a moment for you're in school,
you're busy, your tests are happening.
Good, those things are
always gonna be in your life,
your always gonna have shit to do.
But, you still have a
responsibility to be part
of a polity that is not gonna be one
that crumbles to the ground having killed
and harmed millions of
people in it's wake.
Your job is to be part of the fight.
Find your place, find your lean,
keep your hope going,
practice it everyday,
don't give into despair,
which is a tool of your enemies.
Fight, fight, fight.
Thank you so much.
(audience applause)
We have time, I think, for
20 minutes of questions,
or 15 minutes, I think we go to 7:30,
is that right?
Alright, I did it.
I was not going to go over.
I'm a stickler for time,
people who know me know this.
I like to start on time, end
on time, everything on time.
So, if you have questions,
comments, thoughts,
please feel free to ask them.
I might not have answers,
and I'll just be like I don't know.
Somebody else in the room
might have the answers.
- [Sylvia] Come up to the mic.
- Oh god, people hate that.
- [Sylvia] No, no, no people love it.
- Okay then, people love it, okay.
(audience laughter)
Okay fine, come up to the
mic and ask your questions.
I'm told you love that.
Come over.
You're all just sitting there,
completely obliterated by my brilliance.
(audience laughter)
I know, I know, it's hard.
- So, thank you so much for this talk.
So, you mentioned the Free the New York,
Free NY, Free the NY,
so is that the main
way we can get involved
with your New York mobilization?
- Oh yes, absolutely.
- Okay.
- The Free Them New York campaign
is part of our general campaign.
We have Survived and Punished New York,
Julie's here from Survived
and Punished New York.
We started back in December here,
we have a Survived and Punished National
kind of mobilization formation.
We started that in 2015.
We have affiliates,
so we have one in Chicago, one here now,
and in California.
And the New York affiliate
we meet once a month,
we actually meet here, believe it or not.
I'd invite you, I know
NYU doesn't know that.
(audience laughter)
But we do meet here.
We do meet here because
a couple of your students
are part of Survived
and Punished New York,
and they get us space, right?
They do the thing that
you're supposed to do
when you have access to resources.
They free the land,
and allow people from the community
to come in and use this space,
so, that's what happens,
that's a good part of your University,
you should be happy,
but security might be mad now,
but whatever.
But, we do meet here on
Sunday's once a month,
and we just kinda have
been doing a lot of things.
One thing has been mass
commutations campaign,
that's that.
We're doing a push against the D.A.
in preparation for the D.A.
election in 2019 in Queens,
to try and run a candidate against
the current sitting person,
and get them to actually focus
on criminalized survival,
so we're working, we have a working group
that's the D.A. working group.
We have a working group
that's working on commissary,
creating a fund for people who
are long term incarcerated
people in Taconic and Bedford
particularly to start with,
to create a commissary fund for people
who are life without parole population,
because they have been there for so long
they don't have their families
who can come and visit them
and they don't have money.
And then we have, what's our fourth group?
- [Julie] Newsletter.
- Newsletter, that's right.
So, we're working, the group of people,
are working on creating a newsletter
in the tradition of a
newsletter that used print
called "No More Cages", and
"Through the Looking Glass.
These were two newsletters
that were created by radical feminists,
most of them socialists,
who created these newsletters
in the 1970's and 80's,
and they would send them inside,
to survivors who were on the side,
and it would be a two way conversation,
between the inside and outside.
And so we're revamping that idea
for the current moment.
So, that's what people are doing,
and you're welcome to come
to any of our meetings
if you're interested.
You can leave your email
and I'll let you know
when the next meeting is,
and you're welcome to come and join.
- [Woman] Thank you so much.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Go ahead, Julie.
- [Julie] Yeah, I just wanted
to add something real quick
about the postcards.
You could fill it out here,
we have some pens,
or you could take it home.
You could leave it here, we'll mail it.
You can mail it on your own.
Just remember to put a very
brief love note to Cuomo,
we gotta hear expression,
and then just leave your
name and your zip code.
You don't have to give your full address,
obviously it has to be New York State,
and then you could put a two over here
we'll put stamps on them,
and you can leave me here.
And then, if you're,
probably most of you
follow Mariame on Twitter,
but if -
- Don't, don't all follow me.
- [Julie] Okay.
- I hate that.
- [Julie] No no, I was go to just say...
- I really hate people who follow me
on Twitter for two reasons,
I'll tell you after Julie's done.
- [Julie] Okay, you can
also use the other hashtag,
which is why Cuomo hates us.
We use CuomoMIA, as in missing in action.
So, you can find our
event under the CuomoMIA,
Survived and Punished,
and Free Them New York,
also, as Mariame mentioned,
on the 16th we're going to have that event
that's in conjunction with
Domestic Violence Awareness month,
which is October.
And, so those are a whole
bunch of different ways
to get involved in the meantime.
- Thanks, Julie.
Alright, were there other people who have
comments or questions that
you want to share, please.
You don't have to get up
- [Sylvia] No, go to the mic.
because it's...
- Oh, their taping?
- [Sylvia] For posterity.
- [Woman] Thank you so much
for your time and your wisdom.
I was wondering if you
could talk a little bit
about the strategy behind
a mass clemency campaign
as compared to the individual
survivor defense campaigns,
and then the different
organizing infrastructure
to do something like that?
Anything about that would be interesting.
- Thank you for asking.
So, the problem wasn't,
the good part about having
individual defense campaigns is
if those individual defense campaigns
are explicitly tied to broader,
like making a broader case,
but often, individual
defense can anger about,
are run by family members,
people who are desperately
concerned about their loved ones,
and are not about making
a political statement
in a broader kind of way.
That talks about why are these people
locked up in the first place?
What do we need to change structurally
in order to have less people
locked up in this kind of way?
That's not what the aim,
the aim is raising money for their person,
making sure their people get out, right?
And that becomes the thing.
So that kind of strategy,
doesn't necessarily lead
to what it is that we want,
which is to make this an
issue that people understand
is about systems and structures,
and that in order to
actually end these things,
we're going to have to change
systems and structures.
That isn't just about
an individual person,
or an individual case.
It also makes it much easy,
often we are doing individual cases,
it is easy to fall into the
exceptionalist trap and model,
which is like this particular
person deserves to be free
because they're worthy of freedom,
and they deserve freedom,
but all these other mfers,
they can just stay behind bars forever.
And, we are not, that's not our model
or what we're trying to do.
We're trying to get against,
we're trying to create a decarcel strategy
that's broad based,
that makes people understand
the connections we use,
domestic violence and sexual violence,
because it is such an incredible railway,
pipeline, to the criminalization
of so many people
who are particularly vulnerable.
And we're making a choice that
if we don't uproot those things,
we're not gonna be able to
deal with the numbers of people
who are locked up and criminalized, right?
So, we're trying to get
attention on a thing
that people don't focus on that much.
If you understand the
histories of mobilizations
around prisoners in the U.S.,
it has been particularly male,
very much about black men,
and other populations have not gotten
the same level of attention.
And, it's hard to say
that because prisoners
don't get attention in general,
so we're fighting an economy that's
an economy of scarcity, already,
but it's really important to talk about
gender non-conforming people.
It's really important to talk about women,
because I don't think you could
understand what's happening
around criminalization if
those populations are left out.
So, we're using these
defense campaigns as a way
to insert that language
around the gendered nature
of the criminalization that's occurring.
And gendered meaning, like,
men have a gender too.
That these things play themselves
out in particular ways,
people have premature,
people have differentiated experiences,
but are all exposed to premature death.
So, that's what we're
trying to talk about,
is what are the differentiated experiences
that are leading to premature death,
which is what criminalization really is.
So, those things are the
things that we think about.
We're trying to push in California,
our California chapter's
doing a lot of work right now
on basically life without parole.
Trying to get Governor
Brown before he leaves
to commute a bunch of sentences
for the life without parole population,
which will not even have a chance
to go before a parole board,
so can he at least commute
people to life with parole,
so they have a chance to go.
Some of these people have
been in for 30, 40 years now.
And so that our affiliate over
there's doing a lot of work.
Our affiliate in California
is also older than we are,
and is connected to the
California Coalition for Women Prisoners.
CCWP's were working for 25 years inside
the prisons in California,
so we have a lot of the
Survived and Punished
inside members in California.
We're working on getting an
inside membership in New York
as well as for Survived and Punished,
so we have members of our teams
who are part of our organization
who have been visiting survivors,
'cause we've been talking to them
to see if they want to be part
of the Free Them New York campaign.
Been writing to them,
and then visiting them
And Julie, actually, just
finished doing last week
an orientation for our new members
so they can go and visit
the prisons as well,
and have conversations
with people on the inside,
mostly at Bedford.
I think this is important too,
which is we were talking about
this at our last meeting,
about it's really important
to go inside prisons.
I think there are people, which
it's always shocking to me,
but true, there are people in this country
who never see the inside of a prison,
and never been in there.
I don't think have
anybody who's been inside,
which is weird,
because there's millions of
people who've churned through
the jails and prisons in our country,
but there are those folks,
and so it's important to go there,
'cause you need to see what it means,
what total control looks like,
and what unfreedom looks like,
in order to be able to fight
like how on the outside
for the people who we are supporting.
Does that answer your question?
Okay.
Any other people have comments, questions?
Yes you, come on down.
- I was not stricken, but
I found it interesting
your talking about Joan
Little defense campaign
and I need to do my own homework,
but I was wondering since you identified
that singularly as either
the last or the only
mass mobilization to free someone-
- No, for a black woman.
- There we go.
Was some of the campaigns
in the last 10 years,
was there something
culturally that changed,
or did it not ever get to
the intersectional place
or the many different groups
calling for someone's freedom?
- That's really a great question
I don't know, I think
that Joan Little's case
was unique because of the
moment that it happened.
It happened in '75,
in '74,
and then her trial was in '75.
This is, remember, this
is the moment towards,
this is the medi of the
black freedom movement
of the modern era.
So, the Panthers, all these
folks are getting killed,
are in prison,
all this stuff is going on there,
The anti-war movement is winding down,
because basically people are fighting to,
are seeing the end of Vietnam.
There's kind of like the fermenting
of all this stuff that was going,
and those things intersected in her case.
People saw different levels of it.
There was the prison stuff,
there was the sexual violence stuff,
it was the black nationalists,
it was like everybody could converge
on this particular case.
We haven't had that kind of
a case in this modern era.
There aren't, you know, I don't see a case
that could galvanize BLM,
along with HRC.
(audience laughter)
You know what I mean, like,
I don't know what is the actual campaign
that brings all those groups
to the table with fierceness.
And also, we don't have lesbian,
radical feminists anymore.
Like we have a few old-timers,
you know,
like some of my touchstones
and people who taught me,
but for this current moment,
I don't think there are that many,
and really, honestly, radical lesbians,
feminists socialists,
are the ones who saved
a lot of that stuff.
They were the ones who
did anti-prison work
of the 1960's and '70's,
and they just aren't
there in numbers anymore.
Other people?
Thoughts? Comments?
Oh, sure.
- [Sylvia] I don't usually ask questions,
but I would certainly agree with you
that organizing here in New York
is not always very productive.
I'm gonna say that,
and people do tend to
tear each other down.
And I've seen that, so I'll just say it.
So, my question is,
given the work that we do
to provide an opponent,
And I think of two other major things
that are going on in the city right now.
One is the mass bailout.
- That's right.
Which, people have heard about it?
Okay. There's the mass bailout,
and then there's the rather contentious
if you will, Mayor's
plan to build new jails,
and the response to that.
Okay, so I see people nodding.
So, my question is,
trying to make it brief,
my question is would this
potentially be a moment
to build a better way to
organize together in New York
from an abolitionist's perspective.
It's a very broad question.
- No, I know, I don't think
people are really abolitionists
in New York.
I think people are
situational abolitionists.
Which I understand,
you know,
they're abolitionists
but not for these people.
And that's not what abolition is.
That's not the Faye Knox
version of abolition.
That's not Nils Christie version of that.
That's why it's some
weird version of abolition
for the 21st century, of this moment.
And I don't know if
it's possible to sustain
because of the angio-izatoin of organizing
in New York.
Like, think about the
groups that are at the head
of those things we just mentioned.
These are groups that are nonprofits,
who's money depends
desperately on state funds
and all sorts of other,
like these aren't going to be groups
that are going to be
explicitly abolitionist.
So their funders can take their money.
Then, they're not interested in that.
Which is why, we don't take
and get any funding on purpose.
We're gonna raise our money from people.
Which, not everybody can do that,
not everybody wants to do that.
Not everybody wants to base build.
People want to, and I understand,
people want jobs as organizers.
I never, ever thought I would
get paid for organizing.
I don't.
So, it never even occurred to
me that it was a possibility
when I started,
because nobody I knew
got paid to organize.
People have jobs, and then organize.
That's always been, like, you had your job
and you had your work.
So, that's always the way that
I always thought about this stuff.
I'm old, so it's very different now.
People are paid for telling
you two things, you know?
How you gonna pay me, I
just told you something
that Claudia Jones talked about in 1948,
but whatever, you know what I mean?
It was my invention.
I'm like, honey, no, it
was not your invention.
(audience laughter)
Three, four hundred people
already figured that out,
but whatever.
So, yeah, we're just at a different time.
And I really don't, I don't think people
in New York want different way.
I get it.
Anybody else?
- [Male] I wanted to just,
I'll come to the mic.
- Sure.
- So, thank you so much for being here.
I wanted to just comment on the essay
with which you began,
which it remarked on
trauma, sexual trauma,
that was exacted on some of these women
by men in their lives before
they entered the prison system.
I really appreciated
the list that you had,
you know, listing debt, and
poverty as a form of violence.
I appreciate having a holistic perspective
on these women in their lives,
prior to entering incarceration.
How do we in our own black
and brown communities,
and you know, and white
communities need to do this too,
think about alleviating the
behavior that leads to trauma,
that leads to victimization.
How do we think about these
concepts at a broader level
at home, and if in our own communities,
and in our society?
How do you think about trauma,
and our trauma society?
- Yeah, that's a really good question,
and it's a huge one.
I'm not somebody who knows a lot about
the physiology of trauma,
like, I'm not a social
worker, I don't do that.
But, I understand the concept
of generational trauma,
as a materialist proposition.
It's hard, right, because I get,
part of the way that the state operates,
because the state is the central organizer
of all gendered violence.
Yeah?
And we, our communities
are mirrors of that,
and reflect that,
and it's dialectical kind of experience.
And the state then blames us
for interpersonal violence
within our communities,
and says like we have to do these things
because you're all so violent,
when in fact the state is
the mass violence purveyor,
as King rightly said
before they killed him,
the biggest purveyor of
violence is our state.
So, I don't know how we talk
about those things separately,
they are part of the same thing,
that even if we found ways to be socially
peaceful with each other,
and not traumatize each other,
the state would still
purveyor of trauma against us.
So, we gotta be working
on simultaneous ways
of handling this.
One of the ways that I try to address
interpersonal violence in my own community
is through restorative and
transformative justice.
I hate talking about
this in public though,
because I don't think people really want
restorative, transformative justice.
I don't really think
that's what people want
for the most part.
I think people are pretty happy
with punishment and revenge.
It's actually a
Judeo-Christian way of thinking
about how people learn,
people do it their children from the time
their kids are young.
They use discipline, you know.
It's a very white, you know what I mean,
not in the sense of white
people, but whiteness.
It's this thing that
pervades within the U.S.
But I try in my own communities
to practice that work,
and that's the best way
I know how to intervene
around issuing and addressing trauma
within the communities I'm a part of.
I don't think, people always
what to think about scale
in this country,
'cause everything that's
done has to be put to scale,
whatever that means.
And, I don't know how
you do that to scale,
generally with people
who really don't want,
like, you know.
Toni Cade Bambara in
"The Salt Eaters" says
at one point one of the characters says,
but honey do really want to be healed?
But I think about that all of the time
when I hear people talk about shit,
and I was like, you don't
really want healing.
You want something else,
and can we dissociate those things?
And the something else
you want is to seemingly
to punch people until they die.
I'm not sure how we overcome that.
'Cause that's also trauma inducing,
for the person who caused trauma.
It cycles itself into
ongoing perpetual violence.
I don't know what to say about it.
We're in a really tough moment right now,
today, we've got somebody
who's put in front
of a group of what's mostly white men,
having to throw out their pain
of having been harmed by somebody else
who's also powerful.
I think a lot of people would like him
to pay for what he did.
And I'm pro-consequences,
please don't get me wrong,
I'm just not pro-punishment.
I don't think you should
get a promotion for what,
for sexual abused,
like you actually should
lose out on the job.
That should be the base thing.
So, I don't know,
I don't know if that
answers your question,
but it's something that
I think about a lot,
and I don't really know how
to answer it in broad way,
and try to answer it in my communal way,
and try to work with
people who've caused harm
in my own community particularly,
to try to take
accountability for that harm.
To try and actually put us on path towards
the beginning of healing.
So, I've run, I facilitate
processes around
community accountability
and transformative justice,
for sexual harming specifically.
So, that's kinda my contribution
to that piece of the work.
Yeah.
Anybody?
Oh, the last thing.
- I'm just gonna say all 25
lectures have been magnificent.
- Yes, excellent.
- And there's a lot of people who've been
Sheinberg lecturers,
I'm so happy you've moved to New York.
(audience laughter)
Definitely that.
But I thank you particularly
of Kathy Boudin,
have you worked with her?
- Yes of course, I've worked with Kathy.
- A lot of people have
sounded similar themes,
and raised similar problems,
and nobodies had such a
sharp critique of how bad
we are in New York.
(audience laughter)
I think we need to take that to heart,
and learn from you, and we will
continue to learn from you,
and this has just been magnificent.
I'm sure you can stay up for a few minutes
for the shy people who
were afraid to get up
and ask their questions.
And then, next door we have a reception
that you're all welcome to come to.
- Thank you.
- Thank you.
(audience applause)
