Finally i had the time to join a Dignity Act Philly/Pittsburgh event. We email and share information often to keep each other in the loop.The Dignity Act looks to raise awareness about incarcerated women and the conditions they forced to live in while treated as less then human in jails and prisons. Happy to have joined their virtual reentry day.
The Dignity Act for Incarcerated Women, is a bill that’s on the floor right now and it needs the support of American people to pass. Join by signing up below. You can also contact your U.S. Senator and ask him/her to support this bill.
Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act – quickly joined by Senators Kamala Harris and Richard Durbin. The Dignity Act seeks common sense reforms to how women are treated in the federal prison system.
The United States holds 30% of the world’s incarcerated women. We shackle them while giving birth. We often place them hundreds of miles away from their children – further inhibiting the healthy development of their children. And we force them to make draconian choices, like whether to use commissary funds to call home, or purchase sanitary pads.
We prey upon those who have been traumatized, and instead of releasing them back into society rehabilitated, we re-traumatize them.
This rapidly growing segment of our prison population is often left out of conversations around criminal justice reform, but deserves our attention.
The campaign includes Grammy-Award Winning Artist Alicia Keys and her We Are Here Movement, alongside other creative advocates and the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls.
In Philly and Pittsburgh women and their families involved in the unjust system can connect with tinyurl.com/freeblackmamas tinyurl.com/215Action. For no cost mental health support via art therapy you can contact Jacqui of Sankofa Healing Studio, 215.802.3533
We can all reach out to your elected officials for alternative justice models that support trauma specific and trauma diversion care for our sisters behind bars. Lets understand what an Impacted Mother means to our families and community.
tinyurl.com/judgefoxletter is a handle you can use to reach out to judges who need to hear from you and your concern for how our society currently treats our sisters in this criminalize a woman for being a woman mentality.
Also finally got to join Prof. Kimberle Crenshaw Under The Blacklight series, hosting conversations on the affects of covid19 on AfroAmerican communities. This particular conversation highlights women in Georgia prison. Glad these conversations are being had, getting more into these conversations is key.
Throughout the Under the Blacklight series, we’ve interrupted mainstream discourse in order to advocate for a more egalitarian politics and a more robust political discourse. Thus far we’ve heard from scholars, activists, and thought leaders like Eve Ensler, Eddie Glaude Jr., Ai-Jen Poo, Naomi Klein, Marc Lamont Hill, Barbara Arnwine, Ibram X. Kendi, Josie Duffy Rice, and David Blight, among many others, about what is happening on the ground, how we can contextualize it historically and theoretically, and how an intersectional frame shows us the particular vulnerabilities that COVID-19 puts in sharp relief.
As the tragic killing of Ahmaud Arbery gains national recognition, the horrific history of lynching rears its head once again. Arbery’s death can be a window into the wider political and racial environment in which old patterns of racial vulnerability intersect with newer pathogens. Other tensions as well: How is it that in a state which is the home of cosmopolitanism and progress of the New South–and the home of the eternal flame for civil rights, a Black man can be hunted in broad daylight; in the backyard of the CDC the largest cluster of COVID deaths is situated; in place of Black economic and political power, an election can be stolen in plain sight.
This week, the conversation takes a close look at these seeming contradictions to give us a window into what’s happening there, and what is likely happening or could happen elsewhere.
This week’s Under the Blacklight features:
Kimberlé Crenshaw (Host)
Emery Wright
Talitha LeFlouria
Crystal Feimster
Anoa J. Changa
LaTosha Brown
Pa Voter Court Watch 