 February, welcome our Zoom viewers and our YouTube viewers. We appreciate you for being here. We're gonna give it one 30 seconds or so for everyone to filter in. All right, welcome everyone. Thank you again for being here on this beautiful Sunday and coming out and being in person and gathering. While we're all still getting used to it and still in recovery, gathering is important and we try to make it as safe as possible. So hand sanitizer, bathroom underneath the stairs to the right and let's do this. So this is part of our One City One Book campaign where we are celebrating the work of Ear Hustle, Nigel Pour and Erlon Woods in their amazing book. This is Ear Hustle based on their podcast of the same name on flinching stories inside prison life. So the good thing with this campaign is that we get to have amazing humans that are on the topic of the same book. So we're super excited today to have folks who are part of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. The San Francisco Public Library would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramya Tushaloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as an uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramya Tushaloni community. And this is Native American Heritage Month. So we double double down on the celebration of that. And we have lots of programs and a ton of book lists that we create that you should check out on our website and also check out Segorte Land Trust, a women led organization from Oakland who is doing amazing work in land back movement. They are all powerhouses over there. We have a lot of stuff coming up. You can see it flying by on the screen there in the 22nd, last program in November, they're managing Rodessa Jones. She also is a powerhouse. Some upcoming events that I do wanna tell you about that are in person because we are still trying to gather and get this back into where we were, maybe not back to where we were, but in a different flow from where we were, but gather. So Pindarvis Harsha and Brandon Tizik in combo with Nigel and Erlon talking about their project Facing Life, December 3rd, a Saturday right here. And then there'll be a reception upstairs at the bridge where we'll be serving some light snacks and checking out the exhibition. Another in-person that we have is the amazing Sarah Cruzon who spent over two decades inside and has written the most powerful memoir. She also a powerhouse and just beyond intellect and beauty. So check out her book available at all locations at almost 30 locations, 28 locations and bookmobiles. She will be here December 11th with her co-writer. So please come check that out. There's a brochure in the back that lists all of these events and more. So co-pick that up and there's a commemorative poster from your hustle event with beautiful art from Damien Lanai, whose art is also in the atrium. The California Coalition for Women Prisoners is going to present today a conversation with formerly incarcerated leaders who began their advocacy with CCWP from inside women's prisons. We're gonna hear about the many programs including the Fire Inside newsletter published since 1996 and the Writing Warriors Correspondents Program. They're also gonna share reflections from people currently incarcerated in women's prisons and this is all a part of One City One Book and today's moderator is Lisa and we're gonna watch a quick little slideshow first and thank you again probably. So this is one of the things that I tell the girls a lot. The hundreds I've raised and the hundreds that I'm probably going to raise tomorrow but I tell them that you know write down the things that California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation can't take from you. We always talk about everything they can take from us. So let's talk about the things they can't have. So then I share my list with them and they can never take my love for God. It's not possible for them to take that. They can never take my love for my family and they certainly can't take the love I have for myself. That's something they can't touch. They can't take my spirit or my soul. They're not God even though they think they are. They can't have my dignity and my self respect. They can't lower my self-esteem, my pride and they certainly don't have the power to take my sense of humor. And all these things they can't touch unless I give it to them, unless I hand it to them. They can't have that. So let's make your list since I have them make their list and it's a thing that can always remind you every day where people can't take from it because people try to take a lot from us every day. Sis, I know I'm not gonna make it out here. She said, I'm not gonna make it out here. And I said, no, we're gonna make it home. We're gonna make it home. She goes, no, I'm not gonna make it. She said, but I'm gonna make sure that you make it home. I'm gonna make sure that you and the other ladies get to see your grandchildren because I'm not gonna stop fighting till my last breath this time. I will give up for us. I will give voices from the other side to come in here and to speak up for us. And I won't stop. And she didn't. She walked all the way to the end. And she told me, she said, if I don't get us help, no one knows what's happening to us behind these walls. And our life sentence have just turned into a death sentence. And we're gonna die because these people don't care. They're not getting us help. They don't even look at us as people. And so we definitely have to do something for ourselves. And she goes, if I can start this, I know that it will continue. And if she could only see today what I see, she would be so, so happy. She would be so happy to see all the lives that she have saved, her work saved my life and so many others. So many others because those ladies that get that message and start speaking up for us and start coming in there, they brought love, they brought hope. They showed us, we don't judge you guys like that. Everybody has made a mistake. We're here to help you. We're here to make it right back here behind these walls for you guys. Even though we can't come here physically back there with you, our love and our support will be here for you. And we will step on anything we have to to get to you through by health, through by medical and they did. They really did and they still are. And it's amazing for one person can do. It's amazing. And now we all know that we have that fight in us. Welcome to all of our attendees, both here in person and viewing virtually to the San Francisco Libraries event. We are, this part of the program today is titled Fire Across the Walls, a conversation in the California Coalition for Women's Prisoners with the California Coalition for Women's Prisoners. Thank you for this opportunity for us to share. CCWP would like to thank the San Francisco Library for inviting us to this event and also for Nigel Pore and Earl Onwoods for their book. This is Ear Hustle, Unflinching Stories of Everyday Prison Life. The Ear Hustle podcast is a much needed platform for the people that we advocated women's prisons across the state and we will share responses like you had seen on the slide show from those behind the walls of oppression and their desire to see an opportunity for themselves just like Earl On and Nigel have provided for our brothers that are in San Quentin State Prison. We are a panel of returned community members who are here to share chapters of a story. This story has been written across pages of the pages of lives impacted by incarceration. Our lived experience is collective and ours alone and it drives the work that we do within CCWP. With the spirit of resilience, we work towards a future free of prisons full of restoration and repair where racial and gender justice are a reality and every person can thrive. I would like to introduce our panel individually as they share. First up is CCWP's own right and left hand. Hossa has been the program director for CCWP for over 12 years, anchoring the office, the Spitfire Speakers Bureau and the growth of CCWP as an organization. She serves on a CCWP's leadership committee. Hossa is the core organizer of the legal visiting team and she comes to this work with a history of survivors as a survivor of domestic violence and the supporter of them. Please welcome Hossa. I was gonna say good morning, but it's not morning. Hello everyone, I'm so glad people came. A lot of people don't like talking about prisons and victimhood if the victims aren't deemed to be deserving of anything, whether it's extra tension and closer. You guys can't hear me? Okay. Yeah, anyway, okay, I'm sorry. So one of the things let me just say first, I have been with CCWP about 14 years. I'm not the director, but I'm one of the program coordinators. The work that I have done and continue to do with CCWP spans a lot of different areas. Most currently I'm working with women on the inside and the outside who were victims or victimized inside the women's prisons and they were victimized by authorities. People, you know, when I talk to people, they look at me like, well, what do people expect? We go to prison, you know, if you're in trouble outside, you're likely gonna be in trouble inside, and which is not true and abused, but nobody looks to be abused by the people who are quote unquote charged with making sure you're safe and protected. And I'm saying that tongue in cheek because as everybody knows, prisoners have no rights. They don't have rights inside. And when they come out, depending on their situation, I'd say 70% of the time, they don't have rights when they come out. Community is what helps heal. Community has different perspectives, even within CCWP, we have a lot of different perspectives, but we all come together basically to support and help women inside. And I'm saying women, but I mean women and trans people. And actually men too, men in men's prisons do benefit from all the work that CCWP does. We do legislative work, you know, we do all kinds of work and they all benefit. So I just kind of wanted to say that and then I'm gonna use my cheat sheet because I will ramble. So regarding sterilization compensation, which is what I'm here to talk to you about, some of you guys already know, between 1909 and 1979, California was one of the most aggressive sterilizers in the nation. I mean, we're talking eugenics here, right? People, some people may remember when Planned Parenthood started, Margaret Sanger, what her position was too. I'm sorry, she was a racist, right? People know this. And her work helped to further along other eugenics work, including that that happened in Nazi Germany. In the 80s, and I'll give you an example of some of the influence that she had. In the 80s, there was a woman in the city of Oakland who because of the crack epidemic. And yeah, she was concerned about all these babies born being sick and what have you. But she decided the best way to go about healing or fixing that was to offer women money to get abortions. And she, if I'm not mistaken, she offered something like $8,000 a person. If you wanted to, if you went and had your pregnancy terminated, she would pay you. She necessarily paid for the abortion. She paid you to not have that baby because don't want you on the welfare roles, another whatever black brown person on the welfare roles. So she thought she was doing a good thing. I don't think that lasted very long. I don't recall how long it lasted, but for me, it showed me that these remnants of eugenics still exist around us all the time. So another example basically is, and I'll just continue to read my notes, I guess, the eugenics law that we had here in California was repealed in 1979. But in 2000s, another legal organization, Justice Now, and CCWP began hearing about reproductive abuses at Valley State Prison, which is in the Central Valley. Most people mostly know CCWF, which is Central California Women's Prison. There used to be three women's prisons in the state of California, now they're only two. I'm not gonna go into that, but VSPW used to house women, and at that prison is where many of these forced and coerced sterilizations happen. I'm sure some of you can't imagine what that might mean. How do you do that? How does one do that? How does one get subjected to that? How does one allow that to happen? So again, you're inside prison, you have no rights. You have virtually no other information coming in, so resources, your resources are your sisters, basically. And that's very limited in terms of resources, I think everyone would agree. But if you go into the trusted person, the doctor who you trust, and you say, oh, I'm having these cramps, I've been having them for months, or I've been bleeding for 30 days, and that's not normal, can you help? And they say, yeah, and you go in, and they decide, oh, you have endometriosis. Well, the best way to get rid of that is to get rid of your endometrium, and we're just gonna go ahead and burn that away with some hot salt water, and then you don't have to worry about that anymore. Nevermind that you're likely gonna be left sterile from the process, and sometimes that information is withheld for people. That was a barbaric practice, my understanding is that didn't last very long, but they did succeed in sterilizing, I'm not sure how many, we see different numbers. We're gonna go with 144 because the state has acknowledged those, acknowledged, not apologized, acknowledged those and didn't do too much about it until the Justice Now and CCWP and California Latinas for Reproductive Justice and Disability Education Research Fund, I think is that acronym, came together and started pushing legislation to have these women compensated for what happened to them. There were a lot of different ways that they were coerced and sterilized, and probably the most egregious part of that is that they were not told. They were not told. One person who we work with, Kelly Dillon, she actually complained and tried to see the state in 2003, I believe it was, and she lost her suit. Here we are now in 2022, we've been pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing, pushing legislation. It always came down to money, it's always not stopped the budget process, but for whatever reason, I'm sure it was politically motivated, Newsome went ahead and signed a budget line item so that we could give these women money. The amount of money they're getting, of course, is no way compensatory, really, for what they went through. And the person who I just mentioned, Kelly Dillon, who originally applied in 2003, just got found suitable to be paid, like, last month. That's ridiculous, yeah. There are CCWP, currently we're supporting maybe 30 or so women, most of them still incarcerated, some of them outside. With this process, the process, the application process is, you just don't know what you're getting into until you get into it. So yeah, we got the money, and we're working with the Victims Compensation Board is who is handling all of this, and so we just try to work very closely with them. But these are people who, what do they know about being a prisoner or the kind of medical service you don't get in prison or on a medical record? Where is the doctor right coercion or force? What does that look like? That's not something they're gonna see on paper. So we've seen some women receive compensation. We've seen probably two or three times as many of the ones who submitted applications be denied. Why are they denied? Various reasons, and some of them kind of nebulous, but that's something that we're continuing to work on when you've enlisted the support of attorneys to support women who are being denied. But the whole point of this is that inside prison, you know, some people say, well, you shouldn't have any rights because you're being punished. But what is the extent of the punishment that people are supposed to endure? I'm sorry, it's not cool to take somebody's uterus or tie their tubes and they didn't ask you to do that. Especially while you're doing it, you're saying, okay, I'm doing this, these are doctors talking, doing this because we want to make sure that if you get out, you won't have any more babies put on welfare roles. Those are judgment calls and it's racist. And I say it's racist because the majority of women who this happened to were black and brown women. And I'm saying that from the perspective of California Coalition for Women Prisoners, but the other two groups who are part of this coalition that worked on this, we're talking about people who were in mental health institutions. As far back as the early 1900s, we're talking about youth who were in juvenile detention centers who maybe had mental health issues, we're talking about. So we're talking about men and women and trans people. So if anyone's been in prison long enough, it's quite possible to have, at this point, maybe your outlook on your sexuality is different, but damn, all these other things have happened to you. It's just, it's mind boggling. It actually is quite mind boggling. And anyway, I don't know if I did my five minutes, but there's a lot more that I could share with you that I won't. Oh, also, did I say that I'm not really incarcerated? I don't think I said that. And the reason I'm saying it is because I think it's important that people understand that there are many levels to the experiences people have. My experience is not, I wasn't formally incarcerated, but I married a man who was. I didn't know him when he was incarcerated. I met him after. So I had the benefits, if I can say that. No judgment, I'm just saying, benefit of not having known anything about him before he went to prison, before he got a capital case, before they put him on death row, before he spent seven years on death row and then was released because society said, that's not quite right. So I met him after that, and we've been married 43 years and have nine grandkids and all of that. And again, I'm just saying that to say that you can support people who are inside. There are many ways that you can support people inside. And everybody inside, and I didn't say this, but everyone who's inside and when we say inside, we're talking about inside prison, it's not there because they're bad people. And I'm not gonna expand on that these guys, I sure will, but if you're interested in all anymore in what's going on with this compensation bill, there's some information on the back table. We also have a CCWP member, Diana Block back there and she's more than happy to talk to you about it. If there's, if there are any attorneys in the room who would like to support these women, we could really use the help. That's it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Haasah. Big round of applause for Haasah. Thank you. Mic check one too. All right, so again, yes, thank you to Diana Block. She is one of our founding members of CCWP which began 26 years ago. And so if you'd like to meet with, meet her and get to know her, she's in the back manning the table. So please stop by the table. So our next presenter is the Drop LWAP coordinator. LWAP stands for Life Without the Possibility of Perot. She is a coordinator for CCWP over Drop LWAP campaign. She was incarcerated for 23 years and Governor Brown commuted her life without parole sentence in December of 2017. Finally being released on parole in November, 2018. She was an inside member of CCWP for 15 years and helped initiate CCWP's organizing to end life without parole campaign and is a member of CCWP's leadership committee. Please give a warm welcome to our very own Kelly Savage Rodriguez. Thank you, I so appreciate everybody that's here. For me, I'm just one of many of our individuals that are inside serving the sentence that show leadership skills. I just got lucky and they were highlighted where others have the same talents, the same skills doing the same amount of work that I was doing. I just got noticed and they haven't yet. So our job is to educate about the sentence and what people go through serving the sentence and then look at ways that we can initiate change because everyone is redeemable. It doesn't matter what the sentence is, everyone has the capacity to learn and grow, especially people here in the library definitely can understand that knowledge is power. Most of these individuals are coming in at a very young age. Our normal population, the average age is 19. So you're thinking about a population who is at all times looking for ways to just educate themselves and be involved, but they're the population that's isolated the most. So if you're serving that sentence, you're going to be denied access to rehabilitation or self-help type options because they want to give it to people who are gonna come home first, which of course makes sense. We want our community safe, whole and healed, but everyone deserves that inside and outside of incarceration. So how do we do that? And the only way to do that is treat everyone fairly and give everybody the opportunity. Okay, I can read. Somebody could have warned me. Yeah, yeah, okay, sorry about that. So I think I'm way too close to it though, just, thanks. So with that, giving them opportunity to have the same healing as the person in the same room with them, for some of our institutions, you've got eight people to a room, some you have two, some you have four. It depends on which institution for our women, we have eight or two to ourselves. And dorm style living and full sum. But with the two main ones that serve individuals serving life without, they're given the opportunity to take some vocations, but it's on a limited basis. So anyone else in the institutions automatically going to be put on multiple lists to get the healing and the growth that you need. Our state has decided that it's a state of, they say it's a state of rehabilitation. So we're going to teach you the tools that you need to come out healthy and whole. Most individuals haven't learned those skills before incarceration, but they just assume that they have them when they enter the system. And so they assume that they're broadening on those skills, not the case. We have individuals including myself who taught basic skills growing up. I had to learn them in order to teach them to the other individuals that I work with. And doing that it's, we are the leaders of the community, we're just not afforded the same opportunities as the rest of the community. So we're the ones teaching the groups, keeping the job stable, making sure the housing units run smoothly, but yet we're constantly told, no, we can't have certain things. For whatever, those reasons are budget because we can only have a certain amount of people in a room, in that capacity. So we can have 30 individuals and we wanna make sure that we have short termers that are about to be released into the community. They get the first opportunity for groups, even though they may be just entered the institution four weeks ago, they'll be the first ones to get the opportunity and then it will go to the life or population. And then eventually, now that we have death row and LWAP in general population, then they would get the last option. They are allowed education now, like college at a very, very limited basis. They choose a certain amount and as those complete, then they try to bring in more individuals, but in that sentence structure. So they wanna make sure that they don't have 10 LWAPs in the room taking up a space when they could have someone who has a board day or has a possibility to come home earlier, which makes sense. However, what is that person serving that life without the possibility of parole sentence doing every day? Where they have them is being a porter or a yard crew or the kitchen, things like that. So where is that growth? Where's that motivation to do more, to learn, to grow? It's really hard to do that when you have no ability to get the things that you need. Even library access is difficult inside. Extremely difficult. You would be shocked at how hard it is just to get a book. Like you, you know, beg your buddy to go to the library on the days that they have off because you can't go because you're at work and that's your only opportunity once a week to get something to get your mind. If you have a TV, you can escape that way, but you need books, you need something to do and you don't have that access relatively consistent. You can do it if you fight for it, but even like donated books is a perfect example. We donated to another unit because we had a whole bunch of books. I lived in an honor dorm. So we had books and we donated to the other unit and they took every single book out of the unit and except the four Bibles that they left on the corner shelf, but they have shelves in the unit that are literally empty of books, but they can't have them in there. And that's normal. Just ways to deprive people of things is normal. And the reason isn't that like these books are bad, but you might be able to hide something in there during the day that we would have to search every book. Let's be ridiculous a little bit more and deny something that could help somebody maybe de-stress, maybe deal with some coping things that they need. It's not like just regular reading material. There's a lot of self-help materials too that we would try to share educational books so that people could go to college, more people could go if we could share books, not allowed to share the book. You have to send it out of the institution after you're done with it. Like it's that kind of craziness that everyone in the institution goes through. For us, we just highlight now doing our storytelling. We were just highlighting individuals serving a lot because they were the ones that were forgotten. We had people fighting the death sentence and we had people fighting for lifers to finally, as you saw in there, one of the slides showed, allow lifers to go to the board to get grants because it used to be nobody got a date, but now that individuals are, they've always been able to show their worth, their growth and their change, but board was finally willing to listen and pay attention to the growth and society decided we need to pay attention to what healing looks like inside and when that happened, we saw a shift and when that shift happened, we realized everybody's forgotten us. People inside, when you deal with incarceration and you're coming in with that sentence, it affects every area that you're at. So if you're going to medical or dental, so for dental, they're gonna put you on the back burner because you're not going home, a lifer's gonna be put on the back burner as well. You can have a tooth pulled, but you can't have like a basic cleaning once a year, not every six months, but once a year, you can't have that without being on that wait list for a while. So it takes a couple of years to get in a position for that. If you're in a job position where maybe, I don't know, you're a few minutes late in that one-yearly appointment, you're canceled, you're still on, no longer charged because of CCWP, but used to be, we fought very hard to not charge that $5 copay, but before you would be canceled and you'd have nothing. For medical, you're denied because you have that sentence in my process dealing with the sterilization issue. I refused to see the doctor. I was at that institution and what wasn't going to see him. So eventually it ended up affecting me to as soon as I got out of incarceration. I finally had female medical issues addressed that almost killed me inside because they didn't want to take care of my procedure. And unfortunately punctured my artery and didn't disclose. And then I got commuted. So now I'm a year to the gate, six months to the gate. So they did not want to treat me well inside. And all the fight, CCWP did try to help me as soon as I got out. I was able to get the surgery, but that's normal. That is every conversation inside. Nobody wanted to take care of any medical issues unless they literally had no choice because it was extreme. But that's just one area. As an LWOP, they didn't want to take me out to have that procedure. It took from 2012 to 2017 for them just to finally approve to take me out to do a procedure they knew was not going to be successful. Didn't know they were going to puncture the artery. I woke up because I didn't have enough medication in my system because they don't medicate you correctly when you have surgery because everyone is addicted. 23 years of incarceration has nothing to do with that addiction rate. You just assume everybody's addicted so they give you less. So they didn't expect that result, but that's common. For us, it's treated even worse because we have to have a chase car. So we have to have a lieutenant come in a car following us. So that's more security. So that's more delays because if that chase car isn't available, you're canceled. We lost one of our girls many, many years ago. That was a cancer patient but serving life without and was struggling to deal with the ramifications of going back and forth out to medical and was missing appointments. And unfortunately, it got too bad and there was nothing they could do by the time that she did get the treatment because of all the delays due to that sentence. And then it affects in many areas when reforms come up, that's the first thing they deny. So somebody serving life without is going to know automatically to ask, does this apply to somebody serving life without or not? Because we know most bills are gonna be no. That's the automatic caveat that they want out of each bill is that it doesn't affect us. So I just fought two years for a compassionate release bill, everyone should be treated with compassion when they're dying, except if you are serving life without the death penalty or the victim was a cop. So there's no other medical field or legal field that matter unless you're an officer. And don't get me wrong, everyone should be honored for the victim that they are, absolutely not saying that but why are you held as somebody of more authority than that person running in from a fire? I mean, it just doesn't kind of make sense, but it's a reality that we live with. They are excluded at every opportunity and any bill because they do all these wonderful tough on crime bills to lie to society and say that we're creating situations even now, they're back to their same rhetoric of individuals, these crimes are happening because you're letting people out. Crimes are happening because COVID happened and a whole lot of people couldn't work for a very long time and we're dealing with a whole lot of things that were happening, not because a very, very small amount of people got out when they were supposed to or six months to a year around the time they were supposed to get out, but it just seemed as if they let out a lot of individuals. And the crime rate didn't go up because of it. Society as a whole is suffering and they're using our incarcerated population as a weapon to scare society, just like they did in the 90s. And when they did that, they created a movement in society to say the only way to keep our world safe is to make more cages. We don't care what happens when we're in a situation we don't care what happens once they get in there, we don't care how you treat them, we don't care what they're given or not given, we don't care about none of that, we just want as many prisons as possible and then we wanna complain about paying for them. Kelly, can I ask you to give final thoughts? Yes, and unfortunately with that, it came 18 new ways to get more people incarcerated serving that sentence. And in that, it allowed for individuals who are just in a vehicle and are now doing life without the possibility of parole because it does not matter if you know what that person who actually pulled the trigger is thinking, gonna do or what they have to say, you're charged and convicted right along with them if you're in that space and the prosecution can have any power. It's just how it works. And unfortunately we've got too many people incarcerated just like that. Thank you so much, Kelly. Is the mic on? Is it on? Okay, all right, so this next presenter is the membership and reentry organizer for California Coalition for Women Prisoners. She is a fourth year student at Cal State University Fullerton studying human services and her life's work is encapsulated in the empowerment of just involved women, trans people and their system impacted families while working to end systemic barriers caused by the prison industrial complex. She is part of CCWP's leadership committee. Please throw roses on the stage. Your next presenter, no, don't throw no roses. It's me, it's me everyone. So I would like to talk about the value of sharing stories. Rachel Freed and author, the author of Your Legacy Matter says it best. From a legacy perspective, we tell our stories for ourselves as a gift of future for future generations. How does telling our stories benefit us? We need to know and express our own stories. Difficulties arise not because we have a story, perhaps a very sad or painful stories, but because we become attached to our stories and we make them an essential part of our very selves. A telling of our stories is not an end in itself but an attempt to release ourselves from them. To evolve and grow beyond them. We tell our stories to transform ourselves, to learn about our history and tell our experiences to transcend them. To use our stories to make a difference in our world, to broaden our perspectives, to see further than normal, to act beyond a story that may have imprisoned or enslaved us, to live more of our spiritual and earthly potential. CCWP shares the stories of our incarcerated comrades in several strategic ways. We have a fire on the inside quarterly publication and there are examples and newsletters in the back. Please feel free to take some home and read those stories that are shared of our people on the inside and also our supporters. It allows the incarcerated voice to take pen to paper and speak on issues connected to oppression they endure every single day. They can see their work in print as it's distributed to people in prisons all across the United States and also into people that are living within our communities today. Our recent September newsletter topic was reproductive justice and sexual violence in prisons. Laura Perviance wrote a front page article for that newsletter in September from behind the walls of the Central California Women's Facility in Chachela. She openly shares about the trauma that she suffered during a routine pelvic exam and following several refusals to never have to endure that again. She writes, no one seemed to take note of why I continue to refuse to the extent that when a nurse came to my cell door to educate me about what an exam entails and why it's important like I don't know, my response was met with the offer to have a woman examine me instead of a man. Anyone who knows me and knows anything about me knows that my long-term sexual abuse was at the hands of a woman, my own mother and that I find it offensive to assume only men are capable of such an assault. This ongoing conduct furthers my resolve to not consent to any subsequent exams while in this prison. We print Laura Perviance's story because her experience is important and where California Department of Corrections continues to stifle her ability to be heard, we will not. We prioritize the voices of people in women's prisons through other ways as well. The prison visiting program was created to allow CCWP advocates to have one-on-one visiting inside the prisons. We go in as a team and visit and each visit at least five people each. They tell us what they need support in ranging from preparation for board, political education connected to current legislation and policy changes and also medical grievances just like Laura's. The pandemic shut down in-person visits and CCWP organizers created also an amazing program called the Writing Warriors Project to continue to give legs to the stories of people in prisons, advocates utilize correspondence to do everything we did during the in-person visits while building friendships that continue sometimes well beyond incarceration. Lastly, I would like to share about our fire on the outside support group. Now, this group is very special to me because it's a group for formerly incarcerated people who have spent time in women's prisons. This group is meets monthly. We talk about subjects that's relevant to our transition because it's not always easy. It's sometimes down near hard because the society doesn't provide the same services for women and our people coming home from women's prisons as they do compared to the men's. So we support each other with the understanding that freedom is not always picture perfect but however, I would take our worst day in freedom than my best day in prison hands down and I'm just grateful to be able to say that today. In regards to the importance of telling stories, I'd like to also talk about a podcast. Ear Hustle is a platform that's provided to men inside San Quentin prison. How amazing would it be if we had the same platform in women's prison to be able to live and direct into homes and into cars and into their smartphones hearing our voices of our people on the inside. There's so much going on in there that you could not even imagine if you had not experienced yourself. Every time one of us perils from prison, we leave with an understanding that every sister and friend and person we leave behind is saying to us without words, don't forget me, don't forget me. Remember me when you're out there and fight for me, I wanna come home too. And I wish this was my day too, but it's not. And we know this in our hearts when we leave. It's a sort of weird survivor's guilt. It's like you just can't just totally ever be free and we won't ever really truly be free until every woman's prison is closed and every woman and trans person and our family members in there is free. Thank you so much. So last and certainly not least, Jane Doric-Tick was a senior executive in healthcare professional in community mental health administration when she was wrongly convicted of murder. She spent nearly two decades in prison for a crime she did not commit. While fighting to prove her innocence, Jane worked in the law library during which time she dove into the law books to get her life back. But also too, she ended up advocating for so many others freedom who ended up gaining their freedom as she continued to fight for her own. Her conviction was finally overturned in July, 2022. And widely publicized across the United States. Jane is a member of the California Coalition for Women's Prisoner CCWP serving it on also our leadership committee. It is an honor to be able to say that this woman, Jane Doric-Tick, kicked the San Diego DA in the, in the ass. Thank you, Hassa. And she won for so many people only wish they could have but I'm so grateful to be able to say that you did it, Jane. Welcome, Jane Doric-Tick. Thank you all. And it's an honor to be here and to be able to be here and talk with you about incarceration, about the prison industrial complex. And I feel so proud that now I've come full circle as I'm an exoneree and I work with the California Coalition of Women Prisoners, the Los Angeles Innocence Project, the DA Accountability, all of which I'll talk about and a couple of more organizations. I wanna talk about the legal challenges and journey through the prison system and what it's really like. You've heard some of it, but there's a lot more to tell. I wanna talk about healthcare, the dismal healthcare and the avoidance that happens across the board in the prison system. I'll also touch on wrongful convictions because I thought it was such a rarity and it's not after all. I think most importantly, one of the things I wanna talk about is there's really no difference between me because I was wrongfully convicted, because I'm factually innocent. So what? Because the women that I know that I spent 20 years with are kind, loving, community oriented people and every one of them deserves to be out. I again, just had some good fortune and a great legal team working on my behalf. So I'm out, but I absolutely agree with what Lisa said. We all wanna reach back physically and pull them out. So just a little bit, 22 years ago, I've been out about two years and as you just heard from Lisa, my conviction was finally just overturned because the DAs fought long and hard to maintain their conviction. Right or wrong didn't matter to them. They wanted to just maintain it, keep their records straight. So 22 years ago, my life and my family's life was blown apart by a hurricane of events that I still struggle to see in some kind of perspective. My husband went out jogging on a Sunday afternoon and was brutally assaulted and murdered by two unknown assailants. Four days later, I was accused, arrested and eventually convicted of killing my own husband, the man I loved and lived with for 30 years, the father of our children. And there I was, suddenly in prison. Thanks to the amazing work of the attorneys at the Loyola Project for the Innocent, who are now attorneys with the Los Angeles Innocence Project, and I'll talk about that just briefly a little later. My conviction was overturned and so now I'm an exonerey. I spent those 20 years in prison, initially working to overturn my conviction. I became a believer in if it's to be, it's up to me. And I began to realize that I was gonna have to, I knew nothing about the law. My background was all in healthcare, but I realized I had to teach myself because the system was so screwed. So I worked in the law library to gain my own freedom and I became a pretty decent jailhouse lawyer. And I began advocating for change within, change within the laws, change within prison system conditions, change within healthcare, and change in the whole justice system, recognizing the power that the prison industrial complex has and how we all sort of assume that people that are in prison did bad things. They probably belong there. That's the only way we can keep society safe. And that is not the case. As I say, 95% of the women that I spent 20 years next to are just like the women that have been talking here tonight. They're good people. And I don't know what we're doing as a society spending what, $14 billion a year in California on the prison system. So what could we do with that money? What else could we be doing providing social supports? So yes, I'm absolutely a prison abolitionist. I worked my initiation to CCWP was from inside. I first learned about the fire inside this beautiful newsletter. And it was sort of like, wow, there's people out there who care, who recognize there's something wrong with this system. And it was such an eye opener. And so I began being involved with them. They came in for legal visits. They were my community of support, my hope and my connection to sanity in an absolutely insane world, which is what the prison system is. Again, I also work with the Los Angeles Innocence Project, which is now the fourth innocence project we have in California. And it's a group of attorneys who moved from the Loyola Law School project for the innocent to start this new innocence project, specifically because of its affiliation with the Cal State Forensic Training Center. Cal State has a forensic training center that is phenomenal in terms of teaching criminalists. And I know this on a very personal level because it was all false forensics used to gain my conviction. And I was too naive and my defense attorney was not aggressive enough to know even to ask the right questions. And so it was all false forensics that Loyola uncovered for me. And so their affiliation with the Forensic Training Center where they train graduate students to become good criminalists and that partnering with the Innocence Project can readily show the harm that's caused when it goes wrong and it can go wrong. The culture within the criminal justice system is gain a conviction at any cost. In all of the counties in California, the conviction rate is over 95%. It's over 95%. Now that's mostly because so many people accept plea bargains but I even read somewhere and I think it was in a different state. I think it was in Colorado that the DA's office were actually financially rewarded for maintaining a conviction rate. Now how is that fair within the system? There are so many things that are so wrong with it. And so I also worked with the DA Accountability Coalition and I'll talk a little bit later about the power that the DA's have within the system and how they utilize it and how that is just not fair. So the communities that supported me in gaining my just freedom and reentry into society, I now have the ability and I'm very proud of that ability to be able to work alongside them. It keeps me whole. It keeps me working toward the broader goal of dismantling the prison industrial complex. It keeps me humble and grateful for all that was given me, all that was taken away from me. And for most importantly, what I've learned that I now can share and use for the benefit of society. Some of the things that I've learned, the internal workings of the prison system, in addition to being oppressive, meaning specifically designed to break down individuals, that system is also designed in many ways to keep people in prison longer than they should be. Whether you're talking about the parole board and the parole rate, or you're talking about simple things like how dates, release dates are calculated. As I said, I worked in the law library and I learned early on, first of all, I had read an article through the OIG, the office of the inspector general that 33% of all release dates through case records was wrong. At that point, I was part of the women's advisory council and I was able to do orientation for new people coming into prison and I could say to the room, okay, you're one third of the room. Sorry about your luck, but you've got the wrong sentence. And in my experience, that wrong sentence always goes in the wrong direction. When I was working in the law library, women would come in, tears streaming down their face and say to me, Ms. Jane, I swear, I know I was right. I heard the judge say two years with halftime. I know he said that. And now my case manager is telling me, oh no, no, because of your controlling case, it's four years at 80%, that's what you're gonna have to do. And they had no idea how to fight it. And so we started a process of getting their abstract of judgment, getting their minute order, which the minute order is basically the transcript of what the judge would say. And bingo, it was right there in front of me. Judge saying two years with halftime. So we started a process of writing to the judge and saying, dear judge Jones, I understand you gave this sentence and now Susie Q is being told, four years at 80%. Is this right? What's happening here? And the judges got very involved and started writing back and saying, what the hell is CDCR doing? Only a judge can give a sentence. CDCR's only recourse is to say to that judge, the sentence you gave does not is illegal within the laws. Are you interested in changing it? But the judge has to make that decision himself. So we were able to change a lot of those sentences. And I mean, it happened 40 or 50 times, always in the wrong direction. Now you can't tell me that's a coincidence. It's just ridiculous. Another thing that used to, because I wrote a lot of what's called grievances, Green Paper, a 602, a 602 is the number for the prison form for a grievance, because I wrote a lot of grievances for other people. Actually, I would write how to say it and they would sign their name to it. And that's quite legal. And sometimes I would be standing in the foyer of the housing unit. Some sergeant would come charging out, Ortec, what are you doing with that Green Paper? Come in here, come into my office. What are you doing? Well, sir, this person should have been released yesterday and they're not released, they're still here. Oh, so what, what's a few days? We're just getting our paperwork together. What's the difference? And I would end up saying, if it were you, would it matter? Would you care? Of course you would. And so I always advocated for women to put things on paper. Yes, there's retaliation within the prison system, but it's never going to change unless you put them things on paper. So that was another example of how the prisons, they tried very hard to intimidate me. I mean, I got called in all the time for, don't do that, don't do that. Sorry, I think I will. The dismal healthcare, and Kelly's talked about that quite a bit, the numbers of times that women would be just put aside. Well, okay, we're gonna, you have that little lump on the side of your neck and I realize it's growing, but we're scheduling, we're gonna try and do a biopsy. Maybe by March we'll get done with it. You know, and the tumor is growing and the risks for these women. So again, being able to utilize the prison law office. The prison law office is an organization in California that supports prisoners particularly around healthcare because of some of the federal suits about providing adequate healthcare. The prison system is required to give community standard of healthcare and yet they don't all the time. So being able to write to them saying, here's Susie Q who has a lump, it started, you know, at this small, it's now this small, it's interfering with the breathing, can you please? And very often they would come right in and of course the prison system was very intimidated because the prison law office can say, I wanna see 10 records on your recent cancer diagnosis as I wanna see 10 records and they have to supply it. So although the prison law office doesn't do everything that we would like them to do, they are a big help and I'm a big believer in calling in whatever organization needs to be called in. You know, another thing I'll also mention, one of the things that the system does when you go for a medical visit, they do what's called soap charting, subjective, objective, assessment and plan and that's how they chart. Subjective is what I say to them, dear nurse, dear doctor, I'm coming in today because I have extreme chest pain radiating down my left arm. That's what I would say or something similar like that. Objective is what the clinician says they observe from you and how they sort of analyze. And I learned, and then the next is assessment. What is the assessment given those two pieces of information and then what's the plan? How are you gonna treat it? And I learned early on to ask the clinician to read back to me what was the subjective complaint that I brought into them. And sometimes it was 180 degrees from what I had said. I mean, sometimes it just was not even there because the clinicians learn to chart defensively so that they don't get in trouble. And to me it's very important. I'm a health professional. I wanna know what you're writing down and what you're saying. So read it back to me. Another thing that I learned greatly in the prison system is the importance of hope and fighting back against the system, being able to empower women. I used to say to the women, we control the culture in here. We are thousands strong. We outnumber, not by much, but we outnumber the guards. I mean, it's about a two to one ratio. Two prisoners for every one guard in the system, hugely overstaffed. But we control the culture. And if we believe in kindness and we practice kindness, no matter what, that's gonna be our culture. And that's what's so important to empower women to take control of that and take control of responsibility for their future. And that's what's so important in their lives. I also said I would talk a little bit about wrongful convictions because as I said, I thought it was a very rare occurrence, wrongful conviction. I was so naive. I had no idea that the police were looking at me when my husband was murdered. I just, it was the farthest thing from my mindset. I was grieving. And depending on what research project you adhere to or you follow, anywhere from 5 to 15% of the convictions in the country are wrongful convictions. Now that's a horrible rate. And when you look at companies like Microsoft or IBM, they all have quality assurance departments that try and make sure their error rate for anything. Maybe they're building machines. Maybe they're making staplers. I don't know, whatever they're making, their error rate is probably 0.3%. So how do we as a society tolerate an error rate of 5 to 15% and how do we tolerate a DA system that fights so hard to maintain a conviction rate and maintain their convictions? And that leads me into the power of the DA's office. Number one is the funding. In most cases, the DA's office. Now this is a normal adversarial system. You have the prosecution, which tries to prove criminal behavior. And then you have a defense team who tries to prove the opposite. This person is innocent or whatever. We fund the DA's at about twice the rate as we fund public defenders. Why? How did we as a society think that's a good idea? That allows the DA's to hire any number of experts, sometimes going through the first two who didn't quite agree the way the prosecution wanted them to interpret the evidence. Finally they get a third one who says the right thing and that's the one they get to use. Defense attorneys don't have that luxury. Things have to be paid for. And most people who go through the criminal justice system are utilizing public defenders. And so they just don't have the same ability. The prosecution's office, DA's also have the ultimate ability in bringing charges. And in most cases, they bring as many charges as they think can possibly stick. Many, many charges. It's usually not just one, it's eight other charges added on. They also have the ability to set bail. And again, 99% of the time, if the prosecution, the DA's office asks for a million dollars bail, the judge says yes. If they ask for $3 million bail, the judge says yes, whatever it is. Because most of the judges come up, again I'm talking 85%, most of the judges sitting on the bench in California today came up through the prosecution. So they're not gonna go against their buddies. They're gonna go along with what, and that is just a very wrong system. Also their ability to push for and get people to accept plea bargains. They can delay and they can delay and they can delay until you finally give in and say, I can't stand it anymore. Okay, I'll take a plea bargain. I'll admit to something just so I can get the heck out of here. I mentioned before also innocent or not. There really is no difference. You just learn early on, whatever happened in someone's life many years before is not the person they are now and it just does not matter. We have a very sick criminal justice system and we all need to be responsible for changing it. So I'll just end with saying that level of responsibility, I would encourage you all the next time you vote. Look carefully at who's running for the DA's office and go for someone who doesn't have a background in the DA's office. Someone who is a more liberal public defender who will really pursue justice. Look to the local innocence projects, support them, support California coalition of women prisoners who are all fighting long and hard to overturn this prison industrial complex in every way that we can from individual help to policy changes within the system. So thank you all for being here. I don't know if we have opportunity for questions or what? Thank you all so much. That was really powerful. That was scary. All right, who has questions for our panel? Any questions from Zoom? Do we have Zoom land too? Yeah, hi, Zoom land. I'm impressed. Sort of getting in public, looking into what prisons do when I was in my 20s and you had to go a while to visit the men in the waterfall. The men in the waterfall would tell me, oh, if you're in front of a judge, they had crimes that were never solved, so they stuffed on top of you. If you have anything, talk a little bit of experience going to a public defender or someone. Do I have to use it? Okay, that's better. I guess my question, okay, I don't want to use it. What's your t-shirts in the first place? A citizen of California now or anywhere? Why is this by spending more money on prison than education? Every single time doing so much better with our money. Exactly. Thank you so much for that. Anybody have a comment? Definitely, I appreciate you. There's so many things that you talked about and I really appreciate that. There are so many things that we try to work to make sure that especially that prison school, the prison pipeline, tried to end in so many different ways with our juvenile community. We're engaging with them both inside, both men and women's prisons, especially to be centered on getting some support for our youth before they get to the system and we're trying to find ways to do that as well as well as educate them through presentations, to educate them about what we do, to get them involved, but we're also working with our juvenile justice center and trying to obviously end our juvenile system, period, that needs to end completely for all, not just here in California, but all states. So we're definitely addressing that on many levels and we know that it's a real problem and we continue to push to advocate both with our youth council because we have different organizations that work directly with youth. We try to address it there. Thank you, Kelly. Any other comments, any other questions? One of the Zoom folks, mics are weird today. One of the Zoom folks is asking, did they hear correctly that folks who are in death row are part of the general population? You should start asking if you're a female or transgender, you would come to CCWF or CIW, but for the men, there's a couple of institutions that they're assigned now as an option. During the moratorium, that ability to end death row as part of a population that continues to be segregated started, not everyone has the opportunity to get out of it. Thank you, Kelly. Can you tell us a little bit more about the Writers Warriors program? Like how would people not inside get involved in that? I'm sorry, everyone's the last part. How do people get involved in that? Oh, awesome. Thank you for asking. So the Writing Warriors Project, well, let's talk about Circle Back a little bit and talk about how one connects to CCWP as an organization. You can go on our website on California Women's Prisons. Wait, come on. It's womenprisoners.org and connect with us via our website and that way you can email us and connect with us and letting us know how you wanna be involved, what you're interested in. Our website pretty much is very detailed and very interactive. You can click on different places to see about our history, about our mission statement, about different events that we've, and legislation and policy actions that we've taken part of recently. Also too, and also our different work groups and campaigns and projects that we have opportunities for community partners to join or supporters to join. Specifically also too, Writing Warriors. You can connect with us, email us, let us know that this is something you would like to do and it is basically you and the community joining up with us and connecting with a warrior on the inside in communication. We have kind of a glitchy but very beneficial email system now. So it's a lot more streamlined now to utilize to be able to correspond back and forth. And basically you don't have to know everything. You don't have to have a full grasp of the law. You just have to care and have to just be present with them and communicate. You have support system within the organization. Just in case they ask you something that you're not, hey, how do I answer this? We have mentorship from people who are formerly incarcerated who have that lived experience who can help guide you and how to answer questions or how to respond back when something comes up that you're not aware of. So yeah, the Writing Warriors project is definitely a good starting point for anyone that would like to begin their journey of advocacy and prison abolition along with CCWP. So join now, get on your phone, womenprisoners.org. I just wanna add to that, Writing Warriors was developed and is now an extension of our legal visiting program. During COVID, we weren't able to go in and do legal visits. People inside were be-leagered by all of what was happening around COVID inside. And this was a way that we could continue to support people providing legal advocacy and medical advocacy. But also just to try to let them know that people outside are concerned and maybe that can leave a little bit of tension and pressure, but really what I wanna say is this is not a pen pal program for men to meet women. And I'm saying that because I get a lot of those letters. And people don't know, Writing Warriors, oh, this women's prisoner support organization has a writing program? I mean, so, no, just letting you know. I could share that, that we're not a pen pal program for folks to, you know, it's not meant to just be a social program. It's actually an extension of our legal advocacy. And anybody, like she said, anybody participating has the advantage of all of the resources at CCWC and our coalitions have to support people inside. Thank you, Huffer. I just appreciate everybody for coming both on Zoom and in person. Anytime that we can educate about incarceration and what really happens inside, it allows us one more ability that you guys can reach out to someone else and have a conversation to say, hey, I learned this. Maybe I wanna look into that a little bit more. Maybe it's the statistics that you heard that triggers like, hey, something ain't right here in any one of the different sections or maybe it's the idea of, you know, what is it like for somebody in there? Now think about, you know, a lot of people out here struggled with that lockdown that they call that and what that looked like for them. Step in somebody else's shoes and have it inside where I know my loved one is sick and I can't find out what's going on with them because my roommate got sick because they let her be with the staff who chose to come to work and knew that they were sick and didn't care because they wanted a paycheck. And now I'm quarantined and I can't even find out about my loved one. At least we can pick up a phone. If you're willing to take the time to send an email to somebody inside, it changes the ability to know that somebody cares and that they can be successful in the community at least 25% every time a board member looks at somebody's support letter saying, I have a community connection on the outside. What we do with CCWP with writing warriors is we guarantee by having that support of somebody, one more individual, we guarantee a little bit more success at board because they know they have one more family member or friend out in that community regardless of what that tie is. And all that is is writing back and forth and learning about somebody's life. One of my pen pals literally talked to me about the trees in San Francisco that I live a block away from for five and a half years we wrote about the trees in San Francisco. Absolutely loved every single minute because we didn't have trees where I was at. When I transferred the other institution, it was lovely to have trees for the first time but that five and a half years that was the only experience I had with trees except like outside the gate and the barbed wire and all that that you can see from the distance but I could see that on a TV. That was different because I could feel what she was feeling. And that's all it takes. It doesn't take, I'm willing to fight the system or even I believe that prison should end. It doesn't even take that. It takes compassion and love for somebody else. And if you're willing to do that for the next person it makes all the difference. I'll just jump into and say, the future is not a place we're going to. The future is what we are creating today by our actions. And so what kind of a society do we wanna live in? Do we wanna live in a society where we spend $14 billion a year locking people up who are 80 some years old getting around with a walker? Why are we doing this? We really need to get involved and design the kind of society that makes us all live safer and the prison industrial complex is not doing that. I will only say that CCWP is always in need of volunteers we're so happy to see everyone here today. Excuse me for those of you on Zoom. If this is something that you think you might wanna be involved in and let me also say there are not enough. I don't like the POC thing. So I'll say non-white people volunteering. It's like, what do we do? We know everybody can't volunteer. Most people need money. But we would really encourage non-white people also not that we don't have white folks. But non-white people to please join and we could really use that support that women inside could use that support whatever ethnic group they're from they could use that support inside. And yeah, that's that. Yeah, also too, we also had a discussion today about the fact that we're very underrepresented by our trans community. We definitely need more trans volunteers and so that that voice can be heard and supported. So my final words are every day my nephews and nieces go to school they have to pass through a metal detector. And when they are exposed to, you know or get involved in squabbles between kids which is gonna happen between kids who walks up to de-escalate that but an officer in a, in a vest in a bulletproof vest with a badge and a weapon. And my nephews and nieces are being desensitized every day to policing. And this is the beginning of the madness in their lives. And so if we don't change this system of oppression this patriarchal racist system that's created by the prison industrial complex my nephews and nieces will be right behind me and they won't, they'll be in handcuffs and they'll be like, no, like it's like of course I was going that way. Since I was in fifth grade, I've been seeing handcuffs and bulletproof vest, it's nothing in the society today but the richer neighborhoods, not so much. Why, why, why do my nephews and nieces have to be exposed to that? Why, and I'm frustrated, I'm scared for them. I continue to do this work, to change it for them. If nobody else, I have to do it for them because I love them so much and I don't want them to go that way. I never want them to have handcuffs on ever in their life and not care about it. Thank you so much. Oh my God, amazing humans happening. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. And I'm just gonna mention some things that came up. Belly of the Beast is a film that talks about the sterilization happening in women's prison. You can get that book here and Kelly Dillon is featured in that film. The Prison Literature Project will also be on Zoom, it'll be a Zoom event and they're gonna be talking about getting literature into our prisons. So please check those two events out. And amazing, you are so amazing. Thank you so much for being here and sharing your work and your stories. Yes. Thank you. Thank you everybody. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Go visit the farmer's market, enjoy the trees while we all can.