 I'm Elizabeth Sackler, and it's a pleasure and an honor to be welcoming you to the first of the Autumn Series of States of Denial, the Illegal Incarceration of Women, Children, and People of Color. We began States of Denial in 2014 when people were in denial about the horrendous toll wrought by mass incarceration, except for those lives and those communities who were devastated by it. Three books that year came forward, Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow, which is a primer really on the racist continuum in this country, and Piper Kerman's book Orange is the New Black, and then of course the Netflix series, which brought awareness to television audiences across the country. Brian Stevenson, who started the Equal Justice Initiative, he wrote a riveting narrative in Just Mercy and brought us to the lives of the wrongly incarcerated who have spent decades on death row and his work to get them out. All of them are still fighting to eradicate the overt and accepted, the now accepted injustices of state sanctioned violence, the murder of citizens in the streets, prisons privatized in federal as concentration camps, military war tools by local and state police against our people. As we all know, we now have a backed military budget of $800 billion. So we are not in a better place than we started States of Denial four years ago, because all this front and center and the immoral is now legal. I want to thank the Novo Foundation. The Novo Foundation over the past three years has sponsored States of Denial, and their support and outreach has been extraordinary for us. And Pamela Schiffman and Jacinia Santana, I don't know if you're here today, you're often here on many of the state's programs. And I want to thank you. I'd like to tell you why this is the last of our series. This summer, Novo announced their initiative to confront a national fascist regime that we face. This is the final support we'll have, but they are going nuclear. They are going to the heart with something called their initiative, radical hope. And I'm going to read you from their press release, because I think it's important. I think we all should know about it, and we all need to do our part towards it. In the United States, they write, we are experiencing a continued breakdown of the fundamental pillars of democracy, including independently functioning branches of government, rule of law, and a free press. There is an escalating assault on human rights, and the impact reverberates globally with the deepest impact on girls and women, communities facing racial and ethnic discrimination, LGBTQ people, indigenous peoples, people with disabilities, immigrants and refugees, and other marginalized peoples and communities around the world. In the face of extreme greed and violence and inequality, we are experiencing barriers and divisions that threaten the strength of our movements and achievement of our deeply held visions. We must develop strategies to overcome the structural failures that are undermining our communities, including racism, misogynies and transphobia, and other forms of structurally reinforced hate, bigotry and exclusion. So I'd like to ask you to give a round of applause to Novo for recognizing this. It's hard to start a beautiful day on heavy notes, but we are living in heavy times. And so the fact that we have beautiful days, I think, should give us hope, the feeling of life, of flowers, of new birth. Thank you, Novo, and best of luck for your new initiatives. Here at the Brooklyn Museum, we've been celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, and I conceived the Sackler Center actually in 2001, and it has been all of these 10 years committed to equality, equity, and justice. And it was almost 11 years ago, actually, that I toured Gloria Steinem through the Sackler Center before the press opening, before the press conference. And we're the first institutional center for feminist anything. And Gloria looked up at that sign, and she said, we're in, we're in. And I think Gloria was in years before, but yes, institutionally, we're in, and I think we all know what this has meant for our city, and hopefully, of course, for our country. For a decade, Gloria has given me and the center and the museum her time, her energy, her support to all aspects of the Sackler Center. And I thank you, Gloria, deeply for the light that you shine. You provide introductions that enhance our programming, and with those whom you have joined in panel and in discussion and with your presence. So please join me in thanking Gloria Steinem for everything. Thank you, Gloria. Today you've given us another contribution. Prison Baby, Deborah Trang-Stein, and Gloria Steinem in conversation. Deborah Trang-Stein is the author of Prison Baby, a memoir of the discovery of her birth mother. Deborah lived her first year with her mother inside a prison, and like many, entered foster care thereafter. Later adopted, Deborah grew up in Seattle. Deborah is evidence that no matter how the odds are stacked, personal transformation is possible. Her spirit is imprinted with purpose and the magnificence, resilience of the human spirit. She is on a mission to inspire incarcerated women and girls in communities with hope and tools for success outside prison and to raise public awareness about the social, emotional, and life needs for incarcerated women and for the children who are left behind. Deborah is the founder and executive director of the Unprisoned Project, offering programs and curriculum focused on cultural identity, child welfare, trans-racial adoption, juvenile justice, youth healing, and more. So I thank you, Gloria, and I thank you, Deborah, for being here today. I'd like to offer some statistics as a way to focus our attention and put a context around this discussion. The Sentencing Project reports 12 years ago that 63% of the people in federal prisons were parents of minor children. Most incarcerated people at that time were fathers, 750,000 fathers, 65,000 mothers. In 25 years, the number of incarcerated fathers increased by 76%, and the number of incarcerated mothers increased by 122%. As a result, the number of children with parents in prison increased from 63% to 80%. We must continue to question America's penal system, its intentional destruction of families and communities, and the traumatic effect on our children that has been shown to begin a cycle of violence. It is unacceptable to discard human lives. It is inhuman to treat children, any child, as indispensable. This overt abuse and torture must be stopped. Deborah has given us a prelude today for which I'm very grateful, and I quote, For more than 10 years, Deborah has collected interviews with women in prisons. She is now transforming this collection into monologues for staged performance. Today we will open with a 10-minute excerpt performed by Abigail Ramsey and directed by Tasha Gordon Solomon. We hope you will hear the hope in the women's voices and hear their dreams and struggle so that we can pay more attention to the humanity of women in prisons and the need to dismantle mass incarceration. Abigail Ramsey's first role post-drama school was as an overworked social worker in a London shelter navigating an influx of post-war Balkan refugees. Since then she has committed to engage audiences with innovative, adventurous, and socially relevant work. Please join me in welcoming Abigail Ramsey. Thank you. At this point in my life I spent a lot of time away from them due to my imprisonment. I've lost moments, special times I'll never get back. When they take you away from your kids, that hurts more than prison. You just don't care because the worst thing they could have done was separate me from my kids. Let's see. I came in when I was 15 years old, a prostitution thing in other situations. People don't really like to say what they're in for. I started to get into a lot of trouble when I was 13. There was this guy and I really liked him. He was 19. He was cute and I don't know, kind of went on from there. He never paid me. I paid him and then we had a kid together. When our daughter was four we broke up. After that I started going out with an Italian guy and had three kids by him. My worst pain came from my second to oldest, my son who just had a birthday when I came in. Getting him up to foster care was one of the hardest things in my life to do. In order for me to let go, they had to come and take him while he was asleep. It hurt to look at him so innocent and small. I could just imagine the look on his face when he woke up and mommy wasn't there. Day after day, night after night, and it got worse, missing his twos and threes. Those are special days when they become their own person and I'll never ever get those back. I have a lot of dreams for my kids. I want them all to go to school. I don't want them to drop out. So far my daughter loves school. When it's time for her to go in the morning because she'll be in the first grade this year. She can't wait. So she wants to go and get up and go, go, go. And oh gosh, my other daughter, oh, I got a daughter who really is a brain. She really is. When I get out, I won't do nothing different. I mean, go back to my home and work. Just go back to my kids. I guess they'll be on their own by then, but still my kids, Audrey, aged 42, from Washington state. Sometimes it's a task to get to the day without someone hollering at you or you hollering at them for doing something stupid. In my unit, we're crazy people. People just wild and obnoxious. And there are quite a few people for some reason who are intimidated by me. And that's just because when I get angry at someone, I'm not afraid to tell them. Sometimes it comes out in a way that's not so polite. I first got arrested when I was 12, arrested for selling LSD in school. I didn't take it at the time. I was more into drinking. I was 11 when I first had my first drink. I'd party with my friends and meet all kinds of people and laugh and do stupid things just for the hell of it. Pretty soon, everything built up and by the time I turned 18, I was in and out of juvenile detox 14 times. This is my fourth time that I've been in either prison or jail. One time, a week after I got out, they came to my residence and served me with a warrant for something that I'd done two months before I'd gotten in. I caught another 17-month sentence. I spent eight and a half months in the hole that time, eight and one-half. You know, when you're locked up in that little room, things get to you. There's just a bed, a steel toilet, and a desktop. You get an hour out for a cigarette or maybe rec. Half the time, I didn't even get out. And when I did, I was in handcuffs and shackles. They showered me in shackles three times a week. Get handcuffs and shackles in the shower. I'm Native American. I grew up with white people in foster homes and I asked them, how come my skin was dark and my hair was darker than my foster brothers and sisters? I never got an answer. They would just change the subject. I have seven sisters and four brothers. Say, mother, everyone went to foster homes originally and she took everyone back but me. I met my mom when I was 15. It was in court. They were trying to take away her rights because this whole time she had parental rights, which I didn't know because she didn't even try to see me. She was drunk, loud, obnoxious. Look at my baby, look at my baby. Oh, isn't she cute? My social worker came by and said, well, go give her a hug or do something, say something to her. And I said, if she stops talking so loud like that, maybe I will. Right now, I don't want to go up and associate myself with her. Finally, I walked up with my social worker who said, this is your mom, this is your daughter. And she's like, give me a hug. And I smelled the booze and piss and puke, everything. And I stepped back and I just shook her hand and she kept insisting on a hug and I was so angry. And my mom says, well, I care for her. She's my daughter. And then I said, well, age 33 from Maryland. When I woke up this morning, I was, you're getting out tomorrow. You can do whatever you want, see whoever you want. This is the final chapter to a mistake I made. I want it done. I want it over with. I want to walk out of here and breathe freely. Sometimes the pressure gets tremendous. I've been doing a lot of soul searching, looking myself as a person, my values, my situation, how I articulate. I'm 33. It's like, come on, you're this old and not really know yourself? I think of my kids. I have one daughter. She's 12 years old. And then there's my son, just turned eight. And I have twins, three years old. I have a family, mother, father, four brothers. My father was a hard-working black man. I remember him struggling so much to feed us and to keep a roof over our head. He used to work at the car wash for $2 a day. I admire how my parents pulled together and my mother kept my family's sanity together. It's a little scary right now because I have no idea where I'll go after I'm out. I'm seriously thinking about going to social work or some kind of criminal justice or whatever so I could help women in prison because they need somebody who's dealt with this from the inside perspective. But I don't have skills. You've been in prison for years and you come back and so much has changed. How the hell are you supposed to find a job? I just figure shit. Life's short. And I want to do something for myself. I did a poetry reading at the talent show last night. Everybody stood up and clapped. And I mean I couldn't believe it because I didn't expect that kind of reaction. I pulled the podium close to the audience and I just told it like it was. Really surprised me. Everybody stood up and clapped and it made me feel like all right I can do it. Please join me in welcoming Gloria Steinem and Deborah Chiang-Stein. Thank you Abigail. Great to hear that for the first time. Before I start I want to thank Dr. Sackler for including me in the series. We read about this and it's an honor to be here and I know I'm sitting in this chair because of our meeting a few years ago. So something in Gloria's bio which is magnificent isn't ever mentioned because the only people that know about it are a few hundred women in a prison and a few thousand men in another prison. You walk through both of those prisons and I was told later that they are saving the chair that you sat in set aside. So the first when I was struck when I heard that well and then I thought what about my chair. And I recognize it's a inner walking through that prison it was that we were witnessing and they were being witnessed and seen which is what I find most women want to know about. I'm interested in hearing your experience doing those two things with me and even in the men's prison we got a quote from a man that said I'm 27 African American and you spoke to me this was during domestic abuse month. You spoke to me about how I can be a better man so it really crossed some boundaries so I'm interested in hearing about that experience. I think we all have a feeling that a prison is a separate place right distant and the minute you go inside and you are suddenly yourself deprived of your own freedom you know you have to give up your purse and you have to have identification and you have to you know you have you know so you be you just barely begin I think to feel a hint at what it's like to be deprived of all personal possessions and freedom and so on. And then you begin to meet people and sit down and talk and you discover that though they are in a whole different atmosphere it's like us here in this room right I mean the circumstances are some are different partly because our public schools are such a shame you know and there really is the school to prison pipeline that we know about and it's about poverty it's about especially in the case of women women who end up taking the rap for their boyfriends or husbands crimes because they're sometimes more afraid of their husbands and boyfriends and being telling the truth about you know what was going on then they are of the prisons I mean you know they're but it's the circumstances that are different not the human beings and that is my overwhelming feeling forever more so now thanks to Deborah I go I try to say you know what's the nearest prison to you I mean Bedford Hills women's prison is we know right but there are many other and you know a lot of our prisons are full of people who are not convicted but only accused we only have to you know read the news to know that and it's just it's just possible I think for each of us to do something to take books to the prison to if we can't go ourselves you know something something I mean we each we can talk about it later when we are in our discussion time you know what we can each do but anyway that was the gift that was the gift I'm glad you brought that up about what people can do because I I watch you know I watch Ted talks there are platforms like this which I'm grateful for Aspen ideas and sometimes that's for a certain demographic of people which is really kind of interesting which is to bring awareness but a lot of people say well we want to go out and do something and you're right not everyone can get into a prison and I'm curious I don't really know what to say other than do something and start talking about it teach literacy in grade schools because that's where it's that's where it starts but related to women there's something very strong that I'm aware of that economic securities at the foundation or economic insecurity of every woman that I meet in a prison which is also out here I most women I know have this fear of being a bag lady at some time or another out here so imagine the women that we meet on the inside and I don't know how to change that tide it's not only about weight wage equality but I think about that intersection poverty and racism so I'm wanting to talk about that how we build in and battle economic insecurity because that starts the path it partly depends where we are it happens that we live in New York State which has a law against running prisons for profit I think we can all be proud of our state because of that not that our prisons are you know we need to worry but but at least they're not run for profit and in in the last you know 25 years or so there's been a huge increase in the number of prisons that are run by Wackenot or some you know corporate you cannot run a prison for profit I'm sorry and public schools now are having this for you know are they going to be sources of profit too so in in some states where we are or where we may have family or we came from it may be discovering that the state legislature is the problem because they are taking the money that should go to public education and especially state universities I mean part of the reason that students are in our graduating in debt which didn't happen in my generation huge amounts of debt are there students in debt in this audience raise your hands my daughter should raise her hand that's so wrong I can't begin to tell you and it can't be bankrupted it can't I mean you know we're trying to do okay it's wrong and it's the only country in the world in which this has happened and part of the reason is because business corporate interests state by state have taken have persuaded state legislators to take the money out of public education and use it to build prisons we don't need and to run them for a profit I mean that's an oversimplification but it's what happens so we and this is partly because we have paid more attention or to Washington than we have to our state legislators and you know we we need to rectify that so you know that is that is you know very much part of the system because as long as a prisoner is a source of profit to corporations they're going to be more prisoners right now in New York State it costs more to keep a man probably a woman too I don't know the statistic is a man in prison than it does to send somebody to Harvard hello I mean you know this is insane right and then also more recently I got educated because thanks again to the Great Novo Foundation we are able to take the women's prison that in Manhattan you know the the Bayview women's prison that's at 26th and 11th that was flooded in Hurricane Sandy and therefore was you know no longer prison to take it and turn it into a women's building it's the great symbolism you know of being able to do this the and that we tried to find all the women we could who had ever been incarcerated there and they are helping to in this transformation so that has been a process of meeting and learning and you know listening to their stories and and the thing I love the most is that that when the when it begins to to have what's what's the word demolition when the demolition begins some of the previously incarcerated women to be there with sledgehammers tear down those walls that's amazing but but that's been an education for me you know to to be there to be present and to to just listen and and and get to know each other there's nothing replaces listening to each other's stories in or out of prison right I'm interested in seeing Bayview actually it's it's kind of a model because there are other prisons it's an interesting cycle a prison will be depopulated in some ways and then it'll either be privatized for profit but this model of turning it into a community center and someone asked me earlier I'd be interested in talking about this because really it unless the most violent or sent there were what happens to women who have need to be sentenced and my thought was well what why not in the community where we live and work with our families and we are the nurturers typically so always separated from the families and there's a community unrest about that that we don't want women like that by us and I'm wondering what you think about actually building centers for recovery and treatment in our neighborhoods for sentencing which could be controversy yeah there are there are three main women's prisons in New York State one is closer to the border than this one in Bayview you know this this one is now closed and I I I learned once this was becoming a women's building that Bayview had the worst record for the sexual abuse of women prisoners by guards of any of the three prisons which I couldn't figure out until the women explained to me who had been there that because it was the most desired prison because it was closer to their families and because they could perhaps see their kids or have a part-time release job that all of those possibilities required sexual favors in order to get them from the guards right I mean that's how bad it is so you know that you just you just need to listen to stories and ask questions and figure out how but I I just want to say we can also learn from from other older cultures that it doesn't have to be like this for instance I was I've been trying for years and I hope eventually to do a book that was inspired and I was doing with Wilma Mankeller who was one of the people who got an award here thanks to Liz the chief of the Cherokee Nation if we were trying to take features of original cultures that we could learn from and just write about them briefly all right one of them was from one of the oldest cultures in Ghana where people who do an antisocial destructive thing are indeed punished with isolation since we are communal animals maybe isolation is a universal punishment but for a short time not like sell a solitary confinement that we do but a short period of isolation then when that person is brought back into the society there's a long period of time a long ritual period of time which everyone who knows that person tells that person every good thing they ever did we could do that we do the reverse you know we we continue to punish people we take away their vote we take away their ability to get a job you know it's all we can do now just not to put your prison record on your job application you know we've finally begun to do that so it isn't as if we don't have models of what to do we do and I I've heard you tell that story before in a prison with me I should let you know that after you told it I went back and said because there's no cost to that solution I started thinking so I went back to the transitional staff there and I said what about starting a pilot and doing that they agree that's so great that's not great this is the reward you say something in it actually this is fantastic this isn't right they and I said so it's an interesting model because what if they have known in the community to surround them and I said what about part of reentry you start introducing community people a year before they are released so they build a relationship so then on the day of release they can be surrounded by the community that only met them for the purpose of doing this so use that story was pretty amazing and no cost to the government in fact we don't need the government for that so in fact stay away from it is what I thought well we're going to tell trump every bad thing he ever did I was wondering if we're going to hear about that you mentioned some statistics which which I was glad to hear there are a couple I have related to women which are can open up a huge conversation one of them is that the spike in incarceration for women has is 800 percent over the last few decades twice that of men which is 400 percent and I'm often asked why and I don't the courts don't really know why other than there there are more drug related alcohol related crimes and more underneath all of that more domestic abuse and underneath all that trauma and so really our prisons are trauma centers is how I'm starting to see it and the solution I think is that people know that out here because of when I tell people those numbers or that we have three hundred three million kids with with a parent prison they're surprised and so the there's less focus on women and I'm glad that there is this but I'm wondering if you think this has become a trend and I'm not snarky about it but I've seen I've been around enough now as long as you to see trends and social interest my concern is that incarceration especially with women will be a cycle and a trend until the next social justice issue and I'm interested in other than keep talking about it what are the things that we can do as a public to keep something not a trend you know it used to be about women and that it wasn't about women you know I think there are different causes for this trend one is that the prison profiteering has increased a lot since the second bush who presided over the privatizing of more prisons than anybody else by far and once there's profit in prisoners you get a different motivation right then also change in the drug laws because you know women have often been present when drug transactions were taking place but not necessarily in the past guilty and also they they they literally may be more afraid to testify against their husbands or boyfriends or dealers than they are to go to prison so you know I think those are are some some of the reasons two of the two of the big reasons because it isn't as far as I can tell it isn't that women ourselves are behaving differently can you I mean I think other no I actually maybe drug and alcohol abuse but that's because of trauma so but we're not robbing banks you know right right one thought I had I don't know if it's true is that most judges are men and 20 years ago it was hard for them to sentence their what felt like their mothers and grandmothers and sisters and so in some ways equalizing women became truly equal in sentencing but I don't know I've even had courts not really I don't know the best sentencing story I've heard so far is that there was a woman in Florida who was one of the few women judges and she always had little dog with her behind the you know bench and she was you know very glamorous and so on and a great smart judge and when she was sentencing a man who had been convicted of sexual assault multiple times and finally killed someone killed a woman she got up from behind the bench and picked up a robe and said you see these legs these are women's legs these are the last women's legs we'll ever see that's good right sorry that was just a digression sort of stuck in my mind because it was so rare you know right well it reminds me thank you for putting me in your recent memoir by the way but you dedicated that to a doctor which is that feels similar to me in that it's calling attention to what's normally not seen and and who serves us I want to talk about exoneration well we had a conversation about I did some research on it because DNA has played an influence in exonerating men and academic institutions and liberal lawyers are really getting involved in that for men and I learned that women are never exonerated because our DNA is everywhere in a scene of crime because it's in the by the dishwasher and the closet and in the kitchen sink and so when a crime lab comes in it's no there's no way to say she's only been here once because she's been in there a lot and I realized that even the the most advanced systems we have for freedom aren't serving women and it's gender justice again in a different way and I've wanted to know who and does it take petitioning a university to do some kind of different kind of research because in some ways a conversation like this and awareness can steer away from that and say find something that serves women not just men no I didn't know that until Debra was just you were just telling me that today I didn't know that and so ironic that because where the housekeepers are DNA is everywhere and yet in most states there are thousands of rape kits of DNA that's inside women from sexual assault and the rape kits aren't being analyzed you know there's they're stockpiled there's you know I mean it's some somewhat better in in New York City but it's still a problem in most states I would say and there's there's one more reason that I forgot to say as to why there are more women being imprisoned and I think one other element which is that when women are women kill or injure someone in self-defense there's very often not a self-defense plea that they can legally make because it's it's you know they've been living with this guy for a period of time and self-defense is usually perceived as hot pursuit you know in the moment like that and the laws are written like that now you know some I mean the governor of Ohio for instance pardoned every single woman who was in prison for murder when she shouldn't have been because she actually killed in self-defense after years of torture and so on but that's rare we still have the problem embedded in the law of women unable to use a self-defense plea when they were indeed defending themselves or their and or their children I didn't know that actually I want to talk about it's a little bit of a deviation but it relates to prison because some of what we're doing is is teaching a new kind of awareness just a new thinking pattern you've talked about people talk about learning I've heard you say you are unlearning and I I noticed that about you that you sort of look at the reverse side of things which really teaches me some things and I recognize that I'm unlearning a story that I had about the stigma of mothers in prison and offspring of incarcerated women and so I'm interested knowing what you are unlearning these days well I think we're all in different stages of unlearning gender you know I mean gender is relatively new in human history old languages like Cherokee and I mean you know hundreds of old languages on every continent didn't have he and she didn't have gendered pronouns people were people so gender comes from what seems to be the first step in most and as far as I know pretty much all hierarchies which is controlling women's bodies as the means of reproduction if women didn't have wombs we'd be fine you know and you know as little as 600 years ago where we are now where there were on Native American territory women controlled their own decided when and whether to have children and the it was there were cultures that were the paradigm of which was the circle not a pyramid and and that was true you know you can still see it in in the quay in the sun in Africa and the tip of India the southern the Kerala the matrilineal cultures there some matrilineal cultures in central I mean it you know you can you can still see it so I think some things that we want once we're here and one is a is a society without these polarized gender roles and also we invented race you know that there's a quite a good documentary called the journey of man which I commend to you which is follows the DNA trails of humans from southern Africa around the coasts and so on and and you know you can see that race is a minor adaptation to climate but the individual difference of each of us is unique is and our human sameness is the way bigger so the differences between two members of the same quote-unquote race or are actually bigger than the differences between groups you know so you know we're and I when I say that I do not mean for a moment to to minimize how deep race and gender go because the good news about being human is that we can adapt and so our species survives but the bad news is we can adapt so we adapt to anything right and and again our Indian country folks say it takes four generations to cure to heal one act of violence so we you know these these even though they are inventions they are deep and I don't mean to say they aren't deep but it does help don't you think to know that they were invented they're not human nature most of human history didn't have them didn't have race and gender so I that's what I mean by unlearning right that's interesting about gender I was my daughter graduate from NYU and Pharrell Williams spoke and he said you're the first generation this is a graduation for the women he addressed and he said you are the first generation of young women that are on an equal platform with your males and I thought interesting and I don't and I don't know if he thought that or they thought that but what do you think is there a sudden shift I didn't know about because did I well because I've seen but let me just say the guys are not graduating with a spinster of arts degree or getting a mistress of science I mean I recognize that that's kind of a you know elite area but it's I the stories I hear the same I I heard for you know in the 70s and you probably heard in the 60s and 50s so I don't know if there's that much of a shift but I'm curious there's not a lot of talk about gender and racism the intersection of that in prisons and so one of the things that I like that we did together was bringing an awareness about that because it just caused even though we didn't talk about it it caused people to think and and talk about it so I want to go back to the addiction to incarceration I read a number which I had to research that our country spends 80 billion a year on incarceration and which is a huge number most of those people are going back so it is a lot more than higher education and who's profiting from that in most cases right well you brought that up a few times are you are you of the mind that a for-profit prisons private ones should close it plays a big role absolutely right bed-filling right it's a little bit like hospitals in some way they lose money if the beds are empty so if it's not for profit and it's not a social because prisons are not a social justice enterprise as well then what do you think we do with with wanting to have someone removed from society if we do for certain acts well you know it is true that a destruct some people are destructive enough in every culture you know to to need to be separated so they can't do any more destruction but the idea of their being there is if at all possible is to help them change I mean and from what we know it's very often that if they're violent in adulthood they may have been treated with violence as children it's not always true I'm not saying I mean there are some people who just cannot empathize with other human beings I'm not trying to say it's all the time true but you know to to try to help this miracle of a human being to become somebody who can live in the world and understand what I think I swear to you I think little kids mostly understand from birth just we just know that we're not more important than anybody else we're not less important either and that's why I'm always repeating what the little kids say to me which is you are not the boss of me and it's not fair okay these are the right do they not say this okay I rest my case all right and then you told you said and they've never forgotten because I've been back to that prison if it walks like a duck and what can you say that no I I I think that sometimes we're I'm sure it happens to men too but I think women's but you know we're in a situation where we kind of know what's going on and we know that somebody's putting us down or we're in danger or it's not what it's presented to be or you know whatever but we say no no I have to be polite and it's you know and it's not rational and it must be okay and everything so there's somebody said this to me I didn't make it up you know if it if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck and looks like a duck and you think it's a pig it's a pig trust your instinct right they remember that which is interesting because all along they've been not trusting their instincts and thinking that landed in prison so to me the message was trust your instinct yeah it's it's part of it's part of uh of being treated by society's invisible or wrong uh it means you don't trust your instinct which is way I mean our mental processes are great but our all five senses sensory everything together understanding of what's you know you you sense an earthquake coming not intellectually but you know right so you that's true in life too so to trust that I'm so I'm weaving around between uh women's issues and incarceration is there are there one or two things that you thought would be gone in in our status as women that are still persisting or even worse probably worse but I'm wondering what you thought well I don't mean generally but there are things that that might be but what you thought you forget how old I am okay is that one of the virtues of being really old which I am is that you remember when it was really worse it is better it is better mission for specific things to change which we all benefit for thank you for that but there must have been things you thought I worked towards this and on this and it will certainly something will change well yeah there are some big things I mean one big thing is that I don't get why people don't understand that you can't have racism without sexism advisor you know that these things are intertwined because of course in a one race culture you can still have a patriarchy that discriminates against women but if you have a racist or or caste as in India or class or whatever it is it makes it way worse because you in order to maintain the separation of these groups you have to control women's bodies as the means of reproduction so it affects women differently that is classically say in the history of this country white women were sexually restricted in order to keep the white race pure and black women were sexually exploited in order to produce cheap labor but all women are in trouble as long as there's racism all women so there's no such thing as fighting sexism without also racism I mean these things are just too intertwined and it does totally drive me crazy that we all you know that people keep treating it drives me crazy and also the other thing that drives me crazy is that women the issues of women of all races and the issues of race are treated as if they were separate from all of society when in fact you know if people talk about economic stimulus okay nobody talks about just equal pay for women of all races which would be the biggest economic stimulus this nation could ever have because we're going to spend the money we're not going to you know go put it in bank accounts in switzerland no right right I mean but but but when economists talk about economic stimulus they don't talk about equal pay for for all women right and the other part in addition to the economic part of it the drives me crazy the violence against females is treated as if it was separate from other violence when in fact the the the biggest determinant and I keep quoting a book called sex and world peace which I think I have done on this stage before but do get it if you do it's a great book which demonstrates that in every country in the world the biggest determinant of whether the country is violent inside itself or will be willing to use military violence against another country is actually not poverty access to natural resources degree of democracy or religion it's violence against females not because women's lives are any more important than men's lives but because that's what we see first because patriarchy that is controlling women in order to control reproduction is the first step in every hierarchy I know of maybe there's some exception somewhere and and when we see that whether it's dominance or actual violence it tells us you know because we are malleable it it tells us that it's okay for one group to dominate another by birth it's even natural it's inevitable so if you if you're looking I mean think about all the terrorist groups they are the most gender polarized extremely gender polarized now think about peaceful more democratic groups they are the least gender polarized and it drives me crazy that we don't use that as a measure of foreign policy or just common sense in our daily lives in terms of figuring out you know what what groups are and making that a part of all of our judgment somehow I mean you can't have democracy without feminism I'm sorry and and you and you you can't have democracy with racism you can't okay so we just need to get the to get that straight in our heads and then we'll know what we're going for it so you know interesting about gender and gender roles in something I've learned quietly in prison is the women many women replicate the roles that they had on the outside on the inside which has me thinking how much of it is innate how much is socialized so that if they're used to a dominant male they'll be around a dominant female or you know family structures are built do you want to describe that because I think it's really interesting they kind of recreate families right yeah in fact I don't know how it was decades ago but even staff in prisons have started acknowledging that we build families as women and therefore appropriately so they are allowed to have those families so an older woman will be a grandmother or consider that she'll have her children which might be a 40-year-old woman and really a couple generations of families built in a prison for some of the women it's the best family they've had but for some it's also abusive and it had me thinking that maybe that in some ways is sort of an innate thing that they are seeking well what they knew or what they thought was family starting when they when they were little so I have an interest that's more of a statement but I have one of my daughters came home at three years old and said have you ever noticed that when the boys ask us to get off the swings all the girls jump off and go slide but when we ask the boys to get off the swing they just look at us like we're crazy and she was three she was hardly could tell me the story and I thought so raised by me as a role model and she was noticing it but I thought where is that coming from that the little girls are jumping off and giving up their space to and I thought at that time I thought maybe it's just sort of instinctual in us but it has to be socialized what you think that they yeah no no I think it is it is socialized I agree I mean it's not it's not instinctive but it does it is way earlier than we think I mean there there's you know the kind of famous experiment in which little kids are asked you know little boys are asked what what do you want to be when you grow up when they're five say I think five to eight or something like that and they say you know I don't know pilots and whatever and then the question is well if you were a little girl what would you like to be and they're just wiped out by this idea and they say it thinks like nothing or something and and then they ask little girls what would you like to be well you know I want to be a nurse a doctor so you know more things now than they would have said in the past and but they're still limited compared to what the boys say and then what would you want to be if you're a little boy and they said oh well then so they're they're not depressed by that idea they're excited by that idea you know oh well then I could be a pilot as I don't know all these other things so you know that's how early and there are all kinds of studies of the fact that we pick up little girls when they cry as infants and we don't pick up little boys because we they we think they're supposed to be tough and even it's so ridiculous you know so I don't know put the babies in yellow blankets not pink and blue no nobody will know but it you know it does start very early and it goes deep but it is reversible it is reversible and anybody here who had a loving nurturing father is is you know who raised you as much or any male who raised you as much is is way ahead of the game and what about a single mother's then yeah well no but you can find it doesn't have to be a father that's why I say any male yeah right so if you're a single mother make sure you have good guys as babysitters right we did that actually right I think a lot about every time I think of prison I can only think about what the root causes are which sexism racism and and poverty and economic stability are you are you thinking when you think about the women's movement and now the women in prison that attacking the root causes will change it from the inside or a method of just blowing it up from the inside and working exclusively besides government but working with where the impact is it's by any means necessary you know you just have to you have to do it all you have to I don't mean each of us has to do it all I just mean each of us has to do whatever we can you shouldn't feel overwhelmed you know don't worry about what you should do just do whatever you can and that may be making contact across the prison walls I mean Ms magazine for years I'm not saying this is the answer to everything but at least we have a prison program when so that issues of the magazine go into women's prisons and shelters because frequently there's nothing to read there except the Bible if even that's there and Ms magazine I prefer no but anyway but I mean that's just one example but we we probably each have something that we can do some we can visit we can teach we can write letters we can educate each other we can go into schools where the prison pipeline is you know uh you know we can talk about it when we're turn ourselves into an organizing meeting which is going to happen any minute here right well then I know that we will do that and I was asked that yesterday what's the most common question that I'm asked so we'll get to that but I thought I was I last week I was invited to eight prisons in Kenya which is really and they all have children in there and it had me thinking because we're invited into 30 some states here I am personally and I I wondered I know that you travel other countries that did you feel or do you feel an obligation more to women and women's issues here than globally or because my thought was well I should do finish my work here and then I'll then I'll go to Kenya and but you're never going to finish your work here so that's what I thought right no I don't know it just depends what opportunity alliance to one I have opportunities to travel so I just try to just do it yeah to do it and to try to connect I mean the women's movements and all social justice movements have always been connected across national boundaries and have gotten ideas from each other we in this country learned economic development from the women's movement in India you know it it just you know it depends but it is true that we can learn from prisons in other countries that women can be with their children and and I don't know I was personally you know more about the prison system I've only seen in Minneapolis in Minnesota that there is a place where at least some women can be in a kind of halfway house uh serving out their sentences but be with their children right and well that's a movement because there's so many children now and and mothers who are leaving their children behind but it's interesting in and I think the cases in Zimbabwe they bring the children in so they build a community in there but it's an interesting thing about Zimbabwe which we don't do that when the women are released they're teaching them rabbit farming so they learn skills of small business taking care of something and we we don't have that exact same kind of reentry so I'm interested in as you probably do you when you travel abroad you learn and yeah you can you you get ideas from each other there there are some I mean for instance at Bedford Hills there are women who train seeing eye dogs and dogs who you know help the disabled train the puppies and train you know and it it's it's really important you know because they have a relationship with a living creature right and they're doing something positive it's really very helpful right right I was in a death row in Ohio and the woman had a cat and like a three by five cell and she dropped down I was looking through the food tray and she dropped down and she picked up this kid and said this is what gives me hope I thought that was amazing it was just it was a living fuzzy thing so that was pretty moving for me did I get is there a signal that we need to open it up not need to but want to and I heard you say answers as much as questions which is yes not just answers you know this is an organizing meeting feel free to say anything you know if you don't want it to go out of this room just say so everybody here is trust I don't know but but just we just try to say it in poetry rather than a novel okay okay that's what you said it's the only women's prison there Framon N. C. I. Framon right and the head of the prison said that most of the women there were mentally ill or substance abusers and so I think one of the causes has to be there's just not the inpatient treatment for people in this country for who are mentally ill they end up homeless they end up in prison it's definitely one of the factors that should be considered along with all the other reasons that we mentioned but it's a big one right I'm sorry to have to mention that actually because it's true at every prison I've been in it's almost a 90% and diagnosable mental illness things we treat up here like depression and bipolar and I mean like in the major the major illnesses gets apparently bipolar I mean the inpatient treatment does not exist so I mean there's very few beds because they end up on the street or in prison right and the staff feel that way too they feel totally unprepared for for what they all every staff the person I've met in the prison says we need training to get both mental health right right thank you for that Linda afternoon my name is Catherine uh it's a privilege to have been a part of the conversation today I'm from the Osborne Association of your criminal justice reform agency here in New York City October Osborne started the New York initiative for children of incarcerated parents and I wanted to announce this to the group today our collaboration of New York City organizations and individuals who recognize the experience of parental incarceration and meet regularly to talk about what we can do to support these children who are in New York and nationally so we do have a website New York initiative and October is see us support us month so there's an opportunity to take the pledge and the pledge is simply we care about you we support you and we will stay connected to see the many ways in which we can do this so I wanted to share I hope that's okay in in this forum I'll be here after what we do just briefly we have a class at the largest state woman's prison in New York which is Albion that was mentioned earlier yeah and and we do also support keeping mothers and children and mothers and eight women and eight male facilities in the Heads and Valley stay connected during the course of incarceration so there's many wonderful agencies in New York our children children of promise doing this work they're part of the initiative as well there are volunteer opportunities this is a community that really knows many people in New York kind of standing up to support this population so thanks for allowing me to shout that out and thank you for being and are there are there specific kinds of volunteers or help that people in this audience might have I mean I know women who are men who start help do groups of writing groups say you know of the yes I mean because people here might want to volunteer in a specific way yes I'm the director of Children Youth and Family Services for the Osborn Association and we have a few opportunities under the umbrella of our services we also have a program called Family Focus Discharge at Queensborough which is a male facility in Long Island City very close by so I think the details might feel a little bit more than I can share right now but I'll be here after if anyone would like to talk with me directly and our sister organizations our children based in Long Island City children of promise is here and I'm sure maybe some of my some people might be here from those organizations I can give my car I'd be happy to talk to people about that today there are ways to interact with our kids we have monthly recreational trips where mom's coming home from prison and their children we go bowling we go to Coney Island we go to museums we go to this museum um so we are here there's organizations out there that love caring compassion adults to support moms, dads, kids, be united so Osborn Organization also primarily serves men and women coming home the children and youth and family services is a division but overall we have a lot of re-entry services in the Bronx and all over New York City. Thank you for introducing us. Yes you can volunteer to this moment. Where are you sitting? Where are you sitting? I'm sitting up here. Okay you can volunteer in this area and then we'll be late to talk. I've heard about your services actually when I was in Albion maybe because of your services they women are often traumatized in a positive way after I speak because the women lost their children think of my story so Allie and Brian support staff to be with the women and they broke into small groups after and I'd never seen that in a prison they gave me an idea same as when we were there because then they go back to the cells and what they're left with a story that's that's wrenching them apart so thank you for the work you do. I was at bed for yesterday and I was reminded of the difference with whoever's superintendent because the climate in each prison and the programming changes depending on the superintendent I was wondering if you experience that as you go from prison to prison and also if you also sense a difference in the public private if there's a difference there in programming or the feeling of the prison as you go since you go to so many and also as a footnote I was I'm still get choked up when I think about the women in my writing group who didn't have books three of them didn't have a book in their hand until they went to kindergarten there had been no books in the home but we also learned yesterday that the mechanism for donations is changing so that's just one thing to check we got books in the prison but you but even that changes you have to depends on who's making the rules so my question really is about the power of each superintendent and if there's anything we can do to address the best practices for each person. Thank you Abigail, Abigail brought me to bed for it actually and it I know that the work you do is they're pretty stellar I've only been once the reading part is major and I didn't realize that that sometimes that's the first thing so related to who's in power everything changes depending who's in power whether it's prison or out here or or anywhere but what I notice is a shift in uh I'm having staff and administration say we need help and we need the women served elsewhere than here which is a change because it's jobs right it's we're employing people by keeping them in prison I was in prison in California and the correction officer was giving me a tour took me to an empty room and he was lamenting that it was empty and he said a year ago we were floor-to-ceiling bunk beds but we've lost jobs and that was the story he was telling me about the jobs and I'm thinking great those women are in there so but I needed to stay and speak so I didn't speak my mind on the inside there but it's an interesting thing who is in power matters but I'm noticing that we can change the thinking that I noticed more staff and administration wanting to be allies with us and making change because they can be changing mental health treatment for example and be a service in other ways so I don't know if that answered your question but there is a change because I couldn't get back into Bedford after we were there so that's right okay and that was because of change and somewhere in administration because I completely agree with you that it is about profit and that no change will happen unless we can make it profitable for people to want to choose a more therapeutic approach and I have I don't know if this is an answer or question I just love to get your thoughts on my kind of utopian dream of transforming just doing away with punishment culture in prisons and transforming these spaces into places of creativity and music and dance and validation and therapy and animal therapy and essentially for making it profitable for people who are hurt and hurting others and looking for validation and for their stories to be told and for visibility to make turning prisons into centers where people are healed and won't want I won't have a need to go back into a prison type of environment I don't know if that's clear yeah I just I think we each individually and collectively have skills that we can transfer whether it's computer programming or it's writing or quilting or you know whatever it is we we can take those skills with us and I have to say that everything you do turns out to have a result you didn't anticipate you know when I was talking about the Bayview women's prison we got a message from women in London saying they were taking women's prison there and turning it into a women's center who knew you know I mean so you don't know what's going to happen you just do whatever you can and you will be surprised by the multiplication of it and the response to it I'm Nikki Luna I'm actually an artist from the Philippines and I was sent here for an artist graph anyway um I just wanted to um I'm sorry I just wanted to say that I like them how you touch the intersectionality and how violent against women is something we really should call out and I also like how Deborah um Sharon you're sorry about traveling to different prisons um I I'm an artist visual artist from the Philippines I was sent here and um I also do a lot of work that I go to far-flung provinces in the Philippines and I also go to prisons um to help and in light of the current administration that we have back in the Philippines without precedent um I've had received rape threats not um not just to me but to my two-year-old daughter now I just wanted to ask how else do you think as feminist leaders can you make it more inclusive like to remember those in the development because she's because you know in honesty we don't have a safe space for women when we offend someone in our country our senator who was um fighting against our president was sent to jail and a lot of the political prisoners who are my friends they're still in jail and a lot of as long as you're you know if it's raised here it's class there if you're poor there's no way you're going to get out of jail so I'm one of those privilege who are able to travel get out um still do my work but honestly I'm in tears because I'm going home next week so um but but I I love the work that you do and I was just really curious this is no way of asking you how to save us you know but as feminists all together we are all connected and I was just curious how else are in one way so you think you can make it more inclusive of those in developing countries not just the Philippines but you know a lot of the developing countries over there well I I think that uh in general you know women's groups are connected in that way I mean and it's a two-way street you know we totally learned from each other but I and it's it's usually very organic and it needs to be organic first because it's day to day but a day before yesterday I was at the UN where the European Union has been encouraged by the European women's lobby you know there's women representing every all of the enormously disparate countries you know from east Europe to Bosnia to Britain you know I mean you know in in Europe to take I think it's 116 million dollars of development money from the European Union and dedicated to eradicating violence against women in developing countries on every continent you know not you know regardless of where where it is but any any country in which there's wide-scale violence against women now you know that's that's up here but it's going to sift down so I would say you know whoever it is that's uh has any contact with the UN at all you know make application have your applications ready you know because the challenge is to get that money on the ground where it really can make a difference I guess um I'm wishable thinking that um um leaders like you could actually visit these countries and make it more like intimate more reachable I mean because it's different when you're in front of leaders such as you I mean having this yes no I mean there is a lot of I mean I you know I go to you know because I mean India is my second home so I end up going to India or I end up going to African countries more I haven't been to the Philippines but um no absolutely and there there's a group quality quality now which you may know which takes up legal cases of women's equality in other countries there's donor direct action you can go online and discover on the ground projects that can be greatly helped by small sums of money you can learn online exactly what those projects are and if there's one in the Philippines it should be there you should let it isn't there you should let donor direct action now so we're also trying to use the web to make these obviously to make these kinds of connections too my name is Joyce I'm here from Essex County, Massachusetts one little quick story I'm here visiting my niece who moved here and is making her way and less than we're talking about who would give you the most pause if you met a celebrity and I was like I don't think anybody I don't know I realize it's you I was like wow like this just happens to me so you know we happen to be here um anyhow so I'm on this advisory board of the women's fund of Essex County when we raise money to give to nonprofits who focus specifically on women and girls economic development empowerment safety and education and one of the things we were talking earlier you were talking about the intersection of racism and sexism and North Boston tends to be a little white for the most part and the folks who have the most problems when we're trying to help tend to be women of color um so I was just hoping you could talk a little bit more about um this intersection so that I can take some of that back I didn't want to steal what you your your brains on that's why I can read it back so we can help raise more funds for these people and I can say to my peers um in a way that's meaningful and impactful I would just say listen you know there's no nothing not rocket science you know I mean the people who have the problem are way more likely to know the solution than some expert up there you know um so you know listen and um don't think you have to be successful all the time in fact if you if you aren't unsuccessful about a third of the time you haven't taken enough risks but you know but just uh you know try to fund the people on the ground who are actually doing it rather than I mean there are exceptions perhaps medical treatment and other things but I mean in general I would say to listen to the people who are actually doing the work and what do they need because we really can't serve people unless we know why and who are serving and what we're serving that but how that relates to everyone else how raising raising up these women and girls is actually raising the economic empowerment of everybody in the region regardless of so it's it's that sometimes a challenge to get some people who you know have you know not necessarily have everything but they'll be like why are you just helping out them um what about what are they asking you they're asking more like you know that those of the women in Lawrence so the women in Lowell the women in Lynn um you know who happened to be women of color you know what are we doing here at home well yeah there's people in Beverly there are people in Salem and you know all the different communities who are also helping as well um they just kind of don't see it if it doesn't look like um they don't feel like there's racism there's that racism and sexism and things so that's why I'm trying to help get them past that I understand the connection between the two oh well think how boring it would be to be in a country people over like I mean I are these your funders that are asking that um so they're trying to expand between you know if this used to honestly be a group of you know women that were very very privileged and so we need to do something very smart we wanted to help but now they're trying to expand to women who of of all economic status all right here's okay here's I have an answer I have I have a peculiar those women who think they're privileged should remember that 51 percent of white married women voted for Trump not unmarried women white so some of those so some of those women are who think they're privileged are actually occupied in their souls and heads by you know because they're dependent on somebody else's income and social identity and they're not voting for themselves and so 95 percent of black women voted for Hillary Clinton so I would seriously question the idea of privilege and the you know the the the best explanation I can think of is why 51 percent of white married women voted for Trump is what the great Harriet Tubman said you know freed thousands of slaves by going courageously into the south and you know by dark of night and bringing out thousands and whenever she was complimented on freeing thousands of slaves she always said I could have freed thousands more if only they knew they were slaves that's why 51 percent of white married women are right so I just think we you know we have to look at real life and figure out privilege, privilege you know I mean I don't know that that's so you know to be occupied I would think they just be glad that someone's being served but one thought that I'm wondering you could go to the women who are being served and say we have this other community asking why we're all going to serve you what should we tell them so it's a mostly women of color so you'll get the answer I think I know what it is but ask them what they would tell someone came to them and said why not us so be out of curiosity just to see what they said thank you so much my name is Barbara Lixina I'm a public health nurse and a health reporter and I want to challenge what we all maybe thought was normal about women in DNA and that's why DNA is not used to exonerate women and an action that I'd like to recommend is that we all reach out to the Innocence Project which is the organization that is helping exonerate majority of men I am not a forensic specialist but I think it's bullshit that's because women's hands are in many scenes where they're involved and I think we've there's so much lack of information about women in science in terms of medicine men are mostly studied and I think it's another area that we should not accept as being the final answer although I want to add to that that if most of the crimes for women in death row are committed in their homes or a home of family then their DNA would be imprinted around there as opposed to a man in death row who maybe the crime was committed elsewhere so I don't know if I'm understanding so if it's in their home or their uncle's home or their stepdad's home their DNA will is there or more and so that it's hard to say you only showed up here once for the crime right no I don't take it personally but I agree because right now right now it's only it's free man and not women we used to accept the drug show me the test about men and now we understand it's very different so women it feels like a similar sexist response about exonerated women right and it is the number that I came with I didn't use is that 30% of exonerated women have had false or misleading evidence and two thirds wrongfully committed and the only solution we have is DNA and it's not enough so it right it's not enough so thank you for that it would be going to the innocence problem because they're right now that's what's used well that's what I wanted to bring it up because I think if we speak to it then it could be addressed maybe thank you hi my name is Emily and I'm a grad student at brandace and this term I am a teaching assistant for a black feminism class and so in addition to reading a lot of amazing texts our professor is having the students engage in this project where they have to write a letter of support to women and girls of color pieces or trans anywhere in the country and so I just wanted to know what your advice would be both of you for how they these students could engage in this project respectfully and appropriately intersectional just how words of advice for questions that they could ask things they could say how to approach this kind of project well it's it's kind of uncovering reality you know because actually women of color in general but especially black women have been way more likely to support issues of equality feminist issues the women's movement than white women have just statistically speaking so I mean my education came from Ms magazine because we published and I think 73 or so the first national poll on women's of women's opinions on women's issues and on the women's movement and it it it was a Lewis Harris poll it was a big you know respectable poll and it turned out that about 53 percent no I mean it was 30 some percent of white women supported feminist issues of equality and the women's movement and more than 60 percent of black women so ever you know it's always been more women of color than white women and yet the public perception is the other way around so I think just recognizing reality and the the people who have been I mean there are two things really there they're the the invisible figures of the women's movement you know who are not as visible as the white women and then there are also the women who have been very visible civil rights heroes like Fannie Lou Hamer people know her as somebody who was a hero of the voter registration civil rights era but they don't know that she was a founder of the reproductive freedom movement because she came forward and talked about having been sterilized without her knowledge of permission in a in a hospital when and the the guys in snick were embarrassed by that so she you know talked about it with women and founded the national women's political caucus she was a founder of the reproductive freedom movement yet people only think of her as for her voting work see what I mean so I think just uncovering reality finding the hidden figures of you might say of the have you seen this movie I thought it was a wonderful movie right of of the women's movement is it will be very satisfying and and it will give you more cause to make a button I once made which I should make again which said the truth will set you free but first we'll piss you off and I just started a film school a month ago and I'm hoping to use that as a platform to start discussions but what I've noticed I mean we're talking about privilege before but I come from an almost all white town and coming here just like seeing the gentrification and the privilege that people do have around me and I guess my question is in what ways just like specifically I feel so frustrated when I feel like there's a lot of conversation and I don't know what action I can take and I like can verse myself on the issues but I never know just like what I can specifically be doing and I feel dormant when I just know all of this information and I'm not organizing or I don't know and you've always been such an inspiration to me I'm just what would you recommend you know sometimes it's not always a glamorous thing when I learned that the average reading level is fourth grade it's for men and women across the country a commitment to literacy would change everything it's education that opens up our minds our curiosity our expansion in the world so when I'm at that is the question I'm asked the most is what I what can I do in audiences to volunteer and and work with literacy in children will change everything because it's generational literacy is taught but so is illiteracy if a child doesn't see an adult read then there's not an interest in reading it's a small thing it's it doesn't feel activist but to me it is because you're giving a kind of freedom to the next generation and you I don't know what your life is like every day but just don't worry about what you should do and do everything you can talk to the person next to you who you don't know you know it's part of what's great about New York in general all the boroughs is that we actually it's like a big village right we kind of talk to each other more than other places so just breach the boundaries say what you're thinking if something seems unjust you know whether it's that somebody on the corner has to have a pocket full of quarters because they can only communicate by a pay phone still even in this day and age you know say to that person well would you like to use my cell phone maybe you know so you I don't know anything right yeah just whatever comes up do it thank you um I also just wanted to say I sent a photo to my parents of you and I said you'll never guess where I am my father said it was on his bucket list to see you in person it's also always been on mine so thank you for all the inspiration you're way far from your bucket don't worry thank you hello my name is Anna and I volunteer with books through bars based in Brooklyn and we send books to incarcerated men and women throughout the country and we get lots of really touching letters from people who are trying to improve their lives so I wanted to share that people can come and donate their books to us and they can also come and volunteer and help read the letters and respond sending books out to people and I also have a question which is that it strikes me that in the US the penal system is very much based around the idea of punishment and retribution so that prison is somewhere where you go and you should suffer when you're there and it seems that it contrasts with some models say in Scandinavia where prison is based on reform and rehabilitation and the idea is to have people in prison for as short as time as possible and almost everybody except the most dangerous people are going to be released and therefore it's not about suffering when you're in prison it's about how you can reform and change and become a better person in society so I was wondering how you think we can change attitudes in the US towards prison because it strikes me that we need a big attitudinal change to how prison is envisaged well it is I mean it's our attitudes but there are some people have you have you seen Michael Moore's where shall we invade next okay that's a great example right of him going around to different countries in the world who have better ideas of than we do and one of them is about prisons and you know showing that there is a different way of looking at this so you know depends where we are you know your teachers in the classroom you can teach about you know some of the things we've talked about today you know you go into the prisons yourself you can send books into prison you can make sure that you give priority to employing prison people who have been in prison what a concept you know we can each do it in a different way do you have suggestions of ways that you've found helpful well it just strikes me that then it just needs to be a kind of mind shift in a way from seeing prison as a solution to crime and it as one of the earlier people who asked a question said prisons could be a place which are actually about learning and healing and rehabilitation and not a place where you go to suffer so the whole idea that like I think it's it's there in in in media and you know in movies and so on the idea of prison is somewhere where you go and you are going to suffer and that's the whole point and I think if we could turn that around and see instead that you know there's a problem and a person has committed an antisocial act or has a has a problem in their life then we're trying to solve that problem rather than just try to make it worse by by locking them up for years on end right yeah that's why we don't have a criminal problem we have a public safety problem the issues you're talking about healing and recovery and mental health treatment or public safety and that concept of looking at countries where it works we were talking about norway on the on the way over I've seen that some of their prisons appear to be almost like cabins and they have phones and they're they're built by the water so they are places of healing and and family reunion at times and short sentences and I don't even think they're called sentences so looking at other countries where there's a model that works would really teach us and and there's something I was just thinking well there's some things that people have said to me that they have learned in prison that I realize you know that we need outside of prison for instance of the men I get letters from who understand sexual assault it is men in prison who have been sexually assaulted themselves in the absence of women they've been used as women so they write to me and they say okay I get it now I understand that sexual assault body invasion is a different level of trauma and humiliation and so on to be consistently to have your body invaded even from being beaten up all right those those guys are great teachers of other guys about what sexual assault really is who will be credible in a way that even you know that women are not or anyway will extend the credibility it's harder for men to speak up about that right because their masculinity feels right and and and the other thing is that sometimes women have written to me or said to me that in prison was the first time in their lives they ever felt safe that's awful yeah absolutely I hear that all the time right where they feel safe and fed and have a regular place to sleep where they can actually sleep and not sleep with one eye open are we having a signal for one more question thank you and that's it yeah hi I promise I'll be quick first thing this has been amazing my name is Mary Dove I'm a community organizer in New York and I actually do an education program I have like 4,600 women in my group and so what I wanted to offer is because they're young professional women that are entrepreneurs and run their own businesses or the women in leadership and they also recently did a project for women in the trades that I'm partnering on and 3% of women work in the trades which I think would be awesome for women in prison so if anybody wants to speak to me about reentry or if I can help anybody by getting speakers or any resources in our group I would love to make them available and also email me through the unprisoned project so I have your contact info okay great thank you so much it's been just the only woman I've ever met in my life who was making equal pay with a man was a plumber that's she was in a union and she was making a lot of money you know she was making like a hundred thousand dollars a year as a plumber and her daughter was going to become electrician right yeah and I just met her that's Judeleine Cassidy so yeah I think one more right one more question I just wanted to add to the woman that was talking about mental health in prisons I work for Family Connections it's a program in Rockland County New York that supports incarcerated mothers what I notice is that every woman in my group is has drug addiction issues um their their mothers their parents had drug addiction issues and it's going on generation after generation and um I think they all speak about the guilt and they cry over losing their children and I think the bleakness of it when they get out of prison is just and then the system being so hard to navigate and then they just use drugs again and um so anyway I just wanted to talk about that and how helpless I feel in helping them with that issue too so but we know that recovery from drug and alcohol addiction is a solution to a lot of things so treatment in many forms can serve that and not always it's not always high end treatment but support groups things like that and we're all in some form of recovery recovery from submission recovery from not voting recovery from you know I don't know name your foot right right right thank you so much yeah thank you thank you why don't you just if you would just sit down just just for a minute um there were a couple of things I wanted to say as a result of this being the fourth year of states of denial uh we do video every um every uh program and they are online and available and uh if you go on to the EAS CFA Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art website on the Brooklyn Museum you'll be able to pull up all of the programs that we've done since 2014 and I think many of the areas that were discussed today we have had panel discussions that have in many in some instances been in depth so I think that it will be a very helpful uh resource for you as well the other thing I wanted to say is that I was I'm listening to all of this I'm thinking of people talking recently about the new normal and um Trump and the new normal and we're now in a place of post facts and all of that one of the pieces of this that um hit very hard home was when we honored Angela Davis here a couple of years ago and uh she was talking about um the absolute essential nests first of all of not electing Trump it was pre-Trump uh it was pre-election but also about abolitionists of abolition prison abolition and it was listening to her that I began to understand the difference between prison reform and the the necessity from her point of view of abolition of the abolition of prisons we have been talking here today as though all of the incarceration that we experience is normal that this is the way you handle uh people who are who have committed crimes that this is the way people who have committed crime should be uh put away that this is and so on and so forth I mean you know one can go on and on this is not normal this is not normal it has become this in this country one of the reasons I think the new Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander was so important is because she was pointing out that it began uh the penal system in order to create a new slavery and of course the Rockefeller drug laws and the reason that women are incarcerated this this goes very much to the heart of a white supremacist culture where we are looking to create a no-class and so I think we really need to to sort of turn it on its ear a little bit and say yes we need to help the people who are there now but somehow or another we have to really get our head straight about what a civilized country what a society wants to do to address issues of not only criminalization but certainly mental health one of the reasons that we have so many people who really need to be in hospitals is because of the shutdown of of mental institutions in this country and it's been a disaster so I actually took a moment so I could do my little editorial and I apologize but boy uh this is mark your calendars we have two more programs which will be in the Sackler Center on the fourth floor in the forum one on october 29th close rikers and november 19th becoming miss Burton by Susan Burton and Kerry Lynn and it has a forward by Michelle Alexander and it was published by the um by the new press and uh it's another a story of a woman who uh is a post incarceration and the journey that she went through in order to um find her life and her center and um and live again thank you all for being here and thank you very much for