 I'm Kathy Marston. I'm the Founder and Director of Pre-Veter, Texas Women. And we've got a panel tonight of those of us who are formally incarcerated, local activists, and criminal justice reformers, to present to you on this topic of any master incarceration. In terms of me answering why I'm here tonight, the short answer to that would be because I, why I did the work I do is because I have to. The long answer would be that 13 years ago tonight, I was driving in Shirts, Texas, so here in this area, and I'm a local gal, I went to Randolph and I went to Trinity. And I drove in front of Clemens High School and the Shirts Police officer had somebody pulled over for speeding and by the time I got to FM 309, he had his lights on behind me and I pulled over into the dark business of the site, the lit up gas station instead of the gas station. And that's where he told me I had been speeding. I asked him how fast I had been going. He couldn't answer the question. He got angry and much like Sandra Blanzik, he asked me to get out of the car. He slammed me face down into the hood of my car. He handcuffed me. Then when his buddy showed up, he stuck his foot out in front of me to push me so that I fell on my face. Those charges were dismissed. But that was the first time the state of Texas called me at Cornell, because let's face it, there's no presumption of innocence in this country just by the 6th Amendment. 12 years ago today, the Austin police found my abusive ex-boyfriend and his friend on top of me after my ex had smothered, strangled, and beat me for 90 minutes so that I was bruised and bleeding. My foot was broken. They called them off with me and they told me to stand up and put my hands behind my back. For the past 12 years, I have been called a domestic violence offender. I spent more than nine years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice related to that original arrest where I defended myself against my batter. My batter had me in a stranglehold and I had to bite his arm. I only had me in that stranglehold or I wouldn't have been sitting here tonight. And when he loosened up that grip, I brought my head back into his face and that busted his lip. Those were the only changes he had. I had bruises on my back, et cetera. While I was in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the staff there froze me, broiled me without air conditioner in the summer, denied me minimal care, blocked my outgoing mail for a year and a half, put inmates in my cell with me who had assault records so that they assaulted and threatened me. And when I reported those inmates via the grievance process, they dug up a disciplinary case and put me in solitary confinement or special cell restriction for a period of time. Those were just some of the dignities I suffered. While I was still in prison, I utilized the grievance system. Now, if there was a grievance system everywhere in my authority for your workplaces, do you go to school? The court system is a grievance system. And I wrote grievances. I filed two conditions of confinement, law students, myself protesting while I was in there. I wrote legislators. I wrote activists. I wrote outside academics. I published while I was in prison. I was on the steering committee for the 2014 International Conference on Penal Abolition, which took place on Algonquin Territory and Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. And for ICOPA, I helped from prison. I was writing and talking about what kind of program we should have, having diverse presenters. Women, LGBTQ, make sure we have prisoners of color or persons of color on the panel. My work was presented for me. I have a PhD and I was published before I went into prison. And I published, of course, on this issue of wrongful arrested women. And I also wrote about strategies of written and non-written resistance by female prisoners in TDCJA. And I also wrote on LGBTQ issues, the conflation of sexual orientation and gender presentation in prison. There's a little bit, there's a term in TDC, I don't know if it's in the federal prison, it's stud broad. And this is a term that kind of confuses women who want to present, gender present as male with lesbians. So the biggest thing, the reason I guess I'm really curious, I also created Free Battle of Texas Women while I was in prison. Before I went into prison, I had heard about free battle women in California. Once I got into prison, I found out from one of these women who's my friend, Sherry Nathes, who's been in prison since 89, related to killing her batter to defensive herself and to what was in her 10-month-old child where her batter was molesting. Sherry told me back around 89, 90. They had Women Against Violent Endings was a group in the Texas prisons. Those of you who are familiar with the Sin by Silence Laws in California, they have a group Convicted Women Against Abuse. Well, at that same time, there was Women Against Violent Endings. So I had originally just collected the anecdotes and demographic and information and TDC number of each prisoner. I'm a writer, I have a PhD in communication. I have 29 years of professional communication experience I've worked for two major newspapers in the state. And I thought, I'm gonna write a book about this, but then I realized that I needed to do something more. And that's where I started publishing writing legislators. Once I was released in July, 2014, I began showing up at the legislature. The first time I went to the legislature was November, 2014. And I didn't meet Jennifer then, but she was the speaker at the Texas Families Rally for Justice Rally that was there at the State Capitol. And Tiffa was one of the sponsors of that. And I was still on parole then. I've asked my sentence about a year ago this month. And I was too afraid to go into legislative offices. And well, I've been in legislative offices about three more times since then. Trust me, I'm not afraid anymore. And they invited me. Senator John Whitmire is the chair of the Texas Senate's Criminal Justice Committee. And his staff invited me to write an interim charge. So the legislature doesn't meet him until 2017, but all of these people who are seasoned criminal justice reformers can tell you, this is not the time where nothing happens. This is the time where we need to be continually working with legislators now to make things happen. So I wrote an interim charge for an interim study. We haven't had an interim study on the topic of persons incarcerated related to defending selves or children against batterers or other domestic violence for worse defenses. Since the 91 legislation, we did not get the interim study. I curled up in a little vol for about a week at the beginning of November when I found out. And then I went to Joe Strauss's office. He's here in town. He's the speaker in the house. And I contacted the Lieutenant Governor's office and I went on. I have continued media outreach and publications. I talked a little bit about the piece on a compilation of gender and sexual orientation. It came out in Guavadi, which is the online transnational feminist journal. Then that was turned into a book called Crossing the Borders. It's an LGBTQ book. I've written poetry that's appeared. One of those poems was on the death of my friend, Molly Hunziger, who died on June 19, 2011. It was 105 degrees that night. It was probably about 130 degrees in her under-condition cell. And we were about the same age. I think they're about 42 or 43 at the time. Some of you may have seen, I just had a guest column up here, and they expressed news on Saturday, bias in prisons, battered women. I had a piece come out in an international criminology journal last month. It's a massive review of the state, local, national, and international statistics in the area of incarceration of women and wrongful arrest of battered women. I do public speaking. Like I'm doing today, I've spoken at local universities. I've spoken to the Harris County Domestic Violence Coordinating Committee. I did that in October. I spoke on the prison show. One of the resource lists in the back of the one I put together has the prison media. The prison show has been around since 1980. And they cover criminal justice reform issues. It's every Friday from 9 until 11 p.m. And they live stream it at www.kpft.org. They also archive the shows. So I will be going to Houston again in about a week. And I'm going to be on the show again on the 22nd. I spoke to the South San Antonio chapter of TIFFA. As free battered Texas women, I also correspond with 21 incarcerated battered women. I got three letters this week alone. And that membership builds. I always enclose three of my business cards. I tell them, pass them out. They are organizing on the inside. They're learning what time terms like self-defense and defense of third party means. But we have about a dozen allied groups too. I put together materials like some of the handouts that are on the back table. And I'm still writing grievances. Even on the outside, we've talked about Bay on the Box and the Second Chance Act. I had to file a complaint against a San Antonio area employer who made it really clear that I was denied a job, that I was way overqualified for an education and profession, because they thought I was still in parole. And when I pointed out that I had provided materials to shows not in parole, then they had another excuse so I filed a complaint with the EEOC. So that's some of the way and that's some of the things you can do. And the handouts.