 Good afternoon, everybody. This is a very exciting day, I think, for all of us. In the sacred words of my good friend Gloria Steinem, this is fan-fucking-tastic. So thank you very, very much for being here. This is really important. And I'm Elizabeth Sackler. And when I was married about 30 years ago, I received a gift from my husband. And it was a wooden crate that had on it glued to it wrappers from soap covers. And it was dub, ivory, neutrogena, dial, you know, different soaps. But it was before kiss my face. So there was no kiss my face. But anyway, he gave it to me and he said, this is your soap box. I still have it. And now this is my soap box. And thank you for joining me on my soap box. I'm delighted you're here. Today is the first of the Sackler Center's three-part series, States of Denial, The Illegal Incarceration of Children, Women, and People of Color. We are starting, as you well know, with Sentence to Change with Piper Kerman. The Brooklyn Museum is a venerable institution, an encyclopedic museum giving voice to the past and the present, to art and culture, to history and education, and to give us a better understanding of the world in which we live. I want to thank the trustees of the Brooklyn Museum, the staff of the Sackler Center, with a special shout out to Jess Wilcox. Their enthusiasm and their trust make possible the success of the Sackler Center bringing art, her story, and all things women to you. I would also like to thank the new press and executive director Diane Wachtell for discussing the series with me and with Rebecca Taffel, the Sackler Foundation's director of programs. Diane provided us with more than a dozen books published by the new press since 1999 at the rate of practically one per year, and their titles tell the story. A sampling, Kids for Cash, Prison Profiteers, Race to Incarcerate, Invisible Punishment, and of course a milestone work by Michelle Alexander, the new Jim Crow. The new press is a fabulous resource for those of you who are looking for important information on this subject. Over the past 30 years, our country created and expanded a criminal justice system responsible for a prison population rising from 500,000 in 1980 to two and a half million today. The United States has the highest incarceration rate per capita of any country in the world, one third more than Russia, twice more than Iran and Brazil, and nearly 10 times that of Germany and Japan. We have become a nation intent on turning entire populations into criminals with no recourse and ultimately with no future. This is a pandemic fueled by an economic incentive and a political desire to eliminate, ostracize, and demonize the other. This is human rights disaster. We are militarized at our southern border. We have paramilitary police force in our very wonderful and beloved New York City. And nationally, the privatized prisons are unaccountable to the law. Their existence and invisibility destroys civil society and ignores constitutional law. A state of war and terror against people who are our American brothers and sisters has been fashioned and formed. In this swirling, mist, Piper Kerman materializes. Her talent kept her away from soapboxes and instead she has brilliantly brought us a brightness of being and hope and a phrase which will become and has already part of our cultural lexicon, orange is the new black. That title phrase is filled with humor, humorous twists, it's terrifyingly truthful, and it's a bountiful invitation to join her on a journey. Lighting the way she trips over obstacles, reads the signposts and finds a voice which is brought behind bars and otherwise distracted public. This is her bio. Piper Kerman best selling memoir, Orange is the New Black. My year in a women's prison is an account of her 13 month incarceration for a decade old drug offense. Kerman's story offers a look into the lives of women in prison, why it is the United States locked so many people away and what happened to them when they're there. Orange is the New Black was adapted to the very popular and acclaimed Netflix original series of the same name. Piper also works as a communications consultant for nonprofits and philanthropies and serves on the board of the Women's Prison Association. She is a frequent speaker at colleges and universities. We're delighted to have her here and has recently addressed groups and correctional officials, federal probation officers, public defenders, justice reform advocates, and volunteers, and formerly and currently incarcerated people. She is the recipient of the 2014 Justice Trailblazer Award from the John Jay College Center for Media Crime and Justice. Piper leads today's conversation with an inspiring group of formerly incarcerated women who have initiated justice reform. She will introduce us and talk with Stacey Magruder, Vivian Nixon, and Tina Reynolds. Prison, for some, is a radicalizing experience. And it is my hope that today's experience is radicalizing for all of those who are here. Please join me in welcoming the very wonderful Piper Kerman, Stacey Magruder, Vivian. Spring day to come indoors and talk about mass incarceration. Priorities are right. I am Piper Kerman, and thank you for coming. I am so glad and so grateful that the Sackler Center for Feminist Art has chosen to create this series of events examining mass incarceration, states of denial, the illegal incarceration of women, children, and people of color. It is amazing to be here inside of the walls of an institution that not only prioritizes the arts, but also civil rights as the new exhibit puts on so beautifully on display and social justice. And I can't overstate quite how different that is from being inside the walls of a prison. I would like to start today by introducing these three remarkable women who are here with us today up on the stage. The Reverend Vivian Nixon is the Executive Director of the College and Community Fellowship, which is an organization committed to removing individual and structural barriers to higher education for women with criminal histories, criminal records, and also their families. Reverend Nixon is an ordained local deacon in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she serves as an Associate Minister at Mount Zion AME Church in New York City. She has received countless honors for her work, but she identifies her most valued and life-changing experience as the time that she spent as a peer educator in the adult basic education program at the Albion State Correctional Facility in New York. Vivian serves on the board of directors of the Fortune Society, and she co-founded the Education Inside Out Coalition, which is a collaborative effort to increase access to higher education for justice-involved students. The lovely Tina Reynolds is co-founder and chair of Women on the Rise telling her story, otherwise known as Worth, which is an association of formerly and currently incarcerated women who have been empowered by their own experiences while involved in the criminal justice system and beyond. Tina holds her master's in social work from Hunter College, and she is currently an adjunct professor at York CUNY in the Psychology Department, where she teaches on the impact of incarceration on families, communities, and children. She has published pieces on the abolition of prisons, the impact of incarceration on women and children, and she has also written on formerly incarcerated women in policy change, and she is the editor, one of the editors of the anthology, the wonderful anthology, Interrupted Life, Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States. Tina is one of the leaders of the National Reproductive Justice Campaign Birthing Behind Bars. And Stacey McGruder is the founder of Sisters That Been There, which is a women's support group that caters to the needs of rehabilitating women in Santa Clara County, California. Stacey was released in 2011 from Elmwood Correctional Facility, and she was determined not to forget the women behind the walls, women just like herself. After nine short months, Stacey's dream of starting Sisters That Been There was a reality, and she began working with the probation department there to provide new services to the same women that she did time with. Stacey is currently employed full-time by the Santa Clara County Probation Department, and she works every day to break the cycle of incarceration and to motivate recently released women to find their dreams. And I wanna thank you all for joining us here today in your busy, busy lives. I'm so grateful. I'm gonna give some really quick context for our discussion before I turn it over to these amazing women. Elizabeth shared with you some really important things about our nightmarish, frankly, prison and jail system, our criminal justice system in this country. So as I'm sure you all know, the U.S. prison population has ballooned since the 1980s from 500,000 people in prison and jail to 2.4 million today, and the fastest growing portion of that system has been women. This is why I called my book about my own time in prison, Orange is the New Black. The title signals immediately that this is about women based on that typical fashion trend commentary. Purple is the New Black, gray is the New Black, magenta is the New Black. But the number of women in prison and jail in this country has grown by a jaw-dropping 800%. And the title points out that the person wearing the notorious orange jumpsuit that we associate with prisoners is more likely than ever to be a woman. So women in prison and jail are fairly unlikely to have committed crimes of violence, so about 63% of women in prison and jail are there for a nonviolent offense. But regardless of what their offense is, there are very consistent things that contribute to women doing time. Substance abuse, mental illness, and the experience of sexual or other physical abuse are the three most common factors that we see for most women in the system. And I believe personally that for many, many people, the women who are doing time today are crystallizing examples of where our criminal justice system has gone terribly, terribly wrong and how it has been misused for what many, many people agree are public health problems first and foremost. And of course, as with men, we see disturbingly disproportionate policing, disproportionate prosecution and sentencing of women of color in a system that is undeniably racist. So given that the lives of women can help us recognize all these profound problems with mass incarceration, I find it sort of bitterly ironic that within criminal justice systems, women are profoundly neglected. Whether you're talking about very basic medical care, the unique concerns of incarcerated mothers or the fundamental methods that prisons use to go about their daily business, women are an afterthought. The last prison facility that I personally was held in was a federal jail. And it housed about 700 men and about 35 women, give or take. And the day that I was released, they brought me down to receiving and disbursement because you are kind of like a can of soup coming on and off the warehouse shelf. And they said, you know what, we don't have any women's clothes. So here are the smallest men's clothes that we've got and they gave me a windbreaker and a pair of paper thin shoes and $28. And this was March 4th in Chicago and they showed me to the alleyway door and I was 800 miles away from my home. And to me, this story kind of says it all. I mean, it certainly says it all about how our prison system treats human beings and more specifically women, like those men's clothes. There's something about that. Thousands and thousands of other women have very, very similar stories and most of those women don't have my good fortune because I was so very lucky that waiting at the front door of the prison was a wonderful person who was ready to take me home to Brooklyn 800 miles away. But what if he wasn't there? I think about that all the time. So I believe that there is no way that we will have fewer women in prison or that prisons and jails will work with women in ways that are constructive or appropriate without powerful women's voices calling for change and in fact directing that change. And so that is why I am so thrilled to have these three women here up here with us today. We wanted to discuss the necessity of leadership from women who have survived the criminal justice system and these three women are exemplary. Many people out there are very skeptical about a prisoner's ability to ever return home successfully as a productive citizen, let alone to lead. And there are very formidable systemic barriers to ever really regaining your rights or your dignity once you've come home from prison. And so I am so excited to talk today about what has made it possible for these three women not only to come home successfully but to draw on incredible strategy and skill and strength to lead, to start organizations, to start campaigns, to really push for the changes that they know are absolutely necessary because they have profound personal experiences that inform those changes. So grateful, grateful I am. And with no further ado, I would like to say there's no one better out there to talk about freedom of the mind and education's impact on the experience of incarceration in the first place and on success or failure post-prison than the Reverend Vivian Nixon. And we're gonna watch a short video about her work and then we're gonna hear more directly from her. Alicia, the student on the video who talked about the irony of her studying law completed CUNY Law School last May and passed the bar in August. So we're very happy for Felicia. Hello everybody, I'm very happy to be here. I wanna thank all of the organizers of this event for having the vision to hold such an event and certainly thank Piper for reaching out and inviting me to share the space with her and with my colleagues Tina and Stacy. It's really wonderful to be here today to talk about what we can all do together to make a better world for women who have been impacted by mass criminalization in our society, in particular in the United States. I'm gonna try to frame the work that I do to increase access to education for criminal justice-involved women in the context of several stories. I haven't exactly thought through where this is gonna land, but that's how I do my talks and I usually land somewhere. So we're gonna be on this journey together. I think I'll start out with a brief story about how I became so passionate about this work. When I got arrested, I spent a year in, I was very adamant about my family not jumping through any hoops like mortgaging houses and selling insurance policies and cashing in retirement plans to get me out of jail. I was like, no. That is not what's gonna happen here. I'm gonna sit here in this lousy county jail and I'm gonna work with whatever lawyer we can afford and I'm gonna fight my case from inside the cell. And so I had a year to do that inside of a county jail where it's one of the most hopeless places on earth because there is no programming, there is no education, there's no opportunity there to do anything but fight your case and get involved in whatever craziness is going on that particular day and the craziness is usually initiated by the staff, not the residents. So during that year, stories get told, people who cycle from county jail to state prison and back and forth tell about a better place which would be the state prison because of the opportunity that might exist in a state prison to do different programming. So people would come back and say, oh well last year I was in the state prison and I took up cosmetology or I was in the state prison last year and they let me go to business school and I learned how to type. I learned how to do Microsoft Office or here in New York state there were college programs available even after college programs were widely taken away when government funding ceased in 1994. So people would come back and say, well when I was upstate I went to college. So the whole year that I was in the county jail I was hearing about the possibility of going to college. So in the back of my mind I was saying wow, if I end up not being able to get my charges dismissed or getting the judge or jury to see my innocence, if I end up getting convicted and sentenced to prison time there is hope because I can go to college. I'm not gonna waste the next seven years of my life. Well I didn't beat my case. I didn't get an innocent verdict. I got a guilty verdict and I went to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Now I knew nothing about prison systems so when they took me from the county jail to the Bedford Hills prison I thought that's where I was going to be. And the Bedford Hills prison had a college program. Now again, this was one, a few college programs still in existence because in 1994 Bill Clinton signed an omnibus crime bill which included the exclusion of federal funding for any college student who is in a prison which had been readily available for many years before that and that's how college had been funded in prison so overnight all those programs went away. This program still existed at Bedford Hills because some private colleges decided to invest in it. So after I went through the hoops they make you jump through the first few days you're in prison all of the testing and et cetera I went down to sign up for programming and the first programming I checked off on the list was college program and I filled out the forms and I qualified because I already had a high school diploma and I was anxious for courses to start and then two days later I get a pink slip in my mailbox or on mail call that said that I was being transferred to Albion Correctional Facility and I already knew that I was doomed because Albion Correctional Facility had no college. I can't quite explain the absence of hope, what that is. It's not even, I can't even call it false hope because there's no such thing as false hope. There's only hope or no hope and that was a critical moment in my life. When I got to Albion I had to find a way to survive for the next years and I didn't know what that was gonna be. There was nothing on any list that they offered me that they could teach me that I didn't already know. I already had a high school diploma. I didn't wanna work in industry where they soldered chairs together or made soap. I didn't wanna learn how to blow dry hair. So I ended up being a tutor in the adult basic education program and in the GED program and I rarely talk about this in such detail because the impact that it had on me is permanent and powerful because I was very lucky. I was raised on Long Island and though I lived in a housing project and though my parents were working poor I went to one of the best school systems in the country and I was very well educated as a child. I was blessed with that but I sat down with women who were my mother's age who couldn't read and tried to teach them to read and it broke my heart that people didn't have access to that kind of education that I had access to that people could reach that age and not be able to read a newspaper broke my heart and that's when I committed myself that whatever I would do with the rest of my life that these women would have access to education if it was the last thing I do. When I got out of prison there was this organization College and Community Fellowship that helped me go to college and get a degree because I knew I would need a degree in order to do the work that I'm doing now which is running that same organization which is kind of pretty circular but I believe that's the way it was intended to be. I learned something different though. I learned that the purpose of education in the criminal justice context is very much misunderstood and I'm gonna tell you two quick stories to make this point and then we'll move on because I don't wanna take up more than my time. I went and I visited a program at Gratterford State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania and it was a group of men called lifers. There were young men, they were all convicted to life in prison and they were putting on a dramatic performance where they either read poetry or did spoken word and there was this young man, he couldn't have been more than 19 or 20 years old and he was repeating this poem that he wrote and the refrain of this poem, there was a line at the end of every stanza and that line was, it's all my fault. It's all my fault, it's all my fault. And I'm sitting in the audience and I'm saying that my education teaches me that it's not all your fault, that there are structural things in place that really made it much more probable for you to be here than to be in college. But even in his refrain, it's all my fault, there was an ownership of a sense of power that just like he felt he had the power to make it all his fault, he also felt he could change things, that he had a role and a responsibility to make things better. But when I worked with women at college and community fellowship, the thing I often heard way too much was I wasn't arrested, I was rescued. The powerlessness, the voice of I had no say over what happened to me that it took an arrest and an incarceration, a robbery of my freedom for me to not self-destruct. I had no control over it. Someone else had to intervene. So for me education became about empowering women to understand that while people can help, people can open doors and provide opportunity, the power lies within each and every one of us. Because none of us can lead until we recognize that spark within us that we are powerful and women don't like to do this. Women don't like to say I'm powerful. Women don't claim their power. And a woman who has been convicted of a crime to say I'm powerful, how dare you? You have already broken the social contract. Your role is to be ashamed, not to be powerful. So the work we do at college and community, I had no idea this is where we were gonna end up. So the work we do at college and community fellowship is about helping women find that place inside themselves where they can replace the shame that has been given to them by that conviction with the courage to say once again, I am powerful and I can lead and I can make changes in this society that not only benefit me, but that will benefit my children and my community and our society as a whole. Thank you Vivian. I have one final question for you. Sure. That is this and this is specifically focused I think on some of the work that you're doing with the Education from the Inside Out coalition, which is really obviously the work of the fellowship. Really you begin outreach to women while they're still incarcerated, but a lot of that educational work happens once they've returned home. So anyone who has spent any time inside a prisoner jail can probably not miss the vast missed opportunity when it comes to the potential for education. And I mean, I think in every single prisoner jail, you will find people who are having transformative educational experiences which are almost entirely on their own steam or via the relationship with a peer educator like the program that you participated in. So this is a big question and I'm gonna ask you to answer sort of briefly, but what's it gonna take to have the kind of transformational change for prisoners and jails to have any potential as, to realize their potential as places where education actually happens and those transformations can happen. So it's not just this lost opportunity and wasted time. Yeah, it's gonna take enlightened leadership. We just, Governor Cuomo just during the black and Puerto Rican caucus weekend in Albany two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago announced a prison college initiative where he wants to invest in 10 locations across the state to use state money to make sure that college courses are available in prisons. So that's a step. You have the leader of a state government saying, this is something that is wise for us to do. And he used really good language. He used economic language saying that it's wise for the state to do because it lowers cost. But he also used the language of human transformation that it transforms people's lives and it helps them to go back and be better, more productive citizens, transform their communities. But I would ask the governor to go a step further and to use the existing mechanisms, tuition assistance program, which is a state program that supplies funding to low income students to go to college, was available to students in prison until Governor Pataki took it away. The state government could turn that around. And that way more than these 10 small programs the governor is proposing could be available. It takes transformative leadership to transform these institutions. I believe that if a state like New York took the lead on something like that, that it would go a long way toward convincing our partners in the federal government to reinstitute the Pell Grant program in prisons. Pell Grants are the primary way that prison college programs were funded up until 1994. And we have documented evidence from Claiborne Pell's daughter. Claiborne Pell was the author of the Pell Grant legislation that Claiborne Pell always intended for students in prison to be eligible for Pell Grants. And she's fighting this battle with us. Transformative leadership leads to transformative policy. So it is possible. Thank you so much Vivian. So, as important as freedom of the mind is for every single prisoner, you have to struggle daily to hold on to some sense of integrity of the body. It is what a prisoner of jail is designed to take away. And so it is a daily fight to hold on to it. And I would say that for women living in a dehumanizing system which is essentially designed for and by men, survival demands a very special, special focus on reproductive health and justice and the rights of parenthood. And Tina Reynolds has been a powerful, powerful voice on these issues. So we're gonna see a little bit of her story and then we're gonna hear more directly from her. So I'm eternally grateful that Vivian led off with this conversation. And I'd like to thank the Sackler Center for Feminist Art and the organizers of this event and Piper for pulling all this together. And for those of you that came, of course, you know it's important that you're here as well. So the beginning, where it all started and the organization that was founded by myself and many women who'd been impacted by the criminal justice system is women on the rise telling her story worth. So it's about our stories. It's about us sharing. It's about how Vivian started off with sharing her story and how it is that it pulls at the reality of life because everyone experiences life and everyone tells stories. I was raised in a family where my great-grandmother used to tell me stories all the time about how it is that our family survived many instances of oppression and racism and how it was that we came up out of that very strong and deliberate and intentional and intentional with love and dignity. And so it's important and it's always been important for the members of worth and for myself and for women like us to share our stories and bring dignity to the experience to ourselves. So I guess I'll start and like Vivian, I don't know where I'll end up, but I'm sure I'll end up somewhere. I came from that experience and I guess what I'll do is I'll talk about the resistance that happens behind bars because it wasn't me by myself who made it possible for me to have my son in prison and be able to spend part of the first of his life in prison with me. It was through the resistance of women I did time with. That made it possible for my son to live in prison with me. My son was born in Valhalla, Westchester County, New York, right outside of Bedford Hills. And it's pretty expensive hospital. And it's a pretty expensive area, right? But there's a prison there. And so I was several months pregnant when I arrived at Rikers Island and went to Bedford Hills to fight to keep my son while I was there serving my sentence for a parole violation. I knew within me that if I didn't try this time because as Vivian so aptly placed the words around self-esteem and self-worth, I thought that I was the dirt underneath the tire. I didn't deserve an opportunity to have any semblance of normal life before this time that I was in prison. But this time was different. This time I was shackled and handcuffed in transportation from Rikers Island to Bedford Hills in the dead of winter, I believe it was. Yeah. Yes, as a matter of fact, yes. And I was sitting on the right side of the bus and there's a bar, it's a school bus. There's a bar in front on the right side of the bus, the first seat and the chain where my handcuffs are shackled, my handcuffs are cuffed are the long chains and I remember being chained around this bar and having the shackles placed on my feet. And I must have been about four and a half months pregnant. Now that's 20 years ago so I don't remember everything exactly, okay. And I just, as I'm riding on the bus, I'm thinking, well, this just can't happen to me. This just can't be happening to me, but it's happening to me now. So now I'm starting to think that it's possible that other women experience this. It's possible that other pregnant women come to prison. It's possible that not just in New York this happens, it's possible, I started thinking that if this is happening to me, it's possible that it might have happened to other women. Just possible. And now I'm thinking, well, it's the dead of winter and what if we hit an ice patch and what if the bus turns over? What's gonna happen? So we made it to Bedford Hills safely and I start using the lines of communication with the sisters inside to try to find out ways in which I can try to keep my son and they're helping me. I go through, there's no way that I'm going to the counseling services or to the psychologist or to anyone else to get this information. It's very vital information and a time in which I need it because time is of the essence. And so my sisters advised me of how it was that I needed to try to keep my son. And I did exactly what they said. I wrote all the letters to the superintendent then Elaine Ward and unfortunately she was on vacation. So I didn't know what to do. I went to the women's center through their advisement and asked sister Elaine Roulay. Did I say sister Elaine Lord in the beginning? No, I didn't. Elaine Lord was the superintendent. Sister Elaine Roulay was the director of the women's center at Bedford and I met with her and she asked me one question. She said, what are you willing to do if I try to get you into the nursery and you're able to keep your son? Now mind you, I was arrested 61 times. At this point, if I didn't do whatever I needed to do, it was all over for me. So I said whatever it is that I need to do. And this was through the advisement of the sisters again. You know, it was about showing remorse. It was about showing intention. It was about being in dignity. These were long-termers who had advised me that I needed to see myself as a possibility. Possibility of being a mom, possibility of keeping my son, a possibility of changing my life. And so I was scared because all of the other thoughts prior to that was I didn't deserve anything. In fact, it's my fault. And yes, I did go to prison rescued many times. That was what I believed. And I didn't think about the many times that I was so-called rescued that I'd experienced trauma worse than what I'd experienced out in the street. But here I was in front of Sister Elaine and looking at my only option, my hope. My hope was to be able to tell her that I would do anything that I needed to do to keep my son. And she said, even see a psychiatrist? And I was like, oh boy. I said, yeah, okay, fine. Now mind you, I come from a family line you keep your secrets inside. You don't tell anybody what's happened to you. You don't tell anyone what's going on in your family. My family wasn't perfect. There were a lot of situations that went on. I was traumatized at a very early age but I'm not gonna go into that story because that's not the story that I'm gonna tell you and that's not where I wanna land. I wanna tell you that I was able to keep my son. I wanna tell you that women cleaned out a closet for me in Bedford Hills and made that space my room for me and my son when I got him finally from the hospital, which I went to shackle in handcuffed and in receiving him and returning back to the prison with him, a correctional officer carried him in his car seat and I followed in shackles and handcuffs doing the shackle shuffle. And that further angered me because now in front of everyone else, I'm walking through the hospital, a public domain, locked up basically, right? And looking in everyone's eyes, I deserve to be that person because their eyes glazed over and I was that prisoner. I looked like that prisoner and that was me, that was the picture. But my son was not a co-conspirator to my crime and at that moment I was the most proud mother and human being that I could ever be because I had a chance and I had a chance to be humane. My son was my door opening to my humanity and then there was a special little word that came up after that, which was dignity. And then I thought about all the other women that might have experienced what I experienced and realized that every one of them deserve the dignity, the dignity to have a safe pregnancy while they were in prison, the dignity that they deserve to deliver their child, to receive the proper medical care, to be able to hold their child when they gave birth to them. Long enough for them to make some kind of connection, to be able to think about what type of story, well, I tell my child when they ask me because every child does. Mommy, how was I born? Every child does and to be able to say it in a loving way because it's not where I was, it's what I felt, how it was treated and what the experience was for that child that I should relate to them through love. Every woman deserved that no matter what it was that they did to end up in prison. And so that was my jumping off point, like yours Vivian. That was my jumping off point. I had to take that anger somewhere. So Kai and I walked out of prison, he'll be 20 years old in June, mind you, and I've been doing this work for 20 years. I've been passionate about reproductive justice issues, about women giving voice to their experiences, about them giving worth to themselves and their lives because we're just not alone. We're not just single individuals doing all of this and experiencing all of this. We come with families and communities and many of them have been involved in a criminal justice system. And so one of the most important things that Worth did was in 2009 collaborate with the Correctional Association which we'd done for many, many years, many, many years myself as an individual and then as an organization to end shackling of women to actually pass the law. I remember when Tamara called me, she says Tina, Tina, guess what? She says the law's on the table. What are we gonna do? We're gonna send it to you now. We need to do something. And we'd always been talking about it. We'd always been deliberate in thinking about how do we do this? And that was our opportunity. And I think it was the fastest bill that ever got passed into law that we ever worked on. And not only myself, but many, many women who'd experienced shackling during their incarceration came forward, brave, capable, fearless, courageous women shared their story. Those that were on parole and those with that weren't only through the promise of then the commissioner, Brian Fisher, saying that he couldn't do anything because he had said that it stopped happening. And once we found out that it hadn't, he had to leave the women alone. And we began to compile stories, right Tamara? We began to go up to Albany to fight for this. And like I said, this legislation was passed into law. It was the quickest legislation that I know ever that we had worked on. And we became proud. There were so many women that took on leadership roles in getting permits to go to the police to ask for a permit to hold in a direct action in front of the governor's office. Many members of Wurth went out and organized women from other programs. We were a transient organization. And we began doing this work with intention and love. And so in 2009, the law was passed. And I think New York became the sixth or seventh state, to end shackling of pregnant women as they are giving birth and in labor, in transportation to and from the prison. Absolutely phenomenal. We have 20. 20 states now. That's up into their 13th case in this country. Can I ask you another question? Sure. To elaborate a little bit more on this practice of storytelling because it is so very, very central to your work. I mean, I think it's a part of all of our work. Yes. If you could just give us a couple more thoughts on storytelling and leadership and how we need those stories for a mass movement if we're going to impose mass incarceration and the danger of a single story. And maybe you could elaborate on that idea a little bit. I don't quite understand what you mean by the danger of a single story. I can only assume that you're thinking that when folks think about people in prison is that everyone fits into a particular, in the same circle, like one size fits all and it doesn't. Everyone has a different experience and how they came to it is quite different in everyone's experience, I believe. It's what happens when you're there. What you're able to do when you're there. And unfortunately, not everyone has that spark that goes off where they're able to connect that maybe this should not be happening. However, for us that are watching and where that spark goes off, we see the intention and the opportunity for that to happen within women that just may not be there yet. And so it's not without saying that everyone in prison doesn't resist in some way. However, it's just not seen. And so we should always honor and give dignity to every person's experience. Storytelling is so important because we assume that people come from poor communities. We assume that poverty is the reason. We assume that trauma is the reason. I mean, and there's a lot of research to back all of that up. We actually need to understand that this is a societal issue. And that systems have played a big role in the communities being impoverished. The communities not having the resources that are needed. And these systems, intersections that continue to oppress people, especially people of color. So when we share our stories, it's about educating folks to understand that it's not just the experience or the community where they come from. How could you allow someone to define your community that lives outside of it, right? But in most cases we do. We do allow the media. We do allow a law enforcement. We do allow other people to define our communities as bad. It's the worst place to live and you better watch out. Certain boogeymen walk down the street. And that's not true in many cases. And in all cases, anyone that I've spoken with from communities where we have these situations know their neighbors and take care of Miss Jones down the street and treat each other kindly. But yet still society and people outside of those communities look at them as being something that is not worthy. So stories bring these myths to truth. I think, bring truth to these myths. I think what happens is women have to learn how to give voice to those experiences because a lot of shame and a lot of guilt are attached to when someone defines who you are or you're seen as less than, then you believe it. If you've heard it so many times. So ours worth is to, and many of us, and I'm sure all of us have experienced the opportunity to strengthen women to a place where they see the truth in their love and their dignity and to share their stories so that it's important that those stories are given voice. And once a story is given voice, then you can see me as a human being and your eyes won't glaze over anymore. I was offered an opportunity to have a residency upstate and I was teaching, lecturing at Smith College and I asked what did a criminal look like? What did an inmate look like? And they defined him through behavior, through what it was that they thought that he did, right? Having no remorse. And then it turned into a conversation of where it was more or less what he was without. It was without conscience. He was not a son. He was not a brother. He was not a father. So he was invisible. So if you think of them defining an inmate, a criminal in behavior and then particular characteristics and then ultimately being invisible, then where are women? Where are women? And women are the fastest rising number today. And when you think about women and you realize the women are the fastest rising number, we also have children and our children become invisible. And then that means that these intersections of these systems, it's okay to lock us away. It's okay to lock our children away. And it's okay to treat us in any way you feel. And so the reproductive justice initiative is called Birthing Behind Bars. And it's on the Nation Inside website. And I wish I'd bought some information about the other wonderful organizations that have collaborated and still partner with us like the Correctional Association here in New York. But you can all look, you can look them up. But certainly go to the site, the Birthing Behind Bars site and sign the petition and become one of our followers on Facebook and join the initiative. Thank you. I hope that helps. There is information on a number of these fantastic organizations and some of the issues that we're talking about on the front table on your way out of the auditorium. So Stacey Magruder, a safe and successful return home is what we want for every single incarcerated person. For women, there are some very particular considerations, some very consistent considerations around safety. Around shelter, health concerns. And for most women coming home from prison, their children, how will they be reunited with their children? Stacey Magruder, you came home from prison just in 2011, not so very long ago, and very, very early in your own process of reentry, you started working to build a program for other women, a program housed within the probation department. And we're gonna see a short video that was created at the same time that that program was being created back in 2011, the creation of Sisters That Been There. And then we're gonna hear a little bit more about how you got started and how that work is evolving. Thank you all for being here. I wanna thank Piper for extending herself to me and not thinking I was a stalker. Thank you. I wanna thank Jessica for all your diligence and all your hard work and returning random emails from me. Thank you. And I wanna thank Elizabeth Sackler and the Sackler Center for hosting such a panel and such a topic that is important to me and to many of you I can see. So I'm gonna do, oh, last but not least, she just disappeared. I wanted to thank my daughter. She was in one of the pictures and she's been a part of this journey from the beginning and I just thank her for putting up with me and my weird moods and all that stuff. I'd like to know if there's any sisters that been there in the house today, if you are here and you've been there, please stand up so we can acknowledge you. Thank you for being here. So I'm gonna stand up because I told people that, like if I don't stand up, sometimes I lie. So I don't lie, I'm gonna just stand up. I just gotta tell the truth. So it's an honor to be here. I came all the way from California and everything has been so great. Me and my daughter flew in on Thursday. We've been just like running around New York in fear, thinking we're gonna get lost, but we don't actually get lost because people are helpful around here. I can go back to California and tell everyone that now. But I just, I thank everyone that has made this possible and I'm so honored to be here and to share with you guys about sisters that's been there and how that came to be and all that good stuff. So I'm gonna tell you a little story and then I'm gonna bring you up to speed on my life and kind of how sisters that's been there came to be. When I was eight years old, my mother who was a single mother of four girls, I'm the second oldest out of four women, gave us up to complete strangers because we were getting in the way of her drug addiction. And we went to live with these strangers. They're my godparents today. Their names are Spirit and Snow and they were parents who adopted children who had been abused, beaten, molested, things of that nature and they took them in and taught them that life isn't so bad and that there's safety within their life, I guess you could say, and they taught them how to live and try to break the cycle and hope that they didn't in turn turn around and do the same things that were done to them. So they created this environment and they built this huge house, right? They, this was up in Humboldt County, up in California and they bought this property, this land and they built this house and they moved there and they lived and I had 23 adopted brothers and sisters all under one roof. Crazy. So to go from being with a single mom to 23 children, all different races, all different backgrounds, different histories but all of us having something in common which was not having our birth parents. It was just incredible. So they built this house from the ground up. It was a circular house. There weren't actually any walls in this house. So each corner indicated that like this was the dining room. This is where the piano was. This was the living room and this was the kitchen and in the middle of the house about deep, not this deep but with a huge circle that was cut out and we used to play this game called Gaga. I couldn't even explain it, it was homemade game but we used to play this game in the middle of the circle and there was a basketball hoop and like it was great, right? So when we got there, we were coming from yelling, screaming, abuse, like shut up, go to your room, all that good stuff and we got there and it was like, no, that's okay. No, you can be as loud as you need to be. Completely switched. I remember I broke a plate once and if I was in my mom's house, I would have gotten beat down and I broke a plate and I remember freaking out and them coming and saying, it's just a plate, it's just a plate. You're way more important than that plate. And they would do things like this. We would wake up in the morning, we would have this dream circle so that all the kids had to come down around the fireplace and tell our parents, our godparents what our dreams were and sometimes we told the truth and sometimes we didn't wanna talk about what we dreamt about cause it could have been off the hook. A lot of teenagers running around. And so we would make something up and they homeschooled us. I would run every time it was time for school. I was the one that was running in the woods and did not like school, that has not changed. And they just created this environment for us that was completely different than the one we were coming from. And they loved us unconditionally and at that point my role was to keep all three of my sisters away from these people because it was weird and it was different and it was uncomfortable. And my mom, I just held on to the fact that she's gonna come back for us, you know. And when she finally did, I was about 12 and I went to live with her and at that time, that's when my rebellion, anger, journey, that's when it began. Back to the house. So this house was huge, right? We used to call it the big house. There was a bunch of colleges around the house where people would have interns and they'd come and they'd help my parents and they'd help us build on the house and we'd have big meals and we'd feast and we'd have huge Christmases because people would send in donations like crazy. In the name of our family, they called us the celebrations and every time we went into town, they'd be like, there's those celebration kids and we'd just be running around all wild. None of our hair were combed, our clothes were filthy, like we were just living, you know, living real good. And so we called the house the big house and it was great, we did different things there. So when I went back to live with my mom, I had finally adjusted to my parents. I had finally bought into these people are my parents and they're doing that for me. And so I had to go back with my mom and I wanted to but a part of me didn't and it was horrible, so I began this path of, and so I rebelled and I started my journey at the age of 12 into drug use, speed back in the day, that's what they called it, methamphetamines, alcohol, pot. It started at 12 and it ended four years ago. So I tell you that story to tell you that I was sitting in Elmwood Correctional Facility in November of 2010. I had already been there for about 14 months and I was fighting a case, like Vivian said, finally decided to fight a case. I don't know, out there they give you, they offer you some time and you get scared and they scare you and you just take it. We call it railroading, but this time was different because for the first time in my life I didn't actually do this. So I was fighting this case and I was sleeping and taking a nap and I woke up and the reason why that song is playing is because this is my story. I woke up and I had had this dream and I just started crying and I was like, what is wrong with me and I was crying and I was just freaking out because I had this dream that I was up at the big house, at my house, on the top of the roof of this huge house in the woods and every single woman that I was incarcerated with at that time I had brought them there to that place and I woke up caring about these women for the first time. Every time I did my time it was like, stay away from me. I was very snobby, I didn't want anything to do with anybody, but this particular day, this happened to me and I was laying in my room and myself, by myself, I didn't have a roommate and I was bawling under the covers because I think that I woke up that day and realized who I was and what I was about and what was in me and I had to do something about it and I think that freaked me out, I think that's why I was crying. Later on, that day, I end up outside in the gym, workout area and I didn't really work out very often but I was out there and I was by myself and we didn't have like tons of equipment, there was just this one block that had like three different things on it and we just would make good use of it. So I got up there getting ready to do my pull-ups, I was feeling good and there was this book up there and I was like, and I hit it off of the thing and I was like, I started doing my pull-ups and because I'm such a sweet girl, I was like, oh my gosh, that book looks like it's in good condition and in jail, that's rare. And it looked new and I looked down at it and it had these eyes on the cover and they were looking at me and I was like, am I tripping, have I been here too long? And the book is called Where of All the Smart Women Gone by Alice Rowe. I don't know why that book was out there, books aren't allowed on the yard but it was there. I hopped down, I paced it up and I said, hmm, this looks good, I'll take this with me. So I took the book, later on, a few weeks later, I think it just sat in myself for a while and I finally cracked it open and the journey began. The journey began with the dream and then the book came and it just kind of enforced everything. It was just ridiculous, like it was ridiculous. It talked about Where of All the Smart Women Gone and I said, well, they're not up in here, you know? And that was my thought but that changed as well after I read that book and I actually did the little work thing, the work guide that was in the back of the book and I realized, holy shit, I'm smart. Oh my gosh, I'm one of the smart women and I said, well, if I'm one of the smart women, because I had flashbacks of my teachers telling me I was smart, my godparents told me I was smart. There were people in my life that told me I was smart, not as many people as most would have or maybe because it didn't come from my birth parents, it didn't set in until 17 years later, I don't know but it set in when it set in and it just seems like it's, up to this day, it seems like it's just been the right time for that. So I said, well, if I'm smart, like Tina was saying, well, maybe, maybe I'm not the only one that's smart in this whole place. Maybe we're all freaking smart and no one told us. My gosh, I gotta tell these girls that we're smart. Whenever I catch on to something, I gotta tell everybody about it. So I made it my mission to figure out how to tell them that they were smart without them being like, get away from me. You're weird, you're tripping me out. So I was like being very sneaky and strategic about it, like, oh, I gotta let these girls know they're smart. And then my job began and I started waking up early, I started sitting at my desk, my little desk that they give you and I started making my coffee and just going to work from eight to five, like the COs, they would come in and I would work their same shifts and I started making a schedule for myself and I started planning this thing out. I have never in the 17 years planned anything out, okay? And I began planning the sisters that's been there out and sisters that's been there started in there. And it started. I started talking to the girls. I started asking them, hey, if I start this thing, will you come? And they were like, yeah, if you start it, you gotta actually start it. Everyone said they got things they wanna do and they don't do them. So I was like, okay, I'll do it. And then I started talking to myself, like you gotta do this. But I knew that I couldn't just do it and then just say, hey, come to my group if I didn't actually do the footwork for myself in my own life. So I had to go through the same process that most of the women over there in California in our county have to go through, which if you're an addict, you gotta go through some rehab. You gotta go through a THU and you gotta reenter and you gotta rebuild everything because technically I never had anything. I just, I didn't know that. So every time that I got out, I would go back to nothing and continue to have nothing because I didn't realize it was nothing. So when I finally realized I had nothing, I was able to start with something. And so I did. Sisters that's been there is my baby. It's the best thing that's ever come in out of me other than my kids. And she's still not here. She probably knew I was gonna put her on the spot. But it's the first thing that I've done in my life right and it's the only thing I can't fuck up. And it's not just mine, it's theirs, it's yours, it's ours. They gave the name. I always have to let people know that they gave the name. We were in a holding cell and I was like, okay, what am I gonna call it? And we were like, I don't know. Sisters that've been there, I was like, no, that's too black. They're gonna think it's a black program and I want them to know it's for everybody. I was like, sisters, because we're all sisters and they said, yeah. And then we're like, okay. And then we were like, sisters that've been there, STBT. And then we carved it into the holding cell and it was official. And that's the story. And I got out and I did what I needed to do and I kept it alive. I didn't let it die out. I didn't let anyone tell me that I couldn't do it. It was just time. And sitting here and then hearing these women, meeting Piper, all of these things. There's a movement going on. Change is actually happening. And the video, it was done a long time ago but now you guys see the birthing behind bars and now I'm sitting here with her. This has been my life, just random puzzle pieces, just being put together and you guys get to see it yourselves. Yeah. So I think that's it because I'm rambling. Okay, so before I go, no. Sisters that's been there, we believe that we are the cycle and only we can break it. We believe we can love our sister until she learns from us how to love herself. We believe no woman who is confined should be forgotten or left behind. We believe that only together will our imagined success become a reality. We believe that each sister has a special dream and a gift that should be lived out each and every day. We believe that if it weren't for the women who have been incarcerated before us, we never could have made it through our own incarceration. We believe in you, love and accept you just the way you are. We believe that with consistency, love, support and a safe place with non-judgmental women, all women can get the support that they are in need of. The positive, healthy changes made within your life will lead to a life full of success and will able you to live a strong and productive life. We know that there is no chance or choice when confined, only strength and survival. Let your sisters give you the strength to survive. Thank you for hearing me. Thank you, Stacey. So I have a final question for you and then actually I would like if both Tina and Vivian could also address it because I think it applies to all of our work. So for criminal justice reform and reformers who are so often people whose lives have been touched by the system, whether they've been incarcerated or they have a parent or a child has been incarcerated, I think that one of the biggest challenges is that we need, it's this inside-outside thing. So we bring pressure from the outside for change. But to see change, we actually have to work with the people who run these systems, courts, policing, corrections. And I think that for myself, as a person who's been a prisoner, that is sometimes one of the most uncomfortable things is when I come in contact with the people who run the criminal justice system. And however, it's a big, huge government system, a huge government bureaucracy. And so change cannot happen purely from outside pressure, like the people who run the system actually have to wanna change too. So you're working inside the probation department and that's an interesting perch or perspective because you're collaborating, you've been on paper yourself on probation. So can you just talk a little bit about sort of the challenges and perhaps if there are rewards of working with those systems and maybe if Vivian and Tina could also touch on that as well. And then we're gonna open up to some Q and A. So some of the challenges that I face, I found were more internal. They were more things that I needed to grow into and build on and it was very intimidating at first because I forget which one of you said earlier, but the system has a way of looking at you and keeping that look no matter how hard you freakin' worked to get where you're at. And so when I went in, there was a lot of standoff people who were like, what's happening, you know? She's a known felon and I might add that all my charges were violent. I am that high risk violent person felon type thing on that, not anymore, but. So those were some challenges, but those were just character building. It just helped me get stronger within myself and more confident about what I was doing and I needed to represent that to them so that they could kind of back off a little bit and that's happening, but it's a big system. There's been times where, because I've only been there for the last three years since I got out. And I go into my office and cry and close the door because of the uncomfortable looks and I've ran into officers that I actually did time with that I have to work with on a daily basis and they still try to call me Magruder instead of Miss Stacy or Miss Magruder. Magruder is a term that COs use when you're an inmate. They call you by your last name. It's like disrespectful. So I've had that. I think that some of the challenges are that they have brought me on into the system to help change the system, but yet when I'm really ready to do something that's gonna really impact, it doesn't happen. And I can't get it to happen. So they shortstop me, shortchange me in it and that's a challenge in itself. But as far as the system, it's the same as it was when I was incarcerated. It's the same on this side. It just looks different. And the benefits are that I'm not there for me. I'm not there to feel comfortable. I'm there so that other people come in and see me in there and say, holy moly, how'd you get back there? And then that's change in itself, just seeing that, hearing that it's gone viral that the big bad wolf is with the public defenders now. I mean the probation officers now. So the benefits is that I get to be there for them and I get to advocate for them. And not only that, I get to be the example for us, for felons, for violent felons, for African-American women, for single moms, for drug addicts, for everything that I have been in my life, I get to be an example to that. And I have been a lot, okay? A lot, so that's the best frickin' part and that it spreads so much hope that the system can change to the people who are still incarcerated before they even get out. They hear about this in our area and they come in looking for me, a connection within that. So I get to advocate for people. And the best part is that if they talk to me, if they're at risk of being violated or sent back, if they talk to me and I talk to the PO, they get out of that, as long as they can at least reach out to me. That is a huge benefit. And I'm the first person they make contact with when they get out, another huge benefit, like it's a pour in to them, lace them up, give them the game on what it's gonna be like. And I mean, the benefits of it just keep going, keep going. Cool. I think you might need to retrieve your mic. All right, so the last two years worth has been going into the prison with our own program. It's our re-entry leadership development program, which is called Rise Up. And I believe it's the first of its kind for that was developed by formerly incarcerated women. They designed the program themselves and they made the proposal out to the then staff person of parole who became a real big champion of worth. And so once we did that, she told us who to submit the proposal to to go into the prison. And so we piloted the program, we got a little bit of money and we were able to develop this curriculum that actually is a three month program inside, a three month program in the community and then a connection with an organization where the sister would be working. And so we had two sessions in Bayview Correctional Facility before Superstorm Sandy came and hit the place and they decided to close it down. However, the benefits of that were being able to go into the prison as formerly incarcerated women leaders. And one of our members, Mercedes, had done 20 years and she's still on parole and she was able to get back into the prison and that's phenomenal. For her, that's what her desire was and that was her passion to get back into the prison. And so she left a lot of sisters behind and this was her connection to getting in the prison to see some of them, to offer them resources to get them connected with things and to also just be a source of support. And like you said, Stacey, it's the face, it's the ability to show a sister inside that wow, you did it. I know I'll be able to do it too. And you did 20 years and you're still on parole. And so it makes things believable. And yes, it is difficult when you get out, it's hard. And sure, we got the looks in the beginning but then when the lines of communication are very important, when they started going through the women and then women started coming downstairs when they started connecting the dots that we'd all been incarcerated, that we weren't just coming in and facilitating this random program that didn't mean anything, women started showing up at the door once they came out. They started receiving services. They started wanting to be leaders while they were inside to make sure that they could outreach to sisters. Once they were released then to have other leaders come in and join the group as well. So working within the system, I think for worth it became something where the glass-eyed look kind of disappeared within that particular facility. And then the doors opened up, not only in Bayview but also opened up in Bedford and Teconic for us to submit a proposal and facilitate our curriculum there. So there is hope, that it's extreme great hope that formerly incarcerated women no matter what would be able to go back and assist women in their leadership development and in their reentry process to make it real for them because we know within the prison system the information that we receive from corrections is not true and it doesn't help. One of the things that's really good is being associated with other organizations that have a name. And like College and Community Fellowship like the Correctional Association and Exodus and other organizations like Women's Prison Association, Osborn Association, the thing that worth did which was really different was make those connections with these organizations who had a history before us. And so working on that collaboration and then being the women that we needed to be really propelled us and made the other, made the Department of Corrections accept us more because we were serious. So that's one of the benefits is that partnership with the community orgs. Fantastic. Thank you. Vivian. So yeah, these institutions are big and they're powerful and ominous and when you have to work with Departments of Corrections and probation and parole as a former recipient of their lovely services, it's difficult but it really all goes back to the point I was making is that once you own your own authority and your own power, it becomes easier. And I started practicing this while I was on the inside. I mean, I was the most notorious inmate letter writer at Albion State Correctional Facility. I mean, when guards would come on the unit where I lived and change shifts, you could hear them saying to each other that one in L12 is a letter writer. Like watch out for her. So I mean, I always, I was always unafraid to stand up to unfairness. I didn't just write letters out of the blue but if something seemed unfair to me, I was not gonna be silent about it and I would appeal it all the way to the end. And I'm that way on the outside. I don't wanna fight these systems just for the sake of fighting them but if something is unfair, it's unfair. And our staff had trouble getting access to certain correctional facilities to go in and to recruit women who were coming home soon so that we could help them get into college. And so I decided that I can't fight these institutions one at a time. I just made friends with Brian Fisher who at the time was the commissioner of the State Department of Corrections and one day when one of the program deputies at one of these facilities didn't let my staff in, I just called Brian up and I said, Brian, my staff can't get into Bayview. And the next day I get a call from the program dep saying, Ms. Nixon, I'm so sorry. This will never, ever happen again. And you know, I just flipped the script on him and that's what you have to do. Now we have a theater group that goes into Rikers Island and goes into other facilities and performs for the women there. You have to develop relationships where you can develop them and learn how to exercise your own authority. And women are not good at that, whether they have felony convictions or not. Women are just not good at exercising their own authority. We need to get better at it. That's right. I wanna thank these wonderful women and we're gonna open up the floor for questions in just one second. But first, I wanna remind you that this is just the first in a series of events, States of Denial, the illegal incarceration of women, children, and people of color. And on Saturday, the 29th of March at 2 p.m., there will be a discussion led by Sophia Elijah, who is the executive director of the Correctional Association on mass incarceration's impact on black and Latino women and children. And then on Thursday, April 3rd in the evening at seven, the amazing documentary Crime After Crime will be shown, which is about Deborah Pigler, who is a survivor of domestic violence who was wrongfully incarcerated for 25 years. And it is very gripping. It is an amazing film. So just a reminder that those two events are coming up. So I believe in just one moment, we will open up for Q&A. Elizabeth, do you wanna, yes? And oh wait, ground rules for Q&A. We have a mic over here and a mic over here. So we will take some questions. You will have to go to the mic. Please let us know who amongst our wonderful panelists, the question is for, if it's for all of us, that's fine, but you might wanna direct your questions to one of us. Great, thank you. All right, and I will just call over here first to the left. Goodbye on these issues, keeping in mind, like I guess the difference in how it affects people that have access to whiteness and people that don't. Yeah, I think that question of white privilege is really, it's important for all in the broader society, but when you look at the criminal justice system, it's really quite stark. Around policing, around prosecution, and around sentencing, you will see that people of color are simply treated differently by the criminal justice system. And a great example is marijuana arrests. So black people are four times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than white people. And actually in some places, the numbers are much darker. That's the low level. So in some places, they're eight times more likely. And I probably don't need to tell you all that white people smoke just as much marijuana as anyone else, right? So yeah, so I draw all kinds of, in my own journey through the criminal justice system, whether it was access to counsel or appearing before my sentencing judge with my blonde hair and blue eyes, and also my experience while incarcerated, the treatment by some prison officials, very different than the treatment of black or Latino women. So it's just incredibly important to sort of acknowledge that and to be aware of it. And I also think coming home and making the choice to write my book and the very good fortune that it was adapted into a show, part of the reason that that was true is because people regard the story as a fish out of water story, because they don't think that a white, upper middle class woman will ever end up in prison. And so actually for someone who is poor, black and Latino, they don't actually have the opportunity to tell that fish out of water story because our prisons and jails have so often been built to hold those folks. So I reflect upon that truth and I think about it often. I think the most important thing for me in telling my own story was the hope that more people would start to think about our prisons and jails and demand to know what actually happens behind their walls. Great question. Thank you. Thank you. All right, over here. Hi, I just want to thank all of you for speaking. I think that you hear a lot about time in prison, but certain issues like the shackling, not having as many rights is not as publicized, I guess. So I never knew that you were shackled in prison and watching your video was absolutely heartbreaking tonight. I can't imagine giving birth to me sounds scary, but giving birth in shackles is just terrifying. So I'm really glad that you both worked to get it banned in New York. My question is a little bit about more probation issues. And I'm wondering, except for Piper, because you had a very different life, I guess, after probation maybe because you went back to your husband, your fiance, I believe. For everybody else, under probation, I know that it's really difficult. You have to be in touch with the probation officer, maybe if they do drug tests. And also, through my life of applying for jobs, there's always the question on forms. Have you ever committed a felony? And so I'm really curious as, you didn't really speak exactly about your time right after prison. And I'm sweet, some of you had part-time jobs and worked when you were in college and getting your degrees. So how that affected getting part-time jobs with that in mind? That's a really good question. I'll go first, I guess. When I first got out, I had to go get a job and do all that stuff. So my first job, I worked for J.C. Penney's in the optical department for about a year and a half before I actually got hired on with probation. And I actually just didn't check the box and waited for them to say, hey, why didn't you check the box? They didn't even ask that. Then I pointed it out and I thought, maybe that was a bad idea. But I wanted to be honest, but I also wanted to give myself the opportunity to be able to show who I was with that. So I just didn't check it. And then I was able to explain, however, I worked with a lot of women who faced the same things and were trying to build up confidence and telling them that if they don't hire them, then that's not the job for you. And keep on trucking, keep looking. We're also in California, where you have this movement, it's called ban the box. And we're trying to get the box removed off the application so that people aren't subject to having to even answer that question. Great. Thank you so much. Cool. Anything to add? Yeah, I'll answer it briefly. In New York State, it's against the law to not hire somebody simply because they have a criminal record. So I knew that. And therefore, I only applied for jobs for which I was highly qualified or overqualified. And most jobs that I applied for had very savvy and intelligent HR professionals who also knew the law. So I didn't come across that type of discrimination. I came across employers who understood the law. And the first job I ended up getting, I actually got called back a couple of times and the head of HR called me into her office and said, look, we know the law. We're just trying to, and it was a hospital. And because it was a hospital, they just had to be very careful what job they gave me because I had access to a lot of information about people. And my crime could make it difficult for them. So she told me, we're following the law. We know you are qualified to do something in this hospital. We're just trying to find what that something is. And as soon as we find an opening for you, we will offer you a job. So I knew the law and that protected me in New York State. So that was my re-entry experience. So just to answer your question regarding parole and probation, if you've done federal time, you have a probation officer. If you've done state time, you have a parole officer. And once you're released, you're given a list of mandates to follow and you have to follow them to a T. Now 20 years ago, they were more stringent than they are now. So you can, let's say, violate parole and you won't necessarily go right back to prison. But one of the mandates is that you seek and find gainful employment. And so what I did basically was go back to school. I had come home with a little son and I'd fought to get one of my sons out of foster care. So I went right back to school and I acquired my degrees in five years and then saw the job. But started meeting with women who were interested in forming this group, which was then just us talking about what the possibility of work might be. I didn't see myself working in any other fields other than the criminal justice and human services field like Vivian thought of the health field. I was very much aware of there being a barrier regardless of what my rights were. And so I didn't wanna fight that fight. My intention was more or less getting in where I fit in and working in the human services field was my idea of fitting in with my degrees. Of course I had a desire of starting my own organization and so in 2004 we started work. So then I don't have to worry about it. Ha ha, fantastic. All right, let's go to this question over here. Hi, this is Rita Henley-Jettison from Women's E-News. And I've known about the Bedford program for a long time but after, it's never been clear, after you give birth and the child is with you, what happens? Are you supported in breastfeeding or is it barred? Do you get to spend 15 minutes with your child every day or do you get to read a story before they go to sleep? What, how is your relationship with the child supported during, in your face, nine months? Sure. So over in California, they give you 48 hours with your child and upon your entry into the prison, the first thing that you go through is putting down the person's name who's going to pick your child up, their contact information and they make it very clear that if they don't answer within a certain amount of hours, your child will go into child protective services. So you prepare for that, it's like the first thing you do if you're pregnant and then you breastfeed in that 48 hours and because our state prison is in the central of the state, it's, if your family's willing to come and pick up the milk, there is that option of pumping and saving the milk and things like that. Other than that, what I experienced was I had to pump and dump because my family lived too far away to bring the child to pick up the milk to do those things. So it was 48 hours, they come in with an ID card and say, is this the person that's supposed to pick up your kid and then they call the family as soon as the baby is born and that gives them time to come there and pick up the baby. So it's really up to you to say, hey, give me 48 hours, I want the kid, but be there at the end of that 48 hours. You gotta make all of that very clear, your family will come early, thinking that your kid's gonna be taken away and then you miss out on that time. And then you breastfeed or whatever and you're kind of in this room that is built in the hospital to have the prisoners, it's the prisoner ward and there's three beds, three curtains and the officers sit right outside your curtains and that's that. And you have to take your kid with you when you go to take a shower and it's just you and the kid and the officers. And then they show you the ID, you agree and then they just take the baby out and that's that. And then you wait for mail or a phone call in order to make sure that that was the right person and that your child made it and they got where they were supposed to go. It took me two weeks to get images of my kid again. So, and that was that and then when you go back it's the women that pat your head and wipe your tears and tell you it's gonna be okay and they encourage you and you get through it. So my experience is 20 years ago. And, but the nursery was very supportive. Sisters that did time with me took care of my son when I programmed and I had to work and I had a job like Vivian. I worked in the ABE in the school in the school and I tutored folks who were studying for their GED and in that time was when very early in the morning I would send my son off with one of the sisters that was serving time with me. We lived in a separate building so they would come over in the morning and take my son and just go off with them. I saw it as a wonderful opportunity. Children do not know at that age where they are. And they were able to be there up until a year, some 18 months I think, they're 18 months at Bedford Hills. I'm looking at tomorrow. We're still working on this initiative to make sure that the law is being implemented in New York. And the opportunity for my son to receive so much love, I believe that's the reason why he is the way he is today because women who were without their children were able to help raise my son and I will be forever grateful. So that nursery was a God's sin for me. It was an opportunity for me to grow, although I did not like talking to the psychiatrist because I was raised in a family that said, don't tell your business. I began telling my business and realized that it wasn't any business and that business needed to get gotten rid of because it was crazy business. And so, parenting classes and then being able to talk to other sisters about the way that they were raised and the way that they were raising their children while they were serving time. We served time together. I'll tell you a story. While I had my son, like I said, I was arrested 61 times. My son was my connection back to my humanity. Prior to that, I knew if I did not keep my son that all bets were off. If my son was to go into the system, that was it. There was no reason for me to be a lot and I knew it. So I fought. This was my fight. This was my one big raha or whatever. This was it, and so I was able to get my son, keep my son through the help of my sisters and the women's center and have him. I realized, well, for three months, I did everything that I was supposed to do to take care of my son. I followed the rules. I did everything that they said I needed to do. I fed him. I changed him. I clothed him. Made sure he was ready to go to his morning program. I went to work and everything. One day I came back from my program and two sisters pulled me aside and they asked me how my day was and they start talking and they said, do you know that your son has ears? And I was like, yeah, everybody's kid has ears. I was wondering why they were talking to me about his ears. They turned the back of his ears and I had never cleaned behind his ears. For three months, I started crying. And to me at that point, I realized that I was doing motherhood. There was this connection that I had missed with my son that I was okay at taking care of him, doing the things that I needed to make it look good, but I missed his ears. At that point, because I was challenged by whether I was good enough to be his mom, that's what I realized. At that point when I cleaned behind his ears, there was nothing but overwhelming love that came through my heart and my mind at that time that I was really in this for the hall. That I was never going to not be his mom and not be in his life. Over here. Hi, thank you so much for coming. My name is Danielle Coward. I work for an all-patient program for folks with severe mental illness and substance use issues. And since being there, I've seen so many people come who've been incarcerated and so issues and the trauma that folks experience when incarcerated has become something that I'm now passionate about and want to do something about. And as I hear, you all talk, I hear how incredibly important it is, the role that formerly incarcerated individuals play in helping each other. As someone who's not formerly incarcerated but wants to play a role in helping with his movement and in individual lives in helping to heal and breaking the cycle, specifically healing from the damage that's done in the prisons themselves and the things that lead to being there. I was just wondering maybe Stacy specifically or anybody, what were some of the most important things that folks were able to pour into you to help you to break the cycle? Good question. For the people, like oftentimes we say, if you ain't been there, you can't tell me nothing. We know that that's not true. We just like to say it. I'm just kidding. No, it's kind of true, but for the people who hadn't actually been there, a large amount of people in my life had not been there that made a huge impact. My teacher was one of them. My teacher who would do my substance abuse packets with me behind a door. And I think that what those people gave me was love, unconditional, non-judgmental love. They allowed me to be who I was and let them know who I was and they just took me as I was. They didn't try to fix me. Huge, huge things, especially for angry people, do not try to fix me. Yeah, I'm not broken, you know, and we will fight it tooth and nail. So it was just a matter of them not trying to fix me or do anything like that. Just be like, what's up girl? What do you want to do? How can I help you? You know, and none of that weird egg shell stuff, like, you know, none of that. Don't be scared, embrace them with love. They need love. They need lots and lots and lots of love. All right, I think we're gonna have our last question. This gentleman here, hi. Okay, my name is Carl Dix and I wanna go back to something that Reverend Nixon said about women impacted by mass criminalization because I feel like that's what we're dealing with when we talk about mass incarceration. The skyrocketing of the crime of the people in prison was not because people started doing a lot more crime, but because growing sections of people, especially blacks and Latinos, were being criminalized. And that comes from a system that has nothing out there for a lot of these young people in the inner cities. No jobs, no education. So what they got is jails, courts and cops. And that's what I think we're dealing with and that leads me to be looking at it like the folks in the system ain't gonna be the ones to have the impetus for change. That's gotta come from somewhere else. And I come at this like it's gonna take two things. And then I'm gonna get to my question. One is gonna take revolution, nothing less to get rid of this once and for all. And that's something I've been working on since I got out 11 worth about 40 some years ago. Okay, that's one. Two, everybody who's having their eyes open to this problem has gotta just stand up and say no more. This is unacceptable, it's illegitimate, and I gotta act to stop it. I co-founded the Stop Mass Incarceration Network with Cornell West and we are working on that and we have a proposal for a month of resistance to stop mass incarceration in October. Anybody interested, get with me about that. Now to the panelists, my question. What relationship do you see if any between efforts to unleash resistance just throughout the society from the grassroots, among people in the arts? Well-known people, what's the relationship between that and people who are in prison but also on that cycle trajectory that has them going through it finding within themselves the ability to transform their lives and hopefully get with this fight to get rid of mass incarceration because it's like a slow genocide that's crushing too many of our communities. So that's to any or all of you who wanna respond. I have a couple of thoughts on that and I would pass it on to any of the other women here who wanna weigh in. So I wanted to just add on to what you had to say to remind folks that just as our prison population has ballooned everywhere or most places around the globe the crime rate has declined and declined and declined and declined. And actually since 2000, not just in the United States but all over the world, crime rates are incredibly low just as we have continued to throw human bodies into our prisons and jails. So the two are not connected. There are great organizations and networks that are growing and traditionally the criminal justice reform community has been working incredibly hard for these last 30 years grounded in communities of color who have been saying, what the hell are you doing to us? There's a great, I just wanted to echo what Tina said. There is a phenomenal network called Nation Inside which runs myriad campaigns which are both physical, like focused on physical places but also focused on issues like birthing behind bars. It is a fantastic and very accessible network of people who are committed to change so that's a great place to look. And what I find is that very often there is this integral relationship between the arts because of that storytelling piece that all of our panelists quite frankly talked about and that Tina touched on so well that without those stories that challenge these false paradigms, people aren't galvanized to change but with those stories which require the arts then we can do it. Yeah, I wanna, so the reason I use the term mass criminalization and that is still not a perfect term I'm still trying to work out what is the perfect term in my head because it's really not mass because mass implies equally applied which it is not. Is that if we keep thinking that the problem is just who's in prison, we're missing the point because the problem is not just how many people we put in prison, the problem is how many people we mark with the mark of criminal because we have used the criminal record as a scarlet letter that has replaced race-based discrimination in this country. So whether you have ever stepped foot inside of a prison if you bear the mark of felon it now becomes legal to discriminate against you in much in the way that race-based discrimination worked prior to the civil rights era. So that's why I use mass criminalization as the real problem, not mass incarceration. So I wanna make that clear. And I think that the arts might play a role in making that narrative what this is really about clearer in connecting the dots from the five peculiar institutions that Foucault talks about or Vequin talks about to where we are today and to making that narrative fluid so that people can understand it because that really is the thread that runs through all of this. So over on the West Coast, they have passed a law that mandates every county in California to reduce the prison population. So they're keeping track, they're starting data or they're keeping numbers and they're investing into centers that are specifically for people who are getting out. They're called reentry resource centers and that's actually where I am. I'm in the heart of the reentry center. And in order for them to get funding for programs that help people who are reentering such as housing, food, education, it could be as simple as transportation, things of that nature. In order for them to continue getting funding, the numbers have to go low. So every year they do a check. If the numbers aren't low, they may or may not get funding to keep those programs running and everyone knows that money motivates. So whether they're truly in it for the greater good, they really don't have a choice. The numbers actually have to get low or so. That's something that's awesome that's happening over there. I just wanna piggyback on what Vivian has said and the theater group within College and Community Fellowship speaks to that and Vivian had mentioned that they're in Rikers Island but they also perform during their graduations and it's something that the women are really enjoying from what I get and it's a message and it's so important for women to be able to share this message. Education is important but this message is the story is the experience is so much needed to be a part of it. One of the things that, and I follow Vivian, when Vivian said mass criminalization, I was like, hmm, yeah, that does make sense. I just wanna make one statistical point. There are 70 million criminal history records on file in this country. Only two million people are incarcerated. There are 70 million criminal history records. So when we think about that, it just brings me to Angela Davis's book, Our Prison's Obsolete. And so she talks about women but she also talks about the systems and she talks about segregation, lynching and prison. And so if we don't do something, then we know that we're dying a different death. People of color are dying a different death. And so in that respect, I understand what mass means because it's specific, it's divisive and it's discretionary. And so that's the way I've taken it. And so when we think about the stories, when we think about the systems that intersect, we have to think about prison, we have to think about foster care, we have to think about education, we have to think about these systems that are standing in front of us that we think that are there to make us safe when they don't. For some people, it will never make them safe. And it is beyond for those that have been in conflict with the law for it to ever be a safe place, our society for it to ever be a safe place for them because they have this criminal record. I was, I let someone in with my card the other day, my Metro card. And then I realized that I shouldn't have done that because it was like my second ride and now I needed to get in and then when I swiped my card, I couldn't get through. I had someone open the door for me and the police were standing over there in the corner. And as I'm walking in, he comes over to me and he says, I wanna see your ID. And I said, okay, I said, what does this mean? Are you gonna give me a summons? He says, maybe, but let me have a conversation with you. He says, you know, you're not supposed to walk through there. I said, I swiped my card and he says, you know, you're not supposed to use your card to let anybody else through. And I'm like, okay, yes, sir, okay, fine. You know, and then he says, do you have a criminal record? And I said, 20 years ago. And he says, really? He says, 20 years ago? He says, do you know that that's still gonna show up? And I said, are you serious? And so I'm talking to him. Now I'm talking him out of looking at my record. And he says, yeah, it's still gonna show up 20 years ago. I said, I'm arrested 61 times. I've been to prison five times. I said, wouldn't the hell is this gonna be over? Because I swiped someone in. I wasn't going under the turnstile, right? So I'm reminded after 20 years that any slip-up, and I'm still a con, I'm an ex-inmate. I'm all the derogatory terms that law enforcement and the media has given me, regardless of what I've done to advance my sister's success, to make it right for whatever it is that I've done, which have never been crimes against anyone, not that that makes a difference. But the fact is, is that I will always be seen once the shoe drops as that person who went to prison. I mean, excuse me, as the ex. So I'm not a person, as the ex. So we have to understand that this society is very different for those that have privilege, regardless of whether they're black or white, and those that don't. Minded us of why we have a huge human rights problem in this country. I thank you, and I consider this to be the first meeting of the sisters who haven't been there. And that we, the sisters who haven't been there, have to get in alignment with the sisters who are there, with the sisters who have been there, with the sisters who could potentially be there. And I thank you all very much for coming. And I thank you for being here today. To say that the Sackler Center belongs to you, to give voice to matters of art and civil society, our mantra is equal pay, equal wall space, and obviously, we're in this for the justice. So I invite you to go online, and the Brooklyn Museum has a website. You can sign up for the Council for Feminist Art. You can visit the EASCFA, the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art website, and you will see and have access to the hundreds of hours of programming like this that we've accomplished. But I must say that today was an extraordinary day, and very special, and I thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.