Archives for July 2017

Women whose lives have been impacted by having incarcerated loved ones banded together as a sisterhood called Essie Justice Group. During a visit to San Quentin State Prison, they talked about how they support each other without judgment and advocate for changing the system and the community.

“64% of California’s jail population is awaiting trial or sentencing as of December 2016.” Most remain in pretrial custody because they cannot afford bail.  Jail Profile Survey, http://www.bscc.ca.gov/

“Essie Justice Group is a loving, powerful community of women with incarcerated loved ones,” said spokesperson Marie Levin.

Taina Vargas-Edmond, founder of Initiate Justice, added, “Women with incarcerated loved ones are the ones who experience the harm firsthand, so we are the experts on it. We have a unique experience to share. Therefore, we should be at the center of advocacy change. We already have to fight to visit them, fight to keep money on the phone, so we are ready-made advocates.”

Attorney Gina Clayton, a Harvard graduate, founded Essie Justice Group after seeing firsthand how women are harmed by the criminal justice system because of their connection to an incarcerated person.

While Clayton couldn’t make the visit to San Quentin, four women who embodied the meaning of sisterhood and strength did. The guests included Levin, Vargas-Edmond, Zoe Willmott and Natasha Terry-Robinson.

Levin, as part of Prison Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition (PHSSC), helped change how California determines who goes to security housing units (SHU), where her older brother Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa spent 31 years.

“What Marie brings to the movement is the kind of leadership that takes power from the system and gives it back to the people,” Willmott said. “What we saw with the hunger strike was a movement on the inside and on the outside. Without each other and without Marie, we wouldn’t have won.”

“…We already have to fight to visit them, fight to keep money on the phone so we are ready-made advocates”

Levin started visiting her brother consistently after her sister died and her mother, who died in 2014, wasn’t able to visit him anymore. For the first few years, those visits took place through a glass window with phone receivers on each side.

“It’s inhuman; it’s painful. You strain trying to hear through a phone,” Levin said. “When my brother came out of the SHU and we hugged for the first time, everybody who had passed away flashed through his mind. It was painful.”

Levin plans to further help incarcerated people by expanding her Momm’s Pastries business with the goal of hiring the formerly incarcerated.

Vargas-Edmond and Terry-Robinson are married to men serving time.

Vargas-Edmond uses a background of a political science degree and former employment of a California Assemblyperson to advocate and guide women through dealing with the system. A friend told her that marrying a man in prison was the stupidest thing in the world.

Vargas-Edmond said, “I think people can’t wrap their heads around why we would make the sacrifice we make to love somebody in prison. They think that anyone is better than someone in prison, but when you find the right person, you find the right person.”

Her husband Richard Edmond-Vargas, who took her last name too, teaches financial literacy. He’s serving 10 years.

Terry-Robinson’s husband, Silas Robinson, is serving 25 years to life. He counsels his household using skills learned in groups like the Prison Outreach Program and Restorative Justice. However, Terry-Robinson’s minister thought she shouldn’t marry the incarcerated man.

“It’s really hard to be without my husband, showing up to events, concerts alone, watching your friends all booed up and I’m going home by myself,” Terry-Robinson said. “It’s challenging, but my husband is worth it.”

Essie Justice Group helps both women stay strong.

“Essie helps me, I think for the most part, just to have somebody in the room listening to you, instead of judging you,” Terry-Robinson said. “Whatever feedback you get is coming from a genuine place, and the sisters want to see you win.”

Terry-Robinson also uses poetry to cope and advocate. She wrote a poem right on the spot during their May 22 visit called Essie Was Here, that started,

As I walked through the lower yard, I saw human beings,

The system said they’re criminals but their polite character intrigued me.

These men were humble, respectful and kind.

All deserving of leaving their crime behind.

The women constantly complimented each other and displayed a camaraderie that dispelled the myth behind the old saying, “Two women can’t cook in the same kitchen.”

“It’s actually proven that women are better collaborators and more efficient than men; it’s science,” Vargas-Edmond said. “That’s why women get more bills passed.”

Willmott, the behind-the-scenes organizer for Essie, said they are working on fixing the bail system that leaves poor people in prison defending against, sometimes minor, criminal charges. Also, Essie is seeking to expand its membership.

Nominees come together over nine weeks to learn advocating for self, advocating for family and advocating for the community.

To nominate a female for membership, write a letter with the name of the female nominee, your relationship to her, why you are nominating her, and her contact information, then mail it to:

Essie Justice Group

300 Frank H. Ogawa Plaza, Suite 420

Oakland, CA 94612

Or email:

www.essiejusticegroup.org/nominate

Women can also nominate themselves.

Police departments across the country are using unreasonable force during interactions with people from minority communities. Even those who have or are perceived to have mental illness are targeted.

A 2017 study by the Vera Institute of Justice stated, “Police departments are beginning to view body-worn cameras, the majority of which are typically placed on the upper placket of an officer’s uniform with a forward-facing viewable area, as an essential ‘third-eye’ that can capture events and interactions between officers and the public, including traffic or street stops, arrests, searches, interrogations and critical incidents such as officer-involved shootings.”

“Body-worn cameras have emerged as an important tool for law enforcement … (that) needs to be integrated with key principles and core values in police/community relations, agency-wide training, policy development and enforcement, and efforts to enhance transparency,” said Terrence M. Cunningham, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Body cameras provide a contemporaneous and an objective record of a broader set of police-civilian encounters. A number of police departments and community leaders believe this device can be a key apparatus to:

Improve police interactions with people and communities;

Identify and correct problems when they occur, thus enhancing police performance;

Vindicate officers from false or unwarranted complaints;

Increase public trust in law enforcement, by demonstrating a willingness to open itself up to outside scrutiny;

Strengthe police accountability.

“Body-worn cameras have emerged as an important tool for law enforcement”

The study shows evidence that “cameras can prevent and deter unprofessional, illegal and inappropriate behaviors by both the police and the public due to the ‘surveillance effect’ that is thought to drive people to comply with accepted rules of conduct.”

The use of body cameras is likely to cause officers to think more carefully when considering actions that could become a liability to the department or that could become a personal liability. The Vera Institute study discovered that body cameras can contribute to an overall reduction in the number of use-of-force incidents.

At least 26 states and the District of Columbia passed laws or a resolution in 2015 and 2016 to explore, mandate and inform use of and access to footage from body-worn cameras in certain situations.

In 2015, California legislators passed Senate Bill 85 that requires the California Highway Patrol establish a pilot program to explore the use of body-worn cameras, including when the cameras should be activated, where on the body they should be attached, how best to notify the public that they are being recorded, and mechanisms for reviewing camera policies.

The number of statutes enacted in 2015 and 2016 represents a change in the course of policing reform with a proliferation of legislation in nearly two-thirds of states that affect law enforcement practice and policy, the study added.

The study shows how video footage captured by police body-worn cameras has provided crucial evidence in a number of high-profile encounters that resulted in civilian deaths.

Right to Police Transparency

FBI Stings entangle victims and perpetrators

Domestic Violence 15 Percent All Violent Crime

Historically, Black and Brown people have been especially affected by mass incarceration

A major demonstration is scheduled for the nation’s capital to protest “the new slavery” in America — the use of free labor in prisons.

The Millions for Prisoners Human Rights March is planned for Aug. 19, to challenge the rarely acknowledged exception clause in the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

“We demand the 13th Amendment enslavement clause of the United States Constitution be amended to abolish legalized slavery in America,” wrote an advocate of Jailhouse Lawyers Speak in the No Shackles newsletter of the “iamWE Prison Advocacy Network,” one of the organizers of the march.

“We demand a congressional hearing on the 13th Amendment enslavement clause being recognized as in violation of international law, the general principles of human rights and its direct links to,” among others,  private entities exploiting prison labor, private entities contracted to build and operate prisons and felony disenfranchisement laws.

Section 1 of the 13th Amendment reads: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

The 13th Amendment has been linked to mass incarceration by some activists, and it inspired director Ava Duvernay’s documentary 13th.

“We must realize that the criminal justice system is not broken. It’s operating just as it was intended,” said Amani Sawari, editor of the No Shackles newsletter. 

“It’s proven that the incarceration of a child is not a rehabilitative action…”

The article adds that private companies, such as banks, clothing manufacturers, food distributors and telephone networks, profit from low-wage prison labor, while overcharging prisoners for goods and services.

Historically, Black and Brown people have been especially affected by mass incarceration. But, with television series like Orange Is the New Black and Making a Murderer on Netflix, public awareness about the human rights issues of mass incarceration has increased.

Orange Is the New Black is based on an upper-middle-class White woman imprisoned for a high-profile drug crime. Making a Murderer is a story about a lower-class White man. The vast majority of the other characters inhabiting the prisons are people of color.

“We should all be afraid when a system has become so monstrous that it eats up everyone, men, women and children, for the pettiest of behaviors,” Sawari wrote. “It’s proven that the incarceration of a child is not a rehabilitative action. It only increases the likelihood of their future arrest.”

The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any industrialized country at 698 per 100,000 citizens, according to World Prison Population List: 11th Edition, Roy Walmsley.

“If you don’t see the problem with the reservation of slavery for punishment, then look at the lives of millions of families broken,” she added. 

Convict leasing, Black Codes, Jim Crow, Nixon’s war on drugs and Bill Clinton’s 1994 crime bill represent the different transitions of criminalization throughout the generations, the advocates claim.

Organizers say the march will be a platform to call out a multitude of companies that profit from prison labor. These can range from big oil companies that use prison labor to clean up their spills to banks and financial entities that hold stocks in private prisons and detention centers.

For more information go to the Millions for Prisoners March Facebook page.