Category: CCWP In the News

CCWP In the News

Defending Bodily Sovereignty and the Long Arc of Radical Feminist Care

CounterPunch 

March 22, 2024

By: Diana Block

A Book Review and Reflection Forward

In this rapidly degenerating American climate where women (including trans and non-binary people) are in danger of losing control over their own frozen embryos and face criminalization for crossing state lines to get an abortion, Angela Hume’s new book is a very important read.  It reminds us of the long history of radical feminist action to achieve sovereignty over our own bodies – action that refuses to respect the constraints of legislative advocacy and legality.

Hume began writing Deep Care – The Radical Activists Who Provided Abortions, Defied the Law and Fought to Keep Clinics Open (AK Press Oct 2023) when Dobbs was still only handwriting on the wall.   The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022, which eliminated Federal legal protection for abortion, and the subsequent drastic restrictions on a range of abortion rights in more than seventeen states around the country, has crystallized the need for regenerating militant grassroots movement for reproductive justice.

The book is an in-depth examination of the largely untold history of West Coast reproductive activism from the 1970s to the beginning of the 21st century through dozens of interviews with activists who were part of this movement. It offers critical lessons for the building of a radical reproductive justice movement in the coming period.  Hume theorizes that “deep care” values and practices were at the root of the linked developments of feminist self-help, feminist health clinics and abortion clinic defense. For her, the self-help/self-care movement was a core component of building out this three-pronged strategy.  Self-help “teaches us about how to empower, defend, and care for each other”, she states. “And when we can do this, we can strengthen our community from the inside, and we don’t have to rely on the state.”

The history that she narrates elucidates the ways in which people-to-people care and education has always been an integral part of radical feminist movement starting with consciousness raising groups in the seventies.  At the same time, her perspective raises unresolved questions about how to embed “deep care” practices into movement strategies that go beyond self-reliance and self-defense to build a broad militant challenge to the foundations of the U.S. racial, imperialist state.

As part of her research for this book, Angela Hume interviewed me about my experience in Bay Area feminist self-help circles in the early 1970’s.  I had had a legal abortion in New York City in 1971, shortly after abortion was legalized in New York but before the landmark Supreme Court Roe decision of 1973.  Women from my consciousness-raising group picked me up at the hospital after the abortion and in the weeks that followed we all shared emotional stories of illegal abortions, deliberate misinformation about contraception and sex, and the critical need to take control of our bodies on all levels.  It was one of my first direct experiences of the kind of feminist care that the second-wave women’s movement insisted upon in the face of patriarchal attitudes and practices which devalued all forms of care even within the male-dominated left.

When I moved to California in 1972, the burgeoning women’s self-help health movement offered groups that could expand awareness and care of our bodies, including cervical self-exams and information about menstrual extraction – a way to manage our periods efficiently as well as a method of abortion.  My time in the self-help group was short-lived.  The particular group that I was in was very caring, but it was all white and mainly middle class. I questioned the applicability of this type of self-exploration to the health and well-being of women of color and working-class women.  And in a period when the U.S. war against Vietnam was still raging and horrifying stories about the systematic rapes and massacres of Vietnamese women by U.S. soldiers was circulating widely, I wasn’t clear how self-examination could help build forceful anti-imperialist feminism.

Deep Care gave me a new appreciation of the ways in which the feminist self-help movement in the Bay Area was simultaneously evolving a broader agenda beyond small groups. Taking inspiration from the Black Panther Party’s community-controlled free health care clinics, the Oakland Feminist Women’s Health Center (OFWHC)/ Women’s Choice clinic, was established in 1973, as a “broad spectrum sexual, reproductive and abortion health care provider” which primarily served women of color and working-class women, including many queer and trans people. Women’s Choice soon expanded into a network of Feminist Health Care centers that developed a “participatory” health care model, challenging the conventional hierarchical structure of patient-provider relationships.

Deep Care offers particular insight into the role that Black lesbian feminist poet Pat Parker played in the further evolution of the Women’s Choice clinic. Parker had been a member of the Black Panther Party (BPP) at an early age but left due to the sexism she experienced in the organization.  She went on to express her commitment to the Black community and Black women through her groundbreaking poetry.  When she started working at Women’s Choice in 1977, she didn’t have a background in health care but she, along with other Black women at Women’s Choice, expanded the work that it did with Black and other women of color. As Hume puts it “These clinic workers took insights from Black radical and other Black health activist histories, inflected them with Black feminist perspectives from their own experience, and brought them to the clinic.”

In 1985, as a new women’s health clinic in Richmond, CA came under attack by right-wing anti-abortionists, Parker recognized that a different level of work was needed to protect the right to abortion.  She helped initiate the Clinic Defense Committee to build community support and protection for the Richmond clinic.  Women’s Choice was joined by several other groups, including Radical Women, Women Against Imperialism and the Revolutionary Workers League in their clinic defense efforts.  As  Operation Rescue targeted clinics across the U.S. with systematic efforts to physically block people from access to abortion and clinic bombings spread, the Clinic Defense Committee evolved into the Bay Area Coalition Against Operation Rescue (later Bay Area Coalition for Our Reproductive Rights).  BACORR was a broad coalition providing clinic defense for a variety of clinics. For years the coalition developed an array of sophisticated and creative tactics that physically protected people’s right to choose abortion.

Hume also details the simultaneous commitment of feminist activists to maintaining a network of underground abortion self-help providers. These providers maintained practices that were not licensed, insisting that a form of direct autonomous care needed to be sustained outside of the state’s institutional purview.  Even though the legal system had granted women the legal “right to choose”, these underground networks ensured that the knowledge and skills necessary for people to exercise direct control over their reproductive function would continue despite increasing legislative restrictions beginning with the 1977 Hyde Amendment .

In an adjacent development not discussed in the book, the need to defend the health and bodily sovereignty of women in prison led to the founding of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) in 1995. I have been involved in CCWP since then, and more recently Angela Hume has also become active in the organization. CCWP recognized that people in women’s prisons were consistently denied their rights to basic health care, including their reproductive rights, but were not being included in the work of the feminist movement at that time. Our slogan, Caring Collectively for Women Prisoners, was suggested by a formerly incarcerated woman who understood the absolute importance of collective care to ensure survival inside prison. By trying to put this principle into practice over decades, CCWP has carried the trajectory of the feminist self-help movement of the 1970s into the abolitionist movement of the twenty-first century.  And Angela Hume is now shaping their own practice of deep care through their direct work with people in women’s prisons at the same time as they are documenting the long history of that effort.

I was in Cuba with the May Day Brigade in May 2022 when the news of the impending Dobbs decision was leaked by Politico.  Many conversations immediately ensued between us and our Cuban hosts contrasting their uncontested right to abortion, which had been protected in Cuba since 1965, and the reactionary forces that were systematically bulldozing reproductive and other gender rights in the U.S.  For me, those conversations corroborated the exemplary character of Cuba’s model of participatory community health care where reproductive health is approached “as a multi-faceted part of every woman’s life” from the time she enters puberty. They also reconfirmed the need for care to be guaranteed by a state and a constitution that upholds health and reproductive care as an inalienable right.

Deep care should be a fundamental value that underlies human interaction in community. The fact that it has to be defined and asserted again and again as a political project in the U.S. context exposes the intrinsic inhumanity and violence of the patriarchal imperialist system that we live under.  Hume’s book demands that we find ways to fiercely assert principles of care and solidarity as core to our movements as we accelerate the struggle for sovereignty, self-determination and liberation around the world.

Free Palestine!

Diana Block works with the Bay Area Cuba Saving Lives Committee. She is a founding and active member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners , an abolitionist organization that celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2020. She is the author of a memoir, Arm the Spirit – A Woman’s Journey Underground and Back (AKPress 2009), and a novel, Clandestine Occupations – An Imaginary History (PM Press 2015). She writes for various online journals.  

CCWP In the News

Women at California federal prison say prosecution of warden hasn’t stopped sexual abuse

Real News Interview with CCWP Advocate Erin Neff about sexual abuse at FCI Dublin

A recent investigation into sexual abuse at a women’s federal prison in Dublin, California, brought down several guards and the prison’s former warden, Ray J. Garcia. But a new lawsuit from eight women now alleges that the investigation has not stopped the culture of sexual abuse. Erin Neff of the California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the new lawsuit and the underlying culture of sexual abuse found throughout US prisons.

Studio: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Mansa Musa:

Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars, I’m your host Mansa Musa. Do you know who Joan Little was? Joan Little was charged with the 1974 murder of Clarence Alligood, a White prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina, who attempted to rape Little before she could escape. Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Recently, eight female prisoners, dubbed the Rape Club by prisoners and correctional staff alike, found a lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prison arguing that sexual abuse and exploitation have not stopped in Dublin FCI, despite the prosecution of former warden and several former officers.

The lawsuit filed in Oakland by attorneys representing prison and the advocacy group California Coalition for Women Prisoners also named the current warden and 12 former and current guards. It alleged the Bureau of Prison and staff at Dublin Facility didn’t do enough to prevent sexual abuse going back to 1990. An Associated Press investigation last year found a culture of abuse and coverups that persisted for years at the prison. What does the #MeToo movement garnering public attention mean in terms of obtaining justice and relief for incarcerated women? Here to talk about the current state of Dublin FCI and related issues is Erin Neff, who is a legal advocate with California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.

Erin Neff:

Thank you, Mansa, good to be here.

Mansa Musa:

Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.

Erin Neff:

My name’s Erin Neff, I work with California Coalition for Women Prisoners. We are a grassroots organization that has been active in the California prisons for the last 28 years. We began at Chowchilla with the CDCR giving support to a woman named Charisse Shumate, who was advocating for the lack of medical care. Since then, she actually did not survive her illness, but she began a movement with us, with people on the outside to create advocacy relationships. We have been working mostly with the CDCR system in the women’s prison system, and we are currently in the last few years working at FCI Dublin.

Mansa Musa:

Okay. Now recently, an article came out or information came out about the current state of Dublin Prison in Oakland, California, or in the Bay Area, as it relates to female prisoners being abused, sexually abused. We know that in the federal prison system they have what’s known as PREA, Prison Reform Enforcement Rape Act, I think that’s what it stands for, but the concept of PREA is that anyone under the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prison, anyone under any state or local facility that has an issue about being sexually abused or sexually assaulted by either inmates or staff, they have this mechanism where they can immediately contact someone, had a person allegedly done something to them removed from the institution and have the person that’s making the allegation removed from the institution, and then an investigation going on, and in the interim of that, until that is resolved, these people are never put in the place together.

But now, come to find out that in California, in Dublin in particular, in terms of this particular incident, it’s known that this is far more reaching than just in Dublin Prison, this is a … I think I read somewhere that say it’s the culture of the prison system. Talk about Dublin first, let’s talk about that and what’s going on as far as the lawsuit and how this came about, and if you can give historical context to it, if you have one.

Erin Neff:

Yeah. So PREA is the Prison Rape Elimination Act, and that should generally give a person who is experiencing sexual harassment or abuse a way to confidentially report this abuse, and that appropriate action and investigation will be taken against this person who is doing the abuse. In the case of Dublin, just to give it a historical context, 30 years ago there was a horrific incident of abuse on many people, and there was a big case and a big settlement, and it is heartbreaking to see that 30 years later the same thing is happening. What it exposes is a culture of turning a blind eye to this abuse, there’s cooperation, there’s coverup, there is very difficult to report, let alone confidentially report.

So in recent times, what you’re seeing are people being abused who are undocumented. So first of all, they are being targeted because the staff knows that they are people who are going to be deported. So there is an exposure there. They are threatened that if they say anything they’ll be deported, so these people are people who’ve been here maybe their entire lives, all of their family’s here. So the possibility that they will be deported, and I’m sure this staff lets them think that they have some sort of power as to whether they can stay or go, so there’s that. They’re being retaliated against by putting in isolation, they are getting strip searched, it goes on and on. They’re being deprived of medical care, of mental healthcare. These people have really suffered tremendous abuse, and on top of this abuse they’re being punished again by not getting the medication that they were once taking. That is a very common scenario where their medication that helped them survive in this place of incarceration, they’re not getting the medical care, they’re not getting counseling.

In some cases, reports where they’ll get minimal counseling, but it’s with a man who is part of the staff, they do not feel safe at all. Their commissary is getting limited, harassment in the middle of the night. It goes on and on and on. While this has been exposed, Warden Garcia was found guilty and sentenced to 70 months for his abuse, this ongoing abuse. There was a chaplain, multiple correctional officers, the counselors who were cooperating and giving information to those who were abusing and they’re giving people away to target people who are more vulnerable, those for example who were undocumented. So you’re seeing people transferred out of state if they do report, so they’re getting transferred away from their families and their communities. It goes on and on and on.

Mansa Musa:

We’re not talking about Orange is the New Black, we’re not talking about some HBO theoretical or theatrical rendition of what an ideal prison would look like in America. We’re actually talking about real live human beings. But talk about the lawsuit, so now we’ve reached critical mass to the point where we have a lawsuit, talk about the lawsuit and in talking about the lawsuit, has an injunction been leveled against the institution to cease and desist? How are you able to get coverage for these women? Because as I said earlier, as you outlined, that type of fear permeates the population.

When you’re in the prison, and I’ve been in prison myself, I did 48 years, when you’re in the prison environment and you don’t have no control whatsoever to begin with, but the isolation really makes you feel like you don’t have no rights, and whatever’s going to go on with you that day or that period in time, either you’re going to accept it or you’re going to die trying to defend yourself. But at any rate, you’re going to be subjected to some harsh, cruel, brutal treatment, or mistreatment. Talk about the lawsuit, if an injunction is in effect, and how do these women get coverage where they can get a sense of security?

Erin Neff:

Yeah. So CCWP is the organizational plaintiff for this case against the BOP, along with many individuals. Currently, where it stands is we are waiting for a response from the BOP, it’s currently a bit in what feels like stalling stage on their part, before the trial will be granted. So we are waiting on that. In the meantime, anyone who is part of this lawsuit is also currently incarcerated, some people have been released, but many are still incarcerated at Dublin or transferred. People that I am visiting are talking about being treated as less than human. Last week I sat across from someone who is being denied her medical care, her mental healthcare, she feels completely forgotten, she feels completely hopeless, she’s been subjected to isolation.

This is a real person with children, she speaks to her children and her children are so worried about her because of her feeling of hopelessness. She’s already paying for her debt to society, she’s doing her time, and on top of that she is being treated as less than human. This isn’t a TV show, these are real people. The effect on that individual, the effect on their families, their children, it’s not isolated to that one person. So the hopelessness is very hard to fight against. What we try to do is educate them and inform them of what we are doing on the outside, and that they are not forgotten. They did recently say that they saw us when we filed the lawsuit, and we had a demonstration out in front of the courthouse in Oakland, and that was extremely empowering for them to know that people are active and that we are fighting.

Mansa Musa:

Like you said, this is not no TV show, this is not no, “Wait, go back, act like you’re distraught. Wait, go back, put more emotion.” No, this is real life. Speaking on the outside, and this is just my perspective, and we’re talking about California and we’re talking about the Bay Area, but we’re also talking about a state where if these women were in Paramount Studio, if these women was in some major corporation, if these women was in anywhere in society being subjected to this, the #MeToo movement, the feminist movement, every ambulance-chasing lawyer would be outraged, would be in uproar, would be identifying the warden, the corporate leader and trying to get charges against him, trying to get him locked up, trying to get their money, a lien on their moneys. Do you feel like that it’s a disconnect between these movements and women that are incarcerated? If so, why? If you can talk about that.

Erin Neff:

Well, yes, there’s a huge disconnect, even in the Bay Area people are not aware that this is going on. Unfortunately, what you see in the prisons, everyone knows, is we see Brown people, Black people and poor people, people who are already vulnerable, people who have suffered a tremendous abuse, and a blind eye is turned to these people. This is a capitalist society where we value people who are seemingly of value, and it’s a very, very tragic view even in California, where we are the most liberal state. We see people turning away from this, it’s incredibly painful to see that truth. People don’t want to see that, they don’t want to know that is happening in California.

Yeah. If you see someone on the outside, not to minimize the tragedy of that recent expedition to go see the Titanic, these millionaires, billionaires spent a ton of money and very tragically they died in this accident. You see an outpouring of interest and focus on this. Why are these people who are incarcerated of less human value?

Mansa Musa:

Right. Let’s give a context to people that are incarcerated, because according to the judicial system and according to criminal law, we have what we call crime and punishment. A person’s charged with a crime, the punishment they get is the amount of time they are to serve, not how they serve their time, the amount of time. If I do robbery, if I rob somebody and robbery incurs 10 years, the crime is I committed a robbery, the punishment is the 10 years. The punishment is not, “I’m sentencing you to 10 years to go be raped, sodomized, brutalized, terrorized, and then released.” The punishment is that I’m going to be sent to an institution, the next phase in my sentencing process is and the narrative is that I’ll be sentenced to an institution that’s going to provide me with the means and the mechanism to make the adjustment for my ultimate return to society.

Not where I’ll be subjected to, as a female, more importantly than anything else, be subjected to coming into an institution and the way the prisons are, this is the prison culture in terms of how we look at people that’s incarcerated, we know the institutions they be going to, we know the way the institutions are ran, we know what goes on in these institutions, probably even get there. They say, “Oh, yeah. You’re going to Dublin.” The first thing I know is, “Okay, I know that this is the way …” There’s real abuse like this here, women are being … I’ve got to be on the lookout for this, I’ve got to be on the lookout for that. Automatically what happens is once I get into this environment, I’m automatically on the defense because I recognize that the abuse about the environment proceeded itself.

But talk about the women, and you talked about earlier about how some of the clients that you deal with are really being depressed, and rightly so. But talk about how we’re able to get them to hold on and have faith and be more spirited about the fact that, not only this too going to pass, but the people that’s responsible are going to be held accountable. That’s a fact. We know that based on y’all organization and y’all organizing. But talk about how you are able to get them to hold on and recognize that they’re not wrong for wanting to be human, they’re not wrong for expressing their desire for their humanity. The people that’s wrong is the people that’s abusing them, that’s being given the authority to abuse them.

Erin Neff:

That’s right, yes. It’s an excellent point. The punishment is the time you do, and your time in prison is supposed to include opportunities for rehabilitation. That is another thing that people are allowed to do programming, and this programming can include AA, NA, ways to improve yourself, codependency. This is another form of retaliation in that they deprive you of getting to take those classes and be in groups and in community. So you are being doubly punished. What we try to do, we have in-person visiting where we are trying to meet as many people as possible and let them know that we are here. We have a writing relationship with them, they have access to email where we start being in contact as much as possible. We use this as an opportunity to find out what is going on inside.

Now, no email or phone calls are confidential, so it’s not a guarantee that we can exchange real information. We have also a newsletter called the Fire Inside that CCWP has been publishing for 28 years. We have three issues a year. We’re send those to people in CDCR as well as the FCI Dublin, it’s in Spanish and in English. We solicit information and content and poetry and stories from them to get their stories out, so that they are heard. Last week in my visit I shared the newsletter with many people, and it was great because it’s also in Spanish, and I think it was-

Mansa Musa:

Right.

Erin Neff:

Tragically, they are so moved because they are not used to having people acknowledge their existence and their suffering.

Mansa Musa:

Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead.

Erin Neff:

So the fact that that is happening and we are giving them voice, we want to know what’s going on, we really want them to know that their stories are incredibly important and they are not suffering alone. Sometimes the only thing that we can do is write a letter and say, “We are here. How is your day going?” That can make a huge difference. But things like the lawsuit is incredibly important. A demonstration in front of the courthouse when the case gets filed, these things are incredibly important because it does get inside.

Mansa Musa:

We want people to recognize that we’re talking about human beings, first of all, we’re talking about people, human beings, but more importantly we’re talking about women. The fact that in this society we deal with chauvinists, sexists, racists, bigoted society, capitalist society, the fact that these things exist seems to overshadow what we’re talking about when we’re talking about people that were sentenced to serve time, the judge did not say when sentencing them, “I’m sentencing you to 10 years in Dublin Federal Correctional Institution to be raped, sodomized and brutalized, dehumanized, and hopefully by the time that you return to society you’ll be a shell of a woman.” No, the judge sentenced these people, sentenced these women to a term of imprisonment and to be rehabilitated.

But Erin, you’ve got the last word on this here, how do we get in touch with you? What do you want our viewers to take away from this here? More importantly, when you go back and talk to the sisters, tell them we send our solidarity out and big hugs.

Erin Neff:

Thank you so much. Thank you also doing the shout-out to women who are just a more vulnerable population. Most of the time women end up in prison, have been system impacted, or they have been abused or trafficked, and end up in these situations where they’re getting abused even more. If you would like to get in touch with California Coalition for Women Prisoners, we have an advocacy program where we join people on the outside who are interested in reaching this population and doing advocacy and learning from the ground up. We are a grassroots organization, you can look at WomenPrisoners.org and send us an email and we will get you connected. We have orientations and trainings, bimonthly meetings to support you in this work. It is a really big community of amazing, amazing organizers and people with tremendous heart to recognize that this problem, while isolated to what’s happening inside of a building, inside of a prison, is impacting all of our lives.

Our communities are being impacted, your neighbor is being impacted. Whether you feel it directly or not, it is. It’s welcome-everyone and please come and check us out. WomenPrisoners.org. The women at the FCI Dublin would love to be in touch with you.

Mansa Musa:

Thank you, Erin. There you have it, the Real News, Rattling the Bars. Are you rattling the bars today? We see an event where the person threw their hat up in the air, and when he threw his hat up in the air it was a moment where everybody came around and supported. This is that kind of time. This is a throw-your-hat-up-in-the-air moment for women incarcerated throughout the United States of America, more so importantly in Dublin. Nobody has the right, nobody has the right, nobody has the right to violate your body. Nobody has the right, because you’re serving a sentence, to come in and say, “Because you’re serving time, or because you’re considered an illegal alien, or because you’re a woman that I have a right to subject you to the most dehumanizing, inhumane treatment, only because I got the authority. I got the right to rape you. I got the right to sodomize you. I got the right to deny you your medication. I got the right to deny you food. I got the right.”

No, you do not have the right. You do not have the right. The right is not given to you. The right that you have is to ensure that I’m in a safe environment, and when you subject women to this cruel and unusual punishment, you’re going to be held accountable. We see this being taken place now by the work that Erin and the sisters and brothers in California are doing. We ask you to continue to support the Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only from the Real News and Rattling the Bars that you’re going to get this kind of information. You’re not going to get this information on ABC or CBS or NBC News. You’re not going to get this information from someone from the White House getting on a platform saying, “Yes, we find it’s problematic that women are being raped in prison and women are being sodomized in prison, and that we’re paying money for this to make sure that they do it with impunity.”

No, you’ll only get this information from the Real News and Rattling the Bars, and we ask that you look at this report. We ask that you investigate what’s going on in the prison system, and particularly in California. We ask that you take a stand. If you believe that raping people, sodomizing people and abusing people are a good thing to do because they was convicted of a crime, then weigh in on that. But understand this here, if they come for me in the morning, they’ll come for you at night. So you’re not immune to it, you will be subjected to the same harsh treatment when it goes unchecked. Thank you, thank you very much, Erin, and thank you for listening.

CCWP In the News

CA Women’s Legislative Caucus Hears Testimony

davisvanguard.org 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

By Officer Bimblebury Posted by Vanguard Administrator August 27, 2023

SACRAMENTO, CA – The California Legislative Women’s Caucus here hosted a briefing last week focused “on sexual harm perpetuated by Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) staff,” sponsored by survivors and advocates from California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Survived & Punished, UnCommon Law, Prison Law Office, and Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition (SWFC).

The groups coordinated the testimony at the hearing, and said in a statement they have formed Solidarity Committee for Incarcerated Survivors (SCIS) to investigate the “horrific environment of fear and coercion that breeds abuse and assault in prisons…while working to secure protections and resources for currently and formerly incarcerated survivors.”

The hearing, according to SCIS, follows charges recently brought against former corrections officer Gregory Rodriguez, who the coalition charges “has been connected to the abuse of more than one percent of all the incarcerated people at CCWF.”

The coalition said its goal is to “shed light on the systemic and unchecked nature of such pervasive abuse,” and encourage California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to implement policy changes “crucial for investigating abuse and protecting survivors.”

“We must address the abusive and retaliatory culture inherent to the prison system that allows someone – and anyone – like Rodriguez to use their position of power to coerce, intimidate, and abuse vulnerable incarcerated people,” said Amika Mota, Executive Director of Sister Warriors Freedom Coalition.

Mota added, “The entire system must be overhauled to prioritize the safety of victims and witnesses and create survivor-led programs to support recovery.”

Advocates claim incarcerated survivors and witnesses of sexual assault by prison staff experience retaliation when they speak up, and “many are silenced through threats to remove ‘privileges,’ such as visitation or phone calls, physical violence, and intense surveillance.”

They also cited “the CDCR protocol for investigating sexual abuse, which mandates strip-searching the victim and isolating them in solitary confinement.”

“This response, and the lack of safe reporting, effectively institutionalizes sexual violence and compounds the traumatic violence that survivors have experienced,” argues Katie Dixon, Campaign and Policy Organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners.

In a 2017 pleading, the #MeTooBehindBars lawsuit, advocates said they tried to “hold CDCR accountable for violent assaults by CCWF correctional officers who used abusive physical force and verbal assaults, including homophobic and transphobic threats against queer and gender non-conforming people.”

The SCIS maintains there is still no meaningful change, and are asking for “investigations into abuse at the hands of staff conducted by an independent group, removal of personnel accused of abuse from the prisons they work in during investigations, expedited release of survivors and access for survivors to comprehensive and self-determined healthcare and victim services that are also independent of CDCR, including access to lines of communication that are not surveilled.”

“I want to forget, but my body betrays me as a vehicle carrying these memories. I want to forget the time I was taking a shower in county jail only to turn and find an officer watching me. I want to forget being sexually assaulted by that same officer while I was handcuffed in shackles being escorted to the yard,” said Latasha Brown in the testimony.

Brown added, “I want to forget having a flashlight shone on me until I flashed my genitals. I want to forget what his hands feel like as they grope me. But my body betrays me as a vehicle carrying these memories. I want to forget the things that have happened to me at CCWF by multiple officers, including one whose name everybody in this room knows. Since I am completely at the mercy of my captors, I have a feeling of perpetual uneasiness as I know the lengths they will go to cover up their misconduct.”

CCWP In the News, News Page

A Woman Endured Abuse, Trafficking and Prison. Now She Faces Deportation.

TRUTHOUT

By Victoria Law

May 10, 2023

By the time her husband brought her to the United States, Marisela Andrade had already borne the brunt of his anger repeatedly. The recently married 18-year-old knew that the move would not stop his violence, but she never imagined that her new life would include being trafficked, arrested and sentenced to life without parole.

Now age 44, Andrade has survived and overcome all of these horrors. In 2018, California’s then-Gov. Jerry Brown commuted her sentence to 15 years to life, enabling her to apply for parole. She did so in 2021 and was granted parole.

But instead of walking out of prison, she was met by immigration officers who handcuffed her and drove her to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) holding facility in Fresno. Later, she was transferred to an ICE prison in Aurora, Colorado, far from her family and the support network she’d built during her 15 years in prison.

Now, she faces deportation to a country she has not lived in since the first month of her marriage.

“I Don’t Have Good Memories”

Andrade was 15 years old when she met the man who would become her husband — and trafficker. They married three years later. On their wedding night, her husband beat his 18-year-old bride. It wouldn’t be the last time he hit her.

The next month, the couple moved from Mexico to California. Andrade doesn’t know why they moved. “He never said anything to me,” she told Truthout. “There was no explanation of why we were doing this.”

By then, Andrade had learned to do everything that her husband said or risk a beating. That didn’t change when they arrived at her husband’s brother’s house. She stayed in the room that the couple shared, coming out only to cook meals for the family.

“I was scared of him,” she explained. “I always did whatever he wants. I didn’t come out without his permission [or] he would beat me up.”

The abuse continued after she became pregnant. During her first pregnancy, her husband beat her so hard that she miscarried. After that, the couple had three daughters. They became another means of abuse — her husband threatened to take the children if she ever attempted to report his violence. Terrified, she remained quiet.

Then, he began forcing her to have sex with other men. The first time was with one his friends. She cried and asked the man why he was forcing himself on her. “I already paid for you,” he responded.

Over the next several years, her husband forced her to have sex with several other men. “I don’t understand why my husband did that to me,” she said. “Because when somebody loves you or you marry somebody, they shouldn’t do what my husband was doing to me. They shouldn’t hit me.” But she was unsure what she could do. “I’m coming from a little town in Mexico and here was a different world,” she recalled.

She also feared for her daughters. She tried to keep them with her, but that did not protect them from her husband’s wrath. Once, he beat their 4-year-old for taking items off the door.

Within a year, Andrade had had enough. “I felt, at that time, it was him or me,” she said. “I was so tired of the domestic violence. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to my daughters.” By then, her daughters were a year-and-a-half, 5 and nearly 11. She feared that the sexual abuse would extend to them.

She broke the silence, confiding in her sister-in-law. That sister-in-law introduced Marisela to the man who would become her co-defendant in her husband’s death. Andrade recalled that she told him what had been happening and recruited him to beat her husband. “I wanted him to feel the way I feel,” she said. The two made plans by text and, on the agreed-upon night, Andrade placed sleeping pills in her husband’s coffee and left the door unlocked. Her co-defendant kidnapped and killed him. His body was later found in the trunk of the man’s car.

Andrade was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping. At the time, Andrade believed she was only guilty of kidnapping because she had enlisted someone to beat her husband, but firmly believed that she was innocent of murder. She went to trial — and lost. She was sentenced to life without parole.

“It was hard to understand the life sentence,” she recalled. But she remembered vowing, “One day, I will come out.”

One Step Closer to Freedom?

When Andrade arrived at Valley State Prison for Women, she spoke no English. She had heard that prisons were full of drugs and sexual assaults and, terrified, barely left her cell. Many imprisoned at Valley State spoke no Spanish, leaving Andrade isolated with her fears.

Her brother took custody of her daughters. He kept her updated on their lives. Andrade wrote letters regularly, though the girls never responded.

Slowly, with the help of the women around her (and cartoons), she began to learn English. She enrolled in the prison’s self-help groups, including those that focused on domestic violence and abuse dynamics. She vowed never to get into trouble again. And she kept that promise. During this time, she never incurred a rule violation, disciplinary infraction or even an administrative infraction, or an action as inconsequential as having too many pieces of property, being late or absent from work or a program, using vulgar language, or failure to comply with prison grooming standards.

Still, her chances of freedom seemed remote. One day, she overheard a conversation in the prison yard and the word “commutation.” She stopped and asked the woman about that word.

She … was granted parole. But instead of walking out of prison, she was met by immigration officers who handcuffed her.

Commutation is a form of clemency which shortens a person’s prison sentence. For Californians serving life without parole, it is their only chance at leaving prison alive if they have exhausted their legal appeals.

The woman told her what forms to request from the prison library. Then, she helped Andrade fill them out and send them.

Many people applying for commutations wait years for a response. But by the next year, Andrade was called for an interview. She described her marriage, the abuse and her responsibility for setting in motion her husband’s death.

In 2018, citing her history of significant abuse, efforts to transform her life and lack of prison disciplinary history, Governor Brown commuted her sentence to 15 years to life. It made her eligible to appear before a parole hearing, but she still had to convince the board to let her go.

Three years later, she appeared at her first hearing. She was one of 62 people in California women’s prisons granted parole that year. She was elated, though it would not be the end of her time behind bars.

The Dual System of Justice

Andrade had not realized that her conviction could lead to deportation. Though a parole commissioner mentioned an ICE detainer at her hearing, Andrade did not understand. She began making plans for her release and envisioning a life without fear and violence.

One week before her release, prison officials told Andrade that she would not walk out of prison a free woman. Instead, they kept her for five additional days until immigration officers could take her to immigrant detention to await deportation hearings. It’s an occurrence so common that advocates call it the prison-to-deportation pipeline.

Andrade was frightened about returning to Mexico, where her life would be in danger. Fortunately, another incarcerated woman had connected her with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, an advocacy group for incarcerated women and trans people in California. The coalition had been reaching out to people serving life without parole in the state’s women’s prisons. The coalition was part of ICE Out of California, a coalition of 100 community and statewide coalitions working to end state agencies’ cooperation with ICE.

When they learned about the ICE detainer, the group began a campaign urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to grant her a pardon, which would remove the threat of deportation.

Two days before her December release date, ICE decided to hold Andrade without bond. The agency charged her as removable because of her conviction, which ICE classified as an aggravated felony that rendered her deportable. On her release date, immigration officials took her from the prison to a private immigration prison in Aurora, Colorado.

She’s not alone. According to ICE Out of California, California state prisons transferred 3,200 people to ICE custody between 2019 and 2020.

In September 2021, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memorandum with guidelines for detention and deportation. Those guidelines prioritized noncitizens who were classified as threats to national security, border security and public safety. But the memo also listed several mitigating factors that favored not pursuing detention and deportation, including a person’s status as the victim of a crime and whether that person was eligible for humanitarian or other immigration relief. (In June 2022, a federal court in Texas vacated that memo, but it had been in effect when ICE made its decision to detain and begin deportation proceedings against Andrade.)

Two days before her December release date, ICE decided to hold Andrade without bond.

In 2022, California senators failed to pass a bill that might have helped thousands of future Mariselas. The VISION Act would have blocked state prisons and jails from transferring noncitizens to ICE custody once they completed their sentences. It passed the State Assembly, but fell three votes short of passing in the State Senate. But even if the legislature had approved it, Governor Newsom had already vetoed similar legislation in 2019, stating that it could “negatively impact prison operations.”

This year, advocates are at the legislature with a modified bill — the HOME (Harmonizing Our Measures for Equality) Act, which blocks transfers of noncitizen incarcerated people who have been released through recently enacted criminal justice reforms, such as youth parole, elder parole, or a bill allowing resentencing for domestic violence survivors. It would also protect immigrants and refugees who have been granted clemency, such as Andrade. The act only applies to cooperation between state prisons and ICE. It does not extend to local jails, which between 2018 and 2019 transferred 3,700 people into ICE custody.

The act’s author, Assemblymember Wendy Carrillo, stated at a press conference, “The state of California has created a dual system of justice, which treats immigrants differently after they have paid their debt to society and have been paroled. They are not given the opportunity to restart their lives and go home,” she said. “It is a complete injustice in our judicial system.”

Pam Fadem, who works with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners on immigrant defense and the campaign to free Andrade, agrees. Both the VISION and HOME Acts would apply to noncitizens who have already finished their prison sentences or been approved for release by the governor’s appointed parole board. “If you’re being paroled, you’ve been deemed rehabilitated and no longer a threat to the community,” she stated.

Furthermore, Fadem reminded Truthout, California is a sanctuary state: “We should be providing sanctuary to people.” Many of the people with whom the ICE out of California coalition work came to the United States as children. Although she had been married one month earlier, Andrade, at age 18, was little more than a child when she arrived in the U.S. “This is their home, not someplace that was their ancestral home,” Fadem said.

While neither bill protects against deportation, Fadem notes that being allowed to return home can mean the difference between staying and deportation. “If people have the chance to go home, they can establish their roots in the community, in their faith communities, in their families and in working. Then they have a stronger argument against deportation,” she pointed out. “When you hand somebody directly over to ICE directly from prison, what can you say when you get to immigration court [and the judge asks] ‘What have you been doing for the past 10, 15, 20 years while you’ve been in prison?’” But those who have been allowed to rebuild their lives can show their ties to the community and have a stronger argument against uprooting them from these ties.

Andrade agrees. Had she been released into the community instead of transferred to ICE detention, she would have already been able to start working and established herself in the community. She would be much further along in reconnecting with her daughters.

Free But Still Under Threat of Deportation

Andrade spent the next 14 months in an immigrant prison in Colorado, far from her support network, without a bond hearing.

There, she filed an application requesting protection under the Convention Against Torture. It was initially denied but, upon appeal, the Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the judge had not considered all relevant evidence. That application is still pending.

In December 2022, with the help of advocates, Andrade also filed an application for a pardon.

A pardon is another form of clemency that the governor can issue. For noncitizens, a pardon removes the threat of deportation. It also restores a person’s civil rights, making them eligible for jobs that otherwise bar those with felony convictions.

Although Andrade had been moved thousands of miles from friends, family and advocates, they did not stop fighting for her. After she filed her pardon application, they organized monthly email and telephone blasts to Governor Newsom, urging him to pardon Andrade. They connected her with an immigration attorney who is helping her apply for asylum under the Convention Against Torture.

“Ms. Andrade’s home is here in the United States,” Marisela’s attorney Julia Rabinovich told Truthout. “She left Mexico as a teenager, and now faces credible threats on her life should she be deported to Mexico.”

In March, a federal judge ruled that Andrade’s 14-month detention without a bond hearing violated her constitutional right to due process. On March 29, she was released on bond. She was allowed to return to California, where she now is not only rebuilding her life, but learning what it feels like to make her own choices, including what to wear and what to eat. She has learned that she loves Chinese and Japanese foods, which her husband, who continually kept her on a diet to keep her from gaining weight, never allowed her to try.

If allowed to remain in the United States, Andrade plans to go back to school. While in prison, she worked with people with disabilities. Now, she hopes to work with aging people.

“In the United States, Ms. Andrade can not only continue to heal from the abuse she suffered, but can also serve as a leader and mentor for others,” Rabinovich said. “Ms. Andrade believes no one deserves to suffer in silence, and if she is able to stay here in the United States, she plans to share her story and offer resources and hope to other survivors of abuse, so that their lives can have a different trajectory than her own.”

And, though her future remains uncertain, Andrade wants to help others the way that the California Coalition for Women Prisoners helped her. If she could speak directly to Governor Newsom, she would ask, “Give me an opportunity. I can demonstrate that I’m not a danger to society. I want to help with my testimony to help others, so they don’t make these same mistakes that I do in life.”