Category: CCWP In the News

CCWP In the News

California Coalition for Women Prisoners celebrates 25+ years

by Courtney Hanson            San Francisco Bay View Newspaper

On Nov. 12, 2021, California Coalition for Women Prisoners hosted a special virtual event celebrating 25+ years of inside organizing and the consistent publication of The Fire Inside newsletter. Around 200 people gathered for a dynamic program that featured Mariame Kaba as the keynote speaker and remarks from Angela Davis, Victoria Law, Hamdiya Cooks-Abdullah and Piper Kerman, as well as musical performances and poetry readings.

Romarilyn Ralston set the stage with beautiful opening remarks about The Fire Inside, now the longest published newsletter by and for people in women’s prisons in the United States. She said that while inside, this publication “allowed us to express ourselves through poetry and art, different essays about the struggles based inside of women’s prisons,” and that because of CCWP and this vehicle, “thousands of people’s lives have been amplified and lifted up.” 

Romarilyn shared deep gratitude for CCWP’s community, the many members and volunteers who have fought tirelessly for liberation for the last two and a half decades. “And now, we are here,” she said, “imagining a world without prisons, imagining a community that is free from harm, imagining a space where all of us can live our best lives and be our best selves.” 

Mariame Kaba’s keynote brought this theme of collective care and freedom to life, which isn’t surprising given that her latest book, “We Do This Till We Free Us,” inspired the title. Specifically, her father’s quote in the final section, “Show Up and Don’t Travel Alone,” where he says, “Everything worthwhile is done with other people.” 

“Thousands of people’s lives have been amplified and lifted up.” 

“In the work of CCWP, I see a reciprocal labor of care embodied and engaged,” said Kaba. “The networks and connections you’ve encouraged, fostered and maintained for over 25 years are the foundation for so many people’s survival. You are constantly inventing and reinventing how we be with and for each other.” Kaba framed CCWP’s model as one of accompaniment – to live and walk alongside criminalized and incarcerated people, to “show up repeatedly, listen without judgement, and offer resources and skills without condescension.” 

Kaba ended with the importance of spirituality and generational connection – inviting people to drop names in the chat of ancestors who guide them and us. Dozens of names immediately started bubbling up: Erika Rocha, Patty Contreras, Marilyn Buck, Wolfie, Yogi, Beverly “Chopper” Henry, Rose Braz, Fanny Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, Ella Baker, Leonard Peltier, Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Mumia, Charisse Shumate, Theresa Martinez. During the Q&A segment at the end, audience members asked about avoiding the burnout of care work, how to protect survivors while refusing disposability politics, the relationship between policy and abolition, and building community with imprisoned people. 

Indigo Mateo sings at CCWP’s 25th Anniversary Celebration

Next, Indigo Mateo came on screen to perform “Afterlife,” an ethereal and futuristic song about her traveling back from an abolitionist future to pick up a loved one coming home from prison. 

Angela Davis followed with her remarks about CCWP’s robust support and solidarity for imprisoned people: “As someone who literally was freed by the people, I strongly identify with the theme of this tribute,” she said. Davis congratulated CCWP and its broader coalition and community for recently winning reparations for survivors of forced sterilizations in prison. 

Angela Davis speaks at CCWP’s celebration of 25+ years organizing women prisoners.

Davis used the example of CCWP’s ongoing COVID-19 advocacy to name a crucial aspect of CCWP’s organizing framework: “CCWP knows how to effectively combine attentiveness to the immediate situation with the best possible long-term solution. Therefore, you help to attenuate the isolation required by pandemic-ordered shutdowns through the Writing Warriors program at the same time that you insist on decarceration as the only way to adequately address the impact of the pandemic.” Davis said that this balance “is an important lesson for anyone who wants to ensure that abolition is taken seriously, is strategically approached, and does not distract us from meeting the immediate needs of our people behind bars.” 

Testimonies followed from Hamdiya Cooks-Abdullah, Piper Kerman and Victoria Law. Cooks-Abdullah spoke on the people power behind CCWP’s selfless volunteers and staff and encouraged the audience to continue supporting the organization. 

Kerman uplifted CCWP’s ability to prioritize conditions and campaigns issues, based on guidance from inside members and networks. Law reflected on the beginnings of her journalism career two decades ago, where she found that CCWP was one of the few groups that not only worked on women’s prison issues but was the only group that was specifically formed to work in solidarity with the organizing that was already happening. She raised a toast to celebrate CCWP’s work, our loved ones who have come home, and our loved ones who will be brought home in the future.

Thao Nguyen performs for CCWP on Nov. 12. Some 200 people attended the virtual celebration.

Longtime CCWP members then got on the virtual mic to share various Fire Inside readings from the archives, written by formerly and currently incarcerated members and accompanied by photographs of them and/or of the issue itself. Thao Nguyen gave a heartwarming performance of “We the Common,” a song written for Valerie Bolden (who has since been released) that was performed live at CCWP’s Chowchilla Freedom Rally in 2013. CCWP staff came on screen afterwards to share their own personal histories with CCWP and talk about campaign and program highlights, such as the movement to Drop LWOP (Life Without Parole), CCWP’s Across the Walls visiting program, and racial and gender justice policy work.

Jane Dorotik closed out the program by affirming the importance of inside organizing and two of CCWP’s most generous gifts: the “gift of hope” and the “unparalleled recognition of the expertise inherent in all incarcerated women,” as well as the commitment to working alongside imprisoned people and with their guidance to advance change. “Together, we can build a world without prisons,” she said.

California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) Development and Communications Coordinator Courtney Hanson can be reached at courtney@womenprisoners.org

CCWP In the News

A Visionary Website: ‘Art Against Imprisonment – From Palestine to the U.S.’

A visionary website is launched

by Diana Block and Nadya Tannous

On Sunday, March 21, 2021, a powerful virtual art exhibit featuring art from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in occupied Palestine and the U.S. was launched. “Art Against Imprisonment – From Palestine to the U.S.” grew out of a history of active solidarity between movements against imprisonment in the U.S. and Palestine. It is a testament to the creativity, imagination and brilliance of the many people who resist the invisibility, isolation and repression of prisons and claim a liberated space through their art.

The exhibit was first proposed by Addameer Prisoner and Human Rights Association as a physical touring art show in fall 2019. With the emergence of the COVID pandemic, which shut down in-person activities across the globe, the coalition of groups that had first committed to working on the in-person show shifted it to a virtual art exhibit. 

Milena Ansari, international advocacy officer for Addameer, described Addameer’s goals for the art show: “We wanted the exhibit to inform the public about the international scope of prisoner resistance to oppression and injustice.” 

According to Ansari, the virtual platform actually has many advantages: “It allows prisoners a continuing platform to exhibit their artwork and creativity and enables many more people around the world to appreciate their art. It also facilitates sharing updates on issues concerning prisoners in Palestine and the U.S and builds an ongoing connection among all of our solidarity groups.”

To bring the virtual art exhibit to life, five U.S.-based organizations came together to work collaboratively with Addameer: Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP), Freedom Archives, Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM) and U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN). 

Our organizations have all been involved in the fight to dismantle the carceral systems that uphold white supremacist, colonial power. We’ve seen how the U.S. and the Israeli apartheid state have closely cooperated in the development of their prisons over the course of the last 60 years. 

They have joined forces to devise similar methods of carceral control, such as interrogation, torture, solitary confinement, child imprisonment, family separation, sexual violation and enveloping surveillance techniques. They have also shared their strategies and resources with many other countries, using those incarcerated as proxies for experimentation. 

Art by incarcerated people confronts the U.S. and Israeli apartheid state regimes of oppression and injustice. Art breaks down barriers, walls, gender norms, languages and, in many cases, the social and political infrastructures that are used to separate our struggles.

In an essay marking the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party in 2018, Ahmad Sa’adat, Palestinian political prisoner and general secretary of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), wrote: “Prisons exist for a reason, for the needs and interests of those with power … where there is occupation and colonization, there will be prisons and all of the laws and legal frameworks erected to legitimize exploitation, oppression and injustice and criminalize resistance and liberation.”

Art by incarcerated people confronts these regimes of oppression and injustice. Art breaks down barriers, walls, gender norms, languages and, in many cases, the social and political infrastructures that are used to separate our struggles. It has inspired solidarity between our movements against imprisonment and toward collective liberation.

To create the exhibit, our groups solicited submissions from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people and their families across Palestine and the U.S. We received art in many formats and mediums, representing the tremendous variety of ways that people in prison devise to express themselves and their politics. 

There are distinct sections for paintings, drawings, quilts and embroidery, poetry, pottery, prayer beads and art objects and calligraphy. As visitors to the website, we urge you to explore the work in order to fully appreciate this unique collection of artistry across borders and mediums. 

Other sections of the website provide short biographies of the artists, resources on imprisonment and suggested actions that the visitor can take to fight imprisonment in Palestine and the U.S. All pages of the website are presented in both English and Arabic with a Spanish version coming soon.

Our group collectively envisioned the logo for this art exhibit, created by Heba Hamarshi from Addameer. The logo represents a common commitment to break through the prison walls with the fist of (self)-determination and the spirit of sumud – steadfastness.

Handala-art-by-Palestinian-artist-Naji-Al-Ali.jpg
Artist Naji Al-Ali writes: “The child Handala is my signature … I gave birth to this child … and presented him to the poor … At first, he was a Palestinian child, but his consciousness developed to have a national and then a global and human horizon. He is a simple yet tough child, and this is why people adopted him and felt that he represents their consciousness.” Al-Ali was assassinated in 1987, but Handala, called “an immortal symbol of Palestinian defiance,” lives on. 

Handala, the child standing with their hands clasped behind their back, was first created by Palestinian artist Naji Al-Ali in 1969 to represent the forced displacement of Palestinian people from their homeland. Handala has become a Palestinian national symbol of resistance and has grown to have a global significance. Naji Al-Ali wrote that Handala “was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in the geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense – the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa.”

The “All Power to the People” fist, designed and popularized by Frank Cieciorka in the mid-1960s, has become a symbol not only of the Black Liberation Movement, but for global resistance and liberation.

Hafez Omar, an award-winning Palestinian artist, was imprisoned in 2019 for the “crime” of inspiring people through his art.

The launch event for the website featured moving presentations by some of the website’s artists and their family members. Kevin Cooper, who was wrongly convicted and has spent over 30 years on California’s death row, sent an impassioned statement to the event. 

He wrote: “As the oppressed African Americans over here are being shot by the police for any reason and no reason at all, the same is being done to the people of Palestine by the police and military over there … They are forced to live against their will in the world’s largest open-air prison, the Gaza strip, yet they keep their dignity, their will to live and their self-respect intact.” Kevin Cooper has two paintings in the exhibit – one titled “Free Gaza,” spotlighted on the website’s landing page, and a portrait of Bob Marley. 

Linda Evans, who served 16 years in U.S. federal prisons for anti-imperialist actions, described the importance of getting art materials in prison: “Being able to access color in the drab and uniform surroundings of prison really made a difference to my mental state.” 

She described how mothers were able to communicate with their children by making them a drawing or a toy. “I view solidarity with Palestine as a bottom-line principle of anyone who is striving for international global liberation,” she asserted.

Shukri Abu-Baker is serving 65 years in prison in the U.S. for the crime of giving money to Palestinians as part of the Holy Land Five case.

Anmar Rafeedie, a cultural worker and longtime member of El-Fanoun Palestinian Dance Troupe, explained that growing up, her home was filled with art from her parents, which they had made while they were in prison. “Art resurrects life, which is why when they want to install collective punishment in colonial Israel prisons, they take away artistic tools, such as beads and strings, which prisoners would use to make gifts for their loved ones.” 

Naima Shaloub, a U.S.-based Lebanese vocalist, brought the power of music to the event when she performed a song called “Roumieh Prison Blues.” She wrote the song with incarcerated men in Lebanon’s Roumieh prison when she visited.

Nida Abu-Baker spoke emotionally about her father, Shukri Abu-Baker, who is serving 65 years in prison in the U.S. for the crime of giving money to Palestinians as part of the Holy Land Five case. When she was growing up, her father painted murals all over their house. “Now, every time something major in our life happens, he’ll send us something to cheer us up and to cheer himself up. Events like this one today make him so excited and so happy because he knows that his voice is actually going to be heard, even though he’s in a small prison cell.”

Hafez Omar, an award-winning Palestinian artist, was imprisoned in 2019 for the “crime” of inspiring people through his art. Among his many political posters, he had created many in solidarity with prisoners, including his brother. As a prisoner himself, art took on a new dimension. Hafez explained, “To keep drawing inside the prison was my simplest way to say you’re not winning over me. I’m not defeated, I’m still drawing, I’m still doing the thing that you took me to prison for.”

Oscar López-Rivera, a Puerto Rican former political prisoner who served 36 years in U.S. prisons, concluded the event. “As we become creative, we also transcend some of the negative spaces that we have within our minds. We transcend a lot of the insecurities that we have within ourselves as a colonized person.”

Oscar-Lopez-Palestine Belongs to Palestinians.jpg
“Palestine for Palestinians” was created specifically for Art Against Imprisonment by Puerto Rican artist Oscar López-Rivera. Oscar is a former political prisoner who served 36 years in U.S. prisons, accused of seeking independence for Puerto Rico. His art, along with the art of Palestinian and American formerly and currently incarcerated political prisoners, is included in the “Art Against Imprisonment – From Palestine to the U.S.” exhibit up online at https://artagainstprison.org.

Oscar called on everyone to support imprisoned artists and to grow the art exhibit. “I hope that we will be able to come together again just like we have today. And little by little solidarity will grow among all of us. I believe in reciprocal solidarity and we need to maintain a very close connection with Palestine!”

In the coming months, “Art Against Imprisonment” hopes to take up Oscar’s call to expand the art exhibit, reach out to more artists, their loved ones and advocates, and strengthen the reciprocal solidarity between our struggles for freedom and liberation. 

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For more information, please visit our website at https://artagainstprison.org, like and share our social media pages @artagainstimprisonment and please email us at artagainstimprisonment@gmail.com.

Diana Block is a member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and Nadya Tannous is a member of the Palestinian Youth Movement. Reach them by email at artagainstimprisonment@gmail.com and follow @artagainstimprisonment on social media.