Tag Archive for "Prisons"

Posts Tagged Prisons

By Katie Halper • 10 years ago

Pussy Riot launches a prisoners rights center in Russia, demands freedom in Wisconsin

#SolidarityWisconsin from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Pussy Riot is opening a prisoners rights center in Russia and engaging in transnational solidarity with… Wisconsin.

#SolidarityWisconsin from The Voice Project on Vimeo.

Pussy Riot is opening a prisoners rights center in Russia and engaging in transnational solidarity with… Wisconsin.

By Mychal Denzel Smith • 10 years ago

Angela Taught Me: Linking our Struggles Against Oppression

There’s a reason Angela Davis is regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of her (or any) generation. Here’s the revolutionary scholar and former political prisoner waxing poetic on a recent episode of Democracy NOW!:

By Alexandra Brodsky • 10 years ago

Punishing survivors won’t stop sexual violence

Earlier this week, the Daily News reported that a Cowlitz County, Washington survivor of an alleged kidnapping and sexual assault, perpetrated by her ex-boyfriend and an accomplice, was jailed when she refused to cooperate with the prosecutors on the case. The story didn’t rise to the forefront of feminist news until feminist writer Amanda Marcotte wrote a defense of the decision, arguing that the County did what it had to do to stop future violence.

The Cowlitz County case is awful, and I disagree with Marcotte’s conclusion, but neither is really an aberration from how we view criminal justice and victimhood. Two worrying parts of Marcotte’s piece implicate our larger national conversation about sexual violence: we mistakenly think survivors ...

By Alexandra Brodsky • 10 years ago

Daily Feminist Cheat Sheet

Consent-themed Valentine’s Day cards are cute, though.

“The revolution will not be cited.”

Lauren Chief Elk on Eve Ensler’s V-Day, Indigenous women, and the myth of shared gender oppression.

More from CIR on forced sterilizations of imprisoned people in California.

A remarkable history of five years of anti-violence organizing at Tufts.

TED backpedals on abortion stance after outrage sparked by Jessica’s piece in The Nation.

Dear Dept. of Labor: you probably don’t need two years to figure out that you should protect trans workers.

Send a STEM lady you love a math-o-gram.

Stop Street Harassment is fundraising for a national survey.

Consent-themed Valentine’s Day cards are cute, though.

“The revolution will not be cited.”

Lauren Chief Elk on Eve Ensler’s V-Day, Indigenous women, and the myth of shared gender oppression.

CeCe McDonald will be released this month

Transgender activist CeCe McDonald is scheduled for early release from her 41 month prison sentence for manslaughter according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

In the spring of 2011, McDonald and a group of friends, all of color, queer and allied, while walking to a 24 hour store were verbally accosted by a group of racist drunks outside a local bar. McDonald confronted them and was subsequently assaulted by a woman, who smashed a glass in McDonald’s face, puncturing her jaw and lacerating her saliva gland. The fight that followed resulted in the self-defense stabbing death of Dean Schmitz, who McDonald and supporters identified as an instigator in the confrontation.

Transgender activist CeCe McDonald is scheduled for early release from her 41 month prison sentence for manslaughter according to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

In the spring of 2011, McDonald and a group ...

By Verónica Bayetti Flores • 10 years ago

Keeping youth out of adult prisons

In a welcome bit of positive news, after years of “tough-on-crime” legislation that started gaining traction in the 1980s, some states are now passing laws which keep youth offenders out of the adult criminal justice system by curtailing prosecutors’ abilities to try them as adults.

By Alexandra Brodsky • 10 years ago

Video: Contextualizing California prison sterilizations

I posted yesterday about the recently exposed forced sterilizations in California prisons. On All In, Chris Hayes explains why we should be outraged but not shocked by such reproductive coercion given the state’s history of eugenics and unconstitutionally cruel prison conditions, in the news again today thanks to a 30,000-strong hunger strike. The clip is worth a watch, but Hayes doesn’t take the obvious next step: forced sterilization isn’t only of a kind with California’s particular brand of mass incarceration but also with the inherent abuse of imprisonment.

Transcript, via MSNBC, after the jump.

By Alexandra Brodsky • 10 years ago

California prisons have been sterilizing women for years

Yesterday the Sacramento Bee published a devastating (if unsurprising) article from the Center for Investigative Reporting revealing that, between 2006 and 2010, 148 female prisoners were illegally sterilized by force. Corey G. Johnson writes:

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for ...

At least ...