Women’s prisons as sites of resistance: An interview with Victoria Law

October 25, 2015

by Maya Schenwar, Truthout

On July 30, 2013, during the largest prisoner hunger strike in history, when 30,000 prisoners, men and women, starved themselves simultaneously to end solitary confinement, two women, leaders among family supporters of prisoners, Marie Levin, left, whose brother had been held in the Pelican Bay SHU for decades, and Dolores Canales, whose son was also in the Pelican Bay SHU, went to the Governor’s Office in Sacramento. In the photo, Marie is comforting Dolores, co-founder of California Families to Abolish Solitary Confinement (CFASC), who had just gone inside to deliver 60,000 signatures protesting solitary confinement and had not been welcomed.

When we think of protest behind bars, what comes to mind? For many people, that list would include the Attica uprising, the work of George Jackson, the struggles of the Angola 3 activists, the 2013 California prison hunger strike and other crucial instances of resistance – mostly organized by incarcerated men.

Too often, organizing work done by incarcerated women goes wholly unrecognized. In her book, “Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women,” Victoria Law focuses on the many forms of activism happening inside of women’s prisons, most of which never reach the dominant media.

In the following interview, Law shares stories of little-known actions, insights into what constitutes “activism” and ways in which individual acts of resistance are building toward a transformational new reality.

Maya Schenwar: You discuss in the book how, when you first got interested in resistance within prisons and noticed a dearth of information about women’s organizing, you were often told, “Women don’t organize.” I’ve definitely noticed that the actions that we hear most about – particularly in mass media, but even among outside activist communities – are focused on men. What are some of the factors that create and perpetuate this myth that women behind bars aren’t “politicized” or engaged in resistance?

Victoria Law: We don’t hear very much about what’s happening in women’s prisons. If we hear about what’s going on inside, it’s usually framed as “these are the conditions,” not “these are the conditions, and this is what people inside these jails and prisons are doing about it.”

Even in 2015, prisoner resistance is still largely thought of as male. Part of it is that more attention is paid to men’s jails and prisons – they do, after all, make up approximately 90 percent of those behind bars. Part of it is that support networks for men are different than for women – including trans women – behind bars.

For example, during the Pelican Bay hunger strike, we saw women family members stepping to the forefront to speak about the conditions their loved ones have been enduring. Although we know, barely, that people in California’s women’s prisons had also been fasting in solidarity – and we know that there is also a SHU (Security Housing Unit) at the women’s prison – we’re not seeing – or hearing – outside loved ones amplifying their voices and efforts to the same extent that women like Dolores Canales, Marie Levin and Daletha Hayden are doing for their male loved ones.

In addition, even in this day and age, prison issues are frequently framed as men’s issues – unless it’s an issue like pregnancy, reproductive health or sexual abuse. So when we talk about solitary confinement, even though solitary confinement is used throughout women’s prisons and jails, coverage is often about what happens to men. The people spotlighted are men.

Sometimes, women will speak, like Evie Litwok and Donna Hylton about their experiences in solitary at a NYC hearing. But, unless it’s specifically a story about women in solitary or trans people in solitary, we don’t often see recognition that these conditions affect people of all genders. It’s not just solitary confinement where male becomes the default gender.

Finally, some of the ways women are challenging and resisting aren’t seen as fitting what we might think of as “resistance” or “organizing.” For example, currently and formerly incarcerated women have been involved in challenging policies around parenting – or maintaining their right to parent. It’s an issue that disproportionately affects incarcerated mothers because, when a father goes to prison, he often has a female relative willing to take care of his children.

When a mother goes to prison, she is less likely to have that same network of support and faces a greater chance that her children will end up in foster care. Children of incarcerated mothers are five times more likely to end up in foster care than children of incarcerated fathers, which makes fighting to maintain custody an issue that many incarcerated women face.

Schenwar, Maya, "Women's Prisons as Sites of Resistence: An Interview with Victoria Law." San Fransico BayView. BayView, 25 Oct. 2015. Web. 27 Oct. 2015. 

Response: 

This article written by Maya Schenwar is definitely biased toward women, which is understandable because the writer is female. They are also going to be biased toward the black communities since this newspaper is the National Black Newspaper. But it is interesting to see that most events and conditions are spotlighting men and the things that are happening in the women's prisons aren't being recognized or even mentioned most of the time. Their resistance is not being taken into account seriously enough jut because they are women's prisons. It is also interesting to note that children are 5 times as likely to go into foster care if the mother gets sent to prison then if the father is. Men should not be the default gender anymore.