ACLU of Santa Cruz County, CA

Volunteer. Sign petitions. Call your Congressman. Teach. Email your City Councilmember. Mentor. Visit friends and family. Give love.

These were just some of the calls-to-action given by the panelists at the ACLU-Santa Cruz event Interrupted Lives Panel Discussion on February 22, 2007 at the Louden Nelson Community Center.

A follow-up to the art exhibit by the same name last April, this panel included the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project (DLRP), Justice Now, Critical Resistance, All of Us or None, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC), and GEMMA.

Interrupted Lives, the art exhibit and the panel, addressed the issues facing incarcerated mothers and their children. As each panelist represented their affiliated organization, their topics ranged from issues with prison system as a whole to their personal experiences as mothers and incarcerated women. And in their concluding remarks, each woman had a specific action community members could take to participate in this struggle.

The evening began with a brief opening statement by ACLU-Santa Cruz board member Joyce Brodsky about the panel and introduced the evening’s moderator, UC Santa Cruz Professor Nancy Stoller.

With five to ten percent of the prison population being women, Stoller began, and sixty to eighty percent of those women having children, the issue of incarcerated mothers is very serious. As Stoller introduced the range of panelists, she reaffirmed that incarceration not only affects these women, but their children and families as well.

Anjuli Verma started the panel off, speaking for the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project (DLRP), which is working to end punitive drug laws due, in part, to the unprecedented levels of incarceration on drug-related charges. This increased is directly related to the lives of incarcerated women as the vast majority of them are in prison on drug charges.

However, the relationship between the drug war and prisons, Verma stated, is more complicated. Verma argued that the “War on Drugs” is not actually about stopping drug use, but about social control. Verma called for a paradigm towards a reallocation of funds from the drug war to the health system.

For those who were there, Verma encouraged everyone in the audience to take two or three ACLU-DLRP reports on the subject entitled “Caught in the Net: The Impact of Drug Policies on Women and Families” and the DVD “The ACLU Drug Wars Freedom Files” and share them with anyone who says they care about families, about women, about children.

Justice Now and Critical Resistance sustained the theme of looking critically at the institution of the prison industrial complex. Both representatives, Kat Manlin for Justice Now and Jasmine Syedullah for Critical Resistance spoke about California Bill AB 76 being put forward by the Gender Responsive Committee. The bill promotes the building for 40 new mini prisons, Manlin said, which will not be community alternatives to prisons, but simply more beds to be filled.

“If you build them, they will fill them,” Syedullah echoed, reinforcing the idea that these mini prisons will not rehabilitate women, but keep them locked in the system.

Both Justice Now and Critical Resistance are working to abolish the prison industrial complex. And until that can be achieved, they work to bring aid to prisoners in any way they can. On the night of the event, Manlin and Syedullah asked audience members to write to their state legislators, encouraging them to oppose Bill AB 76. The bill is currently in committee.

Speaking for All of Us or None—and from personal experience as a formerly incarcerated woman—Marilyn Smith called for legislative reform in order to provide “more rehabilitation, less incarceration.” Smith spoke to highlight the dire need for better medical care in prison, more rehabilitation particularly in the area of drug abuse, and fewer prisons in general.

Most directly, however, Smith stated that prisoners need people from the outside more than ever. Her call of action to the audience came through clear, ““Don’t procrastinate; help. Be in touch and act.”

Another organization that is acting to help those inside is Legal Services for Prisoners with Children (LSPC). A former political prisoner, Linda Evans spoke for LSPC and of the multiple services they provide, such as their Mother-Infant program, Habeas Project, and Family Rights Project.

Evans also focused on the organization’s participation in the “Ban the Box” campaign. The “box” refers to the question on employment applications that asks if a person has ever been convicted of a felony and the petition for the campaign is trying to eliminate it.

Evans distributed a “Ban the Box” petition for the San Francisco Area for audience members to sign. She also encouraged Santa Cruz to participate in the campaign, and research into the petition has been picked up by board members of the ACLU-Santa Cruz chapter.

The evening concluded with Kristen Chambers, Rhea Hunter, Susan Greene and Karen Kennedy representing Gemma, a local organization providing care and support for women transitioning from life in prison. Gemma’s primary focus is to provide housing for recently incarcerated women, but their work does not stop there. They have just begun transitional program of classes and offer support from everything from job skills to clothing to transportation.

And the representatives were not shy about asking the members of the audience to pitch in. They encouraged people to volunteer or aid in anyway they could, from teaching to mentoring to helping with their fall fundraiser to making a donation or signing up for their “Keep Me Informed” list.

They encouraged people to write to the city council to thank them for their support of Gemma. Finally, they hoped people would take a tour of the county jail so that each person could see inside. It would be a difficult thing, they said, but ultimately worth it.

As the question and answer portion came to a close the ultimate message of the evening was encapsulated in what Rhea Hunter, Program Manager for Gemma and formerly incarcerated woman, said in her presentation: incarceration affects generations of people; it uproots people’s lives completely leaving them with nothing; and it is a struggle to get back on one’s feet after being in prison.

For Hunter, the call to action was simple: “Go tell people we are human beings. Teach us, support us. We’re mothers, grandmothers… Give us a chance.”

To contact these organizations, locate them on the web at: ACLU Drug Law Reform Project: http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/index.html Justice Now: http://www.jnow.org/ Critical Resistance: http://www.criticalresistance.org/ All of Us or None: http://www.allofusornone.org/ Legal Services for Prisoners with Children: http://www.prisonerswithchildren.org/ Gemma: http://gemmasantacruz.org/index.html