Contributor: Linda Evans

Linda Evans is a former political prisoner and anti-imperialist who served 16 years of a 40-year federal prison sentence for actions against the U.S. government. While in prison she was a founding member of Pleasanton AIDS Counseling and Education, an inmate-to-inmate AIDS peer counseling organization, and of the Council Against Racism, an inmate organization that worked against institutional racism and to lessen racial tensions inside the prison. She is a co-author of the booklet, "The Prison-Industrial Complex and the Global Economy." While in prison, she completed both her B.A. and M.A. in Humanities. She was released from prison on January 20, 2001, when President Clinton commuted her sentence. She is working with the Center for Third World Organizing in Oakland, focusing on leadership skills development for ex-offender activists and working to improve re-entry services for people coming out of prison. She is a recipient of a 2002 Post-Graduate Fellowship in Criminal Justice sponsored by the Open Society Institute.