Contributor: Victoria Law
Victoria Law is a writer, photographer, zinester and mother. In 1996, she helped start Books Through Bars - New York City, a group that sends free books to prisoners nationwide. In 2000, she began concentrating on the needs and actions of women in prison, drawing attention to their issues by writing articles and giving public presentations, culminating in her book Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. She is also involved with ABC No Rio, a community arts center on the Lower East Side.
4 Submissions.
Where Abolition Meets Action: Women Organizing Against Gender Violence / State and Private Violence
The last decade has seen a growing movement toward abolishing prisons. At the same time, antiviolence organizers have called on prison abolitionists to take the issue of gender violence seriously and to develop initiatives to address it in the context of prison abolition. Fueled by increasing recognition that women of color, immigrant, queer, transgender, poor, and other marginalized women are often further brutalized – rather than protected – by the police, grassroots groups, and activists throughout the world, are organizing community alternatives to calling 911. Such initiatives, however, are not new. Throughout history, women have acted and organized to ensure their own and their loved ones’ safety. This article, which originally appeared in the journal Contemporary Justice Review, examines both past and present models of women’s community self-defense practices against interpersonal violence.
Abolition Activism Gender Sexual Violence
Community and Resistance: Katrina, Jena Six and Prisoner Justice / State and Private Violence
A panel discussion with journalists and community organizers Jordan Flaherty, Jesse Muhammad, and Victoria Law.
Activism Audio Community Public Policy State Violence
Women in Prison: Improve Their Lives, Not the System / Sexuality: Stigma and Punishment
Despite the growing numbers of women in prison, discussions about prison abolition largely focus on the incarcerated male. Conversations about prison abolition often do not address the fact that there are over two million people currently behind bars who need immediate, tangible changes in order to survive. Conversely, many conversations about immediate prison reform (such as the recent lobbying in NYC to build separate jail housing for GLBTI pre-trial detainees) do not consider how proposed reforms could work to expand and strengthen the prison-industrial complex.
Activism Audio Family Gender State Violence Transgender
Invisibility of Women Prisoner Resistance / Activism and Social Justice: Inside and Outside
Victoria Law’s research indicates that women prisoners are even more overlooked by mainstream society than their male counterparts. She explains how their struggles to improve their health care, abolish sexual, maintain contact with their children and efforts to further their education have been ignored or dismissed by those studying the prison-industrial complex.