Sheryl Abel Sheryl interview.
Annette Anderson since taking part
in the film “Turning A Corner”, I have in much amazement been
approached by people that I have never seen come up to me and tell me
how they enjoyed watching it. I just celebrated 5 years clean and sober.
I feel great. I still do some service work and I work for Circle
Management. I take care of my mom who just turned 80 years old. I really
enjoy helping those who are less fortunate than myself. My relationship
with my husband is great. We have excellent communication with each
other and spend a lot of quality time together. My family and I have
grown closer. They are so proud of the positive changes I have made in
my life. I want to thank the staff from “Beyondmedia Education” for all
that they have done to help me stay and be inspired. Annette's interview.
Joanne Archibald is the Associate Director at Beyondmedia. She worked at Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers (CLAIM) for 14 years, beginning as Advocacy Coordinator, and then working as Advocacy Project Director and Associate Director. She serves on the Advisory Board of Grace House, a transitional program for women exiting the prison system. Joanne's interview.
Gina Autrey was born in a small town in South Carolina. She grew up in a loving home, with her parents and her sister. Throughout her childhood, she was never problematic or in any trouble; she was an honor student at a private Christian school from grades six through twelve. She got married at eighteen and started her family soon after. So, how did this good, wholesome, caring mother of two end up in prison? this is the story of one woman's painful journey from the lowest depths of imprisonment to a life of renewed determination and independence. She found within herself the strength to overcome the betrayal and abandonment by those whom she thought she could love and trust. she rose from the depths of imprisonment to become an independent, hard working, loving mother who still takes the time to help and encourage those who are incarcerated. She has become an advocate for those who are too afraid to speak up for themselves and a friend to those in need. "Excerpt from Banished Pride." top
Barrilee Bannister was one of seventy-eight women sent to a male prison in Arizona run by the Corrections Corporation of America, where they were sexually assaulted and harassed by male staff. Barrilee organized the women, contacted the media and launched a lawsuit, which resulted in their return to Oregon, a public apology and the firing and disciplining of many of the involved guards. She has been released from Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, Oregon's only women's prison. She is the founder and co-editor of the quarterly zine "Tenacious: Writings from Women in Prison." Read Barrilee's article, "The Harassment Continues." top
Donnie Belcher is a senior at DePaul University, majoring in Education. A published poet, Donnie also writes for the DePaula, the school newspaper, and Melanin, a new teen magazine written for and by African American young women. She serves on the executive board of Black Student Union, an umbrella organization for all of the Black organizations on campus. Donnie's mother was imprisoned from the time she was in preschool until she was eight years old. Read her "Letter to a Formerly Incarcerated Mother." top
Mary Field Belenky, Ed.D. is an educator, researcher, and writer who focuses her work on women's intellectual and ethical development. She studies projects and organizations that enable marginalized and silenced women to gain a voice, claim the powers of the mind, and have a fuller say in the way their families and communities are being run. A co-founder of the Vermont Women's Prison Project, she is a co-author of Women's Ways of Knowing and, more recently, A Tradition That Has No Name. She also co-edited Knowledge, Difference, and Power: Essays Inspired by Women's Ways of Knowing. Read the article she co-authored on The Vermont Women's Prison Project top
Hilda Berghammer Hilda's interview. top
Diana Block is a member of the planning committee of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and part of the editorial collective, which produces its newsletter, The Fire Inside. She is also a member of the steering committee of the California Coalition for Battered Women in Prison. Her writings about women prisoners have appeared in various journals and papers, including Sojourner, Off Our Backs and The San Francisco Bay View, and she has been a presenter at numerous conferences and workshops about women prisoners and the issue of incarcerated survivors. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Women's Building and was a founding member of San Francisco Women Against Rape in the early seventies. Read her article, "A Case of Battered Justice: Theresa Cruz, fighting domestic and state violence." top
Chesa Boudin has been awarded 2003 Rhodes Scholarships for study at Oxford University. A native of Chicago, Illinois, Boudin majors in history and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa. A student of Latin American development, Boudin spent his junior year at the Universidad de Chile as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar and has volunteered in community service projects in Guatemala and Chile as well as at Yale-New Haven Hospital. Boudin, whose parents have been incarcerated since he was 14 months old, has spoken around the country about the problems facing children of prison inmates. He has worked as a tutor, translator, interpreter and disc jockey. In a 2001 worldwide competition, he was named Goldman Sachs Global Leader for his outstanding leadership and public service. His published papers include "The Memoir of a Man Who Overcame a Bleak Past and Found a Bright Future" (Chicago Tribune Book Review) and "In Prison Again" (Salon.com.) He is at work on an autobiographical memoir. Read his article, "From Jail to Yale." top
Marilyn Buck, FCI Dublin, is a political prisoner who is serving an 80-year sentence for her activities in support of the Black Liberation movement and other struggles for social justice. She is a sculptor and a published poet who has won several poetry awards. During her many years in prison she has consistently advocated for other prisoners. Marilyn Buck 00482-285, Unit C, 5701 8th Street, Camp Parks, Dublin, CA 94568. Outside contact: Friends of Marilyn Buck c/o Legal Services for Prisoners with Children,1540 Market #490, San Francisco, CA 94102. E-mail: fombuck@yahoo.com. Read her article, "Prison Life: A Day." top
Kimberly Burke Read her article, "Do I Have to Stand For This?" top
Margaret Byrne is an attorney in private practice who represents battered women in clemency petitions and in the defense of criminal cases. "Fighting for Clemency for Women and Prison Defending Themselves Against an Abuser" top
Anna Bell Chapa, CCWF, is a poet, gardener and lover of rabbits and mice whom she has befriended in the prison. She is a regular writer for The Fire Inside and a keen observer of the ironies of prison life. "The Fire Inside" top
Lucretia Clay-Ward, is happily married and is working as a outreach worker and doing HIV casemanagement. Life is really good her, higher power has done so much for her, she can’t thank him enough. Lucretia's interview. top
Alexandra Cox Read her article, "Cracked Lenses: The Visual Exploitation of Crack Mothers." top
Theresa Cruz, CIW, is a battered woman who is serving a seven to life sentence for conspiracy to murder her abuser, even though her abuser is alive and well. She, her four children and her mother and have been fighting her unjust conviction and sentence for over ten years, building a grassroots campaign that exposes the abuses faced by battered women in the criminal injustice system. "A Case of Battered Justice: Theresa Cruz, Fight Domestic and State Violence" top
Angela Davis is a world-renowned political activist and leader educating various audiences on the prison industrial complex, the criminal justice system, women's issues, issues affecting communities of color, among an array of other subjects. She studied in Europe at the Frankfurt School and the University of Paris before earning a B.A. (magna cum laude) from Brandeis University and an M.A. from University of California at San Diego. Her radical associations in the 1960s resulted in her dismissal from her position as assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She spent sixteen months behind bars before being acquitted on all charges in connection with the conspiracy to free political prisoner George Jackson. Davis currently teaches at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and she has lectured in all 50 states, as well as internationally throughout Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, Russia and the Pacific. Her books include If They Come in the Morning (1971), Angela Davis: An Autobiography (1974), Women, Race and Class (1981), Women, Race and Politics (1989), Blues Legacies and Black Feminism (1999), and The Angela Y Davis Reader (1999). She is also an organizer of Critical Resistance. Read her article, "Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex" top
Diana Delgadois a 35 yr. old survivor of domestic violence and recovering addict single mother of 4 incarcerated numerous of times due to my addiction that stemmed from abuse a member of a 12 step program. I seek guidance through a therapist weekly. Diana's interview. top
Kathleen Desautels is a Sister of Providence and a human rights worker on the staff of the Chicago-based 8th Day Center for Justice. At age 64 she served a six-month sentence in Illinois Greenville Federal Prison for civil disobedience against the School of the Americas, a training school for Latin American military officers who are responsible for violence and atrocities against their own people, targeting religious workers, student leaders, and union organizers. "Letters from Prison Camp" top
Denise Dunkley Denise's interview. top
Naoma Dye Naoma's interview. top
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. "The Fire Inside" top
Linda Field, CCWF, has been a regular contributor to The Fire Inside, the newsletter of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, since its first issue in 1996. Field is a battered woman who is serving time for defending herself and her children from their abuser. She has written eloquently about a wide variety of subjects including domestic violence, disability, motherhood, and solidarity among women prisoners. As a diabetic and wheelchair user, Field has a direct experience of many of the worst abuses of the California prison system, yet she continues to fight and write in her efforts to make change. "The Fire Inside" top
Joann Franklin Joann's interview. top
Delores Garcia Read her article, "Disabled in Prison" top
Girl Talk Girl Talk was a program that worked with young women involved in the juvenile justice system in Cook County from 1993 to 2006. Bill of Rights for Incarcerated Girls top
Dawn Harding, is a 32 year old and is sentenced to 14 months for sales of cocaine from Cape Conaveral, She has a 6 year old son and loves reading and writing poetry. Harsh Reality top
Judy Harden, Ph.D., a psychologist and educator, has studied, taught, and worked with criminal justice issues and women in prison in particular for the past 10 years. She co-developed the Vermont Women’s Prison Project, which works with currently and formerly incarcerated women to document the stories of their lives, to counter stereotypes of who is in prison and why, and to provide a base for connection between the women and their communities. She currently is part of an advocacy group called Unruly women. She is the co-editor of “Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy.” Read the article she co-authored The Vermont Women's Prison Project top
Donna Henry Donna's interview. top
Imani Henry All White Jury Convicts Black Women. top
Iyrania Hill Iyrania's interview. top
Health and Medicine Policy Research Group is an independent policy center with a twenty-three year history of evaluating local health policy. For more information, see their website at www.hmprg.org Bill of Rights for Incarcerated Girls top
Heather Johnson writes, "I am 31 year old, and I have been writing poetry and short stories since the age of 7. I became a published author last year with my book of poetry called Impressions, so check it out! I am also currently at work on my autobiography." "Poem: Untitled" top
Bonnie Kerness "United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women" top
Jean Lathrop, MA, co-director of YES!, has more than 30 years experience as an educator in high schools and colleges and as an initiator of numerous community efforts and still existing community organizations. For the past three years she has researched community-based learning in Vermont high schools for the John Dewey Project. Lathrop has taught critical thinking in Vermont and abroad, and is the former director of Vermont Refugee Assistance, a statewide organization of volunteers that helps stranded refugees and educates the public about immigrant issues. She is currently part of a Thetford group, researching social class divisions in rural Vermont schools. "YES!-Youth Engage Society" top
Victoria Law, has been working with prisoners since high school. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars-New York City, a project that sends free literature to inmates nationwide, and a co-editor of the zine "Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison." She has written about activism and resistance among women in prison for Clamor Magazine, Punk Planet, Turning the Tide and Women in Action and is currently working on a book on this subject. "Invisibility of Women Prisoner Resistance" top
Rhonda Leland, is an inmate in Valley State Prison for Women. "My Sunrise" top
Kari Lyderson, is a reporter in The Washington Post's Midwest Bureau, an instructor in the Urban Youth International Journalism Program serving students who live in public housing and a freelancer for various publications including, In These Times, Clamor Magazine, Lip Magazine and Punk Planet. Read her article, "Our Bodies Are Not a Sacrifice: Prostitution, Criminalization and Incarceration of Women" top
Tori Marlan, has been a feature writer for the Chicago Reader since 1995. She has won two Peter Lisagor Awards for exemplary journalism, an Association of Alternative Newsweekly's award for social reporting, and a Herman Kogan Award for writing on legal affairs. "Illegal Strip Searches in the Cook County Jail" top
Pilar Maschi, is the Former Prisoner and Family Coordinator of Critical Resistance. She is a former prisoner who is a single parent and lives in the South Bronx. Pilar founded a political education program in a drug recovery center for women and their children, where she once was a client. Pilar is currently obtaining her AA degree as a video student at Borough of Manhattan Community College. "Forms of Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex" top
Patricia Elaine Mason is a prisoner and a fine poet who is trapped in the claws of the criminal justice system. "The Fire Inside" top
Danielle Metz, FCI Dublin, is serving three life sentences for conspiracy to distribute five kilograms of cocaine. Her story is typical of the countless women who have been caught up by the war on drugs because of their relationships with men and receive disproportionately severe sentences because they have no "information" to sell. Metz continues to try and fight her sentence and to maintain the bonds with her children although they live far away. "The Fire Inside" top
Yolanda Mills Yolanda's interview. top
Kim Mikesell Read Kim's article,"Children Do Hard Time for Their Parents' Crime." top
Brenda Myers Brenda's interview. top
Patricia O'Brien has a long history of activism, social work practice, education, and research focusing on women’s concerns in Kansas City, Little Rock, AR and in Chicago. As a social worker, she worked as a staff member in three different shelters for battered women. From her work with battered women, she began working with incarcerated women both as an individual advocate and a mutual aid group leader. From this base, she developed her dissertation study exploring the transition out of prison by formerly incarcerated women who identified themselves as successful in managing reentry. The study was subsequently published as Making it in the “free world”: Women in transition from prison by SUNY Press in 2001. After completing her PhD at the University of Kansas, she assumed an Assistant Professor position in 1997 at the University of Illinois at Chicago/Jane Addams College of Social Work, and was awarded promotion and tenure in 2003. Read her article, "Mapping The Way Home: Reducing Barriers to Women's Reentry After Prison"
Sara Olson is a Minnesotan in a California prison. She was a fugitive for 24 years, living in various places including the Country of Zimbabwe, Baltimore, MD and Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN Ms. Olson’s family – her husband and three daughters still reside in St. Paul and they travel as often as possible to visit her.Rehabilitation, Orange Crush, Little Fallujah, A Modern Modest Proposal, Fourth of July at CCWF July 2006, "Environmental Essay", "The Conditions of Women's Prison", "The California Prison Focus dignity for women Prisoners Campaign: No Foolin Keep Your Hands off Women Prisoners", "Armageddon Now" and "Mother's Day in Chowchilla" top
Stormy Ogden is a California Indian woman, Kashaya Pomo, and a recognized member of the Tule River Yokuts tribe. She has a B.A. in Native American Studies from Humboldt State University and Certification as a Substance Abuse Counselor through Merritt College in Oakland, California. Ogden is a former prisoner who was incarcerated for 5 years at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco. Since her release a little over 14 years ago, she has worked with the Bay Area and Humboldt County American Indian communities as a community organizer and speaker. She has done advisory work around the issues of Indian child welfare, protection of American Indian religious and spiritual traditions, Squaw Name Change Project, and the rights for American Indian women within the federal and state prison system. Ogden co-authored The American Indian within the White Man's Prison: A Story of Genocide (Uncompromising Books). Read her article, "The Prison Industrial Complex in Indigenous California" top
Jennifer Price Are We Really Innocent Before Proven Guilty? top
Rose Rose's interview. top
Rachel Roth is a 2006 Soros Justice Fellow who writes about how prisons affect women's reproductive rights. She has worked as a professor and as a research fellow at Ibis Reproductive Health, and is the author of the book Making Women Pay: The Hidden Costs of Fetal Rights, co-author of the report Abortion Funding: A Matter of Justice (www.nnaf.org), and a contributor to Defending Justice: An Activist Research Kit (www.defendingjustice.org). Read her article, "Women's Right Don't Stop at Jailhouse Door" top
Ann Russo, is an antiracist feminist writer, educator, and activist who is currently the Director of the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at DePaul University. Her research, teaching, and activism over the past 25 years has been embedded in the social movements organized to address the pervasive sexual, racial and homophobic harassment, abuse, and violence in women’s lives. She is the author of Taking Back Our Lives: A Call to Action in the Feminist Movement (2001); co-author of Pornography: The Production and Consumption of Inequality; and co-editor of Talking Back and Acting Out: Women Negotiating the Media Across Cultures and Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism. As an Activist, she has participated in local and national organizing efforts addressing discrimination and violence, including work with Chicago with the women and Girls Collective Action Network, YWCA’s Chicago-Area Rape Crisis Line, Rape Victim Advocates, Beyondmedia, the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network and Queer White Allies Against Racism, among others. Read her article, "The Sex Trade and Feminism" top
Laurie Schaffner is the author of Girls in Trouble with the Law, (Rutgers 2006), a qualitative study of court-involved girls. Her other work includes Teenage Runaways: Broken Hearts and "Bad Attitudes" (NY: Haworth Press, 1999), co-editorship of Regulating Sex: The Politics of Intimacy and Identity, (Routledge 2005), as well as articles for Crime and Delinquency, Adolescence, Social Justice, Hastings Women's Law Journal, and International Journal of Children's Rights. Her writing has earned awards from the American Sociology Association, the Society for Applied Anthropology, and the American Society of Criminology. She co-founded the San Francisco For Girls Coalition (1996) and the Chicago Girls Coalition (2000), where community advocates, scholars, and young women come together to focus on girls in adolescence. She is an associate professor of Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. "Girl-on-Girl Violence Hearing Testimony" top
Rebecca Seiber, Rebecca Seiber is 41 years old in 2008, and she has been incarcerated since she was 26 years old. She is 5'2", 130 lbs. green eyes brown hair. She is easy to correspond with. "Feeling the Inside" top
Carolyn Shapiro, MA, YES! director, has more than 30 years experience as an educator in high schools and colleges and as an initiator of numerous community efforts and still existing community organizations. For the past three years she has researched community-based learning in Vermont high schools for the John Dewey Project. Shapiro is also an artist and co-founder of Branching Out, a high school program offering experiential learning with community mentors. "YES!-Youth Engage Society" top
Charisse Shumate was a founding member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a lead plaintiff in a groundbreaking lawsuit about health care conditions for women prisoners, and a regular columnist for The Fire Inside. She lived with sickle cell disease, hepatitis C and cancer. She died in August 2001, having suffered years of medical abuse in the California prison system. "The Fire Inside" top
Andrea Smith, is a co-founder of Incite! Women of Color Against Violence and the Boarding School Healing Project. She is the author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide, the editor of the Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Nonprofit Industrial Complex and the co-editor of The Color of Violence (south end press). "How the Criminal Justice System Uses Domestic Violence Programs Against Native Women" top
Gail T. Smith, is the executive director of CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers). She earned her JD at New York University in 1985. She has represented thousands of mothers and their children’s caregivers in court, and has taught family law to thousands of mothers in jail and prison. She drafted Illinois legislation to ban the use of shackles on women during labor and childbirth. Ms. Smith is a founding board member of the National Network for Women in Prison and serves on the board of the Family and Corrections Network. She has testified on issues affecting incarcerated mothers and their children before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the Illinois General Assembly. In 2005 she received the YWCA’s Racial Justice Award. Read her article, "The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997: Its Impact on Prisoner Mothers and their Children." top
Ann Folwell Stanford is professor of multidisciplinary and literary studies at the School for New Learning, DePaul University. She is also the founder and director of the DePaul Women, Writing and Incarceration Project. "When Love Flies Free: Women, Home, and Writing in Cook County Jail" top
Tammica L. Summers "I am 34 y.o. (but I look 24!). I'm 4'11", 120 lbs., Petite, Sweet, and Single! I was raised in Florida, but have traveled all over the world. I am a college graduate and was a civilian until I was 30. I'm very open-minded, creative, articulate, and eclectic and I have been writing (essays, book reports, letters, poems, short stories) since grade school." Tammica is currently incarcerated at Broward Correctional Institution in Ft. Lauderdale, FL."A Prison Journal: The "Feeding" Experience, "Another Day: A Series of Poems", "Dehumanizaton Resistance, "Being An Imate". top
Silja Talviis a senior editor at In These Times, an investigative journalist and essayist with credits in many dozens of newspapers and magazines nationwide, including The Nation, Salon, Santa Fe Reporter, Utne, and the Christian Science Monitor. She is at work on a book about women in prison (Seal Press/Avalon/Perseus). Her articles on social issues – with a particular emphasis on criminal justice, ethnicity and gender – have garnered a dozen Society of Professional Journalists Western Washington regional awards. Talvi was honored in 2006to receive a New American Media award for immigration – related reporting. In 2005, 2006, and 2007, she received four consecutive PASS award from the national Council on Crime and delinquency for a magazine feature on the impact of Three Strikes sentencing on African American men; the privatization incarceration trend; Taser weaponry; and the interstate transfer of prisoners. The latter three were all written for In These Times. "A Group Blog: Women, Media and McMissile" Why a Book About Women In Prison top
Pamela Thomas is the Client Services Manager for the North Lawndale Employment Network's ex-offender program, where she supervises case managers and develops community resources for clients. Along with surviving the streets as a child, she also battled a very severe drug addiction. She has spent much of her 36 years battling one storm after another, including numerous prison incarcerations. She knows how difficult it is to try and reintegrate into a society whose policies specifically tell you, you're not a part of it. She has taken her life and used it as a basis to promote growth and stability in the lives of other women who've walked the path she has to design a gender-based curriculum for female ex-offenders which she feels could possibly change the face of structural programming for women coming from challenging backgrounds and lifestyles. Thomas has always had a passion for writing poetry and plays from as far back as she can remember, and she uses her writing as a tool to help those who are so easily forgotten about. Her idol is Nikki Giovanni.Pamela's interview. top
Wenona Thompson has worked as the Coordinator for Girl Talk, a weekly collaborative program for girls at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, since 1998. She is a single parent of two children. She received her Associate of Arts degree from Kennedy-King College in 1997 and has recently completed requirements to receive her B.A. from the Inner City Studies Department of Northeastern Illinois University. At the age of 16, she was arrested and charged as an adult on a drug possession charge. She served a total of two and a half years in the Juvenile Justice system. Since her release, she has been active both in her community, as a mentor, volunteer and activist, and through her work as coordinator of Girl Talk. Ms. Thompson has participated in workshops and conferences educating both policy makers and the general public about the realities and needs of youth in Chicago communities and works with the media to dispel stereotypes about incarcerated youth. Read her article, "The Day My Mother Was Sent Away." top
Tracy, is 34 years old. She is sentenced 15 years and will parole after serving 7 years. She was a victim of domestic violence for 12 years."Life's Many Journeys'" top
Michelle VanNatta is currently Director of Criminology at Dominican University, believes in prison abolition and works with CLAIM (Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers). "Fighting for Clemency for Women and Prison Defending Themselves Against an Abuser" top
Kebby Warner is incarcerated in Michigan. After losing custody of her daughter, Helen, she became active in the struggle against the prison-industrial complex and is forming an organization called PACK (People Against Court Kidnapping) to protest incarcerated parents' lack of rights. Read her article, "Pregnancy in Prison: A Personal Story." Will She Ever Know My Name? top
Laura Whitehorn, was released from prison in August 1999 after a little more than fourteen years. She lives in New York City with her lover, Susie Day, and is involved in work for the release of political prisoners. She is a member of the NY State taskforce on policitical prisoners, a group dedicated to supporting New York State political prisoners from the black liberation movement and anti-imperialist solidarity movement. Since the 1970s, when she helped lead a building occupation at Harvard, Laura has been active in anti-racist and anti-war organizing and the women's liberation movement. Along with Linda Evans, Marilyn Buck, Susan Rosenberg and others, she was convicted in the Resistance Conspiracy to attack the U.S. Capitol, the Navy War College, and other government and corporate targets. She was in Federal women's prison at Lexington, Kentucky and Dublin, California, where she was active in AIDS support work and where, with the other political prisoners, she helped organize the Bay Area Art Show for Mumia. Laura is currently an assistant editor with POZ magazine in New York City. "Surviving Solitary" top
Rachel Williams
is an Assistant Professor of Art Education at the University of Iowa.
She is the editing author of Teaching the Arts in Prison, published by
Northeastern University Press in 2003. Currently she is conducting a
two-year narrative workshop with women at the Iowa Correctional
Institution for Women. The workshop will result in a DVD and an
anthology based on the stories and writing of workshop participants.
This program was funded by Humanities Iowa. She was awarded a grant from
the National Art Education Foundation in 2001 to research the Status and
Praxis of Arts Education in Juvenile Correctional Facilities in the US.
In the summer of 2001, Inside Job Theater Company of the UK invited her
to be a guest designer for their production The House of Bernarda Alba
with women inmates at Her Majesty's Prison, Holloway in London, England.
This project was the focus of an independent documentary film called
Artistic Convictions, The Women of Holloway Directed by Lucy Fyson and
produced by Roger Graef's, Films of Record. Williams received her Ph.D.
and MFA from Florida State University. She received a BFA from East
Carolina University in Painting and Drawing. "Women on the Inside"
top Tali Woodward "Life in Hell"
top Debi Zuver is a
battered woman who received a 21-year sentence on a manslaughter charge
after a plea bargain. Her appeal of her sentence was recently denied by
the California appellate court. She continues to advocate on behalf of
other battered women and to dream of the day when she will be released
and can open a home where abused women can start a new life. top "The Fire
Inside"
