Episode 72: #FREELIYAH #FREETHEMALL

April 4, 2020 Brad Off FEATURED, Podcast Episodes, Uncategorized,

We took this week to talk about how this pandemic has taken its toll on all of us and having 4 generations of people on a pod is a good opportunity to share how we are all experiencing and processing fear and injustice as this virus spreads.

PLUS: Anqa Khan joins us to talk about how our system of incarceration is punishing those who are in the system, how it is even worse in the time of covid and how prison abolition must happen now. Good news is, Anqa fills you in on how YOU can take action, because all of this, every bit, ties into reproductive justice!

Listen up!!!

Gathered in the Sleeper Cell

Lizz Winstead @lizzwinstead

Moji Alawode-El @mojilocks

Anqa Khan @anqakhan

Marie Khan @mkhanj

Reality Check- How Are Folks Doing?

Meaty Story

Reproductive Justice and the Prison Abolition Movement

SisterSong defines Reproductive Justice as the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities.

https://www.sistersong.net/reproductive-justice
Meanwhile, reproductive rights are the legal rights and freedoms relating to reproduction and reproductive health that vary amongst communities

Rikers Island Prison and COVID19

Bodily Autonomy and Personhood

Both prisons and legislative barriers to reproductive healthcare serve to rip people of their agency and bodily autonomy
Who gets to be a human? For how long? In what ways?
Who is personhood reserved for and when?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/legal-sex-workers-denied-coronavirus-aid_n_5e86287ac5b6d302366ca912?fbclid=IwAR3UNxoFR6BcJFFazDoUXhCBH1O4qUzUXUCmncsqIUtF1S7gC1GAtQPzu98

Reproductive Health Behind Bars – a report by the ACLU

https://www.aclunc.org/sites/default/files/Reproductive%20Health%20Behind%20Bars%20in%20California.pdf
- Lack of access to abortions
- Lack of access to menstrual products
- Shackling during birth continues (federal law passed in 2018 to end it, but hasn’t been implemented fully)
- Sexual violence

Forced Sterilization

In 2013, the Center for Investigative Reporting found that at least 148 female inmates in California received tubal ligations without their consent between 2006 and 2010: https://talkpoverty.org/2017/08/23/u-s-still-forcibly-sterilizing-prisoners/
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2017/07/26/our-long-troubling-history-of-sterilizing-the-incarcerated

Gender-Based Violence

All of what we have discussed contributed to the criminalization of survivors — folks who experience gender-based violence are denied rights to their own body and well-being, just like folks who are experiencing barriers to accessing abortion.
Survived and Punished: https://survivedandpunished.org/
Apr 5-11: #FreeThemAll National Virtual Week of Action: Defend Survivors, End Carceral Feminism
Follow the AMAZING K @sheabutterfemme (the Twitters and the Insta)

Free Liyah Campaign in CA

www.freeliyah.org
Petition: https://www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-freeliyah
Ethiopian immigrant woman who married a white man based in NC
After enduring racist and gendered abuse, she shot in self defense and was sentenced to 6 years, after which she will be deported

Great Orgs to Follow and Support

No New Jails NYC: https://www.nonewjails.nyc/
Black and Pink: https://www.blackandpink.org/
Critical Resistance: http://criticalresistance.org/
Mariame Kaba (@prisonculture on Twitter)
INCITE!: https://incite-national.org/
Assata’s Daughters: https://www.assatasdaughters.org/
The Bail Project: https://bailproject.org/

Required Reading

All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence, by Emily L. Thuma
Playing the Whore, by Melissa Gira Grant
Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Y. Davis
Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty, by Dorothy Roberts
Reproduction on the Reservation: Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Colonialism in the Long Twentieth Century, by Brianna Theobald

Announcements

Sign the Free Liyah Petition