One of the things about incarceration is that you're deprived. You lose all of your identity, and then its given back one day, and you're ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it.
If you don't have a new door to walk through, the only thing is the old door.
Insulin is a crisis medication.
It would have been great if there were a trauma center located in our community, where you could access grief counseling and be able to address it in a healthy manner.
The person who has been convicted has served their time. Why would we continue to punish and exclude them from housing and jobs? Those are the primary areas that allow people to get their lives back on track.
I went to pick my son up from school and walked him back and was in the house preparing dinner, and he came in the house and gave me this flower of chrysanthemum that was full of ants. And he went back out to play and ran out into the street and got hit by a car. The car happened to be driven by a LAPD detective.
It's important the sheriff and the D.A. work with the community to realize real-world solutions. If they make decisions in silos, it will fall short.
After six prison commitments, at the end of those, I was more broken than when I went into the system.
We keep a woman in prison for decade after decade at a cost of $60,000 a year, and then give them $200 when they hit the gates for release. And, adios. People have to get their IDs, Social Security cards. They have to get clothing, housing, apply for benefits and services, and it's impossible to do with 200 bucks.
There are so many bright people who just need an opportunity to help others and pay it forward.
Telling your story is transformative. For both the storyteller and their audience, a new bridge to understanding is created.
Most incarcerated women have stories that are similar to mine. They suffered great trauma as children.
I can remember, as a child, the happy days of us all piling into the car and going to the drive-in. And that was a weekly routine for my father. He was a proud black man, and that all sort of vanished as America began to export jobs.
Many times, I left the prison thinking, 'I'm smart. I can make it. I won't get caught up again.' But you get off downtown Skid Row, and you're a target for all of the environmental harms in that area. The pain and trauma in that area is so thick, you can almost reach your hand out and touch it.
In prison, you're issued a number of sanitary pads per month. And many times, even when you're issued a number of sanitary pads, the guards will just come in and rip your room apart, rip your locker apart and take them.
At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced.
I got caught back up in the underworld because the upperworld really doesn't have a place for people with criminal histories.
When I see a woman make it over all the obstacles, my heart just sings.
We know that the environment and political information is important, and we expose and teach the women about some of the environmental factors that lead to their incarceration.
It seems like I was born into trouble.
