Trigger Warning for medical neglect and abuse, police abuse, and discussions of the child welfare system

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly.

She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand.

She had already been to two other hospitals that week in September, complaining of leg pain after spraining her ankle.

This time, she refused to leave.

A police officer arrested Brown for trespassing. He wheeled her out in handcuffs after a doctor said she was healthy enough to be locked up.

Brown was 29. A mother who had lost custody of two children. Homeless. On Medicaid. And, an autopsy later revealed, dying from blood clots that started in her legs, then lodged in her lungs.

She told officers she couldn’t get out of the police car, so they dragged her by her arms into the station. They left her lying on the concrete floor of a jail cell, moaning and struggling to breathe. Just 15 minutes later, a jail worker found her cold to the touch.

Officers suspected Brown was using drugs. Autopsy results showed she had no drugs in her system.

Six months later, family members still wonder how Brown’s sprained ankle led to her death in police custody, and whether anyone — including themselves — is to blame.

The way the Post-Dispatch exploits family members’ personal sense of guilt that is a normal part of grieving, equating it with much larger forces, would have you believe that Anna Brown’s death was just a tragic accident. But the way Brown died was not the result of a few bad choices. It was the result of a myriad of institutional violences: white supremacy, the broken health care system, police brutality and the prison industrial complex, the racism and classism of the child welfare system, ableism and its intersection with racism, dehumanization and criminalization of (suspected) drug users, and the lack of housing as a human right, among others. Anna Brown did not die with the dignity we afford to human beings, but with the contempt we reserve for garbage. And a woman’s humanity is not just forgotten and cast aside with no systemic reason.

The institutional violence against Anna Brown began long before her death from an undiagnosed yet treatable condition, and her death can only be understood within the context of this long string of abuses.

Anna Brown was one of 10 children. She graduated from Kirkwood High School. At 18, she had her first child, a boy. She had a daughter nine years later. Brown was raising them alone when a tornado destroyed her north St. Louis home on New Year’s Eve 2010. She moved to Berkeley.

Shortly after, she lost her job at a sandwich shop. Bills lapsed. The electricity was turned off. So was the gas. And the water.

Family members say Brown and her children appeared fine during visits at Davis’ home in Normandy.

They weren’t.

In April, a state Children’s Division representative found Brown’s toilet filled with feces. Burn marks scarred the floors and sinks where Brown had used small fires to stay warm. One refrigerator could not be opened. Insects and rotting food filled another, according to state reports given to the Post-Dispatch by Brown’s family.

Brown was not lucid and seemed confused as Berkeley police arrested her for parental neglect. The courts awarded legal custody of the kids to the Children’s Division. Davis could have physical custody, as long as Brown didn’t live with her.

Brown’s home was condemned. She ended up on the streets. She lived in four homeless shelters from May to September 2011.

At first, she visited her children at her mother’s home. That ended in June, when Brown started telling the children they didn’t have to listen to their grandparents and called the police to report they were being abused. Police found no evidence of abuse.

After that, Brown had supervised visits with her children at the Children’s Division. She also called her mother daily to check on them.

Brown, who later started receiving treatment for mental illness, is just one of countless examples of the way that the child welfare system is an active agent of racism, classism, ableism, and sexism. Earlier assistance could have easily prevented the loss of necessary utilities like heat and water, could have kept food in the fridge, could have provided mental health services to Brown if needed, could have helped her care for her children. This crisis almost certainly could have been avoided.

But as Dorothy Roberts shows in her incredible and important book Shattered Bonds: The Color of Child Welfare, the system sees these means of assistance as undeserved, and either refuses to provide them or makes access to them overly burdensome. Indeed, the child welfare system, instead of acting to keep families healthy, works mainly as a means of social control of Black populations. While Native and Latino children are also generally overrepresented in the child welfare system, the overwhelming majority of children are Black — in some cities, virtually all are Black. Virtually all also come from families that are poor. And the vast majority of cases are not of the kind of child abuse we see on the news, but of “neglect.” As Roberts explains, “neglect” generally means being poor — not having access to adequate food, shelter, or child care. But as in Brown’s case, the system does not give beds to families when it deems they do not have enough, does not provide housing vouchers when they see shelter as inadequate, does not increase food stamp allotment when children are going hungry, or provide child care when parents cannot afford it but still have to work. The child welfare system instead almost always acts too late, and has only one means of intervention: removing the children from their parents, who are usually mothers.

Brown’s children were not only removed from her, but explicitly forbidden from living with her, even when another adult in the household was acting as their carer, even though there was no evidence that she posed a physical danger or threat to her children. The system deliberately acted not just to keep the children safe and cared for, but to keep mother and children apart. In the child welfare system, separating Black children from their mothers is seen as the only means to keep them safe, even when other options are clearly available.

Further, once the children were provided for, the system lost interest in Brown’s own well-being. Like so many poor people of color with mental illness(es), she was not given housing and access to mental health services, but instead ended up homeless — a state which only exacerbates existing mental illness, and would be incompatible with reuniting her with her children. And after this series of assaults on Brown’s rights and humanity, it is her mother who is left feeling the guilt for forcibly complying with an abusive system:

Davis also faults the St. Louis County Family Court, which she said forced her into a heartbreaking dilemma after the state took away Brown’s children on a claim of neglect. Davis could take in her grandchildren or her daughter, a judge said, but not both.

“I’m mad at myself because if I hadn’t listened to the courts, she would still be here,” Davis said. “If she had been here at this house, she would be here today.”

Anna Brown attempted to access health care from the position of a Black homeless woman who had been deemed an “unfit mother” and who was perceived as “mentally unstable.”  The social forces of white supremacy, classism, misogyny, and ableism ensured that she therefore entered this system, a site in which innumerable oppressions are enacted, as someone perceived as far less than fully human. If homeless people are inhuman, if being an unfit mother is close to the worst thing a woman can be, if being Black is both criminalized and associated with worse health care outcomes across the board, if “crazy” people are to be either feared or ignored, this inevitably impacted the care that she received.

Despite repeatedly complaining of the same symptoms, Brown was not believed. The medical staff in charge did their tests, and decided that they knew better than Brown about her own body. Instead of reviewing their work — ultrasounds were apparently conducted to check for blood clots — or searching for alternate explanations, they decided that Brown must be lying, perhaps looking for drugs. This call was irrefutably tied to Brown’s race, gender, homelessness, and mental health status. Real-life medicine doesn’t work like House. But if anyone thinks an insured white guy with no history of mental illness would have been pinned with “drug-seeking behavior” and literally dragged away in handcuffs, they’re living in one hell of a different United States of America than I am.

Anna Brown was arrested for demanding medical care for a condition that killed her several hours later. For seeing herself as deserving of life, for knowing that her constant pain was not normal or acceptable, for demanding that somebody give a damn and recognize her humanity, she was thrown in jail and died alone on a cold cement floor. An officer waited for three hours with Brown to see a doctor who could declare her “fit for confinement,” so that he could drag her from a police car when she could not walk. Who devoted those same levels of time and resources to saving her life? Who cared as much about why this homeless Black woman was in so much pain and distress as they did about locking her up?

Both the police and the hospital have shirked responsibility:

St. Mary’s officials say they did all they were supposed to do for Brown. “Our records show that, in this case, everything that should have been done medically was done properly. We found nothing that would have changed this tragic outcome,” according to a statement.

Police Chief Maj. Roy Wright said his officers had no way of knowing Brown’s condition. “A lot of times people don’t want to stay in jail and will claim to be sick,” he said. “We depend on medical officials to tell us they’re OK.”

We found nothing that would have changed this tragic outcome.

I am not a doctor. Even if I were, I do not have access to Anna Brown’s medical records. I do not know if the ultrasounds were conducted properly. I do not know if there were additional tests that could or should have been done. I do not know if her condition was not diagnosed because of carelessness and prejudice, or because it simply could not be diagnosed. I do not know how or if Anna Brown could have lived.

But I do know one thing for sure: she did not have to die like she did.

It was not inevitable that she was charged with “trespassing” at a hospital while complaining of a legitimate medical condition. It was not inevitable that her pain was ignored and treated as a fabrication. It was not inevitable that she be literally dragged away in handcuffs because she could not walk and because authorities just needed another Black body locked up. It was not inevitable that she die alone on a cold floor, in a way that we would never wish on animals. It was not inevitable that a homeless Black woman asserting herself was perceived as being “on drugs,” or that being “on drugs” revoked her right to decency and humanity.

I do not know that Anna Brown had to die. But even if she did, she could have died in a hospital bed. She could have been given the same dignity afforded to insured white people who aren’t (actually or perceived as) “crazy” or “on drugs.” She could have not have had her identity as a mentally ill, homeless Black woman equated with criminality and worthlessness. She could have been treated like the human being she was, as a person whose life had value.

And anyone who cannot see that is the one who is actually lacking humanity.

On September 21, 2011, Troy Davis was killed by the state of Georgia for the murder of a white police officer, despite incredible doubts about his guilt and many years of strong efforts to save his life. Hopefully you’re familiar with his story; I was writing about it years ago, and many others never stopped. To call his execution a travesty of justice doesn’t quite cover it.

Davis’ family has suffered a terrible string of tragedies. Shortly before Troy’s execution, his mother Virginia died, having long been brokenhearted about what was done to her son. Less than two months after Troy was killed — following a cruel delay in which his family briefly thought Troy was getting another stay of execution — his sister Martina Correia died from cancer.

The Davis family still has outstanding funeral and medical bills for Martina that they must pay.

Jen Marlowe, a journalist who knows the family and has written extensively about Troy Davis’ case for years, has started a fund to help them pay their bills, setting a goal at $8,000. Unfortunately, fundraising efforts plateaued around the $6,000 mark, and I’ve watched over the past couple of weeks as the goal has struggled to be met. The deadline has already been extended, but even with two weeks remaining, at the current rate of fundraising the total will surely wind up short.

Troy Davis’ case mobilized countless racial justice and anti-death penalty activists, and the day after his execution thousands of people donated to organizations working to end the death penalty. Undoubtedly, that’s how both Troy and Martina would have wanted it, being valiant fighters not just for Troy’s life, but to end the death penalty as a whole. (Correia was a dedicated board member at the Center to End the Death Penalty.) But surely, they would have also wanted to see their own family provided for and free of the incredible stress of unpayable debt.

The Davis family has been through unfathomable pain and injustice; and for their long, hard, courageous fight, they deserve all of our support and gratitude. Though we cannot grant them justice, the least we can do, if we have the resources, is help minimize their hardships in this small yet important way.

Please give if you are able; even the smallest amounts will help. And just as importantly, help spread the word through your networks to help meet the goal.

With my infrequent writing here, I’ve neglected the opportunity to previously mention over the last 18 months my obsession with and love of 1960s and 70s soul music (particularly though not exclusively Motown). And there is no such thing as 1970s soul (or 1970s style!) without the phenomenon that was Soul Train.

This morning I woke up to the devastating news that its creator and host Don Cornelius has died of a gunshot would. Preliminarily, that gunshot would looks to have been self-inflicted. He was 75 years old.

Don Cornelius was an incredibly awkward host. He was a fascinatingly terrible interviewer.

Trigger Warning for discussions of childhood sexual violence, sexual violence in schools, and rape denialism

A story of prolonged sexual abuse against children over 25 years shows the dangers of not believing sexual violence survivors who step forward with their stories. In Alabama, a now-retired elementary school teacher named Danny Acker (left) has been charged with four counts of first-degree sexual abuse against two female students under the age of 12. At the time of his arrest, the teacher allegedly confessed to molesting an astonishing 21 female students throughout his career.

Making a horrific story even worse, the school board knew he had a history of sexual abuse allegations all the way back in 1993, were given the opportunity then to remove him from his position of authority, and chose instead to reinstate his job as a fourth-grade teacher. Indeed, they say that given the opportunity, they’d do it again.

Two longtime Alabama school board leaders are defending the panel’s decision in 1993 to reinstate an elementary school teacher who was accused of molesting a student, even though the teacher is now charged with more abuse.

School board President Lee Doebler and Vice President Steve Martin said students, parents and community leaders encouraged the Shelby County Board of Education to return 4th grade teacher Danny Acker to his Alabaster classroom, and the board agreed 5-0. Doebler and Martin are the only board members who remain from those days, and both said they did the best they could with the information they had.

“Looking back, given the evidence we had I would have made the same vote,” Doebler said. “I wish we had some evidence, but unfortunately, we didn’t.” …

Shelby County’s superintendent placed Acker on leave in October 1992 when a student accused him of touching her improperly at her home. A county grand jury reviewed the case and did not return an indictment.

Martin said the superintendent recommended Acker’s dismissal. The school board held a hearing in February 1993 that lasted more than eight hours and then voted unanimously to keep him.

Martin said there were no witnesses and no physical evidence. He said the abuse was alleged to have occurred during babysitting rather than at the school.

Doebler, who was also the board president in 1993, said many students, past and present, and their parents turned out as character witnesses to support Acker, and the board was heavily influenced by the grand jury’s decision to take no action.

“There was no evidence presented to us to indicate the grand jury was incorrect,” he said.

Martin said Acker’s father, longtime County Commissioner Dan Acker, made no effort to influence the decision. “The dad did not call anyone or discuss it with anyone,” he said.

The tragedy here is not only that so many girls were sexually victimized in ways that can never be erased, but also that when shown quite dramatically and horrifyingly the error of their methods, those with the power to have stopped this abuser still do not see the inherent flaw in their system.

When a young girl reported having been sexually abused by a popular and trusted adult male teacher, the school board failed to treat her testimony with the respect that it deserved. Instead, they sided with power. When given the choice between the word of a young girl and the word of an adult man who wielded authority over her, they chose the adult man. When reflecting on the consequences of potentially making the wrong decision, they decided that an innocent man losing his job would have been a greater travesty of justice than countless vulnerable children being placed at the mercy of a predator. They sided with adults’ rights at the expense of children’s rights, with men’s rights at the expense of girls’ rights. They sided with historically and presently white supremacist and patriarchal standards of “evidence” and justice without thinking twice. And then they appealed to our sense of “fairness” to claim that this is the way it ought to be.

With Acker’s reinstatement based largely on the grand jury’s decision, this should be a lesson — though only one among many — on the gross unreliability of the criminal justice system as a reference point for an individual’s true innocence or guilt. At the same time as this system harasses men of color unrelentingly for drug and property crimes, it ignores the violent crimes of white men against women and girls on the basis of their “reputations” as socially valuable¹ members of the community. It should also be yet another lesson as to how the criminal justice system decides when harm has been committed and when community safety has been achieved, as to what exactly the criminal justice system and those systems modeled after it values.

A man’s right to employment and good name were given primacy over the right of girls to have a learning environment safe from sexual terrorism. Indeed, his privacy was likely given extreme concern, as well — in their defense, the school board does not mention any effort to determine if other victims existed, to encourage parents to talk to their children about their teacher, to urge other survivors to come forward.

Even with so many victims, it should come as absolutely no surprise that no others reported on their own. It is extremely common for victims to not speak of childhood sexual abuse until they are adults. Our social silence around sexuality, consent, and interpersonal violence almost ensures that children will not have the vocabulary or the resources to speak of what is happening at the time that it is happening. Children, like all victims of sexual abuse, are also likely to blame themselves; indeed, it is from society that they learn these messages. Those children weren’t wrong in their choices. A grand jury failed to indict him, a community united behind him, a school board chose to reinstate him and put him in the position to abuse further. If his victims feared that they would not be believed, they were probably right.

In 25 years, of at least 21 students, until now only one of these victims had the resources to come forward with her story. It is an indictment of this culture that she had to stand alone, because for 20 years no other victims were given the tools to stand with her. It is an even greater indictment that even when she did have the resources to speak of the violence committed against her, she was not believed. Indeed, an entire community rallied together to call this molested little girl a liar.

We teach children to tell us if they have been the victim of a bad touch (and the consider our work on their continued safety done). But we do not mean it. We do not mean it at all.

Throughout this story is a sustained denial of how power and privilege works. While Acker’s longtime County Commissioner father may not have made any phone calls on his son’s behalf, that doesn’t render his influence over the decision a moot point. Those with true influence need not necessarily flex it in an active way. People simply understand that there will be consequences if those with sizable power and influence are not given the deference usually afforded to them. Further, community members are more likely to stand up in their favor. The school board members defending their decision would have us believe that the great turnout for ACker has nothing to do with his family’s position within the community. But it would extend beyond mere gullibility into willful ignorance to truly accept that as the case. Acker’s family’s status can no more be divorced from the response to his abuse than can his straight white maleness; in a society so invested in upholding hegemonic power, all are considered short-hands for innocence.

Now Acker has been arrested and charged, long after his easy access to a large pool of victims has been removed. He may be convicted, though even with an alleged confession, there is absolutely no guarantee. Best case scenario, he will be punished for his irreversible violence, and that will be considered justice. And yet, it would have been commonly considered an injustice 20 years ago to believe a girl who said she had been abused, to have prevented the opportunity for much of that violence to have ever been committed.

Chances are, this morning, that you’ve seen the new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control statistics on sexual violence and domestic violence. Most notably, you’ve probably seen the new statistic that almost 1 in 5 women have experienced rape in their lifetimes.

That’s a terrifying statistic, though not a surprising one to those of us who have been involved in sexual violence work for some time. In light of this undeniably already awful news, it may seem cruel to point out that the reality is even worse than it initially appears from this soundbite. But I also think it’s necessary.

Firstly, I think it’s imperative to note that these new statistics are inherently cissexist. Definitions in this report assume that women have vaginas and men have penises. There are no individuals who are neither men nor women. Whether any trans* folks were interviewed for this survey is unclear. They may have been disqualified from participation or had their experiences filed under the incorrect statistics. Trans* folks are mentioned exactly once in the full 124 page National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010 Summary Report (pdf); it is simply stated that services specifically for transgender people should be designed, with no accompanying information on their experiences or how they have or have not been included in this study. It is almost certain, in other words, that these statistics do not tell us anything about rates of violence against “women” and “men” but rather cis women and cis men.

Secondly, the definition of rape that is used in the NISVS is in one way unconventionally broad. In several other ways, the definition of rape being used is also woefully incomplete. The full sexual violence definitions used for this study appear below.

Five types of sexual violence were measured in NISVS. These include acts of rape (forced penetration), and types of sexual violence other than rape.

Rape is defined as any completed or attempted unwanted vaginal (for women), oral, or anal penetration through the use of physical force (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threats to physically harm and includes times when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent. Rape is separated into three types, completed forced penetration, attempted forced penetration, and completed alcohol or drug facilitated penetration.

• Among women, rape includes vaginal, oral, or anal penetration by a male using his penis. It also includes vaginal or anal penetration by a male or female using their fingers or an object.
• Among men, rape includes oral or anal penetration by a male using his penis. It also includes anal penetration by a male or female using their fingers or an object.

Being made to penetrate someone else includes times when the victim was made to, or there was an attempt to make them, sexually penetrate someone without the victim’s consent because the victim was physically forced (such as being pinned or held down, or by the use of violence) or threatened with physical harm, or when the victim was drunk, high, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.

• Among women, this behavior reflects a female being made to orally penetrate another female’s vagina or anus.
• Among men, being made to penetrate someone else could have occurred in multiple ways: being made to vaginally penetrate a female using one’s own penis; orally penetrating a female’s vagina or anus; anally penetrating a male or female; or being made to receive oral sex from a male or female. It also includes female perpetrators attempting to force male victims to penetrate them, though it did not happen.

Sexual coercion is defined as unwanted sexual penetration that occurs after a person is pressured in a nonphysical way. In NISVS, sexual coercion refers to unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal sex after being pressured in ways that included being worn down by someone who repeatedly asked for sex or showed they were unhappy; feeling pressured by being lied to, being told promises that were untrue, having someone threaten to end a relationship or spread rumors; and sexual pressure due to someone using their in?uence or authority.

Unwanted sexual contact is defined as unwanted sexual experiences involving touch but not sexual penetration, such as being kissed in a sexual way, or having sexual body parts fondled or grabbed.

Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences are those unwanted experiences that do not involve any touching or penetration, including someone exposing their sexual body parts, flashing, or masturbating in front of the victim, someone making a victim show his or her body parts, someone making a victim look at or participate in sexual photos or movies, or someone harassing the victim in a public place in a way that made the victim feel unsafe.

So the definition of “rape” includes both completed and attempted rapes. Don’t get excited yet, MRAs — attempted rape is not only an incredibly serious crime, it is also the minority of experience made up under the “rape” 1 in 5 statistic. The table on page 28 of the report shows that 12.3% of cis women reported completed “forced” rape, 8% reported completed alcohol/drug-facilitated rape, and a comparably small 5% reported attempted “forced” rape.¹

Further, the definition of “rape” excludes all other means of rape that do not involve physical force or drugs and alcohol. The above definition of “sexual coercion” would, to most readers here who utilize some form of an enthusiastic or meaningful consent model, also constitute rape.² If we are to include the respondents who reported instances of “sexual coercion” under our definition of rape, the situation gets decidedly worse. A full 13% of cis women reported experiencing sexual coercion. We do not know how how much these numbers overlap with the “rape” statistics presented above. But the report does estimate almost 15.5 million U.S. cis women victims of “sexual coercion.”

(It’s also important to note that not all cis women are equal with regards to sexual violence, either. Cis women who are Native, Black, or identified as multi-racial had significantly higher rates of victimization than women who are white or identified as Hispanic.)

When talking about these numbers, we not only need to note their trans-exclusionary nature, but also their inability to account for the full, meaningful picture. We shouldn’t be saying that almost 1 in 5 U.S. women have been raped when what the information actually shows is that, based on a far more social justice oriented model, more than 1 in 5 cis U.S. women have been raped.

Few find it surprising that Jim Crow arose following the collapse of slavery. The development is described in history books as regrettable but predictable given the virulent racism that gripped the South and the political dynamics of the time. What is remarkable is that hardly anyone seems to imagine that similar political dynamics may have produced another caste system in the years following the collapse of Jim Crow—one that exists today.

– Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The thesis of Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is exactly what the title implies: the U.S. criminal justice system has become a formal if unnamed means of anti-Black racial discrimination and social exclusion analogous to though distinct from Jim Crow. In the United States, Alexander argues, all aspects of this system — from policing to prosecutions to sentences to prisons to post-release restrictions — have not only a disparate impact on racial minorities, Blacks in particular, but were actively designed as a racial caste system and means of social control in the wake of Jim Crow’s collapse. And yet, because the system is officially race neutral and overt racial hostility by individual actors generally cannot be proven, the bulk of society goes around acting as though this racial caste system does not actually exist.

To make her case, Alexander turns naturally to the War on Drugs that began in the 1980s, at at time when drug use was on the decline and considered by virtually no one to be a serious social or criminal issue. Though “mass incarceration” and “the drug war” are not quite synonyms, they are fairly close. As Alexander shows, drug convictions make up a very large proportion of the enormous and unprecedented increase in incarceration rate in the past thirty years, from 300,000 in 1980, shortly before the drug war began, to over 2 million today. Alexander writes:

Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980—an increase of 1,100 percent. Drug arrests have tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began. Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs.

Alexander critically exposes the little understood origins of the War on Drugs. Generally, the drug war is traced to the explosion of crack cocaine in urban Black communities, when in fact crack did not become an issue until several years after the drug war was launched in 1982. The drug war has its roots in a combination of the deindustralization and globalization that resulted in mass job loss and a predictable and growing white backlash to the gains of the civil rights movement. The rate of Black unemployment quadrupled as a result of factory closings, while white unemployment increased at a far slower rate. With no new jobs appearing in communities of color, Black men were suddenly no longer needed as workers and therefore disposable. At the same time, unrest was growing among blue-collar white workers as a result of their own unemployment. Instead of creating jobs or addressing class disparities, conservatives harnessed this anger and effectively turned it on the Blacks with whom these whites actually shared exploitation and joblessness.

When crack hit in the mid-80s, years after Reagan officially launched his War on Drugs, he used it as a massive publicity campaign for his program. The media blitz dramatized and exaggerated the now infamous crack epidemic, promoted all kinds of ugly racist stereotypes about poor Black people, and spawned outrageously harsh mandatory sentences and sentencing disparities. At the same time, the sensationalistic  public relation campaign aimed at whites was backed up with enormous amounts of money and equipment being funneled to law enforcement who agreed to use it to fight this metaphorical “war” in a quite literally militarized way. As being “soft on crime” became a political career-ender, Democrats, too, got in on the act, instituting increasingly draconian and cruel punishments for the “crimes” of recreational drug use and addiction.

Before delving into The New Jim Crow, I considered myself relatively educated on the subject of the systemic racism of both the criminal justice system generally and the War on Drugs specifically. It wasn’t long after the introduction that I began to realize just how little I actually knew. Knowing that the system is racist is one thing; knowing how that racism legally and practically functions and how it has been actively protected by the highest powers is something else all together. This issue is about much more than just vastly disproportionate numbers of Black men in prisons and jails, or the fact that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. It is about housing, disenfranchisement, the right to work, and the terrorism and social control of policing, probation, and parole.

Alexander’s “New Jim Crow” metaphor does not just describe prisons themselves, but the system that sends overwhelming numbers of Black men there in the first place and then proceeds to keep them on the margins of society for the rest of their lives upon release. This new Jim Crow, like the old one, creates a parallel society to which large numbers of Black people are relegated. From stop and search procedures that are rarely used against whites, especially middle-class ones; to mandatory sentences that lock people away for years on first-time non-violent offenses; to laws designed to keep released felons jobless, homeless, and disenfranchised, this racial caste system is quite deliberately almost impossible for its targets to escape.

Alexander walks us through the workings of the racist criminal justice system step-by-step, showing us how the U.S. manages to criminalize such huge numbers of men of color. The process begins with enormous federal financial incentives given to local law enforcement in exchange for agreement to comply with the drug war by rounding up as many people as possible. As middle-class white communities would be in an uproar if the same procedures used to criminalize Black men were used in their own neighborhoods — especially since, according to drug use statistics, they would result in as many if not more arrests — police concentrate their efforts on low-income, urban communities of color. Alexander horrifyingly pieces together how the Fourth Amendment has been effectively stripped of all meaning for the individuals who are stopped, and stopped extremely regularly, in these terrorizing everyday fishing expeditions. Police are allowed to stop individuals for virtually no reason and then ask to conduct a search without making clear that one can refuse; should one actually refuse, he will normally be arrested on a bogus charge, at which point he will be searched anyway. Meanwhile, virtually all claims of racial bias in this process have been ruled null and void by the Supreme Court, with racial profiling even sanctioned, provided it is not the “sole factor” influencing a stop.

After “the roundup,” Alexander shows how defendants have their charges trumped up and are denied meaningful representation. Often, they are forced to make a decision regarding whether or not to accept a plea deal in an incredibly short period of time, without first being given access to counsel. With extraordinarily high mandatory minimum sentences, charged individuals are almost guaranteed to plead guilty to “lesser” charges that are still likely to result in years in prison — all, usually, for simple possession. In fact, legislators and prosecutors admit that this coercive power to compel guilty pleas is precisely the intent behind minimum sentencing laws. Should defendants actually go to trial, they are likely to face inadequate representation from a vastly overworked lawyer and all or heavily white juries. Alexander further demonstrates that lengthy prison sentences are not the end, as social control extends through parole, which can result in a return to detention for the most minor of infractions — including continued addiction, being unable to make a scheduled check-in, or being unable to pay exorbitant fees. In 2000, 35 percent of all prison admissions were the result of parole violations. And, Alexander exposes, all claims of racial bias during these stages of the process have also been effectively cut off.

Finally, Alexander examines the period of “invisible punishment.” Upon release, ex-offenders face a maze of legal restrictions conjured up by “get tough” politicians largely in the Clinton 90s. Most commonly recognized is the virtual inability to find meaningful employment with a felony on one’s record, despite the fact that such a huge number of convicted felonies are non-violent. Even crueler than the inability to support oneself and one’s family is the fact that failure to maintain employment is a common cause of rearrest as a parole violation. In addition to being unable to obtain or maintain employment, let alone employment that provides enough to genuinely live off, individuals with felony drug convictions are barred from receiving federally funded public assistance in most states, including food stamps. Further, drug offenders are not eligible for public housing, and housing discrimination against not only former felons but also “suspected criminals” is perfectly legal. Public housing recipients are also able to be evicted for any drug crime committed in or even near their homes, even if they themselves were not aware of it, making relatives of usually-poor released prisoners reluctant to take them in, even temporarily. Ex-felons are barred from voting at least temporarily in almost every state, and voting rights are notoriously hard to get back even when ex-offenders are eligible, resulting in enormous numbers of officially disenfranchised Black citizens, and far more unofficially. None of this is to even begin to touch on the social stigma of a criminal record. All up, Alexander convincingly shows that the intent and effect of the new Jim Crow is to punish Black men, who entered the system only because they are Black, into perpetuity.

The New Jim Crow is not without its flaws and limitations. Alexander declines to take up the issue of increasing rates of incarceration for women both cis and trans, though these women are themselves overwhelmingly non-white, instead choosing to focus on the large majority of male individuals swept into the criminal justice system. While Alexander retains a sharp focus on class, she does avoid and ignore other marginalized identities that make one more likely to be targeted by the criminal justice system, such as disability and mental illness. Further, while the system was clearly designed decades ago to target Black men specifically, the more recent and apparently seamless adaptation of mass incarceration to the growing Latino population’s threat to white supremacy — and what this adaptation means — is left for future writers to take up.

While Alexander’s strict focus on the drug war is understandable, it can be somewhat frustrating in its exclusion of all other causes of mass incarceration. Though most of her racial rhetoric is bold, even radical, in various passages toward the end of the book I found myself disagreeing with some of Alexander’s more soft-peddled stances. The economic realities of the (never-named) prison industrial complex, also a huge player in increased incarceration rates and their maintenance, only garner a couple of pages of discussion. And surely, the topic of racism within the criminal justice system is too large for any single book to cover comprehensively, which means that major issues like police violence, prison violence, lack of adequate medical care in prisons, and so on, are barely touched on, if they are broached at all.

Despite the fact that one book cannot be everything, that’s not an insignificant list. And yet, this book is still invaluable in what it does accomplish: a vital primer for how racism and white supremacy function at all levels of the criminal justice system and how they are not mere accidents or unfortunate side effects. The New Jim Crow is compelling and endlessly quotable, a necessary read for anyone whose vision of social justice hopes to actually address race as a major axis of oppression in the United States.

Currently incarcerated persons are probably already the most isolated individuals in the United States. Those who are not only incarcerated but also the victims of sexual violence while imprisoned face little support, few mental health and recovery services, the ongoing threat of violence, and even retaliation should they speak of the abuse. With their support networks ripped from them, their right to safety revoked, and their abusers (who are most frequently prison officials) having control over every aspect of their lives, they are among the most vulnerable sexual assault survivors.

In light of this, sending a 250 character message of support and greeting during the holiday season may seem a truly underwhelming gesture. It is precisely these same conditions, however, that makes such a small act able to speak volumes. Incarcerated persons are cultural pariahs, socially treated as subhuman, and/or told that they deserve sexual violence as a condition of their detention. A few kind and compassionate words, under those circumstances, could mean the world.

Rafael, a recipient of a holiday card through Just Detention’s 2010 campaign and victim of multiple assaults by state corrections officers, stated:

Here I was in my cell sitting on my bed on Christmas Eve, sad but hanging in there. My thoughts were on my mom who passed on in 2004, and thinking ‘man, this is my 24th Christmas behind bars.’ Then at about 4 pm the officer gave me some mail from JDI. I was surprised because I don’t get much mail. Being incarcerated for so long, friends and family have forgotten me or passed on. When I read the holiday cards my heart skipped a beat and I started to cry. Yes, this 46-year old hard-core convict was crying. The kind words of encouragement, blessing, and letting me know that I’m not forgotten from total strangers from far away shattered my emotions. Please let them all know that I love them all and will cherish their words in my heart. And yes, I will walk with my head up high and will share my story with no shame and will help others that find themselves in similar situations.

Another (anonymous) survivor said:

I have been down since 1998 and have not had a card or letter sent to me, nor a visit. To receive those cards has totally left me speechless. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

While Just Detention International works to eradicate sexual violence in prisons — and other activists do work to more fundamentally dismantle the racist (classist, transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, ableist …) prison industrial complex — please take a few short moments today to send a message to a person who has experienced sexual violence while incarcerated. Your message will be transcribed by hand into a card by a JDI volunteer and delivered to a currently incarcerated person who has experienced sexual violence while detained.

If you’re having trouble knowing what to say, JDI has provided me with some examples of actual messages written by others:

“I wish you hope, healing, and support. Please know there are people fighting for you, even if you have never seen us. Know there is love.”

“May you take comfort in knowing that countless people in the free world care deeply about you and will not stop fighting for justice.”

“From one survivor to another, I send you hope for peace of mind and heart. On both sides of the bars, we give one another strength to go on.”

“Dear Friend, I guess this time of year may feel particularly hard. Please let me take a minute to say that I recognize that your humanity and your safety are worth fighting for regardless of your detention. I wish you hope and joy every day. Be well.”

It is imperative that work to support those currently suffering under oppressive conditions be done simultaneously with work to dismantle the oppressive systems that create those conditions. Ultimately, your words may mean a lot more than you know. Please send a card today and help spread the word.

Ten years ago, George Harrison died.

John Lennon was always dead. For me, there literally was not ever a time when he was alive. It’s not just that I don’t remember him. It’s that he was gone before I was even born.

But George, I remember. Not just from the countless DVDs, both legitimate and bootleg, not just a manufactured “memory.” But in real time. Once, George Harrison was a living, breathing part of the world I lived in. And then, one day, he wasn’t.

And though it sounds strange to say, I miss him. Not like I miss Mink, of course. Nor like I miss my friend whose death anniversary also just passed. But in a way, yes, like an old friend. I miss him. And this material world is a lesser place for his loss.

VIDEO: George Harrison’s song Be Here Now plays over an image of the cover to his album Living in the Material World. Be Here Now lyrics.

Jasmine “Mink” Kulwicki
June 4, 1993 – October 11, 2011

When I was ten years old, my parents decided that my brother and I could each have a cat.

That week, I did something bad. No one remembers what, now. But it was bad enough that my right to bring home a cat was revoked as a punishment. We were only getting one cat, now. And the decision was left up to my 7-year-old arch nemesis.

My mom took us to Al’s Pet Shop on West Ridge in Rochester. The very pretty yet cranky and antisocial store cat, at least one of whose apples did not fall far from the tree, had given birth to kittens several months prior. There were two, or at least two left at that point, both small but really not still kittens. They were both tortoise shell. A boy and a girl.

I wanted the boy.

I made my case to my younger brother. Clearly the boy was better. Here, hold him, you’ll see. My brother skeptically picked up this male cat and held him for half a second before he became angry for no discernible reason and lashed out and scratched my brother’s arm.

So the girl cat it was.

At the time, I was convinced that my brother did this to spite me. This was his revenge for that time I threw sand in his eyes, or all the times I hit him in the head with Fisher Price little people, or the time I convinced him (truly believing it would drown them) to stick a hose in a fire ant hill. Who knows; maybe it was.

But while I know he didn’t mean it, that he wasn’t doing it for me but for himself, and that as it turned out he didn’t even like her, it was the greatest thing that anyone has ever done for me in my entire life. Last night, I called him to say thank you.

We named her Jasmine, like everyone around that time, after the Disney princess. No one remembers how long it took her to become Mink, the name we called her for the rest of her life … unless we were at the vet, or she was in trouble.

I do remember that it didn’t take long for her to become mine. As it turns out, my brother doesn’t much like cats, anyway. (“They don’t do anything.”) And Mink most certainly did not like him. In fact, she hardly liked anybody.

Shortly after bringing her home, my parents had her spayed. She was 9 months old. When she came home from the operation and was let out of the carrier, she ran away. And the place she found herself to was my bedroom, right in the middle of my bed. There she remained for the next week, as she recovered. There she remained, mostly, for years. As you can see in the above photo, taken Easter 1994 when she was just 10 months old, right away, she was my girl. She stayed — she’ll stay — that way forever.

Mink had a perfect line down her face. Half was a light orange, the other a darker mixture of black and brown. Even the front of her nose was split perfectly, the dark half black, the light half pink — until a fight with our next cat, Boomer, tore the skin off, for it to heal mostly pink. She had the biggest, prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen, and the softest, most rhythmic and beautiful purr I’ve ever heard. Her paws were tiny, and got so, so cold in the winter. When she was healthy, she never once weighed more than 7 pounds, and was at her most normal around 5. Her tongue was so rough, but gentle, and her black lips were soft and wet against your cheek. Her fur was always soft and downy, never rough, and everywhere. She had stripes on her legs and a back that grew more and more orange each year she got older. Her tail was long and sharply pointed. Her chin was so, so white. Photos don’t do her justice; no cat has ever been prettier.

Every word I write about her feels inadequate. There is nothing I can say that will do her the justice she deserves or convey to you just how much she meant and means to me, no matter how much reading this makes you think she meant to me now. I want to tell you absolutely everything about her. She was my whole world. I did everything a person could possibly have done for her, and I’d do it all again.

Mink was not impressed by you. She was not impressed by me. Mink was not impressed by anybody, save perhaps Ronald Reagan and Jesus Christ. (Mink was a staunch lifelong Republican.) Mink hated just about everyone, and it was a true compliment if she gave you the gift of her tolerance. She was an old soul, born to want you to get the fuck off her lawn.

Rarely did she “play.” She liked hair ties, and catnip. For a while, she loved to chase the laser pointer, until she figured out where that red dot was coming from. Then she resented us terribly for thinking that she would be so foolish as to fall for such a simple ruse. She did invent one game, though, when she was very young. She found a bouncy ball (and no matter how many times it was taken from her, she always found another). At night, and only at night — for this game was absolutely no fun during daylight hours — she would take said bouncy ball in her mouth, bring it to the top of the stairs, and drop it. Then she would simply watch as it went down the stairs. Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce. It reverberated throughout the entire house of previously sleeping people. Then she’d go back down, bring the ball back up again, and repeat. Bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce.

She was a jerk, through and through.

And a stubborn one. During her very first visit to the vet, she became enraged by the process of taking her temperature, and proceeded to completely lose her shit. In a now infamous story, they put her inside a bag, with only her head sticking out, in order to contain her. But there was absolutely no containing Mink. She decided, then, to simply thrash as had as she could, and throw herself with all of her force against all of the walls every time they tried to touch her. Lord knows what the people in the waiting room thought was going on in there. Lord knows that whenever she went to the vet, her reputation preceded her. She never got any better about it, no less angry, no matter how many times a vet ever had to touch her. Even at the very end, the very last time, she remained a fighter, as stubborn as stubborn could be. But she wouldn’t really have ever been Mink, otherwise.

Living in Australia for three years, it was almost unbearable being away from her. Every week, I would speak to my mom, and every week, right before she called me, Mink would make a sudden appearance from her usual hiding act, and jump up on my mom’s bed and sit with her. Just purring the whole time. She was a smart girl. She always knew what was going on, somehow. Much more than we ever gave her credit for.

When Ian moved to the U.S. and we got married, he’d never had a cat before. But it was not up for debate that she was living with us. Ian put her on a “trial period” of three months. We argued until I let him believe what he wanted to believe. But he knows now that there never was any trial period. She was always going to be ours.  Thankfully, she took to him, and he most certainly took to her.

She changed us, forever. From a couple into a family.

And she was so much happier, too. From a house filled with people and who knows how many other cats, all of whom she hated, to an apartment where she was the only one, and she could be the center of attention, always. She hid a lot less. She became a lot more social. She ran around, and hung out wherever she wanted, with no fear that another feline might appear at any moment. Her voice grew louder, from an always tiny squeak or whisper, to a loud, assertive, and impossible to ignore mew. She wanted what she wanted when she wanted it. And brat that she was, she almost always got it.

She was always cold in the winter. She burrowed her way under blankets. She sat right in front of the vent, waiting for the heat to kick on, sucking it all up in her little cat body instead of letting it filter out into the rest of the home. And most importantly, she permanently installed herself on my lap. She was a heat mooch. She sucked up all your heat, and purred and purred and purred that beautiful, wonderful purr in order to make sure you’d let her. She didn’t care how uncomfortable she made you. She’d stick a claw in your stomach, a foot in your boob, whatever. It was useless to resist. We were cat furniture.

Secretly, she kept me warm, too. I don’t know who will keep me warm, this year.

Mink liked to prance. Unlike most cats, she would not sit still when she wanted you to pet her. Never. She had to prance. Across your lap, across the bed or couch, around in circles, on your lap and of again. Prance prance prance. She always had to be the center of attention, and that meant parading for all the world to see and making sure your focus on her was undivided. She liked to be scratched right on front of her tail. She’d rub her face on the surface beneath her and stick her butt way up in the air while you scratched. She liked, too, to have you roughly rub her tail between your fingers, and even gently lift up her back side by an inch or two with it. She could never get enough.

She scratched her face on everything. The corners of furniture, boxes, the laptop, the couch. It was hard work, living in a world that did not smell nearly enough like her, and knowing that she was the only one who could rectify this situation. She worked tirelessly at it.

She had a flirty tail. Most cats tend to wag theirs when they’re angry; Mink moved hers about when she was happiest. She’d lay next to you, giving every impression of acting as though you were not there, yet make sure she had your attention and knew you had her affections with her tail. She’d gently slide it around your hand, your leg. Swaying back and forth, the tip turned up. Rotating in big circles, up and down, flopping and flipping and turning. Even when she was not paying attention to you, she had to make sure you were paying attention to her.

When Mink was in a really good mood, I’d put my face on the couch or bed right in front of hers. She’d lick my cheek, slowly, methodically, and lovingly, almost endlessly.

Almost two thousand words later, I feel like I still haven’t told you the first thing about her.

I think this is the last photo I took of Mink when she was still healthy. It was right after her birthday, just a few months ago, and she’s laying in her present from me and Ian. She didn’t use this bed long, but she loved it while she had it. Until she was too unsteady to get in and out without falling, it was her spot, and I could always count on seeing her there.

She hated having her photo taken so much, and few of them ever turned out well. In the vast majority of pictures we have of her, she’s asleep. I must have taken close to 20 photos of her that day. I deleted almost all of them, because I thought they were terrible. If only I had known then what I know now.

A part of me well and truly thought that I’d be able to keep her forever. I still wish that I had been able to.

There will never be another cat quite like Mink. I do not know what to do with myself without her. I do not know how or if I ever will. She’s my girl. She always will be. And I will always miss her.

I love you, princess baby angel girl. I love you for always.

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence, prison violence, anti-trans violence, rape apologism, and transphobia and misgendering.

Recently, a woman was allegedly raped orally by a prison guard at Riverside Correctional Facility. She reported the assault to authorities, and an investigation was begun. During that investigation, officials learned that she was not cis, as they had apparently been assuming, and promptly transferred her to a male prison (trigger warning on the link).

Jovanie Saldana, who has been named by prison authorities and the media despite being the victim of sexual assault, has now had her basic rights violated many times over. She was violated when a prison guard entered her cell and forced her to perform oral sex on him. She was violated when her brave decision to report this assault resulted in an investigation that placed her under scrutiny and revoked her right to privacy. She was violated when she was sent to a male prison, both denying her true gender and placing her at extreme risk of further physical and sexual violence. And she was violated when her name was released and spread without concern for her privacy or safety.

Clearly, trans prison inmates are not seen to be deserving of the same rights as their cis, non-inmate counterparts. That Saldana is a black woman also could not have helped these already abusive and oppressive figures to see her as more human. (Indeed, trans women of color are at much higher risk of violence than white trans women.) Saldana’s cousin strongly believes that the transfer to a men’s prison is retaliation for her rape allegations; the timing, media attention, and reaction of the prison guard’s union certainly make these charges credible.

If true, it means that the Pennsylvania prison system essentially punished an inmate for reporting rape by subjecting her to likely future rapes. (Fifty-nine percent of trans women are sexually assaulted while incarcerated, and the vast majority of trans women inmates are housed in men’s facilities.) Even if retaliation was not the primary motive behind the decision to move Saldana, the facts remain the same; a victim of prison rape has not been protected, but instead placed in a position where future prison rape is more likely than not.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, however, is far more concerned with Saldana’s gender presentation and genitals than with the allegation that she was raped by a prison guard who had control over every aspect of her daily life. They also are far more concerned about the prison’s apparently lax policy on cavity searches than the fact that a woman is now residing very unsafely in a men’s prison so shortly after reporting that assault. Indeed, they seem more concerned about the threat that Saldana allegedly presented to her fellow prisoners merely by existing:

A source close to the prison system, who asked not to be identified, complained that the slip-up “jeopardized a lot of women over there [at Riverside],” adding that Saldana tallied at least two infractions for fighting with other inmates during Saldana’s stint in the female jail. On average, Riverside houses about 730 inmates daily, Hawes said.

Of course, it’s not noted how many “infractions” most inmates at Riverside have or whether Saldana is the one who instigated the fights. It’s also not explained how, exactly, Saldana is more of a threat than any other inmate at the prison. We’re simply supposed to “understand” that trans women are “really men,” and therefore threatening to all cis women. The specter of sexual violence is also present, as trans women are routinely portrayed by everyone from Christian Conservatives to self-identified feminists as sexually predatory men in disguise.

Through this defamatory portrayal of Saldana, we are supposed to forget that the true sexually violent perpetrator was a cis man. In reality, it’s Saldana who was the victim of sexual violence, and the real threat to the safety of all women in the prison, both trans and cis, was the armed cis guard lording over them. Only in a kyriarchal society could the black trans woman who was raped and then placed in a position where she is very likely to be raped again be effectively transformed into the “real” sexual threat against more socially valued womanhood.

Indeed, the corrections officers’ union plans to exploit Saldana’s trans status to brand her as a liar, unrapeable, or some combination of both (warning for misgendering):

Lorenzo North, president of the union representing corrections officers, declined to discuss the officers’ failure to perform the required cavity searches.

“I don’t know how [Saldana] got through,” North said, adding that all inmates should be searched. “If you don’t strip-search somebody thoroughly, then you’re not 100 percent sure of getting whatever [contraband] that inmate has. He may have something up his butt.”

But North claimed the goof proved that the officer whom Saldana accused of sexual abuse is innocent.

The officer was transferred to another prison after Saldana’s recent complaint.

“I’m trying to get him back to RCF [Riverside] as soon as possible, because he didn’t do anything wrong,” North said.

How, exactly, Saldana being trans — and officers failing to do their jobs, for that matter — proves that she lied about being raped is not exactly clear. We are either to assume that trans women are “liars” by mere fact of living their lives as women (and that people who lie sometimes cannot tell the truth about being raped), or that trans women have no right to bodily autonomy to begin with and therefore cannot be sexually violated.

Either way, the purposeful dehumanization of Saldana and all inmates by proxy is terrifying, as is the stark inability to accept responsibility and hold guards to a standard of professionalism. North’s attitude as a prison guard authority inadvertently makes it incredibly easy to see how the original sexual assault occurred in the first place. Clearly it’s because those tasked with protecting prisoner safety do not give a shit, and excuses for violations will always be made.

This woman’s safety has been severely jeopardized. She needs protection and recovery services for the assault she endured, not an incredibly more dangerous set of surroundings and public outing. The prison system has behaved abysmally, showing a blatant disregard for inmate safety. Rape is not supposed to be a part of the punishment for any crime. And this rule isn’t only supposed to apply if you’re cis.

via Transgriot