Visiting People in Prison Orientation and Teach-In
Event Information
About this event
Context: Our Campaign
Survived and Punished NY launched a mass commutations campaign called #FreeThemNY in December, 2017. As part of building that campaign, we visit survivors of gender violence at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. Through our visits we listen to their stories and work with them to generate personal narratives from their own voice. These narratives are used in the #FreeThemNY campaign to pressure Governor Cuomo to commute the sentences of survivors and bring them home. Check out the stories of people currently in our campaign at this link.
This Workshop: Visiting People in Prison Orientation
In this workshop we will give an overview of what it looks like to visit those involved in the #FreeThemNY Campaign in prison and those who have reached out to us to become involved. We will share what a visit entails and the commitment and follow-up that comes with working with incarcerated individuals. Anyone who is interested in visiting survivors with us will be invited to sign up for further training and will be paired with a Survived & Punished member for the first visit. Many Survived & Punished members have developed meaningful friendships with the survivors they visited, as well as survivors' loved ones on the outside.
Please note for your planning purposes: There is significant commitment involved in visiting people in prison and managing the follow up. If you cannot commit at least 15 hours over the course of 2-3 months, this work might not be for you at this time.
If you attend, learn more, and then decide that visiting may not be for you, there will be opportunities to engage with our work in other ways such as attending general meetings, joining a working group, or engaging in letter writing events.
Come and bring your friends -- snacks will be served and the room will be full of love and solidarity!
This is a free event, but any donations made will go toward the costs of hosting the event and managing the #FreeThemNY Campaign.
Artwork by Just Seeds.
Organizer Survived and Punished
Organizer of Visiting People in Prison Orientation and Teach-In
Survived & Punished (S&P) is a coalition of defense campaigns and grassroots groups committed to eradicating the criminalization of survivors of domestic and sexual violence and the culture of violence that contributes to it. The all-volunteer organization includes community organizers, survivor advocates, legal experts, and policy advocates including currently and formerly incarcerated survivors.
The national S&P coalition is led by a core of organizers from the survivor defense campaigns, the national Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign and the California-based Stand With Nan-Hui campaign; the Chicago-based organization, Love and Protect (formerly the Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander); and the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. S&P also has two strong statewide team based in California and New York focused on freeing criminalized survivors from prisons and detention centers through organizing and policy advocacy in the state.
