Local organizers held a digital solidarity and letter writing event on Sunday to talk about abolition and decarceration during the COVID-19 crisis.
By Sarah Conway
Image courtesy of Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration Facebook page.
A digital solidarity event was held on Sunday to uplift incarcerated mothers and amplify resources available to them ahead of Mother’s Day next week. Over 100 attendees gathered to write emails to people incarcerated in women’s prisons, listen to spoken word poetry and discuss building a new world without incarceration.
More than 200,000 women are currently incarcerated in the U.S., nearly eight times more than in 1980—and two-thirds of them are mothers.
While Sunday’s event will provide letters that bring solace to these mothers, it also included mini teach-ins on issues that impact incarcerated families, like prison gerrymandering and why the census matters, the decarceration of Cook County Jail during the COVID-19 crisis and how to learn about individual cases and support people’s release.
“Building relationships—that’s really the most powerful part of this work,” says Holly Krig, director of organizing for Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration. The group offers mutual support to mothers who have been harmed by incarceration and are survivors of violence while imagining a world without jails and prisons.
It’s the first digital installation of this annual event where people usually gather in-person to write emails and cards to mothers in local jails and prisons so they don’t feel forgotten on Mother’s Day. “Letter writing is actually a way to unravel so many things. It’s an opening. There’s no replacement for coming together as a community, eating snacks and hearing children playing,” Krig says.
This year’s event was organized by The Women's Justice Institute and the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago along with support from Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Restore Justice Illinois, Illinois Prison Project, Chicago Volunteer Doulas, Love & Protect and CommunityCave Chicago.
With Mother’s Day around the corner, event head organizer Alexis Mansfield, a senior advisor at The Women's Justice Institute, stressed that solidarity and emotional support is needed now more than ever for women in prison, as some struggle to find housing after being released during a pandemic.
“The world is very different now than when people went in. It is different for us, but it is night or day for people getting released with no face coverings, notebooks or even a pen to write down information,” Mansfield says.
The event also included a fundraiser. The proceeds will buy email credits for people who are incarcerated so they can communicate with friends and family. They’ll also go toward care packages for people being released from Logan Correctional Center over the next few months, including backpacks, hygiene products, masks, journals, soap and other essentials.
If you are interested in sending a Mother’s Day email to people incarcerated in Illinois women’s prisons, email Alexis Mansfield at alexis@womensjustice.net.
Read more of City Bureau’s coverage on maternal health.
Event attendees were a mix of advocates, artists and Chicagoans who wanted to learn how to send letters to people incarcerated in Illinois. Incarcerated-mothers advocate Toni Tranchita peppered Sunday’s video chat room with advice and wisdom on writing letters to people who are incarcerated.
“You think it’s just a card and someone wouldn’t care but it actually means the world to someone in the inside world,” Tranchita explained over Zoom. “Prison is the loneliest place in the world. To be locked down on top of it and be in an epidemic is horrible.”
Chicago-based raptivist Bella BAHHS (Black Ancestors Here Healing Society) read a series of poems including “O.G.” She says her whole life and lived experience drew her to abolition which seeks to eliminate the prison system and replace it with rehabilitation, resources and systems that do not focus on punishment.
BAHHS says her first protest was in her mother’s womb while her mother was pregnant and fighting a case. She was raised by her grandmother and aunts while her parents were in prison. “I had a beautiful childhood but I knew my parents weren’t supposed to be separated from me,” she recalls. Women are the fastest-growing prison population and Black women and Black mothers, in particular, are over incarcerated in the U.S.
“The lockdown is a great time for people to think about abolition and understand that we can build a new world where prisons don’t need to exist,” she says.
Melissa Hernandez, the founder of The Chicago Puerto Rico Project and a community outreach and project manager at the Women’s Justice Institute, remembers what it felt like to hold a letter in her hands while she was in Cook County Jail. It was a time when “the world felt really heavy” and she was separated from her young son.
“When you are incarcerated, you are pulled away from your family, your children and the people you love and care about. It means so much to receive a letter and know that someone is thinking about you and someone cares about you,” she says.
Mail and packages help, Hernandez stressed, and it’s a way to support women inside the system and to keep their bonds strong. “Women have a resilience about us,” she says. “We are in many ways each other’s rocks.”
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