WHAT MUVS YOU?

{ SHIFT+CONTROL }{ WHAT MUVS YOU? } YOU ARE ENOUGH. THE BEYOND ROSIE’S CAMPAIGN

BY NICOLE HEROUX WILLIAMS I PHOTOS BY NSP STUDIO BY MARION RODRIGUEZ

This piece is aimed to educate and empower. This month we highlight The Women’s Community Justice Association in New York City and the Beyond Rosies Campaign. The campaign is women-led and consists heavily of directly impacted and formerly incarcerated people. sentence. Her family has the Campaign’s full support and we grieve with them. We need our leaders to step up and do what’s right for the women and genderexpansive individuals at Rikers. Sadly, it is too late for Ms. Yehudah. But they must act before tragedy strikes again. I learned through my experience having an Op Ed Published in the NY Daily News that editors choose the title – mainly to satisfy a quota for online traffic – and many times usurp the message.

The #BEYONDRosies campaign has been fighting to decarcerate and to close the women’s facility, The Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island jail, before the city’s 2027 timeline to close all facilities on Rikers and, to transform Lincoln Correctional Facility in Harlem, NYC into a Women’s Center for Justice for those who remain in custody.

Read our new report The Women’s Center for Justice: A Nation-Leading Approach on Women & GenderExpansive People in Jail.

“Trauma is the driver of a lot of things. Subconsciously, you have this built-up anger.

In this new place at Lincoln Correctional Facility, we want to operate from a healing perspective. Even if someone had to go upstate for some time, she would know she is on the pathway to healing and wellness.” said Rev. Sharon White-Harrigan, Executive Director WCJA

In May 2022 Mary Yehudah became the fifth person, and the first woman, to die at Rikers Island this year. In 2021 sixteen men died at Rikers Island jail. As a society we should be appalled. A jail sentence should not equal a death Also in May 2022, New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante featured the #BEYONDRosies campaign. Rev.

Sharon White-Harrigan said “This isn’t just about creating a new building. It’s about creating a new culture that allows people to get to where they need to be. There is justice without punishment. You can hold people accountable without leaving them worse than when they came in.” The print version titled “Imagining an Alternative for Justice and Healing,” by Ginia Bellafante is https://assets. nationbuilder.com/wcja/pages/85/ attachments/original/1653054084/ IMG_0370.jpg?1653054084 Last week Senator Julia Salazar, Senator Cordell Cleare, Assembly Member David Weprin and Assembly Member Michaelle Solages wrote a letter to Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams urging them to secure Lincoln for those currently at the womens facility on Rikers, rather than relocating them to a new Kew Gardens facility that opens in 2027. “The borough-based jail plan to relocate the women to a Kew Gardens facility where they would share the same spaces and staff as men would create the same or worse conditions than at Rikers,” they wrote. An estimated 77 percent of women at Rosie’s are domestic violence survivors, and the Kew Gardens plan risks exposure to their abusers and re-traumatization.

https://assets.nationbuilder.com/ wcja/pages/89/attachments/ original/1653511060/Salazar_ RMSC_Letter_-_Governor_Hochul. pdf?1653511060

Please sign on to support our campaign! https://www.womenscja. org/beyondrosies_campaign?utm_ campaign=women_s_center_ of_report_2022&utm_ medium=email&utm_source=wcja Marion Rodriguez, www.muvsu.net E: whatmuvsu@gmail.com

“The campaign is women-led and consists heavily of directly impacted and formerly incarcerated people.”

WHAT MOVES YOU