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Overview
Most of the women in these pages, as is true for the majority of imprisoned women, were incarcerated for offences related to drugs and theft. Several were involved in violent incidents. Three of the contributors - Betty Krawczyk, Ann Hansen and Christine Lamont — did time for political activities that received international media attention.
Karlene Faith’s work as a long-time prisoners’ rights activist has given her deep insight into the politics of punishment. The commentary and reflections she and co-editor Anne Near contribute to the book raise provocative questions about personal accountability, the state’s uses and abuses of power, and the broad social challenges women face.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781926685595 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | D & M Publishers |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2009 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 384 |
| File size: | 782 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
From Chapter Nine
Betty’s Story
The iron door to my cell has clanged shut for the last time. At least for me. At least for this trip. My trial is finally over, with all the attending media coverage of my logging blockades, and I am now on my way out of the maximum security part of the women’s prison.
Burnaby Correctional Centre for Women is located in the boonies of Burnaby, British Columbia. Or what used to be the boonies. Now the entire section lying along this side of the banks of the Fraser River where the women’s prison is located has been turned into an expansive industrial park.
My guard and I are heading over to the Open Living Unit, where I have just been transferred. I am pushing a large prison laundry basket in front of me. The laundry basket is borrowed from the laundry section “C” for the occasion. It holds all of the worldly goods I was allowed to have in my cell in maximum security.
There are strict rules concerning what a prisoner may have in her cell. It’s the same in Open Living. I’ve been housed there twice before. I know from experience that the cells in Open Living really do look more like rooms, even though they are not discernibly bigger, and that the guards there wear civilian clothing and are called “staff.” The women who are called staff instead of guards usually make an effort to be, if not exactly friendly, at least approachable. Unlike the uniformed guard who is accompanying me at the moment with a rather stern demeanor.
She’s young. And silent. No chit chat from her. She probably doesn’t know what to make of me. A lot of the guards don’t. Because most of them are aware of my crime, which was standing in the middle of a logging road and refusing to move, in order to try to help save some of the public old-growth forests of British Columbia for everybody’s grandchildren, including my own, which inspires me, from time to time, to disobey a court order, which in turn lands me in jail. This time my quarrel was, and is, with International Forest Products, popularly, or unpopularly, known as INTERFOR, over the ancient forests in the Elaho Valley, just north of Vancouver.
So some of the guards appear diffident in my presence, or even embarrassed. It’s because of my white hair and dignified stance. Most of the guards, like their superiors, seem to wish that environmental activists, especially seventy-two-year-old great-grandmothers like me, would stay out of BCCW. We protesters bring in unnecessary complications for prison officials and staff, and unwanted publicity…
Table of Contents
IntroductionChapter One Diane: Paying for the Pleasures of Pot
A poet and young mother of two spends three painful years in prison for selling a small amount of marijuana to an undercover cop. She thought she was doing a favour for a friend.
Chapter Two Angelique: What’s Normal?
Born on a stormy Texas night, Angelique’s grandmother named her just after her father had sworn she was a child of the Devil. That was just the beginning of the high drama that was her outlaw life.
Chapter Three Lia: When Welfare Isn’t Enough
Welfare fraud is a common crime for which women are imprisoned. Lia was determined to go to college, and she defrauded the government to keep her daughters fed and housed.
Chapter Four Kathy: Just an Average American Girl
A classic set-up for breakdown—a young working-class couple in a shaky second marriage, three small children, a mother harried from work, family and money stresses—resulted in the death of Kathy’s stepson.
Chapter Five Norma: Sex Is Always the Headliner
Norma was expelled from nursing school in the 1950s, just before graduation, when it was discovered she was a lesbian. As an outcast, she roamed around writing bad cheques. Later, she began to write poems.
Chapter Six Vicki: The Low-Down High Life
Vicki was so determined to get over her drug addictions that she submitted to a frightening drug experiment by the prison doctor. The experiment didn’t work, but she discovered her own intelligence.
Chapter Seven Marie: I’m Not Afraid
After having been steadily brutalized by her husband, Marie stabbed him. He died, she went to prison, and she was not intimidated by anyone ever again.
Chapter Eight Mattie and Me: Crossing the Colour Line
A Black Muslim woman, Mattie was in prison most of her adult life on drug charges. She confronted racism in a prison classroom, with ramifications for a friendship and the feminist movement.
Chapter Nine Betty: Protector of the Forest
Betty Krawczyk, in her seventies, stands up to loggers, boldly blocking the road to protect the forest. Much admired as an author and an international environmentalist, she is also a tap dancer.
Chapter Ten Ann: Building a Revolution
Ann Hansen, as a member of the group dubbed the Squamish Five by the media, stood up to pornographers and those who would profit from war and pollution. She withstood prison like the revolutionary she is, and now she protects the environment.
Chapter Eleven Christine: Activist against U.S. Imperialism
Christine Lamont was standing up to the U.S.-supported military dictatorship of El Salvador when she aided and abetted in a kidnapping in Brazil to raise funds for the mass freedom movement.
Chapter Twelve First Nations Women: Prison as Colonization
A myriad of voices speak their truth about residential schools, foster homes and Canadian prisons.
Chapter Thirteen Gayle: The Politicization of Imprisonment
Gayle, serving a life sentence, now works with community groups, former prisoners and policy makers to protect prisoners’ rights.
Closing Reflections