This Thursday WWAV is launching our Community Voices Project with Never Going Back, a safe space for women who have been to jail or prison to talk about their experiences and share their stories. Whether you’ve spent a night in jail or years in prison, we know that the criminal justice system has taken its toll on you and your family. This is an evening for you!
For more than twenty years, WWAV has been using a grassroots framework to transform policies that hinder health, wellbeing and economic self-sufficiency. We have been successful because we know that for change to be real it must emerge from the community. When people come together and reflect on the issues that make them marginalized, they begin a first step to changing their relationship with the world. We work from that place – from that moment when a person sees that they are not what society has branded them – and we provide pathways for women and LGBTQ people to work to create the world they want to live in.
Women continue to bear the scars of the war on drugs, mass incarceration, systemic poverty, HIV/AIDS and domestic violence. Criminalization, and with it over-incarceration, had become an epidemic in Louisiana. One in fifty-five Louisianans is currently living behind bars, making Louisiana’s the highest incarceration rate in the world. Our state’s reliance on incarceration has made it harder to see that the problems being criminalized are often economically driven.  Louisiana’s poverty rate ranks fifth highest in the nation.
We know the statistics, but we don’t know the stories.  That’s why formerly incarcerated women like YOU need to be at the forefront of work to address the social justice, economic justice and structural health issues that hamper your wellbeing.  To do that, you need to be framing how people think about incarceration and about your life.
This summer, WWAV is beginning that process. We are holding space with formerly incarcerated women and giving YOU the stage.
To all of our allies: We want to thank you for helping us to make Thursday be the safe space that formerly incarcerated women need to come together and speak to one another. We will be hosting other open symposiums in the future. For this one, please spread the word to the formerly incarcerated women you know and support them in attending!