Vision

My image is more abstract. It implies that the female offenders that we read about, and will soon meet, play a small hand in the misfortunate conditions of their lives...and ultimately their crimes. Other factors, like racism, sexism and classism are active participants in their every day lives even though it is not often clear to those oppressed by them.

“You are only a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things” ~Unknown

Nixon, and later Reagan and Bush, ran highly successful media campaigns framing drug policy as being “tough on crime,” when hindsight provides incredibly compelling evidence that these policies are actually just “tough on people of color.”

"We can do much more to combat the prison-industrial complex which is ravishing our communities if we recognize its historical connection with slavery and look at the nineteenth-century abolitionist movement as an inspiration for a late twentieth-century abolitionist movement that will work to reduce and ultimately abolish the use of imprisonment as the main means of addressing (or rather not addressing) social problems that are rooted in racism and poverty." Angela Davis, from her essay "Prison Abolition" in Black Genius: African American Solutions to African American Problems (p.203)

...but that's what having a Vision is all about, right? 
Image from: cultivatingyoungmindsathome.com

This video was something a friend shared via facebook last night that related really deeply to my Memo topic, so I wanted to share it with you. 

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rWtDMPaRD8&feature=player_embedded)

Ideas of motherhood are often tools that incarcerated mothers use to help them survive imprisonment, but, they fail to realize just how many barriers are imposed on them that inhibit their ability to be mothers once they are released. 

Will these babies one day be criminalized the way their mothers are?