February 23, 2015 - 15:05
I am writing this on a bit of a high, because I just got back from our book club session at PIC (not the real name), a women’s prison, which went really well. There inevitably were hiccups getting in, and we had a group about a third the size of last week, but it meant we got to have some great small group conversations. One of my favorite aspects of the book club is that I get to learn and hang out with a wonderful group of women. These women often have quote different perspectives than myself, but while I am there I try not to focus on the differenences, but rather on how I enjoy my time and conversations with these women, and how I hope everyone in the club shares the same sentiment.
However, there were a few moments today that reminded me in stark terms of how different my life is from the lives of the women who are incarcerated at PIC. First, one woman (I’ll call her Natalia) in the class walked in and told us she was in labor, and that she was 3 cm dilated. Of course this shocked me (and I think other members of our group), but she was very relaxed, or at least gave off a relaxed appearance. She told us she would go to the hospital once her water broke. I asked if family members would be permitted to meet her there, and she informed us that her mother would only be called to take the baby home. She has to go through the actual birth all on her own, and I think while shackled to the bed (this is just my guess, I don’t know this for sure).
Another moment that elucidated the disparities between our lives arose when we broke into small groups, and the women from PIC informally presented each group’s ideas. In two out of the three groups there were multiple women from PIC, and in one group there was only one PIC woman (along with two Bi-Co students). This group was the last to go, and the woman (“Charlene”) jokingly mentioned that she had to go (present) by herself. A Bi-Co student commented that she was in Charlene’s group too, but Charlene said something to the effect of “its different,” and then, “I don’t get to go party with you all tonight.”
Selfishly, I love hearing feedback from the women that touches upon the idea of them enjoying how we all participate in a similar manner in the book club. I love thinking that we are a horizontally structured group, in which we (as the outsiders) don’t exert power over the insiders. In reality though, this is not the whole truth. We do all participate in the book club, but the Bi-Co contingent organizes it. We never use our power to order a woman to do something she does not want to do, but frankly, we probably could if we wanted to. Or at the very least we could report something to a CO who would then exert power. (I would never do this, but I think it is important for me to be aware of the actually very vertical technical power structure of the group). I will very likely not have to go through child birth on my own, while shackled to a hospital bed, and I did get to spend my Friday night doing whatever I wanted. Despite my feeling that I am building some great relationships, and am gaining a sense of what it is like to be incarcerated, I need to confront the fact that while we share some similarities, for the most part the life I am currently living is so different from the lives that women at the prison are living.
Coming back to this post the morning after I wrote it, I think the best way for to me to reconcile these feelings is to continue to not focus on differences when I am at PIC, but once I leave to think about placing the conversations I have within the greater context of the wholly unjust criminal justice system.