Few find it surprising that Jim Crow arose following the collapse of slavery. The development is described in history books as regrettable but predictable given the virulent racism that gripped the South and the political dynamics of the time. What is remarkable is that hardly anyone seems to imagine that similar political dynamics may have produced another caste system in the years following the collapse of Jim Crow—one that exists today.

– Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

The thesis of Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is exactly what the title implies: the U.S. criminal justice system has become a formal if unnamed means of anti-Black racial discrimination and social exclusion analogous to though distinct from Jim Crow. In the United States, Alexander argues, all aspects of this system — from policing to prosecutions to sentences to prisons to post-release restrictions — have not only a disparate impact on racial minorities, Blacks in particular, but were actively designed as a racial caste system and means of social control in the wake of Jim Crow’s collapse. And yet, because the system is officially race neutral and overt racial hostility by individual actors generally cannot be proven, the bulk of society goes around acting as though this racial caste system does not actually exist.

To make her case, Alexander turns naturally to the War on Drugs that began in the 1980s, at at time when drug use was on the decline and considered by virtually no one to be a serious social or criminal issue. Though “mass incarceration” and “the drug war” are not quite synonyms, they are fairly close. As Alexander shows, drug convictions make up a very large proportion of the enormous and unprecedented increase in incarceration rate in the past thirty years, from 300,000 in 1980, shortly before the drug war began, to over 2 million today. Alexander writes:

Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. Approximately a half-million people are in prison or jail for a drug offense today, compared to an estimated 41,100 in 1980—an increase of 1,100 percent. Drug arrests have tripled since 1980. As a result, more than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the drug war began. Nothing has contributed more to the systematic mass incarceration of people of color in the United States than the War on Drugs.

Alexander critically exposes the little understood origins of the War on Drugs. Generally, the drug war is traced to the explosion of crack cocaine in urban Black communities, when in fact crack did not become an issue until several years after the drug war was launched in 1982. The drug war has its roots in a combination of the deindustralization and globalization that resulted in mass job loss and a predictable and growing white backlash to the gains of the civil rights movement. The rate of Black unemployment quadrupled as a result of factory closings, while white unemployment increased at a far slower rate. With no new jobs appearing in communities of color, Black men were suddenly no longer needed as workers and therefore disposable. At the same time, unrest was growing among blue-collar white workers as a result of their own unemployment. Instead of creating jobs or addressing class disparities, conservatives harnessed this anger and effectively turned it on the Blacks with whom these whites actually shared exploitation and joblessness.

When crack hit in the mid-80s, years after Reagan officially launched his War on Drugs, he used it as a massive publicity campaign for his program. The media blitz dramatized and exaggerated the now infamous crack epidemic, promoted all kinds of ugly racist stereotypes about poor Black people, and spawned outrageously harsh mandatory sentences and sentencing disparities. At the same time, the sensationalistic  public relation campaign aimed at whites was backed up with enormous amounts of money and equipment being funneled to law enforcement who agreed to use it to fight this metaphorical “war” in a quite literally militarized way. As being “soft on crime” became a political career-ender, Democrats, too, got in on the act, instituting increasingly draconian and cruel punishments for the “crimes” of recreational drug use and addiction.

Before delving into The New Jim Crow, I considered myself relatively educated on the subject of the systemic racism of both the criminal justice system generally and the War on Drugs specifically. It wasn’t long after the introduction that I began to realize just how little I actually knew. Knowing that the system is racist is one thing; knowing how that racism legally and practically functions and how it has been actively protected by the highest powers is something else all together. This issue is about much more than just vastly disproportionate numbers of Black men in prisons and jails, or the fact that the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the entire world. It is about housing, disenfranchisement, the right to work, and the terrorism and social control of policing, probation, and parole.

Alexander’s “New Jim Crow” metaphor does not just describe prisons themselves, but the system that sends overwhelming numbers of Black men there in the first place and then proceeds to keep them on the margins of society for the rest of their lives upon release. This new Jim Crow, like the old one, creates a parallel society to which large numbers of Black people are relegated. From stop and search procedures that are rarely used against whites, especially middle-class ones; to mandatory sentences that lock people away for years on first-time non-violent offenses; to laws designed to keep released felons jobless, homeless, and disenfranchised, this racial caste system is quite deliberately almost impossible for its targets to escape.

Alexander walks us through the workings of the racist criminal justice system step-by-step, showing us how the U.S. manages to criminalize such huge numbers of men of color. The process begins with enormous federal financial incentives given to local law enforcement in exchange for agreement to comply with the drug war by rounding up as many people as possible. As middle-class white communities would be in an uproar if the same procedures used to criminalize Black men were used in their own neighborhoods — especially since, according to drug use statistics, they would result in as many if not more arrests — police concentrate their efforts on low-income, urban communities of color. Alexander horrifyingly pieces together how the Fourth Amendment has been effectively stripped of all meaning for the individuals who are stopped, and stopped extremely regularly, in these terrorizing everyday fishing expeditions. Police are allowed to stop individuals for virtually no reason and then ask to conduct a search without making clear that one can refuse; should one actually refuse, he will normally be arrested on a bogus charge, at which point he will be searched anyway. Meanwhile, virtually all claims of racial bias in this process have been ruled null and void by the Supreme Court, with racial profiling even sanctioned, provided it is not the “sole factor” influencing a stop.

After “the roundup,” Alexander shows how defendants have their charges trumped up and are denied meaningful representation. Often, they are forced to make a decision regarding whether or not to accept a plea deal in an incredibly short period of time, without first being given access to counsel. With extraordinarily high mandatory minimum sentences, charged individuals are almost guaranteed to plead guilty to “lesser” charges that are still likely to result in years in prison — all, usually, for simple possession. In fact, legislators and prosecutors admit that this coercive power to compel guilty pleas is precisely the intent behind minimum sentencing laws. Should defendants actually go to trial, they are likely to face inadequate representation from a vastly overworked lawyer and all or heavily white juries. Alexander further demonstrates that lengthy prison sentences are not the end, as social control extends through parole, which can result in a return to detention for the most minor of infractions — including continued addiction, being unable to make a scheduled check-in, or being unable to pay exorbitant fees. In 2000, 35 percent of all prison admissions were the result of parole violations. And, Alexander exposes, all claims of racial bias during these stages of the process have also been effectively cut off.

Finally, Alexander examines the period of “invisible punishment.” Upon release, ex-offenders face a maze of legal restrictions conjured up by “get tough” politicians largely in the Clinton 90s. Most commonly recognized is the virtual inability to find meaningful employment with a felony on one’s record, despite the fact that such a huge number of convicted felonies are non-violent. Even crueler than the inability to support oneself and one’s family is the fact that failure to maintain employment is a common cause of rearrest as a parole violation. In addition to being unable to obtain or maintain employment, let alone employment that provides enough to genuinely live off, individuals with felony drug convictions are barred from receiving federally funded public assistance in most states, including food stamps. Further, drug offenders are not eligible for public housing, and housing discrimination against not only former felons but also “suspected criminals” is perfectly legal. Public housing recipients are also able to be evicted for any drug crime committed in or even near their homes, even if they themselves were not aware of it, making relatives of usually-poor released prisoners reluctant to take them in, even temporarily. Ex-felons are barred from voting at least temporarily in almost every state, and voting rights are notoriously hard to get back even when ex-offenders are eligible, resulting in enormous numbers of officially disenfranchised Black citizens, and far more unofficially. None of this is to even begin to touch on the social stigma of a criminal record. All up, Alexander convincingly shows that the intent and effect of the new Jim Crow is to punish Black men, who entered the system only because they are Black, into perpetuity.

The New Jim Crow is not without its flaws and limitations. Alexander declines to take up the issue of increasing rates of incarceration for women both cis and trans, though these women are themselves overwhelmingly non-white, instead choosing to focus on the large majority of male individuals swept into the criminal justice system. While Alexander retains a sharp focus on class, she does avoid and ignore other marginalized identities that make one more likely to be targeted by the criminal justice system, such as disability and mental illness. Further, while the system was clearly designed decades ago to target Black men specifically, the more recent and apparently seamless adaptation of mass incarceration to the growing Latino population’s threat to white supremacy — and what this adaptation means — is left for future writers to take up.

While Alexander’s strict focus on the drug war is understandable, it can be somewhat frustrating in its exclusion of all other causes of mass incarceration. Though most of her racial rhetoric is bold, even radical, in various passages toward the end of the book I found myself disagreeing with some of Alexander’s more soft-peddled stances. The economic realities of the (never-named) prison industrial complex, also a huge player in increased incarceration rates and their maintenance, only garner a couple of pages of discussion. And surely, the topic of racism within the criminal justice system is too large for any single book to cover comprehensively, which means that major issues like police violence, prison violence, lack of adequate medical care in prisons, and so on, are barely touched on, if they are broached at all.

Despite the fact that one book cannot be everything, that’s not an insignificant list. And yet, this book is still invaluable in what it does accomplish: a vital primer for how racism and white supremacy function at all levels of the criminal justice system and how they are not mere accidents or unfortunate side effects. The New Jim Crow is compelling and endlessly quotable, a necessary read for anyone whose vision of social justice hopes to actually address race as a major axis of oppression in the United States.

A new study about the ongoing rape epidemic in the Congo has some rather terrifying statistics to offer. According to USA Today, 420,000 women are raped in the DRC every year.

Or, if you ask the Boston Globe, 1,152 women are raped every day. The Guardian reports that 48 women are raped every hour. And the Sydney Morning Herald ups the ante even further by putting the number at one rape every minute.

Even if all of the varying numbers did add up just so, I can’t be the only one wondering when exactly this ongoing campaign of sexual terrorism against women turned into a competition over which Western newspaper could write the most shocking headline. Nor can I refrain from asking what, exactly, is the magic number of rapes that will suddenly make us care? Would the headlines still be blaring if it were 30 rapes an hour? Is one rape every one and a half minutes just too few that the numbers needed to be fudged and made even more sensationalistic? Do we, as Western observers, care more now than we would if the number were actually one rape every five minutes?

Do we care now? Will the subject merit our true attention? Will we suddenly start listening to Congolese survivors? Are we ashamed for not having listened more closely before, for not believing the full magnitude when women were already telling us the truth? Do we feel better now that a U.S. organization has officially verified their lived experiences? Or will we remain indifferent until the numbers hit two rapes every minute? Five rapes every minute? One every second? Where precisely is the cut off point for compassion and a sense justice? How many women must be raped before we start to care enough to look at the causes? How high do the numbers have to be?

I am in no way trying to suggest that these numbers do not matter. Nor am I arguing that they are not horrific, that they do not deserve attention, or that headlines on the topic are unwarranted. What I’m condemning is the objectifying and imperialistic tendency towards disaster porn. What I’m criticizing is the refusal to engage with the issue of violence in the Congo in an in-depth and ongoing basis that puts these numbers in context, and the decision to instead resort to pearl-clutching headlines designed to shock Western readers with information we already had and will continue to ignore.

I’m also making clear that the response to this extremely extended crisis would look a lot different were it occurring somewhere other than sub-Sahara Africa. It’s not that the media takes most rape seriously, or that even the most privileged rape survivors are immune to rape apologism, victim-blaming, and indifference — this entire blog is a testament to these things not being true.

But on the one hand, that is precisely the point. These same newspapers that report these numbers with horror and very little background or analysis will tomorrow resort to shaming and casting doubt on rape victims from their own communities. Tomorrow, when it is no longer convenient to feign interest in rape, it will be back to business as usual. Tomorrow, lines will be drawn between the “date rape” that so many women needlessly whine and exaggerate about and the “real” rape that is downplayed by taking it seriously — after all, what about those women in the Congo?

Indeed, the part of this study that has been the most ignored and will continue to be pushed to the margins is the fact that this study shows higher numbers than others, in large part, because it includes rape by intimate partners instead of only rape committed as a tactic of war — a fact that makes the situation look a lot more similar to the one in countries where most don’t consider rape to be a big problem.

And, on the other hand, while the shaming and ridicule of rape victims is ubiquitous in the U.S. and other Western countries, some victims are indeed always more valued than others. We wouldn’t have to wait until the number of rapes hit “one every minute” before we started to care, if a large portion of those victims were white, cis, economically privileged women — at least, not if those rapes were in large part being committed within the context of war and with the level of violence we’re seeing against Congolese women. We wouldn’t have to wonder whether one every minute is actually going to be enough to cause real concern. We would know that there would be outrage.

But women who are black, who are poor, who are from countries labeled “third world” always fall towards the very bottom of hierarchy of rape victims who will gain Western attention. We in developed Western nations can and will ignore their plight because we have constructed them as less than women, less than human. We can simultaneously tut-tut at the atrocity and turn away from it because it is what we expect from those men we have culturally constructed as inherently barbaric, because it’s what we believe the women have come to expect, too.

And we can ignore our role — the role of industrialized nations and of consumers, especially in the U.S. We can look at the numbers and think it is “them” instead of “us.” We who aren’t living in the Congo can refuse to ask the question of why there is so much rape and assume that it has something to do with “lesser” cultures instead of so much to do with our own. We can side-step questions of rape culture and imperialism and colonialism and economic racism and consumer culture. We can forget to ask why we ignored earlier opportunities to ask hard questions and demand change.

We, we reading these headlines divorced from the context in which the news was created, can read “one rape every minute” and exclaim “those poor women!” without wondering why we didn’t care before someone made the headline sufficiently eye-grabbing, and without demanding accountability from ourselves now.

Trigger Warning for descriptions of sexual violence and abuses against sex workers

Last week, Jordan Flaherty wrote an article at Colorlines about how sex workers are being punished under an archaic and punitive law that specifically targets those who are convicted of selling oral or anal sex (as opposed to vaginal sex). The law makes these sex workers open to being labeled as felons by police and prosecutors, and worst of all, forces them to register as sex offenders.

Last month, a coalition of advocates, including Women With A Vision and the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed a federal lawsuit challenging the statue:

Eve, who asked that we not reveal her real name or age, spent two years in prison. During her time behind bars she was raped and contracted HIV. Upon release, she was forced to register in the state’s sex offender database. The words “sex offender” now appear on her driver’s license. “I have tried desperately to change my life,” she says, but her status as a sex offender stands in the way of housing and other programs. “When I present my ID for anything,” she says, “the assumption is that you’re a child molester or a rapist. The discrimination is just ongoing and ongoing.”

Eve was penalized under Louisiana’s 205-year-old Crime Against Nature statute, a blatantly discriminatory law that legislators have maneuvered to keep on the state’s books for the purpose of turning sex workers into felons. As enforced, the law specifically singles out oral and anal sex for greater punishment for those arrested for prostitution, including requiring those convicted to register as sex offenders in a public database. Advocates say the law has further isolated poor women of color in particular, including those who are forced to trade sex for food or a place to sleep at night.

In 2003, the Supreme Court outlawed sodomy laws with its decision in Lawrence v. Texas. That ruling should have invalidated Louisiana’s law entirely. Instead, the state has chosen to only enforce the portion of the law that concerns “solicitation” of a crime against nature. The decision on whether to charge accused sex workers with a felony instead of Louisiana’s misdemeanor prostitution law is left entirely in the hands of police and prosecutors.

Prior to the lawsuit, Colorlines was covering the issue over a year ago. Melissa Gira Grant wrote about the suit at Third Wave right after it was filed last month, and the INCITE! Blog was on it both last year and earlier this month. You should definitely go check those articles out, as there’s no doubt that I’m behind. But I still think the issue is worth writing about and getting further attention.

As noted by Flaherty, Louisiana is the only U.S. state that requires people who have been convicted of crimes that do not involve minors or violence outside the sexual violence itself to register as sex offenders. Meghan’s Law, which created sex offender registries, was clearly intended to target rapists. Louisiana has actively made the choice to abuse the registry to further shame, punish, and vilify sex workers who have not committed any violence. Women are by far the primary target of these efforts, though gay and bisexual men are also incredibly vulnerable. Of the women targeted by the state, women who are non-white, trans, and/or poor are most open to attack.

People convicted under the Louisiana law must carry a state ID with the words “sex offender” printed below their name. If they have to evacuate because of a hurricane, they must stay in a special shelter for sex offenders that has no separate facilities for men and women. They have to pay a $60 annual registration fee, in addition to $250 to $750 to print and mail postcards to their neighbors every time they move. The post cards must show their names and addresses, and often they are required to include a photo. Failing to register and pay the fees, a separate crime, can carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.

Women and men on the registry will also find their names, addresses, and convictions printed in the newspaper and published in an online sex offender database. The same information is also displayed at public sites like schools and community centers. Women—including one mother of three—have complained that because of their appearance on the registry, they have had men come to their homes demanding sex. A plaintiff in the suit had rocks thrown at her by neighbors. “This has forced me to live in poverty, be on food stamps and welfare,” explains a man who was on the list. “I’ve never done that before.”

In Orleans Parish, 292 people are on the registry for selling sex, versus 85 people convicted of forcible rape and 78 convicted of “indecent behavior with juveniles.” Almost 40 percent of those registered in Orleans Parish are there solely because they were accused of offering anal or oral sex for money. Seventy-five percent of those on the database for Crime Against Nature are women, and 80 percent are African American. Evidence gathered by advocates suggests a majority are poor or indigent.

There are several broad critiques to be made of sex offender registry programs. In addition to the racial profiling and discriminatory enforcement noted in the Colorlines article, there are also further questions regarding whether sex offender registries actually keep communities safer and/or lower recidivism rates. Support for sex offender registry programs generally, however, should not be viewed as in any way incompatible with thinking that the Louisiana system is being used as a means of violence and oppression against sex workers and must immediately be overturned.

This is not in any way about keeping communities safer. It is about further punishing and portraying as deviant those who have failed to comply with societal rules regarding sexuality, class, and womanhood. It’s not about making communities safer, it’s about specifically ensuring that these particular community members are as unsafe as possible. And in that sense, it’s certainly working.

Because of the way that sex workers are generally made vulnerable to violence, as well as the ways that prisoners face frequent sexual assault, the most callous part of this practice may be the fact that such large numbers of those forced to register as sex offenders for non-violent offenses are victims of sexual violence themselves. Most of the women and men profiled in these articles talk about having been raped, whether as adults or children, whether by clients or family members, by prison guards or fellow prisoners. They must register as sex offenders, be unable to find employment or residences, face harassment and assault, and bear scarlet letters on their identification while at the same time, probably all of their actual rapists do not have to do the same. They have not only been raped, but been given their rapists’ punishments. They have not only been raped, but told that they are like, or perhaps worse than, their actual rapists.

And while this form of punishment for an act that should not be illegal in the first place is not even remotely acceptable for those who do engage in sex work because it is their preferred profession, it is also worth noting that there are many sex workers who do sex work as a form of survival or have otherwise been coerced. These workers are already more likely to be in street-based economies, and therefore are more likely to be targeted by law enforcement and more likely to be singled out for felony instead of misdemeanor punishment as a result of judicial prejudice.

In other words, punishing people for what they choose to do with their own bodies, when those actions do not harm any other person, is unconscionable — as is punishing them specifically for selling forms of sex perceived as less acceptable by a cissexist, heterosexist, anti-sex society. But quite a few of those women and men who have been forced to register as sex offenders didn’t even necessarily have a choice. And for that, they have been branded by a racist, anti-trans, classist, anti-gay system.

It will be interesting to see how this case plays out, and whether the court will decide with power and oppression as usual, or with the people and justice.

Arizona legislators are working on a new anti-immigration bill that is essentially the hospital equivalent of their notorious SB 1070. The new bill, SB 1405, would require all hospitals within the state to verify the immigration status of all patients. If a patient cannot prove that sie is in the country legally, hospital staff would be required by law to contact immigration officials.

A new bill making its way through Arizona’s state legislature is drawing a lot of attention. It’s Senate Bill 1405. Some call it the hospital version of SB 1070.

Anyone who has spent a day at Maricopa County Medical Center knows people from all walks of life are wheeled through the halls.

But if a new piece of legislation passes, some of those patients will be wheeled from the emergency room to immigration officials.

If SB 1405 passes, hospitals would be required to check a patient’s citizenship status after administering any emergency medical care.

If the person isn’t in the United States legally, the law would require they be turned over to immigration officials.

Yes, this bill is real. It can be read in full on the Arizona State Legislature’s website, and view the official fact sheet.

Now, the bill itself does not actually require that hospitals refuse treatment to those who are undocumented or cannot prove immigration status. SB 1405 doesn’t go quite that far — at least, in this draft.

But do not be at all mistaken — if passed, an inability to access medical care will be precisely what occurs all the same.

Already, some immigrants, terrified and terrorized by the very real raids and surveillances that are a daily threat to their communities, falsely believe that hospitals are required to check immigration status. As a result, they avoid medical treatment, even when it is dire. People have become very ill, risked their lives, been left with lifelong conditions that would have been treatable earlier, and undoubtedly died. Because there is a war to protect U.S. borders, and undocumented bodies have inevitably been declared its enemy.

If this bill is passed — and with the passage of SB 1070, it is most certainly more than a remote possibility — that situation will be multiplied many times over. People will forced to choose between the dangerousness of refusing medical care and hoping they survive and the dangerousness of interacting with institutions have declared their existence, their very selves to be “illegal.” As now with those who can’t afford care in the U.S. for-profit medical system, serious conditions will be nervously brushed off. Rape victims, victims of intimate partner violence, and women and trans* people who are having pregnancy complications will go without treatment. There will be no such thing as safety. Violence will become even more inescapable than it is now. And people will die.

People will die.

They will die, and this fact — this is not speculation, it is a simple cause and effect analysis, it is a fact — is neither a secret nor a mystery. And clearly, that’s at least part of the point. As KPHO Phoenix reports:

Those in favor of the bill said hospitals shouldn’t be treating people in the country illegally.

They don’t quote a proponent of the bill in support of this statement, but such people are not exactly difficult to find. They are everywhere, asking why should “they” (undocumented immigrants) get to use “our” (U.S.) schools, anyway? Clearly, children whose parents don’t have the right papers do not deserve an education, they do not need to read or add or write. They are seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” police forces. Clearly, some of us deserve access to the institutions generally regarded as the primary means to keep communities safe, some of us deserve to report crimes against us, to not be assaulted and raped, and some of us do not. And they are indeed seen asking why “they” should be allowed to use “our” hospitals — there is a health care crisis already, so how dare they use up resources?

Clearly, some of us deserve to live and some of us deserve to die. Because that is what the ability to access health care comes down to. And those supporting this bill know it.

And then there is this:

Senate President Russell Pearce, a Mesa Republican who was chief sponsor of last year’s immigration law, says the hospitals bill is part of a broader effort to crack down on illegal immigration. The hospitals bill wouldn’t bar people from getting care, but it would put the onus on hospitals to “do due diligence,” Pearce said. “We’re going to enforce our laws without apology.”

Added Pearce: “It’s the law. It’s a felony to (aid and) abet. We’re going to enforce the law without apology.”

This is what happens when we declare people “illegal,” when we start calling them by that slur publicly and officially. If they are illegal, their very lives are illegal. To protect the health and safety of those declared illegal, to afford them the very most basic human rights, to treat them as human beings, becomes a crime.

As ms. radically hott off writes:

How much more savage and vindictive can we be? what other mami will have to choose between the health of her children and a place to live/work? Do you know what that feels like? To see your sick child and know—I’m going to have to take her in? To *dread* getting help for your child? I feel like that all the time because of money—I can’t even imagine the added burden of knowing that you will lose everything because your child has a right to live and be healthy.

Those proposing and supporting this bill don’t even recognize that this right to live and be healthy exists for certain bodies, including those which belong to children. They certainly don’t mind putting it in extraordinary jeopardy.

The bill was originally scheduled to go before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, but was yanked at the last moment due to a lack of votes. The sponsors, however, have stated that they are considering other committees. We have most certainly not seen the last of SB 1405, and with numerous other states considering legislation similar to SB 1070, we are witnessing the mere beginning of a white supremacist resurgence in the U.S. In the general public consciousness, the bars for what constitutes either “extreme” or “racist” have both been raised. Progressives can only ignore efforts like these and assume they will just go away at the risk of people losing not only their homes and incomes and right to be near their families, but also their lives.

Yesterday, I wrote about the horrific case of Kelley Williams-Bolar (pictured left), a woman who has been jailed for ten days and slapped with a felony record — which will prevent her from obtaining her teacher’s license — for sending her children to a school district other than the one they lived in.

My analysis of this unconscionable set of events can be found in the previous post. Today, I just want to draw your attention to a way that you can help Williams-Bolar appeal her case. Via Change.org, Williams-Bolar is working with the National Action Network, and is in need of funds to help her pay the legal fees she will incur in appealing the judge’s verdict.

You can send donations to the National Action Network Akron Chapter, c/o Kelley Williams-Bolar, P.O. Box 4152, Akron, Ohio, 44321. Checks can be made payable to Williams-Bolar.

Please give if you can and help spread this information far and wide.

Last week, a woman was sent to jail for ten days, placed on two years probation, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. Her crime was fudging documents so that she could send her two daughters to the “wrong” school district, in the richer Akron, Ohio suburb where her father lived. She was led away in handcuffs.

On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Williams-Bolar could have been sent to a state prison for up to 10 years, but Judge Cosgrove decided on a 10-day sentence in the Summit County Jail after weighing Williams-Bolar’s lack of criminal record with the seriousness of her crimes.

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Cosgrove told NewsChannel5 after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.

Prosecutors said the lies cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.

The school district spent about $6,000 to bring the case to trial. That included hiring a private investigator who followed Williams-Bolar and her children around while secretly videotaping their movements.

Superintendent Brain Poe said Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.

Poe said residency disputes are usually resolved after parents prove that they live in the district, pay tuition or remove their kids from the schools.

This marked the first time that one of their residency challenges went before a jury in criminal court. Poe said prosecuting this case was meant to send a message.

“If you’re paying taxes on a home here… those dollars need to stay home with our students,” Poe said.

One cannot honesty discuss this case without discussing the fact that Williams-Bolar is a black woman, raising black children in a city that has a large non-white population, living in a home secured through the local Housing Authority, while Copely is a very comfortably middle-class and overwhelmingly white town. Williams-Bolar is a mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to the “wrong” school district. But she’s also a black mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to a white school district.

Still, some will inevitably argue that this is not an issue of race or even class. It’s an issue of rules, of order. Someone broke the rules, and now they have to pay.

I would like to remind them firstly that who pays and how is always political.  But just as importantly, it is not arbitrary where we place borders, how we enforce borders, and who we punish for crossing them. Borders, especially modern ones, are chosen. They are artificial. We like to tell ourselves that we create borders out of necessity, to more efficiently manage communities and resources. But we also create those borders specifically to keep other people out, to control resources in a way that prevents certain populations from accessing them. There is no accident in how borders are drawn and who is being kept out and removed from resources, not along lines of race, and not along lines of class — especially not in a country were so many borders were explicitly drawn with racist intent, during times of colonization, during times of slavery, during times of Jim Crow and less “official” forms of segregation, or even during modern times of “legals” and “illegals.” It’s a little too easy to write off as coincidence that the “wrong” school district was white in a country that has a very long and modern history, both official and unofficial, of keeping all non-white but especially black students out of white schools.

As Superintendent Poe explicitly states up above, this is about “our” tax dollars, and keeping them where they belong. And anytime we start talking about “us” and “them,” we need to look at what we mean by those words, because it rarely reflects well on our intentions and prejudices. William-Bolar crossed a border that was designed to keep her out. She “stole” resources that were apparently not her or her children’s to have. (Indeed, she was also charged with grand theft, which resulted in a hung jury.)

I think it’s about time we think about what we mean by “racism” if a black mother landing in jail because she sent her kids to a better school that would not have them doesn’t count, if calling it “stealing” when she gives them access to resources these white parents get to take for granted doesn’t qualify. If we don’t understand the racism of the much higher likelihood that a black mother will have to send her child to a sub-par school that will not teach them all they need to know than a white mother, if we don’t understand the racism of punishing her for fighting back against that inherently unequal, oppressive, white supremacist system, we don’t understand the first thing about racism at all.

In fact, (though I object to his metaphorical use of the word “cripple”) I can’t say it any better than Dr. Boyce Watkins did in his blog post:

This case is a textbook example of everything that remains racially wrong with America’s educational, economic and criminal justice systems. Let’s start from the top: Had Ms. Williams-Bolar been white, she likely would never have been prosecuted for this crime in the first place (I’d love for them to show me a white woman in that area who’s gone to jail for the same crime). She also is statistically not as likely to be living in a housing project with the need to break an unjust law in order to create a better life for her daughters. Being black is also correlated with the fact that Williams-Bolar likely didn’t have the resources to hire the kinds of attorneys who could get her out of this mess (since the average black family’s wealth is roughly 1/10 that of white families). Finally, economic inequality is impactful here because that’s the reason that Williams-Bolar’s school district likely has fewer resources than the school she chose for her kids. In other words, black people have been historically robbed of our economic opportunities, leading to a two-tiered reality that we are then imprisoned for attempting to alleviate. That, my friends, is American Racism 101.

This case is a textbook example of how racial-inequality created during slavery and Jim Crow continues to cripple our nation to this day. There is no logical reason on earth why this mother of two should be dehumanized by going to jail and be left permanently marginalized from future economic and educational opportunities. Even if you believe in the laws that keep poor kids trapped in underperforming schools, the idea that this woman should be sent to jail for demanding educational access is simply ridiculous.

You should read everything he has to say on the subject.

In the end, William-Bolar’s real punishment is not the indignity and injustice of her 10 days in jail. It is the felony record that will follow her for many years to come. It will inevitably keep her from obtaining employment, from creating an economically better life for her daughters. Specifically, it will keep her from getting the teaching license she has been studying for at college — money, time, and effort all sent down the drain. A dream and opportunity taken from her because she had dreams for her daughters, wanted opportunities for them, and did the best she could in an oppressive system to see to it that they got them.

Maybe we should talk about that when we want to talk about theft, what was stolen, and from whom.

via sheresists

UPDATE: Information on how to help Kelley Williams-Bolar with her legal fees can be found here.

Trigger Warning for rape apologism, brief descriptions of sexual violence

Former pro-baseball player Lenny Dykstra (left) was recently accused by a woman, his former housekeeper, of repeated sexual assault. According to the woman’s claim, Dykstra forced her to perform oral sex on him every Saturday. Earlier this week, prosecutors declined to file charges, apparently citing a lack of evidence that the sexual contact was forced.

No story that I could find on the topic provided many more details than that. Indeed, providing a stark insight into their priorities, more than half of the LA Times article (the longest article available) consists of information not about the rape charges, but about Dykstra’s recent financial problems. Nevertheless, with the information available, I cannot form an opinion on whether prosecutors made an ethical decision, though I do find it interesting that they seemingly accept that the sexual contact took place, and only dispute whether a housekeeper giving oral sex to her boss every week like clockwork was non-consensual. I also, of course, do not know whether or not Lenny Dykstra is guilty of the allegations made against him.

So while all of these things certainly matter, they’re not what I wish to discuss today. What I’m interested in is Dykstra’s comment to the LA Times denying the charges, and how exactly he chose to frame that denial:

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Dykstra denied the allegations, saying the woman was trying to extort him to buy drugs.

“If she was assaulted on Saturdays, then I’m a … ballerina dancer on Sundays,” Dykstra said. “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?”

This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on. The allegations are not worth commenting on, apparently, because she’s a maid.

I probably don’t have to tell you that we live in a world where rape allegations are very rarely taken seriously. Rapes are glossed over, covered up, shushed. Victims are blamed, accused of petty ulterior motives, called liars or worse. Police dismiss complaints, hospitals refuse to do rape kits, and prosecutors decline to file charges — even when there’s video evidence or eye witnesses. If rape accusers aren’t working for the CIA (see: Julian Assange allegations), then they’re jealous or regretful, and always vengeful.

Rape allegations are very rarely taken seriously, but the fact is that some allegations are taken more seriously than others, some accusers defended more vigorously, and some attacked more vitriolically or dismissed more easily. Some accusers are seen as having credibility while others do not, and it is not a mistake that these accusers more often than not fall into camps according to relative marginalization and privilege. Some accusers are seen as being rapeable, are seen as having violence against them matter, and some are not. And it is still no mistake which victims tend to already be relatively valued by society. When Dykstra dismisses the allegations against him with nothing more than “This is a maid,” with an affirmation that she and her claims are not worth his breath, we see the heart of this matter.

It takes for granted a set of shared and oppressive cultural assumptions to say the words “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?” You must be kidding Dykstra. Who would take anything a maid says seriously?

The word “maid” is intended here as a blatant insult. (Indeed, the more correct term is “housekeeper.”) And what, exactly, do we know about maids?

Firstly, we know that the word maid is specifically gendered. Maids are women. Unlike culturally gendered terms, such as “nurse,” most people don’t just (wrongly) assume the term to refer to a woman; they know it. “Nurse” is the term for both men and women who work in the profession. But men and women housekeepers are not both called “maid.”

We also know that maids are both economically and socially devalued. According to the 2009 wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage for maids and housekeepers is a mere $19,250 — hardly a reasonable living wage. So, maids tend to be poor. But regardless of actual wages, housekeeping is still decidedly perceived as a “low status” occupation, not only because there is usually little pay and upward mobility available in the profession, but also because the work itself is not valued. Cleaning, scrubbing, picking up after people — these are all seen by most middle and upper class folks as submissive, degrading activities. Which is, of course, part of why they hire other people to do them. (It’s also no mistake that they are activities usually associated with women, or even called “women’s work.”)

We also know, or think we know, that maids are disproportionately women of color. I was unable to find statistics verifying whether or not this perception is accurate (if you’ve got them, toss them my way). But whether accurate or not, the fact remains that in the U.S., maids are understood to be more likely to be black, Asian, and especially Latina than the general female population. Maids are also commonly assumed to be immigrants, whether documented or undocumented.

Now, with the identify of Dykstra’s accuser rightly concealed, we obviously do not know her race, her immigration status, or even her wage. We do, however, know that even if she is white and U.S.-born and was paid handsomely, Dykstra was unequivocally playing into all of these assumptions about maids when he made his misogynistic, classist, racist comment and openly declared that their word does not matter, that violence against them does not matter, and that neither should be considered worth anyone’s time.

Saying “This is a maid. That’s not even worth commenting on, are you kidding me?” in a country where the term “maid” rightly or wrongly conjures up an image of a poor, migrant, Latina woman in a large number of minds is hardly a neutral act. Especially when poor, migrant, and non-white women are always more likely to have sexual violence against them be disbelieved or ignored. Abhorrently, in a culture that still links sexual assault to sexual attraction (and sexual attraction to social value), his words also suggest, “Who would want to rape a woman like that?”

I also can’t help but notice his syntax. It’s true that when speaking, especially when upset, few of us speak with perfect grammar. I don’t even write with perfect grammar. But in light of the rank misogyny, classism, and racism of his words, I find that it stands out. She is not a maid; this is. The dehumanizing sentiment is furthered by “That’s not even worth commenting on.” Presumably, Dykstra is using “that” to refer to the allegations, but coming right on the heels of “This is a maid,” it is jarring phrasing. If the spite of a dismissal framed as “This is a maid” did not transform the accuser into a thing quite starkly enough, “That’s not even worth commenting on” certainly does.

She is a thing. A thing to be raped? Perhaps. Certainly not a thing to care about, to protect, to value, to believe.

This has an impact on rape victims. Attitudes like this determine whether or not victims report, whether or not their friends and communities and judicial systems believe them, whether or not they blame themselves, whether or not rapists find themselves free to rape again and again. And attitudes like this do not harm equally, but discriminate against those already most disadvantaged on the social ladder.

I don’t know whether or not Lenny Dykstra committed the rapes of which he was accused. But I do know that his words, his defense, make life easier for rapists, and much, much harder for rape victims. Especially those marginalized rape victims who already are among the least likely to be acknowledged in our heteropatriarchal, racist, all-around kyriarchal system, who already have it much more than hard enough.

Last week, Adam Sewer published a great article at the American Prospect about the trend of making former prisoners literally pay for their own incarceration, with “user fees” being imposed as a condition of parole. It was a practice that I was unaware of, and one that I imagine many readers who do not have direct interactions with the prison system also did not know about:

Missouri defense attorney Justin Carver has seen it a million times. One of his clients, an 18-year-old parolee, was about to be sent back to prison because he was late paying restitution and “user fees” related to property-damage and peace-disturbance charges. The client showed up at court with $200, more than enough to pay off his $118 debt, in the hopes he could convince the judge to let him stay out and graduate from high school. The judge said he’d take the money, but Carver’s client would still have to spend 20 days in jail. Since he wouldn’t be able to graduate anyway, Carver’s client pocketed the $200 and spent two months in jail. Given that one Missouri county-prison administration estimated the cost per day of housing a prisoner at $64, it’s more than likely that stay cost the state several times the amount Carver’s client owed.

“If the taxpayers knew that was going on, they’d go bananas,” Carver says.

Unfortunately, I’m not nearly as optimistic as Carver. Personally, I know far too many people whose response to the above story would be a shrug and “Well, I guess he should have paid his fees on time.” Among many who would be outraged, the sense of anger and exasperation would come from the cost to the state — not the absurd and tragic fact that a young man was not able to graduate from high school over some property damage and $118. And I’d argue that’s really not a whole lot better than not being outraged at all.

It’s true that in a public policy sense, doing the right thing tends to cost less than doing the wrong thing. Providing universal health care would cost less than the waste and neglect of the current U.S. health system. Providing sustainable housing, mental health care, and addiction treatment would cost less than the current responses to either homelessness or drug use. And yes, it’s true that the right absolutely has obscured these truths, and their all too successful efforts do need to be combated. But unless we care about the underlying issues, we’re just going to keep finding ways to cut costs — or make it look like costs are being cut — without shifting our actual approaches to the problems at hand.

This creation of “user fees” for ex-prisoners is a perfect case in point. People are finally beginning to care about the cost of the prison industrial complex to the U.S. public. But since recidivism and humane treatment for offenders are still not the primary concerns, and the public still has a strong investment in punishment, the “solution” has simply been to find new and more inventive ways to punish offenders. And such punishments may take the form of “user fees” or cutting programs within prisons that make life more bearable and recidivism less likely.

In the recent Florida governor’s race, Republican candidate Rick Scott — now the governor-elect — pledged to cut prison costs by a billion dollars, mostly by reducing the salaries and benefits of prison officers, who responded with an ad campaign that accused Scott of wanting to release dangerous felons early. Neither side was willing to consider the one thing that might actually cut costs: reducing the number of people in prison. The dispute reflected a perilous dynamic for corrections reformers. State governors with recession-ravaged budgets are attempting to reduce prison costs without reducing their prison populations. They are reluctant to invest in solutions that make it look as though they’re “going easy” on people who have committed crimes, so programs to help the formerly incarcerated re-enter society have been given the short shrift in fiscally motivated prison-reform plans.

A 2010 survey published by the Pew Center on the States found that 61 percent of respondents supported sending fewer low-risk, nonviolent offenders to prison and that 75 percent favored reducing prison terms for such offenders if the ultimate goal was to save money, despite the fact that the sample skewed conservative. The results suggest Americans would be receptive to an effective re-entry program. Seventy-seven percent strongly agreed with the statement that “an effective probation and parole system would use new technologies to monitor where offenders are and what they are doing, require them to pass drug tests, and require they either keep a job or perform community service.”

Now, it’s certainly positive that U.S. citizens are increasingly interested in seeing non-violent offenders not spend time in prisons — it’s a start, at least. But I think that the travesty of effectively paying for one’s right to parole proves that basing incarceration policy solely off of the desire to save money is incredibly dangerous. Supporting less incarceration because of money rather than a desire for justice, improved lives, and safer communities is likely to result in nothing more than punitive structures that look and act an awful lot like prison, anyway. Indeed, looking at what kind of parole and probation system the public supports, one has to wonder what exactly the point of constant tracking and surveillance is if not a somewhat more lenient form of imprisonment, and what they expect and hope to happen when one tests positive for drugs or is unable to find or keep a job. I’m guessing that most respondents are relying on the threat and reality of prison to keep these individuals “in line.”

In other words, it seems that we, as the U.S. public, are increasingly open to alternatives to prison — but only so long as the prison system remains the backbone of our method of dealing with all undesirable behavior. The fact that we’re trying to force ex-offenders to pay for their own incarceration even though it probably costs significantly more than the alternative should be considered a problem, but it’s not the problem. The problem is that really, most of us are probably pretty alright with that. Because the point isn’t really so much about saving money, but proving to offenders and ex-offenders that they aren’t worth “our” money. The point is to force ex-prisoners to literally pay their way to freedom. The point is the same as the point of the entire prison system, at least from the general public’s point of view — punishment.

So I’m not sure that fighting the practice of “user fees” with information about how they’re actually costing more is the most effective method, either from a practical or social justice standpoint. It’s not particularly practical because saving money doesn’t really seem to be the goal of these initiatives — no matter what the official reasoning and surveys happen to say. The goal is to add punishment on top of punishment. And it’s not great social justice because focusing on the money completely eludes the conversation of how punishment is being wielded primarily against oppressed classes, furthering a cycle of harm, violence, imprisonment, and marginalization. It ignores that prison is designed to be oppressive, and forcing overwhelmingly already-oppressed (and poor) people to pay for the means of oppression against them is beyond unjust. Appealing to people’s pocketbooks instead of their senses of justice seems a lot easier and realistic, but it doesn’t question the system in which the prejudice and financial concerns of the privileged get to determine the worth and humanity of the oppressed.

The mainstream conversation needs to move away from a conversation about monetary costs — which we need to remember is far more frequently used against imprisoned populations than in favor of them — to one about recidivism, specifically why recidivism rates are so high and how to most effectively lower them. This seems like a far more effective and appropriate starting place for leading into conversations about why we are imprisoning so many non-violent offenders to begin with, where this desire for punishment comes from and whether it is either healthy or just, and how this connects to the way the prison system acts as a means of oppression for marginalized communities. Hopefully it would even eventually lead to conversations about punishment for violent offenders, and whether punishment is really the best way to prevent future harm (a topic I myself still struggle with deeply).

Centering the conversation around justice instead of money takes a lot more work and induces a lot more headaches, at least in the short term. But it’s the only way to manage conversations like ones about forcing ex-offenders to pay for their own incarceration effectively, in a way that doesn’t just play wack-a-mole with each symptom of a highly racist, classist, and all other kinds of -ist system one at a time.

Trigger Warning for sometimes graphic descriptions of human experimentation and medical research on non-consenting individuals

There’s a photo on my wall of a woman I’ve never met, its left corner torn and patched together with tape. She looks straight into the camera and smiles, hands on hips, dress suit neatly pressed, lips painted deep red. It’s the late 1940s and she hasn’t yet reached the age of thirty. Her light brown skin is smooth, her eyes still young and playful, oblivious to the tumor growing inside her — a tumor that would leave her five children motherless and change the future of medicine. Beneath the photo, a caption says her name is “Henrietta Lacks, Helen Lane or Helen Larson.”

No one knows who took that picture, but it’s appeared hundreds of times in magazines and science textbooks, on blogs and laboratory walls. She’s usually identified as Helen Lane, but often she has no name at all. She’s simply called HeLa, the code name given to the world’s first immortal human cells — her cells, cut from her cervix just months before she died.

Her real name is Henrietta Lacks.

– The opening words of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Henrietta Lacks was a poor black woman, a tobacco farmer. She knew that something was wrong when she went to seek health care at the free “colored” ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was diagnosed with a highly aggressive cervical cancer, and during her treatment — without her consent or knowledge — they cut out a piece of her. The cancer cells they cut are still alive today, are growing as I write this, are growing as you read it, are being bought, being sold, and being used for so many different kinds of research, I doubt there’s anyone who could name them all.

Henrietta Lacks died an excruciatingly painful death in 1951. And her cells have helped to develop seemingly endless medical advancements since then, and continue to develop them now. But just like Henrietta Lacks was never told that they cut out a piece of her cervix, her family was never told that here cells were still alive. The Lacks family only learned through a long series of events over 20 years later. Though those cells have made billions of dollars for various companies — both directly through the selling of HeLa to researchers, and indirectly through the selling of medicines and treatments HeLa has been integral in developing — they have not made a cent for the Lacks family. Indeed, at the time the book was written, many of Henrietta’s children and grandchildren continued to struggle financially, and several did not have health insurance to access the care that only exists because their mother and grandmother died.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, written by Rebecca Skloot and released in 2010, is about all of this.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a piece of creative non-fiction, which  means that while it is entirely fact, the author heavily relies on narrative to get those facts to the reader. As a result, unlike with most non-fiction books, some of the details contained in this review could be considered spoilers by some readers.

The narrative of the book alternates between the scientific history of the HeLa cells and the personal story of the Lacks family, particularly Henrietta’s youngest daughter Deborah, who was desperate to learn more about her mother and see her get the recognition that she deserves. The book is not a “feminist book” in the sense that it does not offer a feminist or otherwise gendered analysis of the events it describes — though some relatively small race and class analysis is included. But I imagine that few who have even a passing understanding of the ways that gender, race, and class intersect and operate in U.S. society could manage to read this book non-politically.

Indeed, what was done to Henrietta Lacks and her body is as impossible to divorce from her gender as it is to divorce from her race and her class. It’s impossible to separate the violation and violence of removing a part of a woman’s body — a part of her cervix, no less — while she is unconscious, and without even bothering to ask, from the continued sense of public ownership over women’s bodies and reproductive lives, black women’s especially. It’s impossible to divorce that violation from the ongoing history of sexual violence against women, and sexual violence against black women by white men in positions of authority specifically. It is as impossible to divorce her treatment from her gender in the same way that it is impossible to divorce it from the history of non-consensual scientific experimentation on African Americans or the history of slavery or the context of segregated hospital wards. It is as impossible to render her gender irrelevant just as it is impossible to render irrelevant the notion that doctors felt poor patients owed the “donation” of their bodies for scientific research as a form of payment for their care.

The point is not that they would not have stolen from Henrietta Lacks’ body if she had been a man, or if she had been white. The book presents evidence, in fact, that they likely would have. The point is that context matters, especially when at stake are not only individual senses of trust and safety, but lives. Violations don’t occur in a vacuum. This violation was committed against the backdrop of racism, classism, and misogyny, as did the ongoing violations committed against her family.

At no point is this made more clear than through the story of Elsie. Elsie was Henrietta’s second child and oldest daughter. Elsie had both cognitive and physical disabilities, and required a full-time caretaker. Henrietta was the only one available to act as her caretaker, but she had four other children, including two babies — so after years of resisting, she did what doctors told her was best and sent her to the Hospital for the Negro Insane. She visited Elsie every week until she got sick, and then no one visited her. Elsie died a few years after Henrietta.

Elsie’s story is not told within the context of the devastation that Henrietta felt at relinquishing her daughter, but rather what was done to Elsie after she was committed. It is eventually revealed that she not only lived in horrific conditions marked by abuse, and died a horrific death, but also that she was the subject of abhorrent, non-consensual human experimentation because of her disabilities and institutionalization. They drained the fluid surrounding her brain and pumped air into her skull. They inserted metal probes into her brain. She would have suffered extraordinarily. These things were done to her because she was black and disabled. Because no one ever thought that she or her family might have a right to say no. Because no one cared.

What was done to Elsie matters simply because it does. It matters because she matters. But it matters within the context of the Lacks story for the way it illuminates the climate of abuse and brutality that the violations against Henrietta Lacks were committed. These violations were far from isolated. And they were also far from extreme by the standards of the day. What was done to Henrietta and what was done to Elsie existed at two ends of a spectrum, but they were both a part of the same racist, dehumanizing system.

The cruel irony is that Henrietta’s cells, too, have been used to do highly unethical testing on unknowing patients, largely those with disabilities. Though paling in comparison to the literal torture committed against Elsie, HeLa cells were injected into unknowing, non-consenting individuals — mostly those with disabilities or serious illnesses — in order to see if they would develop the same cancer that Henrietta had. Henrietta was not just violated at the hands of this system; her violation was also used as a means to further its abuses.

Without being pedantic or even particularly explicit, Skloot beautifully weaves together these two “separate” historical stories. Overwhelmingly, the point of telling the stories of the Lacks family’s many misfortunes is not to show what evils HeLa cells brought on their lives. Though the Lackses did experience trauma as a result of their connection to the cells, it is not the direct cause of most of their problems. Rather, their story serves to reveal that a great deal of their problems did stem from Henrietta Lacks’ death — and to remind us that it was only because a woman got extremely sick and died that so many of us have had access to treatments and vaccinations that have kept us alive. It’s to remind us that while Henrietta did not donate her cells, they were stolen from her, she and her family did make an unchosen sacrifice. It’s to remind us that researchers didn’t just take a part of her — they took the part that killed her. And she, and her family, are real people. Real people whose lives matter, too.

But they have been treated repeatedly as if their lives mean nothing. As if Henrietta’s life was not worth anything. As though the horrors those cells have imposed on their lives do not matter in the face of the medical advancements. As if their mother and grandmother did not have a right to her own body, and they do not, as her descendants, have a right to it on her behalf. As though their bodies mean nothing, too — and they do not, with their frequent lack of health insurance, have the right to access the care that only exists because their mother or grandmother died.

It’s long past time that Henrietta Lack’s story was told, that her family’s story was told. For the fact that it accomplishes that vital justice, and for the eloquence and sincerity with which Skloot tells the story not only of Lacks by the history of ethics in biomedical research, I couldn’t recommend The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks more strongly. This is a story that needed to be told, and that needs to be read.

Sadly, it is also long past time where things could ever truly be made right. Years cannot be undone, dead family members cannot be brought back to life. But the remaining Lackses do still deserve that which has always been rightfully theirs, as well as our gratitude, though it seems that those who most owe it to them are not going to be the ones to provide it.

As promised to Deborah Lacks while she assisted in writing the book, Rebecca Skloot has set up the Henrietta Lacks Foundation, which provides funding for education and health care to the descendants of Henrietta Lacks. Again, while billions have ultimately been made from Henrietta Lacks’ stolen cells, her family has never seen a single cent from their use, and family members are often without health insurance, and without access to the funds needed to access higher education. Anyone can make a donation to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation by clicking through to their website.

Trigger Warning for violence against sex workers, including but not limited to sexual violence and police violence

Today, December 17, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. The International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers is a day to remember sex workers who have been murdered, and to acknowledge and spread the word about the ways in which sex workers are uniquely vulnerable to all forms of violence. This year, the list of those who have been killed is forty entries long (pdf); several entries contain more than one victim, and many of the victims’ identities are unknown. It should be noted that these murders are only the ones that are known of. Undoubtedly, they make up only a fraction of the real death toll.

But today is not just about those who have died; it’s also about those who live with violence, or the threat of it, every day. While victims of violence span all social markers, some are more vulnerable than others. The vast majority of victims are women. Women of color are more vulnerable than white women. Trans sex workers are more vulnerable than cis sex workers. Queer sex workers are more vulnerable than straight sex workers. Sex workers are already deeply devalued and dehumanized by society as a class; the more they are additionally devalued and dehumanized along other axes of oppression, the more likely they are to be subjected to violence.

From the SWOP-USA website:

Violence against sex workers is an international concern which plays out on a daily basis, in all countries around the globe.

• A study conducted by the New York City-based Sex Workers Project reported that 80% of participants had reported experiencing violence, including 27% at the hands of police.
• In a report on violence against sex workers in India, 70% had reported abuse by police, and 80% had been arrested without evidence.
• During a meeting of sex workers and advocates from Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa, participants described “routine police violence including sexual violence, beatings, rubber bullets, and spraying sex workers’ genitals with pepper-spray guns.”

It’s these notes about police violence that I want to address specifically. Because as the fabulous Audacia Ray puts it, it’s not just violent clients who hurt sex workers. It’s police. It’s the law. It’s the government.

State violence is wielded against sex workers in many ways. Individual cops certainly pose a part of the problem, as listed above. Beating sex workers, threatening them with weapons, and raping them either through force or coercion. Police officers certainly have a history, like clients, of seeing sex workers as easy victims of violence, victims who they believe no one will care about.

But it’s also the law itself that both promotes abuse and acts as a direct form of violence against sex workers. With many forms of sex work being illegal throughout most of the world, sex workers are placed in a position even more vulnerable than that created by the extraordinary social stigma alone. It’s the oppressive nature of the law that lets police officers rape sex workers, by giving them the option of “having sex” or going to jail. It’s the oppressive nature of the law that puts sex workers at risk of HIV and other STDs by making them afraid to carry condoms and denying them access to HIV prevention funding.  It’s the oppressive nature of the law that makes sex workers afraid to report violence when it is committed against them, not only because they may be subjected to further violence at the hands of police, but because they may also be arrested themselves.

It’s the law which puts sex workers in prisons for doing nothing more than using their own bodies as they saw fit, subjecting them to state violence and control on a daily basis. It’s the law which places them in prisons, where it’s possible that they will be denied health care; where they will be compelled to undergo strip searches and cavity searches; where they may be beaten or locked in solitary confinement; where they may be raped by guards or other inmates; where, if they are trans, they may be placed as women in prisons with men. It’s the law which may force them to submit to public floggings while crowds and authorities laugh. Or worse.

The law doesn’t just “fail to protect” sex workers. Far worse, it is an active danger to them. Criminalization of sex work causes violence against sex workers just as much as personal misogyny, racism, transphobia, classism, and homophobia do, and it’s all of these -isms in which such laws are based. These laws are framed in terms of paternalism — we must protect women from their choices, even when we don’t bother to work on why they probably don’t have any better ones available — but they’re really about a much more vitriolic form of oppression. They’re about outright hate. And even if you want to quibble about intentions and motivations, the fact remains that they do just as much if not more violence against sex workers than direct beatings.

Decriminalization of sex work will not magically erase anti-sex worker stigma, or magically make police take violence against sex workers seriously, or magically cause them to stop raping or otherwise abusing sex workers themselves. But that’s no reason for the state, for countless states all over the world, to continue having direct authorization to commit violence against sex workers itself. It’s no reason for the state to have the right to enact violence against vulnerable and marginalized persons precisely because of their vulnerable and marginalized status. And it’s no reason to act as though, when we’re talking about violence against sex workers, we’re somehow not largely talking about state violence.

Sex workers deserve safety. Sex workers deserve freedom. Sex workers deserve human rights. That needs to be remembered and spoken today and every day.