Organizing Resources
A collection of resources to learn more about the criminalization of survivors of gender violence and activist strategies to free them.
This list is a work in progress! If you have suggestions, please contact us.
Demonstration to Free Joan Little, 1974
Explore these campaign websites to learn more about how to develop a legal defense campaign for survivors who are prosecuted or incarcerated. Strategies include social media actions, fundraising, art, direct action, education and much more!
- Chicago Alliance to Free Marissa Alexander
- Free Bresha Meadows
- Free CeCe!
- Free Cherelle Baldwin
- Freeing Ky Support Guide
- Free Marissa Now
- Free Shantonio Brown
- Naomi Freeman 10 Day Fundraiser
- Stand With Nan-Hui
- Women’s Prison Activism Archives (an archive of activism from the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s)
More on the History of Defense Campaigns:
- Gore, Dayo. Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York: New York University Press, 2012.
- Hill, Rebecca. Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-Lynching and Labor Defense in U.S. Radical History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.
- Kaba, Mariame (ed). No Selves to Defend: The Legacy of Criminalizing Self-Defense and Survival. https://noselves2defend.wordpress.com/
- Law, Victoria. Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women. Oakland: PM Press, 2012.
- Law, Victoria, “Sick of the Abuse: Feminist Responses to Sexual Assault, Battering, and Self-Defense.” In The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, 39-56. Edited by Dan Berger. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2010.
- Thuma, Emily. “Lessons in Self-Defense: Gendered Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism.” WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, 43:3–4 (fall-winter 2015): 52-71.
- Thuma, Emily. All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, and the Feminist Fight to End Violence. University of Illinois Press, 2019.
Anna Nepomuceno #RiseWithAnna
- Clemency & Parole Guides, by Survived & Punished NY and California Coalition for Women Prisoners
- S&P Research Across the Walls Guide
- Survived and Punished Toolkit for Defense Campaigns
- Survived & Punished Guide to Writing Letters to Incarcerated Survivors
- How to Organize a Book Drive for Incarcerated Girls & Women, #FreeBresha Campaign
- Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color & Trans People of Color — Organizing Toolkit, INCITE!
- Invisible No More: Police Violence against Black Women & Women of Color Study Guide
- Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality against Black Women, African American Policy Forum
- Resources for communities responding to & transforming violence, INCITE!
- Creative Interventions Toolkit: A Practical Guide to Stop Interpersonal Violence
- Abolitionist Toolkit, Critical Resistance
Art by Molly Crabapple
- S&P Research Across the Walls Guide
- REPEAL MANDATORY MINIMUMS: A Racial Justice & Domestic Violence Issue, Free Marissa Now Mobilization Campaign
- Research & Strategy on the S&P Blog
- Girls do what they have to do to survive: Illuminating Methods used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal, Young Women’s Empowerment Project
- Women’s Experiences of Abuse as a Risk Factor for Incarceration, Melissa E. Dichter, in consultation with Sue Osthoff
- The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls’ Story, Human Rights Project for Girls, et al
- The Most Dangerous Thing Out Here is the Police: Trans Voices on Police Abuse & Profiling in Atlanta
- Reproductive Injustice: The State of Reproductive Health Care for Women in New York State Prisons, Correctional Association of New York
- From Protection to Punishment: Post-Conviction Barriers to Justice for Domestic Violence Survivor-Defendants in New York State, Cornell University, Avon Global Center for Women and Justice, Correctional Association of New York
- Justice Now report on Conditions of Confinement and Illegal Sterilizations
- Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act, Correctional Association of New York
- Increased death rates of domestic violence victims from arresting vs. warning suspects in the Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment (MilDVE), Lawrence W. Sherman & Heather M. Harris
- Gender Injustice: System-Level Juvenile Justice Reforms for Girls, The National Crittenton Foundation
- There’s no one I can trust: The impact of mandatory reporting on the help-seeking and well-being of domestic violence survivors, National LGBTQ DV Capacity Building Learning Center, Lippy, C., Burk, C., & Hobart, M. (2016).
- Herstory Oregon Survey: Intimate Partner Violence & Trauma, Oregon Justice Center (2019)
Art by Micah Bazant
- Quick Stats from S&P
- Fact sheet: What’s Driving Criminalization of Women & LGBTQ People?
- Fact sheet on Domestic Violence & The Criminalization of Survival
- Fact sheet & talking points on domestic violence, immigration, criminalization and Nan-Hui Jo
- Reproductive justice and domestic violence
- Fact Sheet on Domestic Violence & the Criminalization of Girls
- Women in Prison: An Overview, The Link Between Incarceration and Violence Collateral Consequences of Conviction
- Systems of Inequality: Criminal Injustice (intersection of overpolicing and profiling of low income people and of trans and gender non-conforming people)
- Statistics on mass incarceration in the US, from the Sentencing Project (pdf)
- Statistics on domestic violence and sexual assault in the US
- Facts about California Women’s Prisoners
- Incarcerated women forcibly sterilized in California prisons
Survived & Punished NYC event, August 2018
- Survived & Punished Curriculum, 2018
- No Selves to Defend: Curriculum for Marissa Alexander Teach-In, Project Nia
- INCITE! / Critical Resistance Statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex (link includes a popular education workshop)
- #FreeBresha Curriculum
- Transformative Justice: A Curriculum Guide
- Educational Videos on Criminalized Survivors & Campaigns to Free Them
- #SurvivedAndPunished Analysis & Vision
- Ongoing collection of news coverage and analysis
- Free Marissa Now and Stand With Nan-Hui: A Conversation About Parallel Struggles
- ‘Free Joan Little’: Reflections on Prisoner Resistance and Movement-Building
- “#SurvivedandPunished: Criminalizing Survivors of Violence,” by Mariame Kaba
- “Against Carceral Feminism,” by Victoria Law
- “Unsettling Innocence: Rewriting The Law’s Invention of Immigrant Woman as Cooperator and Criminal Enforcer,” Lee Ann S. Wang
- The Color of Violence: The Incite! Anthology by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence
- Invisible No More: Police Violence against Black Women & Women of Color, Andrea Ritchie
- Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation, Beth Richie
- All Our Trials: Prisons, Policing, & the Feminist Fight to End Violence, by Emily Thuma
- No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity, by Sarah Haley
- Inventing the Savage: The Social Construction of Native American Criminality, Luana Ross
- Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex by Eric Stanley and Nat Smith
- Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock
- Association of Black Women Historians, “Statement on the Modern-Day Lynching of Black Women in the U.S. Justice System” (PDF; includes suggested readings)