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!

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 Survivalhttps://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

Art by Molly Crabapple

Art by Micah Bazant

Survived & Punished NYC event, August 2018