Strategic Convenings
| S&P 2nd National Convening, NYC 2019
The 2019 Survived and Punished National Convening featured a day of panels, strategy sessions, and community building — all with a focus on launching defense campaigns and organizing to free criminalized survivors of racialized gender-based violence. The goals of the national convening were for participants from across the country to build on a shared analysis of the criminalization of survival; learn directly from criminalized survivors of violence; strategize ways to deepen local efforts and build a long-term national/transnational agenda through coalition building and cross-movement coordination; and identify successful coalitional strategies between efforts inside and outside of prisons and detention centers. Find convening resources here.
| Free Them All: Mass Commutations Convening, NYC 2018
The Survived and Punished NYC Mass Commutation Organizing Campaign worked to pressure Governor Cuomo to commute the sentences of survivors of intimate partner violence and other racialized, gender-based violence who are in prison throughout New York State. This event was a call to action to join the Mass Commutation Organizing Campaign.
| California Statewide Convening, Berkeley 2017
On December 2-3, 2017, Survived & Punished CA convened over 30 advocates and activists who are also formerly incarcerated survivors of domestic or sexual violence. This convening was an opportunity to learn directly from formerly incarcerated survivors about their experiences of criminalization and barriers to release, as well as collectively identify California-based decarceral strategies to increase the rate of prison release for people in women’s prisons and trans women in men’s prisons.
Convening participants identified barriers to release that have been previously documented as ongoing institutional problems, such as the lack of access to free/affordable and effective legal representation, the lack of information about new legislation that increases pathways for release, and coerced plea deals that can forfeit the right to appeal. Additionally, participants also explored lesser known barriers that are often gendered, such as the role of abusive partners in manipulating judicial processes, parole board discrimination against survivors of domestic violence, immediate ICE detention after prison release, and the refusal of prison officials to follow court release orders, sometimes out of retaliation if the incarcerated person has filed a complaint about abuse while in prison. The Board of Parole Hearings was highlighted as a particularly problematic institution with largely unchecked power to extend incarceration.
| No Perfect Victims Convening, Detroit 2017
The national No Perfect Victims gathering at the 2017 Allied Media Conference was organized by Survived and Punished to convene survivors, defense campaigns, anti-violence organizations, artists and media advocates, legal advocates, and grassroots organizers to build a shared analysis of the criminalization of survival; hear directly from criminalized survivors of violence about their experiences; strategize about how to deepen local efforts and build a long-term national/transnational agenda through coalition building and cross-movement coordination; and identify successful coalitional strategies between efforts inside and outside of prisons and detention centers.
Convening notes available upon request.
