Reproductive Freedom And... Incarceration.mp3: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix

Reproductive Freedom And... Incarceration.mp3: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Briana Perry:
Hello, I'm Brianna Perry. I'm Ana Carella, and we're the co-executive directors of Healthy and Free Tennessee, a state wide network that strives to promote sexual and reproductive health and freedom in Tennessee by advancing policies and practices which recognize these elements as essential to the overall well-being of all individuals and communities.

Anna Carella:
Reproductive Freedom And... highlights topics within reproductive freedom and Tennessee. Issues of reproductive freedom affect all people and this podcast showcases stories across a range of experiences. We hope you enjoy listening as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

Briana Perry:
Reproductive rights and health care in jails and prisons can go overlooked in the larger fight for reproductive freedom. From being restrained during labor and delivery, limited breastfeeding, lack of nutritional supplements for pregnant people, not being able to easily access abortion care, and the barriers to parenting while incarcerated, there are a host of challenges to exercising reproductive autonomy, especially in the midst of being in an environment where a lot of basic human rights are stripped away.

Anna Carella:
Brianna and I sat down with three advocates who are working at the intersection of reproductive freedom and incarceration, Alex Chambers and Jawharrah Bahar are two organizers with Free Hearts, an organization based in Nashville led by formerly incarcerated women. Free Hearts provides support, education and advocacy to families impacted by incarceration with the goal of keeping families together. Alex serves on the Steering Committee of Healthy and Free Tennessee and the Board of Free Hearts. Jawharrah is formerly incarcerated, a mom, and a Free Hearts board member. Jawharrah shares her experiences pregnant and parenting while incarcerated, and Alex talks about the lack of reproductive freedom in jails and prisons.

Briana Perry:
Erica Perry is a social justice lawyer and organizer with the official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter. Erica has organized a chapter around the Black Mamas Bail Out since 2017. She shares how the Black Mamas Bail Out started, the lessons the chapter has learned since 2017, and the larger goals of their end money bail campaign. Thank you, Jawharrah and Alex, for joining us today. Just wanted to see if you all could tell us more about Free Hearts. How did Free Hearts get started, how did you all get involved with the work, and what led you all to the work?

Alex Chambers:
Free Hearts started, it was sort of the dream of Dawn Harrington, who's the executive director during her time of incarceration, she dreamed up an organization like Free Hearts and she and I just happened to meet at a Ban the box event where we were working to help ban the box in Nashville regarding the employment conviction history question on metro employee applications. And we just got to talking. And she talked about her experience of incarceration. And she called me later and we met up and she was like, I want to start this organization. And she had been having a lot of difficulty getting any jobs because of the felony on her record. And she said that she was didn't think that she could be the face of the organization because of all the obstacles she was facing. And I just encouraged her. I had known. I knew Aniya Wiley, who's another free hearts member from when I was going into the women's jail here, and she had been out for a while. And I thought, like, you should meet with Aniya and see if we could get other formerly incarcerated women together, because I know Aniya has a lot of passion and energy, and I think that y'all should really be the ones leading this organization and I'll be here to support. So that was sort of the beginning. And then Jawharrah ran into Dawn.

Briana Perry:
How'd you get started with the work Jawharrah?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Ok, so I met Dawn and her friend Cameo at a women's event back in 2015 and then I stayed in North Nashville. So I came up to Magruder to get assistance with my electricity bill. And this was like a year later, 2016, around the summer, going towards the fall. And I ran into her again and I was like, Hey, I know you guys like I remember you and I heard her talking about the organization, how she needed volunteers and how it's about formerly incarcerated women. And I was like, well, I've been incarcerated before. I want to join. And she was like, yeah, you can join. So I started coming to the meetings with them and participating or whatever, and that's how I got started.

Briana Perry:
Ok, so Jawharrah, you talked about how you were formerly incarcerated and there was a connection there and you joining Free Hearts. Could you just tell us more about your story and what it was like parenting while incarcerated?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Yes. So, wow that's a lot. OK, so. Me parenting in prison was very hard, I end up doing three years, three and a half years in prison for child abuse, neglect. However, I was on probation, state probation. I was on there for six years, was three years consecutive. And so, like, I had violated. And then when I violated with the new charge, it was like, oh, that six year I did was gone and void and then I had to go and do time for my current charge. Plus the time I had on probation. And so I end up making parole 2013 and end up getting released October 18, 2013. And so being incarcerated and having children was very hard because I didn't really get a lot of visits with the children. I really didn't want them to visit me that much. I didn't want them to get used to seeing me in this environment. And plus, it was very hard for me to cope with, you know, them coming and then they had to leave. And plus it was like four hours away because I was in Memphis, Tennessee, in their prison, Mark Luttrell. And it was very difficult because I would hear stories at home about, you know, the kids and, you know, my sister or somebody disciplining them. I was just ready to come home. It was very difficult to parent them from behind bars, but my sister, she did, like, keep me informed on what they were doing. She'd send their paintings, pictures, artwork and stuff. So. It was rough.

Briana Perry:
So what kind of support is this for parents who are incarcerated and just thinking more so the stigma about reproductive freedom? What type of support is available for women like if they're pregnant just at reproductive health overall and if they're parents what support systems or type of resources are available in jails and prisons?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Um, it varies. It's not really a whole lot of support, especially in a jail. In a prison, they do have the department where Tennessee Prison for Women has a program for women with their children up to five years so that they can actually stay. I don't know if that program is still active, but when I was in the Department of Corrections, I didn't qualify for that program. But the jail doesn't have a program to where the kids can come and spend time, because I know in TPF W., which is the women's prison, they had it to where the kids can come back on the weekend. They have to go get it approved through the case manager and stuff. But it only certain charges were able to do that. But I know they had to be like under five, I believe after five then they couldn't stay and in the jail because I had my son when I was in jail awaiting trial. And so they didn't have any kind of programs in place for the women and the babies that they were having in jail. Their health care was not as great as it would be if you were home. The diet wasn't as great. They fed us oranges for a snack every day. So, like, you know, that is too much acid, you know, for a pregnant woman. For calcium, they gave us Tums. Wow. And so they had me eating Tums like it was Candy. For Calcium because. It was just the diet it was like horrible, like, I don't know what type of food that was, it was mystery meat.

Briana Perry:
So think about you being pregnant while incarcerated and just seeing, like, the lack of health care and, like, things that weren't available. So if, like, when you had your son, what happened? Was there like access to breast pumps? Were you able to breastfeed? Is that available?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Well, when I was going when I talked to the warden and everybody at the jail asked him if I could breastfeed before I went in to have my baby, and it was like, no, you can't. When I got to the hospital, I told my doctor that I would like to breastfeed and he said, OK. He said by law, they can't deny you to breastfeed your child regardless if you're in jail or not. And I was like for real. I said, OK, so he gave me a breast pump and he told me to take it back with me and that they should allow me to pump my milk. And so that's what I did. And it was a bunch of like talk about it. But they let me do it up until he was six weeks. And then after that they stop allowing me to do it. And I really never knew why. But I knew another lady. She's actually used to get visits with her child and she was a Caucasian lady. She used to get visits very often with her son and she used to have him lactate in her purse. I don't know if she had like a sentence. Or she was already sentenced to do her time or what. But the remaining of the time I was going back and forth to court, I remember her having that privilege. And then after that, I didn't hear anything else about it.

Briana Perry:
Oh. So I'm like hearing like a lot of restrictions. So not good health care, people feeding oranges and Tums and also not great access to breastfeed. And it depends on your background and race and like those disparities as well. And I'm just really curious as to the other restrictions that exist when we talk about reproductive freedom in jails and prisons. So if you all can, both you and Alex can talk about other restrictions, like what if someone wants to obtain an abortion? What is abortion care like if someone is incarcerated,

Jawharrah Bahar:
You can't get no abortion. Because, like, I wanted to get one and I had the money to do it, but they told me I couldn't.

Alex Chambers:
I know. And usually my senses from seeing cases across the state, it's if you have an attorney has to go to court and fight for it. And so I think most people probably it's not there's not a sense that it is a right unless an attorney really comes in and does that. And we've seen a couple of cases where that has been successful and then other cases where the state, like the jails, have been sued because someone couldn't obtain an abortion. So it is still everyone's legal right, when they're incarcerated. But again. Right, like the access to it is so limited and they can delay it, delay, delay it as well, the same way as we've seen outside of jails and prisons, all the tactics to prevent people from accessing abortions.

Briana Perry:
What about accessing other reproductive health care products or just resources like menstrual products? If people are on their period, what does that look like?

Jawharrah Bahar:
You get I want to say eight pads a month- eight or ten? I can't remember a month. Mm. And if you had Commissary money you was able to buy what they probably and they pay for about 12 in a pack, 12 and the pack was a little small pack. But if you have money on your commissary, your books, you can order extra feminine products.

Alex Chambers:
Would they be better quality?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Not really, not in a jail and not in a prison it was, but they were more willing to give you more feminine product products in the jail. I mean, in the prison vs. in the jail. In the jail, they made you buy all that stuff. But in a prison, even though they had it on commissary, the state still, if you needed it, they would give it to you. Wasn't really a problem in prison as it is in jail.

Briana Perry:
So kind of like punishing people who menstruate. They need these products. And you are like you have to find a way to do with these eight to 10 pads or tampons if you don't have the money to buy more. Right. So you talked earlier about how you were in Memphis and your children were here in Nashville. And just like, you know, the barriers there, like you've been in a totally different city and what their prison is, is that typical for folks to be like somewhere else, incarcerated somewhere else, like separated that great of a distance from their children?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Yes, because. Yes, because like now there is only three prisons for women. So you got to TPFW in Nashville. Yeah. Bledsoe was like a medium security. You can do work, work, release. And then it's another one, the one that was in Memphis. They shut down and they reopened it to the men because it was a condemned building. I don't know why it is open period. But now the women are in Henning, Tennessee, so they wasted.

Briana Perry:
So just thinking about where prisons are located, like where they typically are like like positioned and that separation from like different cities. Again, there's like another barrier. So think more about that. And I want to turn to you, Alex, because just thinking about visits overall. I know you've talked before. I said that the visitation room in men's prisons are always full of women and women's prisons. They're empty. Why do you think that's the case? Can you share more of your thoughts on that?

Alex Chambers:
And Jawharrah might be able to speak to this too. In general, I think when women end up in prison, it's jails and prisons. It's largely because they in part don't have the same social safety net, both in terms of family and communities. They're more likely to be single, not necessarily not in relationship with someone, but legally, I guess, considered single.

Briana Perry:
Like marital status

Alex Chambers:
Right. And have children. Often they're sort of trying to survive on their own, and then they're like, there's a good number of women who are incarcerated in relationship to a man, right? So if they were to have someone supporting them, then he's also often incarcerated. I mean, I think there's a lot of issues related to gender expectations that about who's supposed to nurture who is supposed to be present and consistent. I think it's also that women will take their children, you know, to see their fathers and other family members. I do think you have a lot of men who are incarcerated. And so that's also like sort of devastated communities. I think there are various variables, but I do think there's often not that same support both. We see that within efforts to end the incarceration in mass incarceration. There's not that same focus and concern for women, and there's just not that general social safety net that includes like the emotional labor that women provide for those they love. What do you think Jawharrah?

Jawharrah Bahar:
What she said was true women barely have people come see them. I just think it is a more. Women don't really have a lot of support like men do. Maybe that's because we're just stronger people. But yeah, I think that's what it is, because women can deal with things more so than men and men are babies. They can't handle anything. I think that's the real thing because. When I used to go to visit two about three people in there, if that.

Briana Perry:
A very low number and I'm just wondering like and thinking about like this lineage and history of prisons and, you know, thinking about different people's work, like Angela Davis and her work around prisons and thinking about our prisons obsolete. And she talks about, you know, different books and different speeches about like how like women, how people thought about women being incarcerated. And it like vastly different than men and how prisons even came about in the first place and how they were, like, geared toward men. And so I was wondering if you all could talk about how, like gender structures the prison system and like body cavity searches, like how this is state sanctioned sexual assault, just like our prisons are set up and like the searches have, people don't necessarily think about what's really going on, and how this like a violation of our human rights and that is a form of like sexual assault.

Jawharrah Bahar:
So any time you leave the facility, you get a cavity search.

Briana Perry:
Can you tell more talk more about that for our listeners? What is a cavity search?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Well you have to get butt naked and squat and cough, with your butt cheeks spread open. To see if anything coming out. Very demeaning, very embarrassing. So every time you live out, even if you went for a visit. Every time you go to visit, every time you left the facility, whether you were in jail or prison, that's how you get searched.

Briana Perry:
Now. It's kind of like this position of being like you can't do anything right. It just has to happen. And folks are just like saying that they have to do it.

Jawharrah Bahar:
If you don't do it, you just stay in a holding cell until you decide to do it.

Briana Perry:
You have to stay in holding cell they like for whatever kind of like them trying to torture you. Maybe it's like by yourself until you agree to these searches.

Jawharrah Bahar:
Mm hmm.

Alex Chambers:
Those searches are normalized, so most I'd say, bureaucratically within prisons and the criminal legal system, it's like. Those are considered normal, whereas if that were to happen to anyone outside of a jail or prison, we would call that sexual assault, right? Right. And so I think that's a great example of how people lose really the sense of bodily autonomy the second they cross. I mean, not the second. I'm sure there are many other ways people lose that before entering jails or prisons. But that's a clear example of the lack of control that anyone's allotted over their own bodies. I also think that's a big part of you think of the a large number of incarcerated women and this goes over into incarcerated men as well, but have experienced domestic and sexual violence prior to their incarceration. And so if you think of having someone who survived sexual violence, then being revictimized by this very system, again, that just. Shows the thread, I think, of interpersonal violence outside and then state violence inside prisons.

Briana Perry:
Because I'm sure there's no trauma informed approach or care when people are incarcerated. And I know you mentioned earlier that, Shantonio, you know, took a plea deal. So can you talk more about why people take plea deals and what are the trade offs there and what are the consequences of them thinking about their cases and in situations where they are parents.

Alex Chambers:
In general, people, and Jawharrah could say more to this, they take plea deals for multiple reasons, one of them largely being if you're in jail and you can get out of jail, you want to.

Briana Perry:
You want to get out of jail.

Alex Chambers:
So it's used as leverage in that way. Often it's I mean, two really awful options. It's and the idea of going to trial and risking everything while also possibly winning everything and knowing having a clear sense of what time you would have to do, like putting those next to each other. I think it's like you don't know what the outcome will be. You know what the outcome is going to be.

Briana Perry:
Jawharrah, did you want to add anything to that? Why you or people take plea deals or maybe like just the trade offs or consequences?

Jawharrah Bahar:
Well, from my experience, people would take plea deals because, like you say, they want to go home and they are trying to get out the trouble. And also they used plea deals as a scare tactics. A lot of times people may not even did the crime, but so they can go home to their families, they take the plea deal and then at they don't realize what they signed until it's too late. Can't get a job, can't get fair housing. Some people can't even get a passport. Which is sad. The federal government pays the state. The district attorney for plea deals, they fund it.

Briana Perry:
Like an incentive for people to, like, push folks into doing it. And I think that is a really important trade off especially thinking about people who are mothers and have families, they have children and trying to get back to their families. And it's like, you know, do I stay in jail and wait this out? And I've been here already for two months, three months. And this could take a long time. Or do I go ahead and set this plea deal and get out now? But then also, this is like going to affect me in, like, you know, trying to access different things that will enable me to better take care of my family. Yeah, I think this is really happening again. Reminds me of just different things with the prison system and going back to cash bail, because that's sometimes like what people find themselves in, like, you know, I'm here haven't been like even convicted of anything, but I've been here like months and I'm trying to go. And that's just all just like a lot of things that come with this and like how all of this is tied to like the larger reproductive freedom movement. I think sometimes that gets left out, like thinking about domestic violence, thinking about health care and reproductive health care that's available in jails and prisons. Sometimes that gets overlooked when we think about reproductive freedom and just fights to ensure that people have access to all of their rights and are able to maintain their bodily autonomy. So thank you all for highlighting all of those issues. So if you all could talk more about this phenomenal win with the primary caregiver bill that just passed that you have been working on for quite a while, like just tell us more about that bill. What it does and why is important, especially in a moment like we have now of all this talk about criminal legal reform, as in, you know, just trying to ensure that we are working toward the end of incarceration.

Jawharrah Bahar:
Our primary care bill is basically a community based alternative sentencing for primary care providers to have nonviolent charges. Anything that you could think of that is nonviolent, that's what that bill falls under in basically the bill is to keep families together and not destroy the home of the children in their primary care provider and put more money into the community and not through the jails or the prison system. And so what the judge will do is they would be like, if you came before the judge, they can consider the alternative sentencing versus just sending them to prison. So that's another option for them. And what that looks like is doing things in the community, like going to different programs in the community and parenting, anger management, whatever issues they're having, in therapy, maybe they need to seek mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment, helping them with housing, school and getting their GED or high school diploma. And so that's basically what the overall what it would look like, basically alternative to sentencing. So just not locking people up and we spending 70- what is it? 78 dollars a day on this, how much it costs for people to be locked up. So instead of the state and taxpayers paying that money, that money can go back into the community and we can use that money to fund organizations that's helping people.

Briana Perry:
And providing more supportive services. Right. And I know you all have done like research around is and like released a report last year, and I'm just thinking about kind of like a conversation around how a lot of these things are gendered. And because, you know, we talk about women and women's experiences with incarceration gets overlooked. But primary caregivers are mostly women. Right. So, OK. And what have you what do you all find with that report is when you all were thinking about pushing a bill like women, mainly being primary caregivers and kind of like the impact of this, the primary caregiver not being like in the home. And kind of like the effects of that.

Alex Chambers:
So one in 10 Tennessee children have or have had an incarcerated parent, and incarceration is considered an adverse childhood experience that can really affect long term life outcomes for children from the stress and trauma of, you know, forced family separation. I think another significant, there are a couple of significant pieces to this legislation, the first being that it seeks to address the gender disparity in Tennessee in terms of. Women, the rise of women's incarceration in Tennessee has continued to go up, even as men's has stayed the same or gone down. And in 2016, women, men's incarceration numbers decreased, but women's increased so much that they added to the total of people incarcerated in Tennessee. So the idea that I mean, women have been and are clearly being left behind in criminal justice reform efforts. So primary caregiver, the goal is to, you know, help all primary caregivers, but primarily because women are tend to be primary caregivers and the and incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, that that was one major goal of this legislation. The second piece is that it's a sentencing consideration and within the sentencing considerations, it says before you sentence someone to incarceration. Take these things into consideration, do you have other options and so the primary caregiver piece. Asks the judge to stop, and even within that language, it says, consider the effects on the community. So the language within there says before you send someone to prison, consider alternatives and consider if they're a primary caregiver and convicted of a nonviolent offense. What impact? Like, is there a community based alternative that would be better for the community by keeping the family together, which I just think is significant when you have people shuffling in and out of courts every day and they're not being seen as the whole human beings, they are with a full community connected to them.

Briana Perry:
Well, thank you all for your work. This is a lot. A lot more to do. I know it can be very tough, but we very much so appreciate the work that you are doing here in Nashville and also across the state. So if folks wanted to get more involved with FreeHearts and plugged in, how should they go about doing so?

Alex Chambers:
You can find us on Facebook. Free Hearts Org and Twitter @freeheartsorg

Jawharrah Bahar:
Instagram @Freeheartsorg. It's the blue and purple.

Briana Perry:
Thank you so much for taking the time out and talking more about reproductive freedom, mass incarceration, gender based issues when it comes to incarceration.

Anna Carella:
All right, today we're here in Memphis with Erica Perry, who's been involved with the Black Mamas Bailout, and she's going to talk to us about her experience. Thanks for being here with us Erica.

Erica Perry:
Thanks so much for having me. Really excited to talk about this work with you all.

Anna Carella:
So this is the third year, I believe, that there's been a national Black mama's bail out day. Can you say a little bit about how it got started nationally, but also in Memphis and what the goal is of the day?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, so this the mama state bailout got started January 2017. Color Change and the Movement for Black Lives Policy Today held a convening around bail reform. And so while we were there, we had like organizers, advocates in the room and Mary Hooks, who is the co-director of Southerners Underground, was like, yeah, we should bail out Black women. Black mamas and caregivers for Mother's Day as a tactic to end money bail and like it immediately resonated with people. People were really excited about it. So folks went back to their local organizations, talked to their people. And like I, of course, went back to the BLM office and was like, hey, are we of course, said we wanted to end money bail as one of the the goals for our chapter for the next few years and said, hey, we should start we should launch the Arbel campaign with this bail out. And so we're excited to be in collaboration with the National Bailout Collective since 2017 to bail out black folks. And so as far as the local BLM chapter, we've bailed out over 30 people since 2017. And as the national collective has raised well over a million dollars and bailed out, I believe, over 300 people since 2017. And so we've been doing a lot of real work. And again, these organizations throughout the south, California, New York, Denver, places like that, and on down in Texas. And so for us, I can speak specifically about our chapter and for us, the bailout as a tactic right to end money bail. So we hope to raise awareness about who's in jail and make sure we're humanizing people, because oftentimes people think, well, because this person is arrested or locked up then they don't deserve humanity and dignity.

Erica Perry:
And they oftentimes forget that these are people's like parents, mothers, caregivers, people who drop their children off to school, people who have dreams and visions for themselves and their families. And so we want to highlight their bail, like snatches people's power away from them, their visions, their dreams from not just them, their families and their communities. And then we also wanted to just make sure we get people home for Mother's Day because we like actually our people deserve to be celebrated and loved on Mother's Day. And I think the third thing is to really model our vision for Shelby County. And so our vision is to like a county that does not have bail, does not have pre-trial detention and instead actually invest in people, uses the 80 million dollars they spend on jail to actually invest in people. And so we want to model that by getting our people out of jail, showing that people actually go to court if you meet their support or services, needs to show that people are less likely to have encounters with the criminal legal system if you meet their support or services needs, while also highlighting that there's so many like institutional structures that we have to change. One is decriminalization because many people are having encounters with the criminal legal system with policing because of just overall policing and the state's obsession with controlling people's bodies. And so we want to name that too while also saying let's invest in our people. We can spend our resources in different ways. So that's what the bailouts are about. And that's what we've been able to accomplish for three years now by bailing out our people.

Anna Carella:
So one statistic that I read that wasn't shocking well, wasn't surprising, but it was shocking is that children of incarcerated mothers are more, I think, five times more likely to be placed in foster care than children of incarcerated fathers. And wanted to just sort of get your thoughts about why that is.

Erica Perry:
Yeah, I don't have any real analysis on that. I think from my experience, what I can tell based off of like our bail outs and just work inside the criminal legal system, um, is that oftentimes mothers are like the primary caretaker, which wanted to shout out Free Hearts for their primary caretaker bill. But yeah mothers are the primary caretaker. And so oftentimes when the mother is gone, I think the child maybe doesn't have anybody take care of them outside of another Probably another. Black woman, to be honest, another Black femme person. And so, I mean, that's my assumption. And from what I've seen through the work, um, is that oftentimes when the mother is gone, the father may or may not have been there in the first place and the child doesn't have anywhere else to go.

Anna Carella:
Um, yeah. You made that point that women are sort of the fabric of the whole community and, um, the and the family. And so locking them up, um, sort of unravels a lot of things.

Erica Perry:
Yep. It creates a crisis for every person that the mother caretaker has touched and whose life they are involved in from like the teacher where the child goes to school, to where the person may work to their block, right. Where the mother raises her children. So every aspect of the person's lives is is put in crisis when people are snatched up and thrown into a cage and held because they don't have money.

Anna Carella:
Why bailing out Mama's and not dads?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, so. Let's see, we strategically decided as a national collective in alignment to bail out Black mamas and caregivers because so often the stories, experiences of Black women, Black queer folks, Black trans folks are often left out of the conversation, left out of like policy recommendations and meaningful change because of race, sex, sexism, misogyny, just because of the value people place on the lives of men. And so we don't say that Black men aren't going through the same things. What we're saying is we want to also highlight what Black women, what Black, queer, trans folks are going through, what Black gender nonconforming folks are going through. And I think also it resonates with people when we say that mothers are in jail, to be honest, like it resonates with people in a different way. They say caregivers are in jail. And because oftentimes, like mamas and caregivers are the pillars of our community are holding up the entire family. And then also the truth is, like BLM, we bail out fathers and the folks in June and we've done this for like three years now. We've made a decision to do that as well, because that's been an ask of the community, to be honest.

Anna Carella:
So you mentioned queer and transgender and gender nonconforming folks. How do you incorporate them into the bailout?

Erica Perry:
Yeah. We bail folks out who are trans and gender nonconforming and let's be clear, there are barriers to that or challenges to that, because oftentimes the state misgenders people. And so they'll arrest somebody who is a woman. But because they don't believe this person is a woman, they decide they want to hold them until unpopular and will misgender them, won't call them the correct names, so it was hard to find folks. And the way that we've gotten around that is by like making sure that we're working with trans folks, which should be like obvious, like I mean, nothing without us, nothing for us without us. And so because of the relationships our organizers have with because we because of those relationships, we're able to learn about who's in jail, who's trans and where they are in ways that we could couldn't if we were not, if our values in politics were not in line with them with the work.

Anna Carella:
Can you say more about why the bailout and cash bail as a larger strategy is a reproductive health rights and justice issue?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, absolutely. And I can give some just real life stories. So for us, it's a reproductive rights reproductive health issue, because one when a person is held in jail because they don't have the money to to get out, they're prevented from being with their families, with their children. And there are quite a few people we know specifically two cases. One mother I spoke to last week, she has a four month old. And so this is a newborn baby who is without her mother because the mother can't afford to get out of jail. Um, and so that was one case. And so she said, I need to get home to my baby. And we were like, we got to get you out. And then there is another case of a woman who her baby is three months old, she and the baby's father were arrested at the same time, and when the police arrested them, they took her car and what she had in the car. And so she had enough money to pay for milk for the baby. The baby is premature. So she uses a special type of milk for this three month old baby. And the mother got locked up. The police took her car. And so she was talking to her, her sister on the phone.

Erica Perry:
And she's like, why is my baby cry? Why is my baby yelling in the background? And she's like, we don't have milk to feed the baby and we don't have the money to buy it. And so I was like, OK, we're going to go give you your sister money for the baby's milk. And when I spoke to the sister, she was like, yeah, I was going to try to use the milk that I used for my child, but it's not the same. And so just I think that highlights for me the way that bail separates families puts children in very vulnerable positions. One, because the family doesn't have the money, they have to choose between getting the mother out. Right, paying for a lawyer or milk, how dare we make people make that choice? And so for me, just recognize the inhumanity and like people's right to parent, neither the child's mother or the father can be there for their baby right now. And that will be true for months because the mother's bail is twenty five thousand dollars. And we didn't have the money to bail her out the father's bail is three thousand dollars. And so we we may want to think about bail him out for Father's Day, I think.

Erica Perry:
But for me, it highlights the dangerousness of like disposability of black folks, of black Mamas and caregivers. And I think the other issue was there are people who are pregnant right now in jail who are not getting their medical needs met, who are in who are eating very horrible food, the lack of nutrition, who are forced to take showers in overcrowded bathrooms, sleep on floors and mattresses. For me, that's a reproductive health issue and a reproductive rights issue, one because like inherently jail takes away your body autonomy and your decision and your ability to make decisions about what to do with your body, from the strip searches, which are extremely inhumane. And I just found out last week that when you go to court. After you come back, you're strip searched, so every time you go to court, you're strip searched and I just can only imagine how horrible that would make a person feel. And so just take away the humanity and dignity of both the person who is incarcerated and the sheriffs, the the the security folks in every aspect of it. And so for me, that's why it's a reproductive health issue.

Anna Carella:
Yeah, it seems really clear and it's clear that I think that doing this work has affected you personally, too, and I'd love to hear more what on whatever sort of reflections you have after doing this for a couple of years, how your perspective has changed or just how you've come to see things differently or just more deeply?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, I think for so many of us who lived in this for three years. I mean, the fourth objective with the bailouts for us is to be in proximity to the problem seems to be to embed ourselves in the system so that we recognize and have a deep analysis of the problem, so that our solution to actually confront all aspects of the problem. And so just what we've learned for, like the past three years is that there the city has zero support services, infrastructure. I mean, there's a few they like to say there's a few for people who are, um, facing domestic violence issues. But there are so many women who may or may not be who need who need housing. There are so many, like trans folks who need housing. And that's not there, um, one of the challenges we've had is like we. We know that when we bail people out, we want to make sure they have somewhere to go, and so we've tried to hold that. As a rule, it doesn't work because every single person I talked to last week and the week before last and I talked to like eight people, maybe nine, nine people, eight out of nine of those did not have a house to go back to when they were bailed out. They did not have a house. They had a family member's house they can stay at. They didn't not have a house. Maybe 70 percent of those people didn't have a job or were in between jobs or had a job like but got fired because they were locked up and most of them had had children or were.

Erica Perry:
And if they didn't have a child, they were taking care of somebody themselves. And so. So so the lessons we've learned are that like we spend 80 million dollars on jails and a very small percentage of the budget goes to like health care and housing. And I think one other thing that I didn't recognize until this year is that and I believe Shea kind of brought it to my attention, who's was one of the organizers with this, but that they. When they decide when the city decided to clear the housing the housing projects over there in, I believe, the South Memphis, that it displaced so many people. So, so many of our people are just displaced right now. And there's actually no there's not a well-structured government housing program. And then also, like so many of our people live in poverty. So people every day are making decisions about medicine, clothes for school, and then being forced to make a decision about how they going get out of jail. And so. For me, it has been humbling. Weary is weary, I think, because we see we see how huge the problem is, and so we know us personally, we can go through it. But to see it on this scale, um, it makes me angry and light a fire under my ass because I'm like, yo, we got to do all we can do to actually, like, flatten the system and build something up in its place that is deserving of our people.

Erica Perry:
And so when we say invest divest, we're saying yo actually divest from jails because that shit ain't keeping us safe it's not protecting our families, is actually destroying our families. And it's not actually like addressing harm. And we're saying we want to replace that with something that actually can address harm, can keep us safe, can help us create and build communities where people are living and breathing and able to actually work to sustain themselves and live whole lives. And right now, so many people aren't. So many people aren't. And so, yeah, the bailouts help inform our policy work, our legal work. We're organizing the way we organize, the way we base bill, because I think the truth is it resonates with people when we say actually like. People are suffering, and right now the way we are, the way this the way the city and county and state deal with poverty is by disposing of people is not and they're not making a conscious decision to invest in people. The decision now is about disposability. And we're seeing actually like our vision is bigger than that. People are not disposable because they are in a crisis our people are not disposable because they're in poverty, our people are not disposable because they are looking for ways to get money to buy food for their babies. Actually, like, let's radically address the problem. So I think that's what we've learned over the past three years, that our vision has to be deeper and wider than the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Anna Carella:
You mentioned invest, divest, and obviously nobody expects you or anybody to have all the answers today. But I'm just interested in sort of like, do you invest first, divest first? And what are maybe some of the next steps in terms of policy changes and like overall end cash bail campaign goals?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, that's a good question. The invest divest question, because I think so many people are having that conversation. So when I just want a name, we are not limiting what we invest to what is currently spent on jail, policing, and incarceration. Like we know 80 million dollars is not enough. But at the very least we're saying, let's take this 80 billion dollars. Is that

Anna Carella:
Sorry? Is that in Memphis?

Erica Perry:
That's Shelby County or Shelby County spends 80 million last year, but eighty million dollars on jails. And so we're saying at the very least, let's start there and then let's expand. And what we'll see is that people are living healthier lives, will see that crime significantly goes down or like crime, and I put that in quotation marks because there's some issues around that use, but like actual like harm would go down, I believe. And I think, like what we want to see happen is in is we want to be able to do both concurrently, like investing in people and divesting from from incarceration and jails at the same time, because it has to be holistic. Yes, I believe it has to happen at the same time so that we create infrastructure that can hold people while also like drastically decreasing the pre-trial population. And we know as we're in it for the long term, for the long flight, because it'll take it takes years to undo a system so treacherous, treacherous system that terrorizes people. But we want to let's start with Bail. Let's start with Bail. Start with that pre-trial detention. Oh, I'm sorry. The other thing, the policy. Yes. So, um, right now we're working with a few county commissioners to pass a resolution that would create a task force; the point of the task force is to be able to study who is in jail, why they are in jail, what people need not to go back to jail. And then also what what we can do to decrease pretrial detention, significantly decrease pretrial detention. And I think the fourth thing is a huge examination of supportive services in the city and what we need to create meaningful supportive services that could reduce the number of people who are having to encounter the criminal legal system.

Anna Carella:
Yeah, well, this, um, that's been illuminating for me, I think it's an incredible thing that you all are doing and how if people want to get involved or support your efforts, what what should we tell them to do?

Erica Perry:
Yeah, so we're always excited to have people get involved. People can email us. [email protected] They can also follow us on Facebook at the official Black Lives Matter Memphis chapter. And so people can donate to us, can look us up on Facebook to donate and also can email us about getting involved with the campaign.

Anna Carella:
And one last thing. Um, this is in Memphis. There are other bailouts across the state. Are you do you know where?

Erica Perry:
Yeah. So Knoxville is doing did a bailout, Nashville did a bailout. So really excited to be in solidarity with them and talk about what it looks like to demand some things from the state in collaboration with that people who are doing this throughout the state.

Anna Carella:
So, yes, the folks who get involved in in their hometown or the nearby or all three. So that's great.

Erica Perry:
Yeah. And I think Chattanooga also and then I think also people are free to organize their own bailouts and can hit up the national bailout collective if they want to be a part of bailouts in the future.

Anna Carella:
Awesome. Well, thank you. That's great. Um, I'm certainly going to go and donate. Um, and we just appreciate you so much talking to us about this important topic today.

Erica Perry:
Thank you so much. I appreciate y'all.

Briana Perry:
Thank you for joining us for this podcast brought to you by Healthy and Free Tennessee. Healthy and Free Tennessee is a state wide coalition whose mission is to promote sexual reproductive health and freedom in Tennessee by advancing policies and practices which recognize these elements as essential to the overall well-being of all individuals and communities. Please find us online at www.healthyandfreetn.org. On Instagram @healthyfreetn and on Facebook and Twitter at Healthy and Free TN.

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