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Transatlantic Visions: Resisting the Globalization of Mass Incarceration
JULIA SUDBURY (Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnic Studies, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613; e-mail: [email protected]) is a Nigerian-British zami activist and writer. Her book, Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation (Routledge, 1998), was inspired by her involvement in the black women's movement in Britain. She is currently an organizing committee member of Critical Resistance.
I got in an accident and I wasn't able to work. I was in a hospital for three months and then I was in a therapy center for another month and a half. So I went through a lot of hassle, I had applied for disability, and I was on my first appeal against rejection of that. I guess it was 6 months after the accident that I was granted a welfare grant. I mean I appreciated it and the food stamps, but I had a $500 car, a $500 apartment. So I lost my car, was about to get kicked out my apartment. They were real nice because they knew I'd been in an accident, but I just didn't have any income. That's when it came up that a friend of mine was having problems too because she'd just had a baby and naturally the guy was no good and you know that story. She came to me, she said we could make these couple of runs and be alright. That was how I ended up here. 1
DENISHA'S STORY IS TYPICAL OF THE AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN WHO CROWD jails and prisons in the U.S. as a result of a "War on Drugs" that in reality is a war on the poor, on communities of color, and on women who rely on welfare to survive. Yet Denisha is not incarcerated in the U.S. This interview took place in Winchester, a small scenic town and former capital of England, where Denisha is detained "at her majesty's pleasure" in the women's annex of a closed (medium security) prison. Denisha was arrested at Heathrow airport and sentenced to five years for importing cocaine from Jamaica. She is caught up in a dramatic increase in women's imprisonment in England and Wales, which has more than doubled since...