Elaine Bartlett is an African American activist from Harlem [1] who was charged with a first offense felony for selling cocaine in 1983. [2] Bartlett, a mother of four children, spent sixteen years in the Bedford Hills prison in New York. [3]
During the time of Bartlett's arrest, New York had just undergone major changes with their drug laws. The controversial Rockefeller drug laws caused an upset and caused many to second-guess the motives of the criminal justice system. [3]
While Bartlett was in prison, she became involved with multiple activities to keep busy. [4] In 1999, while still in prison, Bartlett obtained her associate degree from Mercy College. [4]
After her release in 2000, [3] Bartlett found that her family did not have the resources necessary to be successful, but states that she was determined to be successful. [5] She became an activist to repeal the Rockefeller drug laws. [4] Bartlett helped found the Mothers of the Disappeared which is an advocacy group aiming for repeal of the drug laws. [4] She has advocated to New York state legislators, delivered speeches at rallies, [4] and attended anti-drug law events in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, and Texas. [4]
A 2004 book by Jennifer Gonnerman, Life on the Outside ( ISBN 9780312424572), tells the story of Bartlett's crime, her time in prison, the effect of incarceration on family members, and her re-entry into society.
Julia Ward Howe was an American author and poet, known for writing the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and the original 1870 pacifist Mother's Day Proclamation. She was also an advocate for abolitionism and a social activist, particularly for women's suffrage.
Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a women's prison in the town of Bedford, New York, is the largest New York State women's prison. The prison previously opened under the name Westfield State Farm in 1901. It lies just outside the hamlet and census-designated place Bedford Hills, New York.
Elaine Brown is an American prison activist, writer, singer, and former Black Panther Party chairwoman who is based in Oakland, California. Brown briefly ran for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008.
Elaine Marie Catherine de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist and Figurative Expressionist painter in the post-World War II era. She wrote extensively on the art of the period and was an editorial associate for Art News magazine.
Reproductive Freedom for All, formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America and commonly known as simply NARAL, is a non-profit 501(c)(4) organization in the United States that engages in lobbying, political action, and advocacy efforts to oppose restrictions on abortion, to expand access to abortion and birth control, and to support paid parental leave and protection against pregnancy discrimination.
The Rockefeller Drug Laws are the statutes dealing with the sale and possession of "narcotic" drugs in the New York State Penal Law. The laws are named after Nelson Rockefeller, who was the state's governor at the time the laws were adopted. Rockefeller had previously backed drug rehabilitation, job training and housing as strategies, having seen drugs as a social problem rather than a criminal one, but did an about-face during a period of mounting national anxiety about drug use and crime. Rockefeller, who pushed hard for the laws, was seen by some contemporary commentators as trying to build a "tough on crime" image in anticipation of a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976. The bill was signed into law by Governor Rockefeller on May 8, 1973.
Anthony Papa is an artist, author, advocate against the war on drugs and co-founder of the Mothers of the New York Disappeared.
Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) is a female-only California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison located in Chowchilla, California. It is across the road from Valley State Prison. CCWF is the second largest female correctional facility in the United States, and houses the only State of California death row for women.
Florynce Rae Kennedy was an American lawyer, radical feminist, civil rights advocate, lecturer, and activist.
Upstate Correctional Facility is a maximum security state prison for men in Franklin County, New York, US. The prison, in the Town of Malone, was the first New York State prison built as a supermax.
Elma Ina Lewis was an American arts educator and the founder of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and The Elma Lewis School of Fine Arts. She was one of the first recipients of a MacArthur Fellows Grant, in 1981, and received a Presidential Medal for the Arts by President Ronald Reagan in 1983. She is also an honorary member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.
The role of women in Egypt has changed throughout history, from ancient to modern times. From the earliest preserved archaeological records, Egyptian women were considered equal to men in Egyptian society, regardless of marital status.
Elaine R. Jones is an American civil rights attorney and activist. She joined the NAACP Legal Defense Fund (LDF) in 1970 and in 1993 became the organization's first female director-counsel and president.
Prison contemplative programs are classes or practices that are offered at correctional institutions for inmates and prison staff. There are measured or anecdotally reported benefits from studies of these programs such a stress relief for inmates and staff. These programs are gaining in acceptance in North America and Europe but are not mainstream.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness is a book by Michelle Alexander, a civil rights litigator and legal scholar. The book discusses race-related issues specific to African-American males and mass incarceration in the United States, but Alexander noted that the discrimination faced by African-American males is prevalent among other minorities and socio-economically disadvantaged populations. Alexander's central premise, from which the book derives its title, is that "mass incarceration is, metaphorically, the New Jim Crow".
Elaine Donnelly is an American conservative activist and anti-feminist principally concerned with preserving the traditional culture of the U.S. military. She is a contributing editor at Human Events magazine. She is the founder of the Center for Military Readiness which opposes the service of gay and transgender people and favors limiting the positions open to women in the military. It has been described as a right-wing organisation by the Southern Poverty Law Center and other sources.
Abortion-rights movements, also self-styled as pro-choice movements, advocate for the right to have legal access to induced abortion services including elective abortion. They seek to represent and support women who wish to terminate their pregnancy without fear of legal or social backlash. These movements are in direct opposition to anti-abortion movements.
The incarceration of women in the United States refers to the imprisonment of women in both prisons and jails in the United States. There are approximately 219,000 incarcerated women in the US according to a November 2018 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, and the rate of incarceration of women in the United States is at a historic and global high, with 133 women in correctional facilities per every 100,000 female citizens. The United States is home to just 4% of the world's female population, yet the US is responsible for 33% of the entire world's incarcerated female population. The steep rise in the population of incarcerated women in the US is linked to the complex history of the war on drugs and the US's prison–industrial complex, which lead to mass incarceration among many demographics, but had particularly dramatic impacts on women and especially women of color. However, women made up only 10.4% of the US prison and jail population, as of 2015.
Kalief Browder was an African American youth from The Bronx, New York, who was held at the Rikers Island jail complex, without trial, between 2010 and 2013 for allegedly stealing a backpack containing valuables. During his imprisonment, Browder was kept in solitary confinement for 800 days.
In the United States, women represent roughly a quarter of all arrests. Women and men are both more likely to be arrested for less serious property crimes, but men are more likely than women to be involved in violent crime. Since 1960, while arrests in total have decreased, women have become a higher percentage of those arrests, partly due to an increase in drug-related arrests. Steffensmeier and Schwartz (2008) claim that this increase is not because more women are committing substance-abuse offenses, but because law enforcement officials have begun using broader, more expansive definitions of crimes, arresting more people for minor crimes. Because women are more likely to commit these minor crimes, females have been disproportionately added to the number of arrests.