Join inside and outside comrades from the Support Ho(s)e Collective for a zine reading, history of organizing and a conditions update from inside an Illinois prison on Friday, April 24th 2020. 

This event will be held over Zoom, please RSVP for a meeting link. Participant Bios : Red (they/them) makes zines that center sex worker organizing, activist-oriented political education, prison/police abolition and incarcerated comrades’ stories. Alisha Walker (she/her) is a multi-media visual artist, poet, inside organizer, (former) sex worker and criminalized survivor. LeLe is a mixed ethinic, Black woman and self-described unapologetic whore. She is a member of the Support Ho(s)e Collective. Alisha is currently (forcibly) based in Decatur, Illinois. $10 suggested donation 11:30AM EST - 12:45PM EST Register here: bit.ly/SxHxZineReading 

Tweet from Support Ho(s)e (@supporthosechi)

Support Ho(s)e (@supporthosechi) Tweeted:

Take action to demand Governor JB Pritzker grants her clemency NOW: https://t.co/5XXZCHKqlN

You can also find steps to write to Alisha, read more about her case + organizing, and more at the link above!

#FreeLeLe #StandWithAlisha #FreeThemAll https://t.co/kzPhIU6JnH https://twitter.com/supporthosechi/status/1359923671297589251?s=20

https://t.co/kzPhIU6JnH

#FreeLele ✊🏿 https://www.instagram.com/p/Bn415UXj967/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=c3ed9w3pc806

SxHx Tumblr Sunset

Hey everyone! We’re currently working on a brand new website! 

As such, we’re sunsetting our Tumblr, which will now serve as a standing digital archive. 

Thanks so much for your continued support! 

Coverage from the Hacking//Hustling Convening two of our comrades presented at! 

Join the #FreeThemAll: Defending Criminalized Survivors Webinar. 

We’ll be talking about our work building a grassroots defense campaign with Alisha and inside/outside sex worker organizing.  

Learn more about current survivor defense campaigns and how you can take action to #FreeThemAll! #SurvivedAndPunished

Register at bit.ly/DefendSurvivors2020 

Video Visit Update

4/6/2020 

Just got off a video visit with Alisha! GTL cancelled our 50min and swapped with a “free” 15min but kept our money. She was able to use the new kiosk on unit which meant a little more comfort (durag on, makeup off), and no awful “strip and squat” search prior to our visit.

She’s being moved to another unit soon, like her friends before her. Decatur is compressing people, forcing them into even tighter/closer configurations than they’ve experienced before. The din in the background held the nervous, agitated voices of LeLe’s unit-mates and also the booming voice of the COs shouting at folx. LeLe looked lovely but self-described her look as tired and “over it.” She asked about Uptown People's Law Center’s lawsuits and is excited about upcoming actions Survived and Punished, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, and Love & Protect are taking.

She sends love to everyone and also wanted to convey that it’s okay to feel pissed off; she’s pissed! She’s also thankful and energized to hear people outside are fighting to #FreeThemAll however folx can.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-alisha-walker

People asked us for the piece that Red shared this evening for International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, below is their introductory statement and Alisha's poem.

Tonight I’m reading a poem written by my friend and comrade Alisha Walker. Alisha is a self-described queer, mixed, Black woman and unapologetic whore. She is a member of the Support Ho(s)e collective, a poet and an artist. Alisha is also a criminalized survivor, currently incarcerated at Decatur Correctional. LeLe was sentenced to 15 years in state prison because she fought back against a violent client, Alan Filan, who was demanding unprotected sex and threatening her and her friend with a knife. Alisha saved her life and the life of her fellow worker that night. When Judge Obbish sentenced Alisha to 15 years he ostensibly said that she should have died that night when Filan attacked her. He ostensibly said that her life didn’t matter as much as that well-connected white man’s. Alisha’s survival and subsequent punishment underscores the racist and whorephobic violence of the police, courts and prisons. When Alisha called me a few days ago, she was adamant on me also sharing with y’all the violence of erasure that prisons perpetuate. She excitedly yelled into the phone, “tell them to remember all the hos in county and in the prisons! Remember us!” She wanted me to me also share that as it’s so important to come together to mourn and grieve our lost, it’s equally important to organize and fight to end the everyday violence sex workers face at the hands of the police, the courts, the prisons, the jails, the detention centers. She sends her love, rage and support to all y’all tonight.

Here are Alisha’s words:

I wrote this poem called "Battle" in honor of December 17th, International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. It's gonna take all of us to fight this hatred of us, and we need you to fight alongside us now. If you support sex workers rights you are supporting all other kinds of rights too--because it's the most diverse and marginalized profession out there. Show up for us.

"Battle"

How did I get here? What wrong did I do?

Defending myself? I guess was the wrong thing to do.

They said I should have laid down, that I should have gave up and quit.

Should have been a compliant little whore. Gave into a trick. That I have no right to say no, I don’t deserve to choose "She’s nothing, she’s useless, what’s she going to do?"

My escorts, workers, my family, you feel my pain, as I do you.

Listen

They have a plan: "take away our little security,"

Kill us off, decrease our numbers, divide and conquer

But they forget, we are mothers, daughters, partners, and friends. We have our own army. We will never end! We're survivors!

When you knock us down, it makes our skin tougher See....

We are a different breed

They fucking envy us! So they try to make us bleed.

We've lost so many in this war.

Just to name a few...

Hande Kader Alphonza Watson Vanesa Campos   Yang Song Sisi Thibert Alloura Wells

So listen up!

We as a community have shit to do. Stand! In solidarity!

Because this is a fight for our lives, WE WILL NOT LOSE!

(art by SWARM comrades)

The recording from our zine reading and talk back with our comrades Red and Alisha Walker, hosted by Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center is now LIVE online!

We made sure to include lots of resource links in the video's description too!

S&P Webinar Recording!

We wanted to thank everyone for joining us for Survived and Punished's #FreeThemAll: Defending Criminalized Survivors Webinar!

Special thanks to all the amazing speakers + organizers for sharing their knowledge and campaigns!

Here's the webinar recording if you weren't able to join!

https://zoom.us/rec/play/7sd_JeH9pjg3T9TEtgSDAfJ5W9W4faOs1ykdr_YJxEqzAHZVZFulNbQRYce_qNW6jsFKyA_oXpOCqbE?continueMode=true&_x_zm_rtaid=zmpR_iowS9KdRl7ItIGbgw.1587399776818.07b80d3d2bc17a294e3cbb9416e2758a&_x_zm_rhtaid=370 

Level 1 Lockdown

We got word from Alisha last night (4/28/2020) that Decatur had put itself on "Level 1 Lockdown," as of a few minutes ago we still believed she'd be able to leave her cell for scheduled video visits. 

However, an email she sent early this (4/29) afternoon that just posted notified Red that all video visits are being suspended until further notice.

  LeLe no longer has regular access to phone use or to showers. One person allowed to phones and showers at a time is what COs are instituting. She and her cellmates are being confined to their room for the entire day, a room she shares with 3 other people, who share a toilet with another 4 people on top of that. As of today, chow is being delivered again on trays directly to rooms. 

She said in the email, "they [COs] are now wearing gowns and placed hazard trash by each of our doors, and now they say there is no cases here... But since that girl had a fever they went through all this... So i think they are lying. And just wont tell us whats happening."

  We are calling JB every single day. We email his office every single day. We've been doing this. Please join us. Let's get our loved ones out of these hell holes.

Call JB Pritzker and tell him this is torturous! Springfield offices: 217-782-6830 or 217-782-6831Chicago office: 312-814-2121

Email him via his contact form too: https://www2.illinois.gov/sites/gov/contactus/Pages/VoiceAnOpinion.aspx 

Thanks for Watching!

Much love to everyone who joined us and Bluestockings Bookstore, Café, & Activist Center for our Zine Reading & Talk Back with Alisha this past Friday! We’ll have a recording up ASAP as well—and we wanted to make a findable post for all those shoutouts we made during the event!

We highly suggest following Survived and Punished, Survived & Punished New York, Quimby's Bookstore NYC, Quimby's Bookstore, Love & Protect, Black and Pink: Milwaukee, #FreeChrystulKizer, Midwest Perzine Fest, Curandera Press, and Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration for starters!

You can support Alisha by giving to her post-release fund! https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-alisha-walker 

You should follow us on Twitter for real-time updates @ supporthosechi 

We highly suggest you subscribe to "Free:Survivors" S&P NY's inside/outside newsletter and send copies to your loved ones: https://www.survivedandpunishedny.org/newsletter-campaign/ 

Get historical! Check out archived issues of "No More Cages" here: https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/search/commonwealth-oai:np197v453

  We also recommend reading "All Our Trials" by Emily Thuma! Snag a copy from your favorite indie bookstore online! 

READ ZINES made by sex workers! Make your own! Subscribe to prison abolitionist newsletters and abolitionist zines! Write to incarcerated people! 

We'll be participating in Survived and Punished's "Free Them All" Week of Action from April 5th-11th! Check out the full list of events/actions here: bit.ly/SAAMFreeThemAll

We’re taking time today, in spite of the fear and anxieties swirling within us to take stock of the last four years. Today, we’re turning 4 years young as a collective!!! 

In late March of 2016, we organized our first demonstration in solidarity with Alisha Walker and all criminalized/incarcerated sex workers who had survived violence. It was our first formal action as a collective.

Since then, we’ve fundraised, visited, developed friendships and organized alongside LeLe, protested, found pro bono legal aid for her, and launched a grassroots campaign for clemency.

We developed a syllabus for political education reading groups for our sex working comrades and accomplices in adjacent queer communities.

We’ve taken public space, held teach-ins, trainings, knowledge shares, hosted letter writing events, Know Your Rights events, and crafts workshops to demand rights, respect and protection of sex working people.

We’ve created art and print resources like zines, posters, banners and more to artistically intervene with sex workers’ resistance in visual culture.

We created toolkits for Letter Writing to incarcerated folx, as well as Media and Health & Wellness professional to become sex work competent and create ethical conditions for working with sex workers.

We’ve been honored to work closely with Alisha’s mother Sherri and family and help facilitate numerous articles to highlight her case.

Through Alisha’s inside organizing, we’ve built many comradeships with others inside at Decatur and Logan Correctional Centers/Prisons. 

We saw the release of one of our comrades, Judy, who’ve we’ve co-authored a forthcoming book chapter with. We’ve engaged in mutual aid efforts to help Judy and her partner establish their new life together. 

We have continued to expand our organizing work in NYC, and are helping to build radical community amongst current and former sex working people and co-conspirators. We’ve been humbled and thankful to forge bonds with Survived & Punished NY, Hacking//Hustling, Red Light Reader, Red Canary Song, Kink Out, Bluestockings, No New Jails NYC, and other renegade comrades who we learn from everyday! 

We can do a lot more as a community and need to. We’ve got to keep lifting up our incarcerated sex worker family and work to get them free. Especially now amidst a global health crisis and pandemic. More people are learning about and deepening their mutual aid/care practices and it’s so hopeful to see. It’s going to take all of us to resist the death blows of capitalism and the racist whorephobia of carcerality. 

Thank y'all for all your support along the way. Please keep sharing, keep writing LeLe, keep telling folx that she should be free--extend this care to all on the inside. 

We’ve got a long fight ahead of us, but having these years behind us, we’ve learned a hell of a lot. We are a small, extremely small, formation, and yet we feel committed and focused. We’ve learned hard lessons, and have fortified bonds of trust and love. You can be small and make shit happen. 

We know folx are giving a lot right now. If you still have the means, please consider making a contribution to Alisha’s support fund for our "birthday": https://www.gofundme.com/support-alisha-walker

Updates from Lorena!

We finally got word from another one of our comrades who's currently incarcerated in Illinois right now. 

On 3/21 Lorena (pseudonym) wrote us: “So I am here on an immigration warrant, I was at work release and tried to fix my green card and it put a red flag out and got me a warrant.. My mom has a lawyer working on it right now..but it might take forever.. I heard Chicago is a sanctuary city or something, could you check? I'm in a drug treatment program so I'll be out in October.. This place is so crazy.. I wish I could've gone back to Decatur... We are on full lockdown right now. We can't do anything .. As for commissary, money is a lil tight…”

Our comrades working with Hacking//Hustling were able to send funds immediately to Lorena for when commissary is reestablished and she can shop again.   

On 3/24: “Thank you for the funds!!! Yes, please share everything.. I want to help when I'm out by advocating for women behind bars because they [the prison staff at Logan] treat us very badly!!! I'm so stressed about getting deported but it's something that's out of my control.. We still get fed and get showers..but shopping [commissary] is on hold and phones are so crazy to get on without arguing..everyone is going crazy..”

We waited to share until we got express consent to give folx updates. At Lorena's request we also forwarded the details she sent us to Uptown People's Law Center via their survey! 

Alisha and Lorena are very close and incredibly worried about each other. Prison policy expressly forbids correspondence between incarcerated folx (with very few exceptions--LeLe was denied writing a cousin because he wasn't deemed "close enough kin.") 

We'll continue posting updates and messages from our comrades inside, since JB Pritzker has refused to do the right thing and #freethemall4publichealth to voice their needs directly. 

Do you know someone inside an IL prison, jail or detention facility? Fill this out ASAP: https://www.uplcchicago.org/what-we-do/prison/il-prison-covid-response.html 

Updates from LeLe

3/21 Morning Call 

Decatur has implemented “Administrative Quarantine” furthering their lockdown practices.

The incarcerated mothers with babies have been released. Many had no where to go, LeLe heard some had been sent to shelters/hotels but has no way of confirming this. She’s worried for them. She’s worried for herself and those left caged.

They prison is doing “half and half’s,” based on odd and even room numbers, limiting who can leave their rooms to use phones, etc.

Mostly folx are being confined to unit. COs brought meals to people in cells on disposable trays. Limited access to gym is still being negotiated.

Email is down, completely. It stopped working on Friday. They’re getting server errors when trying to log onto tablets.

They received a notice last night about how the prison administration plans on handling this crisis that was vague. It promises “alternative programming for contracts and days” but doesn’t specify what or how.

The notice also stated that showers, GTL kiosks (video visits), commissary and the law library would still be accessible.

There is bleach to clean the phones finally. Though that cleaning labor has been put onto folx inside.

Midway through the call LeLe said: “Social distancing. Psh. All they talk about is social distancing. How the fuck is that supposed to work in here? I’ve got people less than a foot away from me right now!”