This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:07] Laura Bell Bundy: Welcome to the Women of Tomorrow Podcast, where we work to change the social consciousness around women's worth and equality through art, education, and community.

[0:07] Shea Carter's's: I'm your host, Laura Bell Bundy, and this is my partner, Shea Carter's.

[0:19] Laura Bell Bundy: April marks second chance month, when we reaffirm the importance of helping people who were formerly incarcerated re-enter society.

[0:26] Shea Carter's's: Here is a message from President Joe Biden about this month.

[0:30] President Joe Biden: America is a nation of second chances, and it is critical that our criminal and juvenile justice systems provide meaningful opportunities for rehabilitation and redemption.

[0:38] President Joe Biden: It is also vital that we address both the root causes of crime and the underlying needs of returning citizens using resources devoted to prevention, diversion, re-entry, trauma-informed care, culturally specific services, and social support.

[0:52] President Joe Biden: By supporting people who are committed to rectifying their mistakes, redefining themselves, and making meaningful contributions to society, we help reduce recidivism and build safer communities.

[1:01] President Joe Biden: We must rethink the existing criminal justice system and whom we send to prison and for how long.

[1:07] Laura Bell Bundy: Today we have the opportunity to speak with two women who are deep in this fight.

[1:11] Shea Carter's's: From the New York Women's Foundation, Director of Programs, Gisela Marroquín joins us to talk about the foundation's 35-year history of advancing women's issues, including ending mass incarceration.

[1:23] Guisela Marroquín: The foundation uses an early investment philanthropic approach that sets the stage for community leaders to flourish by investing in women-led strategies with the belief that when women and gender-expansive people thrive, their families and communities also thrive.

[1:39] Guisela Marroquín: The New York Women's Foundation participatory grant-making approach between community members, leaders, and funders creates opportunities for local solutions across a wide variety of areas, including gender, racial, and economic justice, expanding democracy and leadership, safety and healing justice, and health equity and reproductive justice.

[1:58] Guisela Marroquín: To date, the foundation has distributed more than 100 million dollars to over 500 community-based organizations through their unique early investment strategy.

[2:08] Guisela Marroquín: In October 2018, the foundation created the Justice Initiative and Collaborative Fund, a first of its kind grant-making and philanthropic mobilization effort to invest in community-based and cross-sector solutions that significantly decrease the involvement of women and families in all aspects of the justice system.

[2:26] Guisela Marroquín: Key among the priorities is closing Rikers Island and investing in alternatives that promote justice, safety, and overall well-being for these communities.

[2:34] Guisela Marroquín: One of the first grant recipients from this fund was Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan, who founded the Women's Community Justice Association, WCJA.

[2:44] Laura Bell Bundy: Thank you for giving us so much information. And let me break it down in the most basic way possible. We all know that women lead movements, and we need more women to lead movements.

[2:57] Laura Bell Bundy: And the New York Women's Foundation invests in women so they can lead movements. The New York Women's Foundation is a platform for women, cis and trans, non-binary and gender-expansive people.

[3:11] Laura Bell Bundy: They are a force for change using people. And when they want to protect women, that means all women, including those who are incarcerated or who have been incarcerated.

[3:25] Laura Bell Bundy: Which is why they are longtime supporters of the Women's Community Justice Association, also known as the WCJA. And that is why we have Sharon on today. Welcome, Sharon.

[3:36] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Well, hello. Thank you for having me.

[3:40] Laura Bell Bundy: Can you share with us what led to the inception of the Women's Community Justice Association?

[3:46] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Oh, absolutely. The fact that women have for so very long been overlooked, underacknowledged, underrepresented. And, you know, just as the Close Rikers campaign was really gaining traction, and what happened with Khalif Browder at that time.

[4:10] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Just to give some context, Khalif Browder was an African-American youth from the Bronx in New York who was held at Rikers Island jail complex without trial between 2010 and 2013 for allegedly stealing a backpack containing valuables.

[4:24] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: During his imprisonment, Browder was in solitary confinement for 700 days. Two years after his release, Browder hanged himself at his parents' home. His case has been cited by activists campaigning for reform for the New York City criminal justice system.

[4:57] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Always been an afterthought, you know. Oh yeah, and the women too, you know, and although the women may be the smallest populations in prisons and jails, we are the fastest growing.

[5:13] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So WCJA came about just understanding that there need to be an entity that exists that uplifts and elevates and addresses, dismantles, disrupts all of the things that keep women oppressed.

[5:40] Laura Bell Bundy: Do you feel comfortable sharing any of your experience?

[5:44] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Oh, absolutely. I'm formally incarcerated. I've did a year collectively on Rikers Island, and over a decade in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility behind a man attempting to rape me back in 1992.

[6:05] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And thus began, you know, my road to my advocacy and activism in this. You know, prior to that, you know, I am atypical story than what you find within prison walls. You know, I come from a family that, you know, raised in a two-parent household. Education was the capstone, you know, and the cornerstone of our household.

[6:37] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And I was sheltered. I was sheltered from, you know, all of the things that was happening around us in certain communities. And so when I myself wound up behind prison walls, it was a shock to me how many women and gender non-conforming folks were incarcerated, and the trauma that led to that.

[7:09] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And so that's one of the reasons why I became a social worker, a licensed social worker, because there weren't any social workers in prison to address the root issues, the causes, the, you know, all of the things that brought us to prison.

[7:29] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Instead, they only had psychiatrists that just wanted to medicate people so that they can forget that they have problems rather than address it. And so, you know, this brought me to where I am, you know, now I'm a recipient of rape. I've been raped, I've been in domestic violence, I can't even call it a relationship.

[8:01] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: These things, we know that at a time, you know, I don't want to tell my age, I'm young, but I'm 55, right? And so going back to an age in my 20s, just turning 20 and being in a domestic violence relationship where, you know, or domestic violence situation, that in my household, you know, that I just didn't come from that.

[8:33] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I didn't see that. I wasn't raised with that. You know, there was no safe havens. There were no places that we could come to and talk about why this shouldn't happen. People just didn't talk about it. Things just really became real when I experienced it for myself.

[8:54] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And that was such an eye-opener. That was such a self-awareness and just being in tune and a community awareness, how so many women had that same kind of bottom line, right? That baseline that they had this trauma, this domestic violence, childhood violence, all of these things.

[9:22] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And although I couldn't relate to all of that, I can relate to some of it. And so my life can't be anything else but what it is, you know, because of my personal experiences.

[9:37] Laura Bell Bundy: Yeah. You know, it's I want to jump in and add something. At Women of Tomorrow, we do a lot of work to understand the connection between women's issues and how they intersect.

[9:51] Laura Bell Bundy: And you were talking about domestic violence or child abuse. We can't ignore the fact that gender-based violence is the primary driver of a woman's incarceration.

[10:04] Laura Bell Bundy: And this was on your website. An estimated 77% of women in jail nationally are survivors of domestic violence. In addition, women's criminal involvement is more likely to flow from their relationships with family or intimate partners than is men's.

[10:32] Laura Bell Bundy: One in four women experience domestic violence in their lifetimes. That's 25% of women. Every month, 70 women in the US are shot and killed by an intimate partner. And the main reason for homelessness for women in the US is domestic violence.

[10:48] Laura Bell Bundy: And homelessness also can lead to being incarcerated. We can't ignore female incarceration is a huge women's issue that stems from other women's issues.

[11:02] Laura Bell Bundy: And a patriarchal thinking of entitlement over a woman's body, whether that's in the form of sexual violence or violence and manipulation in general, a sense of ownership.

[11:18] Laura Bell Bundy: And, um, but that's baked into the cake, right? Of course I think there's also a patriarchal idea, even less severe about women's roles and how women are supposed to like, you know, protect their children in certain capacities that are sometimes impossible for them.

[11:36] Laura Bell Bundy: I mean, there was a domestic violence survivor in Oklahoma who was sentenced to 30 years in prison because her partner was abusive. And so she was sentenced to 30 years for failure to protect her children, and he was sentenced to two years.

[11:54] Laura Bell Bundy: And so a lot of times in these states, there's these other expectations just of women's purity and women's ability to do all things, provide for their children and protect them and be there full time, you know, to kind of an impossible standard.

[12:08] Laura Bell Bundy: And I think, and I just want to add to that that this goes along with just our history alone, you know, just in particular, just understanding how we raise our children, the culture, you know, the ideologies, all of the things that we have normalized throughout the years, right? That, you know, men shouldn't cry, they should be this, they should be that, they should be strong, you know, and that women, oh, you should be strong, you have to do this, you have to be there for the kids, you have to be barefoot in prayer.

[12:41] Laura Bell Bundy: All of these things is this is what leads up to what is, you know, we have always since the beginning of time, and as a woman of faith, biblical times, that we have been treated as other second-class citizens or less, that we have never been seen as partners, as equals, as, you know, and this is why people feel like they can make decisions and have control over our person, you know.

[13:14] Guisela Marroquín: Um, this is taught learned behavior, things that have been put in place, and you know, now we need to change that narrative and change laws, and it takes all of us.

[13:28] Guisela Marroquín: And change how we talk about it in the home.

[13:31] Guisela Marroquín: I mean, we at Women of Tomorrow, we just offered a class to anyone who follows us called how to talk to your kids about consent.

[13:42] Guisela Marroquín: Because the reality is that we have a rape culture; we can have a consent culture.

[13:47] Guisela Marroquín: That's right. Um, if we give children the license to understand what boundaries are, not only with their own bodies, but other people's bodies and respecting, you know, I don't consent to that or I'm uncomfortable. Like, you know, don't make your kid have to hug your hairy, sweaty uncle. Like, that's also consent.

[14:11] Guisela Marroquín: Um, so I'm gonna jump back and ask you about your Beyond Rosies campaign.

[14:23] Guisela Marroquín: So what is that?

[14:25] Guisela Marroquín: So the Beyond Rosies campaign is a decarceration campaign.

[14:30] Guisela Marroquín: And so we have these pillars in which A, we wanna close the Rose M. Singer Center, dubbed as Rosie's on Rikers Island.

[14:40] Guisela Marroquín: It's the only female jail that exists on Rikers Island for women and gender nonconforming folks and those who identify as women. You know, we want to shut that down.

[14:52] Guisela Marroquín: So, you know, there's a plan to close Rikers, and it started out at 2027.

[14:58] Guisela Marroquín: And so our idea is there are less than 350 women on Rikers Island right now that we can safely shut that down, right? And get the women off sooner than the anticipated date.

[15:16] Guisela Marroquín: Um, the other thing is reinvestment into the community.

[15:21] Guisela Marroquín: And so we say reinvestment, but the reality is invest into the communities because we come to understand and we know that there are marginalized, disenfranchised, low-income communities that aren't invested in. You know, and if they are invested in, it's to gentrify it and then move those who really belong there up to move on.

[15:51] Guisela Marroquín: This is where the homelessness now just becomes more, right? That it increases.

[15:59] Guisela Marroquín: And so, and the other thing is housing, housing for all.

[16:04] Guisela Marroquín: Everyone has a right to be housed, whatever that looks like for them. You know, not everybody wants an apartment. Not everybody just wants a room. Not everybody might want to live in a house, but everybody has the right to be housed.

[16:19] Guisela Marroquín: And so with Beyond Rosie's, it is everything pertaining to women and gender nonconforming folks with all of the issues.

[16:31] Guisela Marroquín: We address black maternal health, you know, we address poverty. We address all of these things because these are the things that are affecting the communities the most.

[16:45] Guisela Marroquín: Most importantly, Beyond Rosie's is about healing justice in a different kind of way.

[16:52] Guisela Marroquín: Not just repairing relationships and stuff like that, but really healing, healing from the inside.

[17:01] Guisela Marroquín: Now really understanding what does that mean? Everybody's inches measured differently, you know.

[17:08] Guisela Marroquín: And so what does healing mean for someone that might have known just harm all their life, right?

[17:17] Guisela Marroquín: What does healing look like for someone who has been poor all their life? What does healing look like for someone who's seen nothing but violence and conflict in their life, or incarceration that's generational or just being on welfare, whatever it is, or their children in the system and forced to care? You know, and so just really understanding what does healing at the table mean for every individual?

[17:52] Guisela Marroquín: Because, you know, not for nothing. Women are the heart, the core, the root, the soul of the family and of the community.

[18:02] Guisela Marroquín: And you invest in the women, you are investing in the men, you are investing in the children, you are investing in everything because we know that we are the spine, right?

[18:13] Guisela Marroquín: We keep, we hold everything up.

[18:15] Guisela Marroquín: And we shouldn't have to be resilient, right? Resilience is a specialty word.

[18:21] Guisela Marroquín: I remember growing up, resilient is a word that you had to look in the dictionary and be like, how you spell that again? Because it wasn't used as often.

[18:31] Guisela Marroquín: But now we use it regularly, and we shouldn't have to muster up everything, all the strength, everything that we have just to go through our daily endeavors.

[18:31] Guisela Marroquín: We shouldn't have to draw on all the strength that we have, right? To just go through our day, but we do, and we shouldn't have to.

[18:56] Guisela Marroquín: So what does healing really look like? And that's what the Beyond Rosies means, beyond jail, right?

[19:05] Guisela Marroquín: Beyond that jail on Rikers Island, beyond the prisons up in New York State, beyond anything.

[19:12] Guisela Marroquín: What does it mean to be beyond anything that is harmful and hurtful to the women, to the gender non-conforming folks in the community?

[19:23] Guisela Marroquín: It's beyond.

[19:24] Guisela Marroquín: So that's what the campaign really just represents, anything beyond hurt and harm and violence.

[19:33] Guisela Marroquín: And it's amazing.

[19:34] Guisela Marroquín: It's amazing because what you're doing is the rehabilitation that should be happening the moment the crime takes place.

[19:46] Guisela Marroquín: If a crime takes place, right? Like there's empathy that we lack in this country around how we got to where we are, what led a person to certain actions, and what systems are in place that made that person, you know, which though as we look at those systems and how the structures in our country are built around women, um, they're criminal, right?

[20:12] Guisela Marroquín: They are criminal. And we're fighting those all the time.

[20:15] Guisela Marroquín: But you keep hearing the same rhetoric, right?

[20:17] Guisela Marroquín: Well, prison's not supposed to be comfortable. You did something bad. This is your punishment.

[20:21] Guisela Marroquín: And then we create this lack of empathy for people that are put into certain positions for so many other variables that aren't talked about.

[20:28] Guisela Marroquín: It's this idea that there's an easy black and white good and bad, and there's gray.

[20:33] Guisela Marroquín: There is a question I wanted to ask you. Having been incarcerated, it seems like there are so many fewer programs for women than there are for men in the criminal justice system and in prisons.

[20:58] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Absolutely.

[20:59] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I mean, it goes back to that patriarchal way of thinking.

[21:04] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Um, and also, too, I think that I mean, we're intimidating.

[21:09] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Let's not for nothing. You know, women now are, we have conquered the workforce, the schools, we have conquered the churches, we're every place, everywhere.

[21:21] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Then we come home, we got the children, we got dinner, we got the housekeeping.

[21:28] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I mean, hell, we even changing the batteries in the remote now, right? To the TV.

[21:33] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I mean, you know, for nothing. You know, the bottom line is that how do you, you know, you can't have control if you don't have people to have control over, right?

[21:47] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And so if we're coming up the dominant ones now, because I mean, you know, not for nothing, and I love men. I just have to say that for my husband, because he's upstairs.

[21:59] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: But you know, um, you can't step on us anymore, right?

[22:04] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: We, I'm saying we have rose up, you know, we are the dominant ones, and we're doing it, and we're doing it, you know, and we don't wear capes every day, you know.

[22:18] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And the fact is that it's almost it, and I'm gonna put it in this context.

[22:25] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: It's almost how the black and the brown, especially the black community felt being kept uneducated.

[22:33] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: This is how it is for women, right?

[22:36] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: You keep them at a certain level so that you can have the control, so that you can financially, emotionally, spiritually, physically control them.

[22:48] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Period. Why wouldn't you give us the same amount of programs?

[22:52] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Why wouldn't you give them what they need, especially if they tend to the house, right?

[22:59] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Because it's mama's baby, but daddy's maybe, right?

[23:04] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So regardless of what we know that a mother is a mother, even if a father doesn't claim their kids.

[23:09] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So regardless of what, you know, that the woman is the one that is the stable, steady one.

[23:16] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And I'm not saying that, you know, men aren't anything, but in the context of women, we are everything to everybody.

[23:26] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Why wouldn't you?

[23:28] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Why wouldn't you give us what we need to survive?

[23:33] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: It's so interesting because in preparation for this interview, I was looking at different ways that they keep it equal, right?

[23:39] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So for male prisons, there was this rule of if you were going to be transported outside of the prison, you had to be shackled on both your ankles and your wrists.

[23:47] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And so they just naturally made that equal for women's prisons without taking into consideration that women go into prison pregnant and then will have to give birth to the baby.

[23:57] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And so now we have women in active labor being shackled to a bed, both ankles and wrists.

[24:04] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And so it's like they cherry pick and pick and choose what's going to be equal, whereas like reformation programs, not going to be equal, shackling.

[24:11] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Well, that's gotta be equal.

[24:13] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So we do this picking and choosing, and it seems that you're right.

[24:18] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: It's like they're doing this in order to keep power to one gender.

[24:24] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: On your website, you had written about a woman named Layleen Polanko, and I was curious if you would feel comfortable sharing this story with our listeners.

[24:36] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Um, this sort of explains not only sort of sexism in the justice system, but economic injustice.

[24:45] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And I thought it would be interesting for you to share about sort of what is going on in New York and with this particular prison.

[24:53] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And Layleen, and I just want to put a disclaimer that I did not know Layleen personally.

[25:02] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And her story, her narrative is not mine to tell.

[25:06] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: But what I will say is that she was on Rikers Island.

[25:12] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: She could have been out on bail, right?

[25:15] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And that's another thing that we definitely need to address is the fact that if people can't afford bail, like it's in order to even just have a bail process, if people can be out on the street, even with a murder charge with bail, right?

[25:31] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I'm just saying, what is the sense?

[25:34] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: There's other forms, other ways, other methods, other practices that can happen, right?

[25:40] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: That people can still be in the community.

[25:43] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So she was on a low bail, and she was put in solitary confinement as a transgender woman, and she shouldn't have been, right?

[25:53] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: She shouldn't have been in solitary confinement. She had health issues, there was things going on. Um, and she should not have been in solitary confinement and she wind up dying. And I think she is uh uh uh an example, uh and I it's really a really touchy subject, only because, you know, you don't want to use people as an example, but just to say that there is a better way, and there can be justice beyond punishment, right? To deal with folks, to deal with people, right? Not locking them down like animals and doing things that, you know, um, that is just really not only inappropriate, but come on, it this is dehumanizing, right? It's it's dehumanizing. And so, you know, when I think of it, and let me just say this Rikers Island is the warehouse, right?

But we we also have to get at the courts because Rikers Island is a place, right? DLC is the place that is the people that are over the place, but it's the courts that send the people there, you know. So this responsibility is across the board, you know, it's really across the board. And we keep criminalizing people who have survived. We keep sending people who need help, mental health care, need substance usage care, you know, need all of these other things, but instead we detain them on at Rikers Island, you know, so there's this greater issue there, and then all of these other issues there. And Laleen should have never died. She should have never died on Rikers Island, you know, she should have never been in solitary confinement, you know.

She shouldn't have even been there, you know, and and that's the reality. The same with Khalif Browder, the same with a many other people, and we, you know, we're in conversation now with the city, you know, just talking about how do we take care of the women, and and of course the men will come, but the women first. I'm sorry, uh fellas, love y'all, but okay. Um, how do we safely get people to where they need to be? Get the way we treat people in New York, how we detain them and incarcerate people, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, right? Because for a place to be so progressive, to be so, you know, have you know all of these resources. I mean, and we have many resources, you go to other states, right?

And and and then you say, well, Dad, New York got it going on, right? How we do not utilize what we have. We spend a lot of money, and it's a bunch of fluff, you know, because a lot of these resources are underutilized. We spend money to do these things, you know. Uh de Blaggio's wife spent millions of dollars to have these mental health two diversion centers open, one in East Harlem and one in the Bronx, I believe, to have people instead of getting arrested to go to these diversion centers. Underutilized. Nope, you haven't even heard of them. Look at that. I'm just, you know, people don't even know that they exist. So, you know, how can it be effective if people don't even know that it exists?

You know, and so that's you know how we do things. You know, Rikers Island, you know, we know that Rikers need to close, but we also need a strategy. We also need to have a great plan in place, right? To decarcerate the folks. You can't just relocate all 5,000 plus people into borough-based jails and all. That shouldn't be the plan at all. The plan should be how do we get people where they need to be? So I don't know if I is that have anything to do with a path to uh under 100? The path to under 100, yes. We had that done to show that there is a roadmap, there is a pathway to getting the women safely, you know, and and with with intent, right, to places that they can get their needs met. And if we at 300 and I know, I think it's 331 women and gender non conforming folks that's there now, under 100 leaves a handful of people that need a great level of care because they have the most serious of charges.

The rest can be put back and in and safely brought back into the community, you know, in alternatives in other places, you know, to get their to get their needs met. The rest, you know, build the healing center, you know, so that people can go to, and that's the path to under 100, is showing that it can happen, it can work, and it's doable.

[32:02] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: I would be remiss to not point out that your work was critical to the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act that was enacted in New York State in 2019 to provide judges with more discretion on sentencing a domestic violence survivor who is convicted of a crime related to their abuse. And this law allows for alternative sentencing and retroactively gives those sentenced prior to the law's enactment the chance to apply for resentencing. Essentially controlling her to commit those crimes essentially. And it's sorely underutilized right how many more people what about the ones that can't prove significant domestic violence because they couldn't call the police, or they didn't call the police because of the community they come from, because of you know their situation.

You know, this time I remember even in my own experience where I had the police, the police came, took them away and released him. We was in Harlem, released him 15 minutes later. He came walking back around the corner. So obviously there's no record of that, you know. So it's unfortunate we have this law that exists. And again, it's still flawed. There's still things that that could be enhanced and added to. But the reality is that the judges, you know, don't utilize the authority that they have enough because the majority of women come from a baseline of DV, right? Or IPV. A lot of people that have even submitted an application has been denied. And then on the front end of it is if there's a domestic violence situation, from the beginning, an assessment can be made.

They would never have to touch jail or prison. They would never have to have handcuffs. They would never have to even be detained. That's the discretion that the judges have. But again, to even show that a man was able to be the first one to come out from under this law, still show you that we got too much more to go. It also makes me think of victims' rights and how most states in the United States don't have victims' rights. And I think New York is one of the states that doesn't have victims' rights, meaning victims aren't told about court dates for their perpetrators. They aren't told when their assailants are released from prison. And so you have a lot of women, especially with the COVID releases that were being attacked by the men that they put in prison for domestic violence.

And then they're expected to not fight back. And if you do fight back, then you also have to the repercussions of that. I have a question that we didn't ask you before. So if you don't know the answer to this, that's totally fine. But COVID saw a lot of early releases for a lot of people that were incarcerated. Do you know the differences gender-wise, what it was for men and women or the trans community or I I probably have the numbers somewhere because that's when we activated our task force. What I do know is that the women went down almost half. The women got down to 129 during COVID. And of course, more men, I am going to say I don't off the off the cuff know the percentage, but there were definitely more men released because of course there's more men that are detained.

There's 5,000 to 340, you know, 31 women. But that was a time that I think that we should go kind of go back to that. How did that happen? And be able to create a model from that because it they people got released, and the numbers got down. Now, how do we keep it down? How do we and kind of draw from that? So I can get you some accurate numbers, but know that yeah, there were definitely more men to women, but the women's population cut in half during COVID. That's huge. That's huge. 129 is huge. That also tells you women potentially being in prison unnecessarily, most likely for nonviolent crimes, if they did not feel as if the general public was at risk for their release and taking a look at their record and their behavior, et cetera, et cetera. But what needs to happen and what you are providing is the ability to have rehabilitation after, not only after trauma committed against them prior to incarceration, but during incarceration.

[37:42] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: That leads me to um congratulating you on your honor. Uh, the New York Women's Foundation celebrating women's breakfast pays tribute to extraordinary honorees and grantee partners who are advancing innovative and bold solutions to create an equitable and just future for women and families. Um, the breakfast that is coming up on May 4th is an annual tradition and significant fundraising event contributing to the foundation's annual grant-making efforts. And in the 2023 celebrating women breakfast, it will be a hybrid celebration celebration, both in person and virtual. So congratulations on that extraordinary honor. Thank you. And for doing this work that you do, um, which is truly dismantling the patriarchy. So I appreciate that so deeply. And today we also have a New York Women's Foundation representative, Gisela Marroquín, Director of Programs who works closely with your association.

[39:01] Guisela Marroquín: Hi all. Yes, we actually met Sharon and folks who were beginning to build this idea of the Beyond Roses campaign back in 2017 out of former relationships for grants that we had made around alternatives to incarceration and housing options through housing plus, which creates those opportunities for women coming home to have family reunification and an alternative space. So, you know, this happens a lot to us in our relationships with folks that we grant for a number of years. They come back and they're like, there's a new piece, you know, there's a maybe a collaboration, a coalition that we're building. And so they came to us at a moment where we were also listening to other grantee partners about the urgency of closing Rikers, the opportunity that was being posed with some, you know, some of their advocacy for the administration to commit to a particular date to close it.

And so we were more than happy to partner with women we knew well and who we knew were very much leaders in the space as they developed this idea. And so we started, you know, with a seed grant to sort of strategize and put the thoughts together. And since then we've been close partners, both as funders, but also I think it just grows deeper. You know, there's for me a real gratifying and an honor to be in the company of all of these women who've been advocating, not just you know, since their time coming home, but actually within the walls of these prisons and jails where they were building resources because they're problem solvers without any resource and already thinking about, you know, a policy as you are all talking about, the DBSJA and others. It's amazing.

[41:13] Laura Bell Bundy: And I'm as someone who is very familiar with the New York Women's Foundation, am so pleased that you guys are investing in this effort. This fact was also on the White House website. Every year, over 640,000 people are released from state and federal prisons. More than 70 million Americans have a criminal record that creates significant barriers to employment, economic stability, and successful reentry into society. Can either of you speak to how decarceration efforts serve as an intersection of economic security, criminal justice reform and reproductive justice?

[41:50] Guisela Marroquín: Sure. Sharon, I hope you don't mind if I can start because it's sort of the intersectionality of our values and our grant making model. You know, we see those intersections as we go and see a group that maybe identifies itself with doing economic security work, but then starts to talk about the participants and the folks they're working with on the ground who are also encountering issues that somewhat intersect. So, you know, as you were all mentioning, the pathway into incarceration, there's so many different ways. And so, you know, anywhere between like childcare and the child welfare system that sits really close to it, you know, to homelessness, right, and the housing issue. So for us, you know, at the core, our whole strategy around grant making is around economic security and justice, reproductive justice, and certainly anti-violence and safety as a whole, which is now inclusive also of the healing justice work that Sharon was talking about.

So we don't, you know, think of our grantee partners as doing silo work. We definitely see them as being in relationship with each other in close proximity and certainly, you know, working to really build up the solutions in all of their neighborhoods. So we see our work as really providers of the ecosystem and supporters of the ecosystem of resources for these groups to thrive. We also know from them and learn from them that, you know, policy is one tactic, but there's also, you know, the organizing piece, the services piece, all of those are also super necessary in order to ensure that people are able to make both individual impact but also systemic impact. And so we understand that poverty and other conditions can certainly drive systems of confinement even outside prison jails, right?

Like sort of keeping folks in one neighborhood with limited resources with limited networks can yield a lot of different problems that they themselves try to find solutions to, but then find themselves under resourced. So that is really what drives us to continue to do the work and as it relates to the criminal justice space, we knew that other funders had supported re-entry work, had supported, you know, prevention work, youth development work, but weren't really thinking in the family paradigm, which to us was really important to elevate in the space and for our justice fund as we call it, our seven year initiative calling on other funders to come at the table, that's really the learning we want them to take that if we're gonna really resolve and dismantle mass incarceration anywhere, we need to elevate that when a woman is put into the pathway of incarceration, it affects the entire family, the entire community, right?

And then an entire movement can be really broken by missing the women within the system. So it's been to me really great to see this specific initiative really grow and center that and the Women's Community Justice Association and their Beyond Rosies campaign has really been a core of that.

[45:27] Laura Bell Bundy: Can you talk a little bit more about the seven year plan that you have?

[45:33] Guisela Marroquín: Sure. So it was launched in 2018. We are getting close to that year five in October. And our really our vision was to mobilize philanthropy to really think about the gender lens within the criminal justice space at a critical moment. 2018 was, you know, a year of the mayor and Mayor de Blasio at that time really wanting to commit to closing Rikers and proposing a plan that would build smaller facilities in different neighborhoods. And so community engagement was key at that time. And we felt that it would be needed for us to invest so that communities could really be a part of that process, get to have their voice included. And we didn't want to exclude women anymore, right? So motivated in the same way that Sharon was sharing, just like this isn't going to be another table or another decision that's going to exclude the voices of women.

So we launched with the idea that other funders would start coming to the table and on the one hand, maybe increase their own philanthropic investments in this area, but now with a knowledge around the gender justice lens. And then, you know, while they can sit and contribute with us, that there could be a further collaboration in philanthropy to make this beyond the seven years an investment that's really permanent in our space, because we know these campaigns take many years, you know, to the point of W of DVSJA, it was built, you know, 14 years ago as a campaign that's again, there's still implementation pieces that folks need to invest in. So our initiative is really to entice that philanthropic field to really stay for the long run, provide, you know, the supports that folks need.

And under our model in the New York Women's Foundation, we not only provide the grant, but we also provide technical assistance and what we call capacity building, which are additional dollars and additional opportunities for the organizations and their infrastructures to also get support to be sustainable.

[47:51] Guisela Marroquín: We know a significant number of women in prison end up there because like we were talking about before, they're disadvantaged as children. How do you feel the overturning of Roe v. Wade will impact those numbers in the future?

[48:04] Guisela Marroquín: Again, everything is intersecting, right? So we definitely see the criminalization as the core of all of these actions, all of these policies. So anything that could be labeled as wrong and criminalized is put into the books. And while we think that, you know, New York is very progressive, there are certainly parts of the state which lack access to even a clinic that a woman can turn to, right? Even access to the right information around what their rights are and the resources that are available. So the numbers you know may not necessarily increase here, but I think there's a sort of a connected domino effect that happens and that we will see and this is also coming from one of our grantee partners that has shared that there's billboards in states where there's so many different laws prohibiting abortion and access to it as like New York is, you know, a supportive state.

So folks, you know, coming from down south all the way. So it puts a burden on the system in place of advocates and services that is here in New York trying to be supportive over decades at this point of, you know, if they're not also seen and investments are not made in them at this critical moment, we could see, you know, just sort of like all of it falling apart. And so we were very interested as well of being at the pulse of what was happening so that we could invest and make sure that those networks that, you know, abortion access funds were sustainable and had enough staff to be able to respond to these things. So they're at the intersection of having to provide legal services and having to build their own legal service network to support folks coming into the state.

And I think that what might get caught in between is, you know, folks getting arrested for transporting someone from a different state, because you know, and so police departments are certainly in the habit of collaborating with each other and targeting folks. And so in those less friendly regions of the state, we might see some upkick of that kind of activity as things get tougher, right? We've only had a year to sort of observe what's happening, but in a month just now, right? We can see so much can happen so quickly as it relates to access and access to medications. And we are again not as progressive as they think. So there are other grantee partners that are actually working on just even access to contraceptives.

And what does that mean through our health insurance and through other ways in which policy can intervene or, you know, prevent us to have access and dictate our bodies and what we what our choices are.

[51:11] Guisela Marroquín: It's interesting. I was looking at single moms and single mothers are 80% of all single parents. And over 20% of single moms are living below the poverty line, which means that children are too. And we're only going to see those numbers go up with the overturning of Roe v. Wade. And one of the statistics I saw too was 58% of women in state prisons are parents to minors.

[51:45] Guisela Marroquín: And what we don't know is that there are policies in the books on the federal level that also have made it really hard for those women in prison to actually keep their parenting rights. That, you know, through the foster system. And it's so complicated in so many layers. So again, for us, it's so important that folks are aware of all of the ways in which women are impacted and families as a whole are really torn apart through incarceration or any form of criminalization.

[52:31] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: It seems like the more you look into it too, the more things you never even considered break your heart. Like I was reading about women trying to make phone calls to their kids, not having enough money to make their monthly phone call, having kids in multiple homes and having to decide which one to call.

[52:46] Guisela Marroquín: Yeah. These are just scenarios you never really think of. And when you do, your empathy for it kind of explodes, you know.

[52:54] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Yeah. I will add that in New York, a lot of these prisons are very far away from where families live. So folks from New York City, right, go into prisons kind of far away. So it requires, you know, a lot of transportation costs to take families up there if they don't have a car, you know, it's bus, trains, and then a lot of walking because it's not a very short ride from the train station or the bus stop onto an actual facility.

[53:26] Guisela Marroquín: And it's very heartbreaking to your point to hear the stories of how that, you know, impedes people from being able to see their family to stay connected. But in addition to that, just to even access healthy foods, right? You if you're eating the food that the facilities are giving you for 15 years, you know, how do you come home and expect to have, you know, be in your best health? So we haven't even opened up that piece of reentry and the healthcare system, right? Then you're also limited by employment. And so your health insurance is state funded and you're not going to be able to access the best of networks.

[54:11] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And, you know, I just can't tell you that through this work, how we have held space through COVID and even before for folks who have passed on who are amazing women who are leaders until the end in their worst health conditions, because they just never had access to appropriate health care. So, you know, if we could take a moment here and just honor the space for Rusty Miller Hill like the AIDS epidemic was one that was very close to her heart and during COVID we lost Rusty and just we all really were reminded of how difficult and how just fragile the healthcare system is in treating folks who are coming home and how that seems to be like a continuous way to punish people without access and the appropriate care for all of them for their whole self.

[55:08] Guisela Marroquín: Right it goes longer than the prison sentence right I'm going to give us an opportunity is there anything that we want to say that you guys want to talk about that we haven't gotten a chance to talk about I'm like do we have weeks months because I can I I don't even know where to you know to begin this there's just so much.

[55:32] Guisela Marroquín: Well I think for us it's that, you know, it's so easy to say it we believe that folks who are directly impacted are building the solutions right and I think for me personally coming to a place that had that value as the core of how it invests is really important. I grew up in a home with a single mom. I also experienced the ways in which some support systems weren't appropriate right to support my mother and I think it all has to it all connects back to a lack of resources. So even the nonprofit world often struggles with how to deliver a service if it itself is not feeling sustainable or stable in the resources that it has and so I think that had certainly an impact in the path that I've taken in my own career.

[56:13] Guisela Marroquín: And so I will say that one of the most beautiful things I see here at the foundation is that we really amplify that leadership we really amplify that expertise and we also build it with a real commitment to partnership, you know, a sort of a deep friendship that lasts for a long time and so when in leading this work we learn from each other and I think Sharon and I have developed quite a strong friendship where we can sometimes finish each other's sentences and we are just so honored to work together and so I know my place and I reflect on it often of what I can best do for this particular campaign for this effort and initiative and I think like Sharon brings her ideas to me and we strategize together because there's the investment lane that we sit in but also the systems change lane that we both are walking on.

[57:45] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: So I really appreciate the partnership.

[57:47] Guisela Marroquín: Me too. I just I just love me some you. You know, um, and and I think that also too, something that we could talk about is also philanthropy, right? And how like foundations like the New York Women's Foundation and this, you know, a couple of more, but right now we're talking about us, right? That has changed the trajectory and the landscape of how funding happens, right? For people in the communities. I remember back, been home almost 19 years when I first got into, you know, working in organizing working with an organization, you know, in this movement, like foundations, what they wouldn't even talk to you. They wouldn't, they wouldn't even talk to you. They give you a booklet, you know, this is what you have to fill out. They want your unborn kids, your this, you that, the life insurance policies to all your, you know, everyone in your family, just to get some money.

[58:58] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: And now here it is, you have the New York Women's Foundation that believed in us, right? They gave us the seed money, you know. That's important. We wouldn't exist. I remember coming home and my resume was just bam. And they said to me, oh, yeah, you would be great doing this, but you haven't been home long enough, you know. And so that's how it was for us. Oh, you know, I know this will be great. This is great work, but you're not really in existence. You're not, you haven't been operating long enough. And if it wasn't for the New York Women's Foundation, honestly, right, we wouldn't be in existence. We wouldn't. You know, they gave us the seed money because not only was it about funding the work, but they believed in us.

That changes the game, you know, that changes the landscape and how I just remember so distinctly how foundations were just very, they were ran and operated by white men with old money and now this is women. Okay, here we go again. Women at the helm and it's not just, oh well, we're giving you money to do a service because it's the right thing to do, but because we are invested, all of us. It takes all of us. They are invested not only in the communities, but they really care.

[1:00:47] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Um, and I just, you know, want to highlight just how funding has changed and how the applications now are one, two pages where you can just sit and have a conversation and that's the report versus spending hours doing this thing that takes away from the work, you know. So just wanted to say that I can't even express how appreciative and grateful and honored we are to be in partnership, to work with the New York Women's Foundation for many different reasons and on many different levels. They change their game changing. They're seriously a game changer for women.

[1:01:40] Laura Bell Bundy: I know that I'm super inspired by hearing the both of you, and I know the people that are listening to this podcast will be too. How can they, the people that are listening support your organizations? What's the best way to go about that?

[1:01:53] Guisela Marroquín: For our work, I think, you know, a pitch that this is work we're committed to in the long run. And so beyond a donation to also sign up for our newsletter where we often highlight the work that's happening, who we're funding, what is coming up in the field. It's a Sunday newsletter that comes up, and I find it more and more that folks are reading it and finding it really informative. So that's my little pitch for that. But also invite you all to attend our events where you also continue to support our work through, you know, coming and sitting at the table, but also get to meet some amazing women and gender non-conforming leaders because they are part of our expansive definition of women. So we have a celebrating women's breakfast coming up.

So I hope you all would join us in celebrating Sharon, but also another couple of honorees and to walk into a space with about 2,000 women at different tables feels really, really powerful, or even though it's early in the morning, but I encourage you all to really attend. I was so inspired by the breakfast last year. I left buzzing and had a thousand ideas and the speakers are just truly just so inspiring.

[1:03:20] Guisela Marroquín: And for those listening today, the 2023 celebrating women breakfast is on May 4th. It's in the morning before work in New York City. We have the information for you in our show notes and on our Instagram bio at women of tomorrow. That's W O M X N of Tomorrow. If you cannot attend the breakfast in person, considering purchase a ticket, online live stream of the event, or come with a group of friends. And if you want to buy tickets, you can visit www.nywf.org to purchase tickets or to sponsor the event if you can't make it.

[1:04:02] Laura Bell Bundy: We want to thank you so much, both of you guys for being here today and for the work that you do to make the world a more equitable place for women. Thank you so much for being on our podcast.

[1:04:14] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Thank you for creating this space.

[1:04:17] Guisela Marroquín: We celebrate you.

[1:04:20] Laura Bell Bundy: Hey, hey, she came to play.

[1:04:23] Guisela Marroquín: Oh, oh, get out of her way.

[1:04:26] Reverend Sharon White-Harrigan: Thank you, mama.

[1:04:27] Guisela Marroquín: Thank you, friends.

[1:04:28] Laura Bell Bundy: I got front row seats to watch the queen of sins. Baby, how you feeling? Breaking that glass ceiling.