Um, a lot of rallies, a lot of legislative visits,
a lot of really trying to reach Republican, uh,
legislatures who did not get the gist that
pregnant women was shackled.
They didn't think that that was something that was happening, not in our state.
Yes, it is. Right.
And really getting people from their districts who were incarcerated,
who were pregnant,
who were shackled to actually talk to them and share their experiences.
And that to me is, is the coalition, right?
The work that it did to help people share their experiences
without retraumatization, right. And,
and really getting people to hear them and know that this was a serious issue
that we needed to face in our state. And so in 2015, we got it.
And so far I may have heard one or two people in a county jail
up north that said they were shackled after the 2015 law.
Um, we partnered with, um, the New York civil liberties union,
and anytime anybody reported to us, we reported to them.
And then they started the process of a lawsuit. So that was that.
Um, but that was a lot of organizing.
It was some fun organizing too. We, we would take, and we ordered,
um, costume bellies and plastic handcuffs,
and we would go sit out in front of the governor's office and y'all might have
seen some of the pictures from that, people holding up, you know,
hand one hand cuff shackled at a big belly and, and things like that, you know,
and, you know,
talking about how and inhumane the chains were for pregnant women.
And so, yeah, so that was that one. Um,
and in the midst of doing that,
we wound up talking to,
so let me say this, the coalition had three committees.
One was the violence against women's committee.
We had their reentry and conditions committee,
and then we had the incarcerated mothers committee. Right. Um,
and so the violence against women's committee,
we all would come back to the big meeting and we would report what our committee
was working on.
How often did the committees meet and how often did the CWP meet?
So the CWP met the,
the full group used to meet once a month and the committees we would meet,
like every two weeks. Um, we would meet as a committee,
talk about the issues, you know, get the folks at the table,
figure out who we needed to be at the table with,
and then start to strategize from there.
But in one of our full CWP meetings, the V.A.W.
Reported back that sister Mary was having
conversations with women.
And she said 80% of them were survivors of violence.
And that's sister Mary Nerny, right?
Yes.
And were doing very long sentences because of that.
And then we started trying to figure out what could we do to help bring
some relief to their sentence.
And at first we looked at the department of corrections had already had
something on their books called the merit time.
Merit time was,
if you completed six months of any kind of
programming within the department, that you can get, uh,
four months off of your parole time.
So you would go to a parole board four months earlier.
And so what the catch was,
it had to be a nonviolent felony.
And so many women who were doing these long sentences had violent
felonies. And so they were excluded. And so,
um,
it was a long fight to get people to understand the
impact and the trauma of violence, um,
especially on women who had fought back and killed their abuses,
right. Um, or did some real serious bodily harm to their abuses.
Um, but then there were women who were trafficked, but back then,
they wasn't talking about it as being trafficked. They was calling them mules,
because they were trafficked carrying drugs and they would get caught with
these drugs and the trafficker would get, let go,
or get a slap on the wrist. And they would do the hard time.
And so looking at all of that sister, Mary said, you know,
we gotta help these women. These women are dying in this system.
They're gonna be older than me when they get out, if they get out.
Right. And so, um,
we started talking to people in the legislature
around what we could do to bring some relief.
So we started out trying to get the merit
bill expanded to violent felonies and,
um, Ruth Hasell Thompson, who was, um,
a state Senator
who was really intricate in looking at the impact
of violence on women in her district,
but across the state, um,
we were introduced to her by Senator Montgomery and we started having
these conversations and we tried,
she tried drafting a piece of legislation that would expand the merit time.
However, she got a lot, a lot of pushback and not enough support.
Right. And so, um,
we kept trying to figure out what it was we could do.
And nobody really knew actually what the law,
what the law was that we really wanted to, to actually get past. Right.
And then it came to us and I'm not sure if it was
Tamar's dad, who is a lawyer. Right. Um,
who mentioned something about changing the sentencing structure,
but I know Tamar brought it to the coalition. Right. Um,
in one of the strategy meetings with the smaller group,
about how could we look at changing the structure of how people are sentenced,
especially around violent offenders.
And so we started working on a draft and we shared it with Ruth ASEL Thompson,
her, her legislative team. And we would have these, um,
biweekly strategy meetings, um,
which consists of the small V.A.W Group, the Senator staff,
and some other pointed community members that we knew would be
really great partners in getting a piece of legislation passed.
VW's violence against women committee.
Yes. Sorry. um,
and so long story short, um, we came up with, um,
looking at re resentencing because there was
something around re resentencing in the Rockefeller drug laws,
which kind of sent off a light bulb and, and said,
we can kind of use that model to ask for like a retro,
a reachback sentencing type.
And so it took a long time and a lot of work,
and we had some support,
but at the time that we thought like maybe
20, 15, 16, when we were really pushing, um,
it was, the majority was Republican and they just wasn't,
we're not opening the floodgates. We're not letting people out. You know,
these people are murderers, they killed people, da, da, da, da, da. You know,
what about the families of the victims and all of these things like that.
And then we started to engage some of the families to say, you know,
how would you feel if this person could actually, you know,
has rehabilitated themself and show some remorse? You know,
some people were saying like, you know, I couldn't care. You know,
it's done and said, you know, they did day time,
whatever they do with their life is their business. You know, then we had,
some families would say, no, you know, we, we don't have our loved one anymore.
Why should they have the opportunity to be with their loved ones?
And so it was a real back and forth for a really long time. Um,
but we,
we didn't give up because the women on the inside didn't give up and we shared
the drafts with them and asked them like, what you guys wanna see,
please talk to us, let us know, be a part of this work.
We really want to try to bring some light to you,
ladies long story short in like
2016, we had a full draft, um,
and then brought to the legislature and they took
out a lot. They there's like, they really gutted it. They was like, no,
no homicide, no sexual assaults,
no dis no, that, I mean, it's, it's uh,
about eight exclusions that people cannot apply for.
We could not apply for resenticing under the D.V.S J.
And so we were pushing and fighting and pushing and fighting,
and we got enough sponsors to sponsor it with the exclusions,
but we couldn't get it out of the codes committee, which was heavily,
heavily Republican. The chair.
And most of its membership were either from upstate New York or Staten island,
the real conservative areas. And they just would not move it.
Um,
in 2017 when the majority
flipped, then, um,
they began to look at it and then we had to reestablish it all over again.
And then, um,
Ruth Hassel Thompson decide to retire
it was like, oh my God, no, you can't right now, she retired.
And she passed a bill on to her predecessor,
which was, um,
Jamal Bailey. He was taking her seat, her district,
he first picked up the bill. Um,
but from my understanding, she actually wanted,
um, a woman to take the bill and bring it across the finish line.
And the conversations was had with her and Senator Roxanne facade out of
Brooklyn, who was another, um,
advocate for DV survivors. Um,
and so she really didn't know much about,
she was an assembly person and she really didn't know much about the bill.
And she wasn't a part of the drafting in the,
in the beginning.
And so it took a lot of work in educating her about the impact of violence on
incarcerated women.
Her work was mostly around survivors in the community
survivors who didn't fight back, but were the victims
and trying to help her understand that there are survivors
who were victims as well,
but also fought back and are now incarcerated.
And so doing that work, um, took us a couple of years. Um,
and we got through to her after a long fight, um,
and then got all of the co-sponsors we needed,
we had a super majority.
So even if the governor decided that he wasn't going to, um,
sign off on it, or he was gonna Vito it, we could still come back and say,
it's enough for y'all to override him. Right. Um,
and so we got it passed through both houses
and then the governor decided he was gonna sign it, which was amazing.
Right. And so after that, it was, that was 2019.
And then it was like, how do we follow the implementation? Right.
Um,
and because the department of corrections knew that it was signed into law,
they gave us a list of 487 women
who fitted the criteria. So the criteria had to be,
you had to be doing eight years or more.
You had to be in the,
in the category of violent crime,
not in the exclusion, but outside of the exclusion. Right. And,
um,
they just sent us all of these women who had violent histories,
violent charges with the amount of time,
like everybody's doing eight years or more.
So it was 800 and 487 exact excuse me.
And so when I got the list, I was like, okay, to Andrea,
what are we gonna do with this list? Right. So she's like, you know what?
The appellate division is a place that we know had been working with women
who were survivors on appeals. So let's reach out to them.
And when we did, um,
Kate Leski reached back out to me from Brooklyn law and
she runs the Brooklyn law clinic,
but she also works with the appellate division on
DV cases mostly, well, now she's all DV cases,
but at the time she was working on appeals. Um,
and so she asked me to share the list with her.
So I shared it with her and lo and behold,
they also had sent it to the appellate division.
And so we looked at it with the same list and we started looking at
who could we, you know, reach out to,
and what information could we send them to let them know on this list? Hey,
there's this new law that might apply to you.
You might wanna apply for it. Right. Um,
and so we started going through the list.
Kate started checking docs to see that some people had already been released.
Um, some women had already went to parole, but was not released as of yet.
So we started sending in, um, we sent in a one pager, like, know your rights.
And so we did that really quickly. Um, the correctional association helped us,
they did the mailing.
And so folks started to reach out to the Brooklyn law center.
And with that, we developed the, that was justice project.
So it's, um, Brooklyn law, um,
Kuni research center. And, uh, we started tracking, you know,
the responses. And so we've been doing that since the beginning of 2020.
Um, and so we have right now
assisted people in access to applying back
and we have 29,
28 people have been released under the D V S J a to this day.
And we have one waiting for, um, a response from the hearing.
So total 29 people have actually applied to the D V S J a
28 of them have been released or was released on parole.
But because they got their hearing after they were released,
got their hearing and had their parole removed.
So it's been doing what we would hope it would do,
but for not enough people mm-hmm . Yeah. So that's the D B S J a,
and it took us 10 years.
Thank you for that.
Very extensive history of the domestic violence survivors justice act. Um,
do you wanna talk a little bit about the halt solitary campaign? How.
That, so halt came around, came about around,
I think, 2010 or 2011.
And it was through, um,
the campaign for campaign against isolated
confinement is that, and That is actually an acronym. Yes. Right. So, so yeah,
so let me say this. So the campaign against isolated confinement,
which is the acronym is cake,
their campaign was the halt solitary campaign.
Halt is humane,
humane alternatives to long term isolation. Mm-hmm ,
that's what halt means. Halt solitary solitary is isolation.
So it's, it's two or three acronyms mixed into one,
but the overall campaign is cake.
And that's the coalition cake has about
statewide about maybe 400
members throughout the state. Mm-hmm . Um,
we got a lot of Northern folks, um,
and we've been working on that for many years.
And so when it first started,
it was mostly around men sharing their experience of
isolation, long term decades,
and then coming home and being released from solitary
to community and the impact that it had on their physical,
mental, and spiritual health. And so, um,
they had a lot of men talking about the experience, right.
And in
maybe 2017,
I'm gonna say 2017
as somebody who was going to their coalition meetings and hearing these stories.
I said to them, one day, I said,
do y'all know that there's three women's prisons.
And each one of them got a solitary confinement unit. And they was like,
no, but thanks for telling us, can you talk a little bit about it?
so I was like, sure, for somebody who lived through it, yeah.
I can tell you a lot about it.
And so I started talking to the guys and Victor pay was leading the
campaign. He was the lead organizer at the time. Um, but Scott Powell, Truitt,
um, is the person who actually, um, formulated the campaign.
And Scott, I worked with at the correctional association, excuse me,
he was one of the, he was the director of monitoring
at the correctional association. Um, and that's how we met and, you know,
mingled and built relationship around different coalitions. And he was like,
Anissa, you should really bring the women's perspective to this because nobody
nobody's mentioned it, it either. And so long story short,
I started talking to the women in the coalition,
like anybody got experience with solitary, you know, have you,
you know, been in lock and, and people started saying, yeah,
I was locked in dah, dah, dah. And so, so Andrea said,
we need to help cake bring awareness to the women's to the
impact on solitary on the women. And so we started talking behind Annette as,
as the, the last of the women in prison project, like around in 2018.
And we decided to do a survey for them and survey women who were,
um, actually held in solitary and share their experiences.
So we did the, um,
Andrew did a great job with the prison within a prison, right interviews.
And then, um,
working with a graphic designer to actually design
the women's stories, you know, pictures and,
and the way that we described our experiences, he put it into a visual, right.
Um, along with the words from the survey, and we did that, um,
and then I shared it with the coalition, um,
the Kate coalition, and they was like, oh my God, could we use this?
Could we get you guys to come and share with us in, in advocacy?
And so we started collaborating on advocacy days and working
with them to actually get the women's perspective, get their voices out,
talk to women legislatures,
and getting them to see that this is just not about the men,
but it's about people and human lives. Right.
And what it's doing to a lot of people. Right. And so long story short,
we fought for a very long time. It was a long fight,
but I think bringing the perspective kind of
highlighting and elevating the importance of ending it,
right.
Although the department of corrections still pushes back to say,
we need to have a way to isolate people. And we say,
no, there's a difference between separation and isolation.
Separating is fine.
Just remember that you're separating them to make sure that they're well,
that they get their mental health check, that they have human interactions.
And all of the things that the law says, right.
And not isolate them 23 hours out of a day alone in a
cell. So we're at the point right now, we are following the implementation.
Um, it was past March 21.
They had one year to implement it.
And so now I just came back, um, myself,
the correctional Association's monitoring team and Scott Paltrowtiz,
um, from visiting two prisons,
I'll beyond for the women all needs for the men to see how
they're implementing, um,
the alternatives and how they are
reducing the use of isolation.
Because the law actually says for the state,
you can separate somebody for up to 15 days in
any 20 day period. No, you can separate somebody for 15 days,
no more than 20 in a 60 day period. Right.
Um, to see if they're following that. And then if the
behavior doesn't change,
then they're to be moved into what we call a residential rehabilitation unit,
which is where you're supposed to get all of your mental health treatment, your,
um, educational programming,
any kind of programming that you might need to continue your,
your stay so that you can then meet your parole board.
And so we went to look at that to make sure that that's happening,
but it's not the way that it should. Um, but we are looking at it. Um, and so,
yeah, so that was that fight.
And that actually was the last work of the coalition, um,
before our sunset.
Yeah. So that is a perfect segue. Um, cuz now we're up to 2021,
which was the year, the CWP sunset.
So I was wondering if you could share a little bit of, um,
the process of coming to that decision to sunset the coalition.
So we had been, um,
housed and supported by the correctional
association for many years in 2018,
the board changed their direction of work.
They no longer wanted to be considered monitoring advocacy.
They wanted to be considered pure monitoring. Um,
and so they removed the two projects that did the most advocacy,
which was the women in prison project and the,
uh, they call it the prison visiting project, but they not only did the visits,
they did the advocacy around the men's facilities. They keep,
they kept the visiting piece of it, but they removed the advocacy piece. And so,
um,
now all they do is monitor and then they share their reports for other people to
be able to advocate around the issues that they find.
And so in 2018, I,
in 2016, I had became a fellow to, um,
a foundation called Move to End Violence. Um,
a project which was funded by a foundation called the Novo foundation.
Um, Novo had funded me for three years
and they funded
the CWP's work through the women in prison project.
And so in 2018 when they decided that they no longer wanted the advocacy,
I decided to take that last year of funding and find another organization
to complete the work. And so I went to, um,
some of my coalition members who were directors in organizations,
and that I thought would work with us to continue the work and the work that we
had on, on the table,
the most prevalent was the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act. Right.
And we were really, really close and I did not want to just let that go.
And so I went to my partner at Steps to End Family Violence
and they were, were housed in, um, uh,
a child welfare organization called Edwin Gould.
And Edwin Gould was then merged with Rising Ground,
um, which had a different perspective
on the work.
Their work was basically around foster care foster care
agencies. Um,
they wound up getting into work around the unaccompanied migrants,
things like that. Um,
but steps was founded by sister Mary
and formulated for survivors of violence. Right.
And they worked closely with us in coalition.
And so we thought that would be a good place to land the D.V.SJ a and
possibly if we couldn't continue the work,
at least let steps pick up the advocacy. Right. Um, however,
after sharing with Ann, she said, well,
let me talk to the folks who we just merged with to see if we can make space for
you guys,
cause I would love to continue working on the D P S J a with you guys and making
sure that we get it over the finish line. Right. She said,
I know this is something that was near and dear to sister Mary's heart.
And we definitely want to, you know, work with you guys, long story short,
it came to the point where they was like, okay, we'll take them.
And so, um,
we made an agreement with rising ground and the CA
for the CA to release the,
the last year of funding to Rising Ground. So that's what they did.
They released the last year of the funding and it was a pretty large,
it was a pretty large amount of things. I was like maybe 150 for the year.
150?
K [150k]. And so, um,
Nobel had given us a really generous grant to do this work at one point they were really
, um, front and center in women who were survivors. Right. Um,
and so that grant was for three years and the last year of the grant was like 150. And so they had also given me as a fellowship
, um,
like organizational develop funding, right. So I was trying to really develop and increase the capacity of the coalition, because it
has started to dwindle with all of the changes at
the CA all of the staff changes. You know, it started to dwindle, our, our database was still there, but many people had moved
on to different things, working in different areas, moved out of the state, da,
da, da, da, da. And so thinking about capacity, it was really just three of us.
And what were all of your formal like roles, titles at that point?
So I, my role stayed the same actually. Um,
I was the project associate/coalition
coordinator and that's what I was, um, when I volunteered,
I was just the coordinator chairperson, but when I started to get paid,
I was the projects associate.
And so still coordinating the coalition.
And so just thinking about how could I build the capacity back up in the
coalition was one of the thoughts that I was thinking about with the funding
that I got from Novo. And so really doing, um,
a series of consulting workshops and bringing in
coalition members to talk about capacity building, um,
what was needed to keep the coalition alive and thriving. And through that,
we found that, you know, people had moved on, right. Um, there was not really,
um, a lot of
advocacy left because we didn't have the information. Right.
We had moved away from the correctional association.
It was going through a transformation board, new Ed,
new staff.
And so we weren't getting the reports the way they said they would give to us.
And so the last thing we actually had that the coalition had owned
was the D.V.S J.A.
And so we wanted to make sure that we got that over the finish line
and then to see if we can actually build the capacity of the coalition back up
and keep it flowing. But low and behold through, you know,
coalition and workshops and talking with consultants and really
seeing that, you know, there was nothing really for people to do.
So what,
what were we asking people to come to the coalition with and to do what the
coalition?
It wasn't much because the D.V.S.J.A was,
it was blowing up, but we didn't need that much.
We had a small group of V.A.W Members
who stayed committed mm-hmm we had a small group of coalition
members who stayed committed,
but the incarcerated mothers committee and the reentries committee had
already sunset. Right.
So only thing that was really up and flourishing was the V.A.W
And the full coalition. And at any given day,
we would have maybe 25 people in coalition,
right. In the small committee,
we would have maybe 12 tops.
And compared to like, compared to the beginning?
Yeah. Where we would have 70, 80 people in a room, um,
for a full coalition meeting or in a,
in a sub subcommittee meeting 25 30, you know, like that.
So we had really willed down in capacity size,
but then also the capacity for people to do the work. Right.
But there wasn't much, you like, for me, every couple of years,
the coalition had a new venture, right.
There was something happening that we were getting reports on,
that we were focused on. Right. Um,
there was a lot of work being done around the reproductive justice
and the report. So there was always stuff to do. Right.
We were going out and sharing and doing surveys. And I mean, it was,
it was plenty work to be done, right. When it got done, it was done.
And the same thing with the D.V.S.J.A,
When we got it to the point where we knew we had enough co-sponsors right.
We just needed to get it over the finish line.
And we had to work with the lead sponsor to get it addressed
along with the two lead sponsors,
lead majority leader and the speaker in both houses.
So getting to them and their staff was a,
it was a task for us because we had all the other support once we got to
them and got them to bring it to the floor, we were good to go with the votes.
Right. But that was just the work. And one, we got done with that.
It was really nothing to do. We had no incoming information,
we had no incoming issues. And so the coalition was like,
where do we go from here?
And the second piece of that was that Rising Grounds and the
coalition were not an alignment in work.
Rising Ground was a service provider. Well what is a service provider.
They provide services to foster care agencies, you know,
things of that nature. They were not in the advocacy realm.
They got a lot of federal and state funding.
They didn't want to lose that by going against the gray.
And so, yeah,
they refused to incorporate the advocacy
in their agenda. And so when the funding ran out,
we were out of work. And so we decided before that happens,
let's sunset.
It let's find a way to bring this coalition
to some,
some form of archive so that people can then see it,
use some of the experiences,
maybe create another coalition by learning how we did it and what we did. Right.
And so
we started looking and the first place we looked was, um,
in Philadelphia, and I forget the name of the place, but it's a,
it's a women's archive as well.
And they did things around women in prison as well. Well, however,
it was, it was during COVID and they didn't have the capacity
to even talk to us. We sent emails. Um, they finally,
after a couple of months sent back an email saying due to COVID, we, um,
we are at, we are under capacity. We really can't, you know,
talk about the archives. We can't get anything, we can't ship anything.
You know, we, we are just, we are just not in that space.
And then Andrea started doing her research, which I love her,
cuz she's such a great researcher.
her skills are impeccable when it comes to researching things.
And that's one of the things that, um, I really admired about her,
even when she was teaching us in, in reconnect, right.
She would actually do research and say, Hey guys, I found X,
Y A, B and C,
take a look at this or she'd do some research and something would come up,
but there's event coming up around reentry, you guys should go. Um, there is,
there is hearings in the Senate and the assembly and the city council,
you guys should go.
They want to hear from people directly impacted and things like that.
Always giving us good information.
So she came up with the archive and I was like, okay,
well let's, let's shoot this person an email and see how she respond.
And you mean the archive about Barnard College?
Yeah. Okay. And, and so when we was in our staff meeting,
she was telling us about it and she pulled up the email and Annette
says, I know that name. And I was like,
really well, do you wanna send her an email and ask us, if she'll talk to us.
. And so she was like.
And, and that name is.
Um, oh, Martha, Martha.
Tenney. Okay. Yeah.
Martha. And so I was like, she was like,
why don't you send her and she said You're the co you're the coordinator I said,
but you have a relationship. She said, look,
draft up an email and send it. She said, if you don't get a response,
by the end of the week, I'll draft one up. I was like, okay.
So I drafted up the email and I told her, I said, oh, you know,
I work with Annette Dickson Warren and we work at the correctional
association, but now we're at Septs to End Family Violence.
We have all of these things. Our coalition is sun setting.
And we really wanted to know if you made me interested and that started the
conversation. And so in that we started to, um,
really talk to the coalition members, those who was closest to us,
you know, we really don't want to just let this go and be done with,
we wanna make it a space where people can actually, you know,
see this stuff and be able to use it, do research around it, you know,
especially some of the policies that were passed. Right. And so they was like,
oh, that's a great idea. How are you gonna do this? What are we gonna do this?
I said, we gonna try to bring everybody together. We did a, um,
we did *counting* 2, 3, 4.
We had about four workshops, um, consultant driven, um,
with, um, a graphic facilitator who
we spoke. They wrote pictures and, you know,
tried to design what we were saying. Mm-hmm . Um,
and so we did that. She came twice,
she came to one of the workshops with us to help us kind
of pick out some to graph.
So we could see like what we were saying, what we wanted to do,
how we wanted to do it, where we wanted this, this, this body to land,
um, and all of that. Right.
And then she came to the actual sunset and actually did
like a PowerPoint for us of, excuse me,
what we did in the workshop. Excuse me.
I pulled that into the sunset.
And so we had these photos and I think Andrea might have sent them.
I hope she did of the sunset convening.
And so that's what it was. It was, um, it was, uh,
we think we did it four hours.
I think we did four hours of a convening.
We really just let people talk about what the coalition meant to them,
what part they played in it, where they were at, you know,
what it would mean to them to be able to share a link to the archive with other
folks in the community. And so that was the sunset.
Yeah. I think that's a really beautiful place to start wrapping up.
I think for our final question,
we were hoping you could maybe reflect a little bit since you were involved in
the coalition, you know, in the early 2002's, although up until the sunset,
if you could talk about like the sorts of changes that you saw in the CWP
throughout your time.
Mostly I saw the,
the changing in membership, right?
When I first came to my first coalition meeting,
there were maybe three or four formerly incarcerated
people. And that was myself, Marion Rodriguez,
Stacey Thompson and Lorraine Patterson.
We were the four that made the first, well, me and Lorraine were in the first,
in the cohort together, Stacey and Marion were in a cohort together.
So they were in cohort one. We were in cohort two.
I think.
There are Reconnect Cohort?
These, these are re reconnect folks. Um,
we were the first four that I seen at a coalition meeting.
Mm-hmm it was predominantly service providers,
attorneys, and students. Right.
Um, and I would say, I would call some of the folks, the community activists,
right? Cuz these people from the community who were trying to make change.
But over the years,
I started to see more and more formerly incarcerated people.
Let me say that because we did have some men who came home through the prison
visiting project and they didn't have, they had, they had, they had the,
what they called the drop, the rock, which was the Rockefeller drug laws.
But after that was passed, they had nothing else to do.
So they joined in with us in our fight for the women. And so,
um, it,
it really began to grow the directly impacted folks.
We would go into communities, um,
that were impacted and we would go to houses of worship.
We would go to substance abuse programs.
We would go to universities and talk about the coalition and its work
and the need for support, um,
from all of these folks and really engaging with the folks
that were impacted, that we're providing services,
they were providing services to and inviting them to our meetings.
Folks were coming and they were coming with stories.
And these were the stories that we used to pass a lot of the legislation
that we worked on. And so, yeah, so it,
just to me evolved from, um,
the leaders in the coalition being
non-formally incarcerated people to formally incarcerated people.
Mm.
And so all the way up until its sunset,
it left me as the leader and
two people, lady Catherine and,
and lady Catherine, William Julian,
and Edema Moore were the last two V w members who
were survivors of violence.
That sat as co-chairs for the V.A.W as time moved on.
And so every time, you know, there was a transition,
some people moved on moved outta state, whatever the, the,
the co-chairs, instead of being just community,
people wound up being directly impacted community members, right.
People with lived experience leading those committees.
And so it, it was really, it was enlightening to see,
but it's also inspiring to see that people come out,
accept that they've made a mistake in their lives. They changed their lives.
And now they wanna give back in the best way that they,
they can and whether it's using their stories or leading others to use their
stories to make change. So, yeah, that's where we,
that's where we sunset it.
Mhm, okay. I think for now, I think that's a good stopping point. We can pause