So what is “Rene Records”? For a while, our comrade Red and Rene have been kicking around the idea of cross-posting and amplifying some of Rene’s writing while she’s inside! We’ll re-share her articles, reflections, updates, and fundraising needs under blog posts titled “Rene Records” so y’all can more easily find them! This first blog post is all about resourcefulness and political education, thanks for taking the time to read Rene’s words and holding space for our comrades inside federal prisons!
interesting women’s prison things (7/12/24)
- u can get birth control here (i think it’s prescribed for painful/irregular periods, cysts or other hormonal/menstrual issues) and it comes in this plastic case where there’s a hole with a pill in it for each day of the week, and u just pop the pill out of the hole when u take it—the girls here will take the case apart and use the side with the holes as a cheese grater lol
- i saw some girls take a mop stick and hang gallon bottles of cleaning fluid on the sides of it to do deadlifts. my friend and i will put weighted balls in our duffel bags to lift. for workouts where we would normally use ankle weights, we tie the bags to our ankles instead
- the girls will take a toothbrush holder (it’s a long, thin cylindrical plastic case) wrap it up in ace bandages until it reaches whatever girth/shape they want, then slide a rubber glove over the whole thing — now u got a dildo lol. some girls will crochet straps for the dildos to make strap-ons. i heard that in prisons where there’s no crochet stuff, the girls use t-shirts or cut the straps off backpacks/duffel bags to make them
- pretty much everyone uses tampons as sponges to wash dishes with, and maxi pads to wipe down the floors and surfaces. there’s also like a million other uses for them, including putting pads in your work boots (they’re super uncomfortable and cause awful blisters) as insoles, using tampons to apply foundation, the plastic or cardboard tampon holder to store c*gs, and i learned how to thread eyebrows using threads pulled out of tampon strings.
Read along with Rene! She’s been reading, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transformative Justice, by Mariame Kaba and friends, and really loved the essay about Cyntoia Brown’s story (you can read the original article here). Her reading group started reading Kindred by Octavia Butler earlier this month and are loving it! They’re already getting excited for their next read, “we all agreed that we’d like to read something nonfiction for our next book after Kindred, and everyone seems to be leaning toward a memoir or autobiography with a strong narrative.” We recommended, and sent these to Rene and her reading group (via Bluestockings Cooperative) to check out:
When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir
Body Autonomy: Decolonizing Sex Work and Drug Use
Angela Davis: An Autobiography
Support Rene and her comrades! Rene is a political prisoner, journalist and SWer! She hosts reading groups for other women inside and continues her journalism, even in the face of CO retaliation. You can also read more about her case linked in her commissary fundraiser. You can also support her boo here, as well as her co-defendant Cody, here. The best method of support for her other co-defendant, MJ, is to send donations to $JohnLungaho on CashApp.