Here’s to holding space for Freedom Day, for finding joyful community advancing Black Liberation. Uplift incarcerated families and friends today, our collective struggle toward a truly free world depends on our commitment to abolition. #FreeThemAll

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!

Zine Reading + Talk Back with Alisha Walker Transcript

Matilda:
Here we go. Good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. This is Bluestocking’s online event series. Just a final reminder that this call is being recorded and will be published to our YouTube. For those of you who don’t know, this is Bluestockings. Scattered to the winds, but we are a small collectively run intersectional feminist bookstore and activist space that’s been part of the Lower East Side community for over 20 years now.

Matilda:
Like a lot of small businesses, we are really hurting right now because our store is closed and we still have landlords and rent to deal with with no income stream. So we have been completely relying on membership and donations. If you have the means to make a small donation or, even better, to become a sustaining member, you are literally our lifeblood right now and it’ll ensure that we’re able to reopen when it’s safe to and continue to serve our Lower East Side community. I’ll drop a couple of those links in the chat, but for now I’m going to turn things over to Red.

Red:
Thanks so much, Matilda. Thanks for everyone for being here this morning. Hey y’all. My name’s Red. I use they/them pronouns and I’m a part of the Support Ho(s)e Collective and help coordinate our Justice for Alisha Walker defense campaign. I’ll be joined hopefully by my comrade and dear friend Alisha in roughly 30 minutes by phone. She’s attempting to call from inside Decatur Correctional Center, aka Hell, in downstate Illinois. There have been multiple issues with their phone access recently due to new punishment policies brought on by the pandemic.

Red:
We’re just playing that by ear, fast and loose, and we can respond to whatever Alisha’s needs are when she’s able to call. I can move content around based on when she’s calling us. Alisha and her fellow incarcerated comrades have been condensed into fewer units, meaning their access to phones has shrunk and there are new highly restrictive time limitations put on phone use. In case she’s not able to join us for this call, LeLe has sent ahead written responses as well that I’ll share out about art making, prison newsletters, and conditions inside right now.

Red:
I wanted to start with a heartfelt thank you to Matilda and Bluestockings Books. Y’all have been such amazing comrades to us as a collective and also to Alisha directly. I feel really lucky to be a part of the community and collective that is Bluestockings. Much appreciation and love. If folks on this call haven’t already considered becoming sustaining members of the space, I want to just take a moment and also just put that out there again. If you’re at all able to consider something like that right now in this moment, please do because Bluestockings needs you.

Red:
It’s a queer, trans, and sex worker lead space. That’s so rare in this world and so beautiful. We really wanted to just put that out there. Both Alisha and those of us in Support Ho(s)e wanted to do this event as a fundraising effort for Bluestockings as well to raise awareness around just how few sew worker spaces there are that allow folks to come be in community and build radical compassionate structures of care for one other. That space has done that with and for us.

Red:
Who the hell am I? Who is Alisha? What is Support Ho(s)e? Like I said before, I’m Red. I’m an organizer. I make zines and I’ve probably invited you to a letter writing event for incarcerated comrades. If you live in Chicago or New York, you’ve seen me there. I’ve probably compelled you to stuff envelopes and lick stamps. That’s me.

Red:
Alisha Walker, who I’ll be joined by either in written response or by phone, is a 27 year-old former sex working person originally from Akron, Ohio. In January of 2014, Alisha was contacted by a returning client, Allen Filan. This is where I’ll give some content warning and trigger warnings for folks. Mute me or take a walk away if you don’t want to hear some of the details of Alisha’s case.

Red:
I’m not going to get into extreme details, but there are mentions of whorephobic and racist violence and an attack on her life, so content and trigger warnings now y’all. Take deep breaths. Walk away if you need to. She was contacted by this returning client, Allen Filan, who had agreed to pay her and another sex worker for sex in his Orland Park house. This was back in 2014, like I said, and when Alisha and the other sex worker arrived, Filan was very intoxicated and demanded that the sex be unprotected.

Red:
Now, Alisha and her fellow worker refused what they saw as totally unsafe services for themselves, asserting that Filan had to stick to their agreed upon terms. Filan became violent. He punched Alisha in the face before grabbing a knife from the kitchen and Filan threatened both women with the knife. Alisha then struggled with him. She managed to wrestle the knife away, stabbing him in self defense, and both she and her fellow worker fled. Filan was still alive when they left his house.

Red:
Alisha was arrested and charged with second degree murder despite no physical evidence ever being recovered. She was held without trial for 20 months in Cook County. At her trial, the prosecutor portrayed Alisha as a manipulative criminal, a mastermind of crime, calling her a monster, and spoke disparagingly about her family and her profession as a sex worker. Her defense attorneys sexually harassed her and never requested bond. A jury convicted her of second degree murder and Alisha was sentenced to 15 years in prison. She’s currently incarcerated at Decatur Correctional Center in Decatur, Illinois.

Red:
That’s a little bit about Alisha’s case and what brings her to the struggle. The Support Ho(s)e Collective, of which we are a part, is a small, very small, leftist formation of sex workers, current and former, and our trusted co-conspirators and accomplices that’s based in Chicago and also New York. We aim to build radical community for all sex workers through political education and public agitation. We also coordinate the Justice for Alisha Walker defense campaign, which is a popular grassroots campaign demanding Alisha’s freedom.

Red:
We’re currently a closed collective, meaning that we don’t accept new membership. We decided to remain closed until Alisha is free. That was a decision that we made together based on the kind of work that we needed to do and keeping our central focus on Alisha. Y’all, we are real small. We’re real real small and more than happy to be. People often confuse large membership with success and effectiveness of organizing. While it is so awesome to have a show of force in numbers, where we’ve found ourselves is preferring to work with very trusted accomplices who have demonstrated through their work that our politics align.

Red:
Our approach has been this. We’ve built trust slowly and patiently, prioritizing political education and correspondence with our loved ones inside, and rely a lot on our periphery of comrades who aren’t necessarily part of the organized collective, but who rise up with us to work when they have capacity to support us. This has worked for us. So I just wanted to share that you should never think that a small dedicated group of folks can’t get shit done, because you can.

Red:
It’s really important to have that trust building, especially if you’re going to be a small formation. As for our work, we’ve primarily provided resource-based support for grassroots organizing including information on building popular defense campaigns for criminalized survivors of gender-based violence inspired by and supported by our comrades in Survived and Punished. We’re created sex worker-centered political education syllabi. We’ve assisted other organizations in planning protests and demonstrations, holding space for formal and informal knowledge sharing sessions, doing know your rights trainings for other activist sex workers, produced tool kits on media, health and wellness from sex working perspectives.

Red:
Really our main organizing focus currently is to provide material support to Alisha while we advocate for her release. To create art and political education resources for other sex workers and those looking to center decriminalizing all survival tactics in their own political analyzes. That’s a little bit of an overview of Support Ho(s)e. Who we are and what we do as a collective. Wanted also to just share a little whorestory of our collective as well and walk folks through. We get this a lot. We get questions online a lot of, “How long have you been doing this? How did you get started doing this?”

Red:
Just wanted to give folks a little bit more of an intentional overview. We’ve been active for a little over four years now. In late March of 2016, we organized our first demonstration in solidarity with Alisha Walker and all criminalized incarcerated sex workers who have survived violence. It was our first formal action as a collective. Since then, we’ve fundraised, visited, developed friendships and organized alongside LeLe. We’ve protested, found pro bono legal aid for her, and launched a grassroots campaign for clemency. We’ve developed, like I said before, a syllabus for political education reading groups for our own sex working comrades and accomplices and adjacent queer communities. That’s something that we can send to any and all of you.

Red:
It’s basically a catalog of things that we read, and watched, and listened to together for discussion and round tabling. We’ve taken public space. We’ve held teach-ins, trainings, knowledge shares, hosting letter writing events, know your rights events, and crafts-based and making workshops to demand rights, respect, and protection of sex working people. We definitely believe that art in practice and action in the streets are inherently connected.

Red:
In terms of the art that we’ve made, we’ve created print resources like zines, posters, banners to more artistically intervene with sex workers’ resistance and visual culture. We’ve also created a best practice resource for writing letters to incarcerated folks that Survived and Punished has also included in their newly released letter writing resources and tool kits on their website, which is an amazing resource.

Red:
I really think that people should visit that Survived and Punished website and just absorb and then practice because there’s so many amazing resources there. In addition to that, the tool kits that we’ve developed for media use and for health and wellness professionals to become more sex work competent and create ethical conditions for working alongside sex workers or caring with sex workers was some of the first resources we created. Through Alisha’s direct insight organizing and relationship-building, we’ve been able to build many comradeships with others inside at Decatur and Logan Correctional prisons.

Red:
We’ve seen the release of one of our comrades, Judy, who we’ve also co-authored a forthcoming book chapter with that’ll be a part of an anthology of sex worker writing through Feminist Press. We’ve also engaged in mutual aid efforts to help Judy and her partner establish their new life together in Illinois post-release.

Red:
We’re currently and have supported our undocumented comrade, Lorena, which is a pseudonym to protect her identity in voicing condition concerns at Logan with the help of the Hacking Hustling Collective. We’ve gotten Lorena commissary support to continue being able to correspond with comrades outside and also get the hygiene items that she needs.

Red:
We’ve also continued to expand our organizing work in New York City and are helping to build radical community amongst current and former sex working people and co-conspirators. That’s always our first and foremost goal is to help foster that radical community amongst workers and those in the trade. We’ve been humbled and really thankful for forge bonds and continue working alongside Survived and Punished New York, Hacking Hustling, Red Light Reader, Red Canary’s Song, Kink Out, Bluestockings, and No New Jails New York City along with other renegade comrades who we learn from every day.

Red:
That gives us a little sense of some of the work that we have done, some of the work that we’ve been doing, and a little bit about our motivation around building out a structure of support and solidarity both in Chicago and also in New York, which is a lot. It’s a whole lot. I think a lot of folks on the call right now, I’m just looking at our participant list, have also been engaged in this community building and also movement building work. I’m really thankful to have y’all on the call as well and building out this new resource, which will be recorded and shared, and hopefully hear from Alisha. Get to not just hear her voice, but also get updates from her in real time from her about what’s going on inside of Decatur and talk more about art making as a practice of both self care and also community and collective care.

Red:
I wanted to just take a moment because I am seeing some chat activity. Oh, great. Thank you Matilda for sharing those. Hopefully folks have some time to check out these resources. We’ve got links here right now in the chat to supporting Bluestockings, but also to following the work that we’ve been doing online. The Justice for Alisha Walker defense campaign on Facebook. Also our Tumblr.

Red:
Yes, we are still holding it out on Tumblr. They haven’t deleted our quote unquote adult content, though they have flagged many of our videos from protests because of tags like sex work. We’re also very difficult to search for and find online because of pretty rampant shadow banning practices and also just good old fashioned bad algorithmic data. Either way, direct links are the best way for y’all to follow us. Definitely copy these down, bookmark them.

Red:
Can we turn on Donna’s mice and also Erica F’s mic?

Donna:
Thank you for that beautiful presentation.

Red:
Donna, am I hearing you?

Donna:
Yes, that’s me.

Red:
Yes. I’m so glad you’re able to be on the call.

Donna:
Yeah. I was really happy I was able to make it too.

Red:
Yes. Y’all right now are hearing Donna’s voice. Donna helped hold things down for us in New York with Support Ho(s)e for the last few years. We’ll get more into some of Donna’s reflective work in one of our zines later when we do our zine reading. We’ll also hear from and share out a little bit about Donna’s work, Erica’s work in the zines, and another one of our collective members, Aaron. We’ll be hearing some actual work from them in a little bit, but love to hear y’all’s voices and that you’re actually able to be on the call with us.

Erica:
Yeah. Hello.

Red:
Hey. There is Erica’s voice. So glad to have you on here.

Erica:
I’m just excited to be here. I love seeing the work that y’all are doing right now because I know that summer is usually such an active season and I don’t want it to be an inactive season just because people are going to be home a little bit more. I’m excited to see so much mobilization happening around getting people out of prisons. I really do feel like people have been more active I feel like because they’re at home. That’s exciting to see. There’s been a lot more of my friends reaching out to learn how to call people and how to call clerk’s offices and stuff like that. Wanting to spend their free time doing it. That’s been really exciting to see.

Red:
Yeah. Everything that’s happening back in Chicago right now with the mobilizations and the caravans is really inspiring. I know doing some more things here in New York too, but just with sheer fact of having comrades in Chicago closer proximity and being able to do those caravan mobilizations more frequently. Actually surrounding Cook County Jail, which is where Alisha was incarcerated without trial for over 20 months. Just thinking about everyone encircling that hellscape. Just blasting their horns, and flying banners, and staying safe while still sticking it to Cook County Jail, it was life giving. It was really reinvigorating to see those images coming out of Chicago.

Erica:
Yeah. I do think that folks on bikes have really just … I feel like even with delivery and mobilizing to help make sure people are still getting books, and groceries, and the things that they need. I’ve been seeing a lot of bike mobilization in Chicago, which has been really wonderful.

Red:
Yeah. Absolutely. Y’all, I got to express and be honest about my nervousness about Alisha being able to call in. I just want to make space and room for that. Right now there’s nine of us on this call. I know almost every single one of you. Real talk, Alisha and I have been able to call on the phone at least every other day. When this first started going back almost five weeks ago, they still had regular access to the phones. Five weeks ago she was calling twice a day because the panic and the fear was so palpable and high. She was calling to check in and say, “We still don’t have any word about this. Can you let me know what’s happening in the news?” We were doing a morning check in and an evening check in around that.

Red:
As the weeks have worn on y’all, we’ve gotten to experience in real time what those new punishment policies inside of the prisons look like because of the pandemic. It’s wild. Decatur is running wild and it’s not an exception. I can share a little bit about what’s happening at Logan also, which is where one of our … We have a lot of pen pals there, and comrades, and Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, also, Love and Protect have a lot of comrades inside of Logan. Alisha has a lot of friends, loved ones, chosen family inside of Logan. That was where she was incarcerated after Cook County initially.

Red:
If Decatur is bad, Logan is next level right now is what we’re hearing from folks inside. Our comrade, Lorena, who has been able to email us but not able to access phones and call us has been talking about just the rampant unsanitary conditions, the fear, the internal tensions that are now just really explosive amongst fellow incarcerated people, as it pertains to resources, just because of the fear and anxiety. Lorena was talking about them providing, and by them I mean the COs, the correctional officers, right? The inside cops.

Red:
They were essentially supposed to be providing a bucket of bleach and cleaning implements for every single unit. They’ve provided buckets that barely smell like bleach, so everyone inside thinks that essentially they’re just being given water or such watered down bleach that it wouldn’t be killing any kind of bacteria or virus that it comes into contact with. There is also an update from Lorena two days ago that was talking about the fact that they have limited showers for folks who might be sick, who are sick.

Red:
That they’re not allowing people to purchase new hygiene items or replenish their hygiene items at commissary. That there’s just been incredible abuses by the COs. The shouting, the berating, the separating of people who have been on housing units with folks for many years and shuttling them into new configurations that are even more cramped and condensed. When Alisha joins us or if I end up having to read her responses that she sent us, y’all are going to hear similar characterization there too. Where there is no logic, or if there is a logic, it’s just a logic of punishment and torture.

Red:
We’re not speaking pejoratively. We’re not speaking in an exaggerated way. What is actually happening with the kind of confinement that we’re seeing is nothing short of torturous and people really need to internalize that and to think about what this means in general. Despite there being a global pandemic health crisis, this is always a crisis. The confinement of people in prisons, jails, detention facilities, and those confined against their will at mental institutions. This is a crisis already.

Red:
That’s something that we’ve been talking with our folks on the phone. Through letters and emails. Y’all, this had been a problem and really glad that y’all care right now, but we really need to expand the framework. It shouldn’t be free them all because of a pandemic. It should be free them all period. End of story. None of this nonviolent offender apologetic politics. This is not the way. This is not how we deal with harm. This is not how we respond to community need for healing and transformation, right?

Red:
That’s been part and parcel of conversations that we’ve been having and they’re even more intensified now in this moment. Yeah, just wanted to bring that into the conversation too and just be real. I’m really nervous. I’m nervous that I won’t hear from Alisha today. Erica, when was the last time you got a call from LeLe?

Erica:
Two days ago. Yeah. This same pattern of as this pandemic really took hold in the US, I was hearing from her every day, which was nice because I love hearing her voice, but also scary because she was constantly, “I don’t know what’s going on. I’m so confused. This is stressing me out.” I can hear it in her voice. Then it tapered off to every other day. Then there was a few days where I didn’t hear from her at all and that started to worry me. Yeah, I can see where there is the graph of intense anxiety and uncertainty and then it fell off. Yeah, it hasn’t been as frequent recently.

Red:
Right. It’s been the same for video visits. GTL Network, for those who don’t know on the call, is a profit making monster. They charge exorbitant fees for video visits. As a gift to us on the outside, they removed for the last three and a half weeks or three weeks give or take. What is time right now anyway?

Erica:
Actually a month. It’s been a month. It’s a whole month.

Red:
Oh my God. Thank you. Four weeks. They removed the option to have our regular 50-55 minutes and replaced them instead with … Ooh, she’s calling. Okay. I’m going to turn you up so you’re nice and loud.

Erica:
Hey, sexy.

Red:
LeLe, can you hear Erica’s voice?

Alisha Walker:
I heard.

Red:
Yeah?

Alisha Walker:
Back at you. Hi, Erica!

Erica:
Morning!

Red:
We’ve got Donna on here too.

Donna:
Hi!

Alisha Walker:
Hey.

Red:
The gang’s all here. Matilda’s on here too. They’re on here too.

Matilda:
Hi. Good to hear your voice.

Red:
It’s so good to hear your voice, babe.

Alisha Walker:
I’m [inaudible 00:27:02].

Red:
Yes. We’re not going to miss this. I know that we only have a few minutes.

Alisha Walker:
20.

Red:
We have 20 exactly. Okay. I’m so glad you were able to get on a phone. I’m so relieved. Erica and I were both just …

Alisha Walker:
I’ve been waiting in line since 10:30.

Red:
Oh my God. The lines have been that long?

Alisha Walker:
Yeah. I’ve been in line since 11.

Red:
I love you. You’re a fucking champion.

Alisha Walker:
Are you in the group?

Red:
Yeah, we’re on here now. Can we start talking through some of these questions that we discussed?

Alisha Walker:
Yeah.

Red:
Awesome. Wanted to start. Before we tell everybody and share about all of the really enraging and upsetting shit that we are definitely going to get to, we wanted to start maybe with a conversation around art and our poetry. Does that sound good?

Alisha Walker:
Sure.

Red:
Okay.

Alisha Walker:
Absolutely.

Red:
When did you actually start making art and writing poetry?

Alisha Walker:
I figured out I could draw probably when I was in Logan and I was stuck in [inaudible 00:28:25] all those months when I first got there and I didn’t have [inaudible 00:28:40]. Stuff like that and [inaudible 00:28:40] draw because I wanted to do pictures and stuff for my brother and [inaudible 00:28:44] birthday card. “We should [inaudible 00:28:49] a birthday card and it turned out really [inaudible 00:28:52]. Well, let me see if I can [inaudible 00:28:59] more details. I don’t know. [inaudible 00:29:06] huh. Then I was just like, “Well, let me draw what I would like to be.”

Alisha Walker:
[inaudible 00:29:23] if I like something I draw, I [inaudible 00:29:26] to it. [inaudible 00:29:32] writing my poems [inaudible 00:29:40]. I kind of [inaudible 00:29:42] I like some stuff on paper, but I never really sat down and tried to write stuff out. When [inaudible 00:29:58], I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t have a way to release [inaudible 00:30:05] have no idea what to do and I was just writing and I was like, “Let me write this and this.” Then [inaudible 00:30:15] no idea what to do with what I was feeling and I was like, “Well, let me just write it.” That’s how my poetry just came along. I’m not really good at talking.

Red:
Yeah, you are.

Alisha Walker:
Well, now, but I wasn’t. I feel like poetry [inaudible 00:30:36] because before I wasn’t able to express what I was feeling until I started writing the poetry. Then it was like, “Okay. This is how I feel. This is what this is.”

Red:
Yeah. I feel like that’s something that we’ve talked about during visits and also just for years now you’ve talked about you’ve always been a creative person and you were doodling on everything. Doodling on surfaces and designing elaborate tattoos, but that the art practice came later. That the poetry practice came a little bit later than that too. As you began trying to articulate the pain, articulate your healing process, and just having that time, that unfortunate time of being inside, also trying to figure yourself out and figure your shit out too with those artistic mediums.

Alisha Walker:
That’s the main thing of what the poetry did for me. It helped me realize who I was. You know what I mean? [inaudible 00:31:46] it’s because when you’re young your emotions are just all over the place. You really don’t understand. You’re just living off pure emotions and making your way through it. It helped me start going through the process of thinking things through. “Okay, let me take a pause. Let me jot this down and get this out. Okay, this is what I’m feeling. That’s why I feel that way. What’s the root cause of it?”

Alisha Walker:
The poetry really helped me grow as a person. Also, having just time to … Literally all I did was focus on me. I was antsy before. You know how you know yourself but you don’t know know yourself. That’s what this time has gave me. Is this opportunity to know what I like. What I don’t like. What I want to do. [inaudible 00:32:38] person. Then I wanted to change the whole process of, “I don’t like this quality about me, so I want to change it.”

Red:
Yeah. It sounds like it’s helped you focus and stay calm even when you’re on fire and angry. It channels that rage in this really intense way for you. Just all the stuff that we collected that became the zine A Survivor: Alisha Walker, all of that was just the most intense raw shit. You were attempting to heal in the face of this awful state violence.

Alisha Walker:
Yeah.

Red:
It’s so necessary and so important. Related to that, I wanted to see if you wanted to talk a little bit more about how those art practices, like how drawing or how creating poetry and using rhyme and word patterns, how has that helped keep you centered? Keep you grounded and show you what you’re capable of?

Alisha Walker:
Well, if I am not focused on drawing, I can’t draw. Really. My lines don’t look right. I have to hone in on what it is that I’m [inaudible 00:33:59]. I can’t just be like, “Oh, well let me just go ahead and sketch this out on [inaudible 00:34:03] emotional ass shit going on. I can’t sit down and draw. That’s why sometimes I’ll be like, “I don’t want to draw. I don’t want to do it right now. I don’t want to be [inaudible 00:34:26] away and if I’m not in the mood to do it, I can’t draw. My lines and everything was horrible. I don’t know why, but I can’t [inaudible 00:34:45]. It’s stupid and I don’t want it. It’s like [inaudible 00:34:54].

Red:
Yeah. Totally. I think I’ve heard you say … I have it jotted down right here because I wanted to remind myself of how you’ve said this before, but you’ve said it’s helped keep you in your mind. That you’ve characterized making art and poetry is helping to keep you in your mind. What does that mean? What does that mean for you?

Alisha Walker:
Okay. A lot of times, I [inaudible 00:35:21]. It’s so hard to not think about that. It’s why [inaudible 00:35:48] my school work and just [inaudible 00:35:59] and all this stuff, now I want to write. You know what I’m saying? Now that’s what I want to do. Before when I was like, “Let me [inaudible 00:36:13], it’s because if I don’t have something to say, I focus on the negatives. [inaudible 00:36:21]. I don’t even want to do it. [inaudible 00:36:31]. I focus on the future instead of what’s going on or what happened in the past. This is the only way I can get through what I’m going through right now.

Red:
Totally. I also just love and I know that I can’t go into detail on the phone about it, but I love how you have incorporated … I’ll say incorporated, maybe snuck, messages and symbols into projects. I love that you’ve used your art practice to do this important, subversive, amazing work inside too.

Alisha Walker:
Of course.

Red:
I just want to shout you out for that. Always being down and giving zero fucks. I also wanted to ask you about the importance of getting zines and newsletters inside. Blank and Pink’s zine and Survived and Punished New York’s free survivors. Can you talk a little bit about why it’s important to get things like that inside?

Alisha Walker:
Okay. At some point, it all makes you realize other people are going through what you’re going through because [inaudible 00:38:04]. We’ll talk, but we don’t like to talk too much about how we’re feeling and all that because we’re all a little broken. Sometimes when you talk to someone [inaudible 00:38:20], they might not talk the way that normal people would. So they’ll use your vulnerabilities against you, so you don’t want to talk about it. A lot of times [inaudible 00:38:32] what other people are going through [inaudible 00:38:37] okay, we’ll there’s someone. This is how they’re feeling.

Alisha Walker:
Not only that, but the prison will not tell you what the laws are. What your rights are. You have to dig for it. Not only when you’re in prison. Once you realize that it applies to [inaudible 00:38:51] that you can do something about it, [inaudible 00:38:54] really hard. [inaudible 00:38:55] the newsletters they tell you what’s going on and how [inaudible 00:39:00]. What else is going on. Especially even just in other states.

Alisha Walker:
It’s just the fact that it’s happening [inaudible 00:39:04] that it could happen in here. You have to know about what’s going on. It’s the only way to connect things. We realize, “Okay, we can do something about this [inaudible 00:39:15] the laws and how to [inaudible 00:39:20] going on. It’s so important. It’s so important to be connected. Not only that, but it’s also a connection to the world.

Red:
Yeah, totally. You’ve also talked about how important it is for us to be the people writing our own stories. For us to be using our voice. I want to maybe move into that for our next question. Let’s see here. I’m scrolling down now. Yeah. I think one of the reasons those zines and newsletters are so important is because it keeps us all connected too. It keeps us connected on the outside to y’all inside and then y’all inside to other folks inside.

Red:
Like you were saying, it works in all these different ways to continue keeping people connected even though we can’t necessarily call each other all the time. We’re not allowed on all the phone lists. We can’t do in-person visits if some of us have records. All of those things prevent people from being a part and being a community. When we can build community in this creative way, it can really help.

Alisha Walker:
Yeah. Like I said before, if I did not have you guys, I wouldn’t have a voice. I would not have a voice. I would not be able to say my opinion. It wouldn’t matter how I felt. It wouldn’t matter. Literally, I’m telling you all the time, you are my voice. Without you, I literally would just be [inaudible 00:40:58]. I feel like that’s why I don’t forget about [inaudible 00:41:03] while I’m in here. It’s because they know I will make sure that whatever is going on we’ll get out and then we’ll get revenge. That’s the last thing that they want. I feel like a lot of times this is the proof that we’re not playing with them the whole time. Now they’re acting like they finally got it. It took them like two years, but then they got it.

Red:
Yeah. It’s exactly what you’re saying. The prisons want to keep y’all invisible. They want to keep your voices shout out of everything. Not just decision making over what happens to your bodies and minds, but they want to keep you cut off from people on the outside. We can tell our own stories. We can take back these narratives and get them out there, right? That’s what these zines and newsletters can do.

Alisha Walker:
Yeah, but there’s the oldest trick, divide and conquer. It’s the same thing. Divide us to keep us away from everybody else and they go ahead and conquer everything. [inaudible 00:42:07] department of corrections. [inaudible 00:42:17].

Red:
I love you.

Alisha Walker:
I love you.

Red:
In our last few minutes here, we’ve got four minutes left. What do you want people to know right now about what’s happening inside during this pandemic?

Alisha Walker:
That they’re fucking liars. I guess on the news there was some girl that they were talking about on the news from Logan and she was Decatur is so good. They have hand sanitizers and they’re getting their temperatures and everything checked. We’re not getting that.

Red:
Yeah, that’s not happening at Logan. That’s a lie. That’s not happening at Logan.

Alisha Walker:
Yeah. Well, it’s not happening here at all. We have the non-alcoholic hand sanitizer, which of course does really nothing. [inaudible 00:43:06] some of the guards aren’t wearing gloves all the time and they take their masks off. [inaudible 00:43:15] I’m pretty sure there was an issue of what was going on. It’s just scary. Possibly it seems like a deliberate attempt at hurting us. It’s just insane. Not only that, but we’re all stuck here on the unit and [inaudible 00:43:41]. Everybody wants to argue. We have [inaudible 00:43:48]. I would have waited until I don’t know, 10:30 to get in or to get back in line or it wouldn’t have happened. Thank God that they all went to chow and I sit here and held my spot down. Had that happened, I wouldn’t have been able to be on the phone right now. [inaudible 00:44:18] October 30th, but I supposed to graduate the horticulture and get my certificate in July. [inaudible 00:44:26] I missed out on all that month and a half of [inaudible 00:44:30] that I could have been getting [inaudible 00:44:32] out earlier. Everything’s just …

Red:
It’s fucked.

Alisha Walker:
Oh, yeah.

Red:
Yeah. I remember for a while when we were starting our phone calls, you would start the phone call by saying, “Social distancing does not exist in prison. This is not real.”

Alisha Walker:
Because it does not. Clearly [inaudible 00:44:51] right now I’m sitting next to someone on the phone. [inaudible 00:45:02] bathroom with eight women. I sleep with four women. You go to chow and there’s a line but you’ve got to sit three chairs apart when you go to chow. It’s stupid. It’s fucking stupid.

Red:
Last thoughts, LeLe, before they disconnect us. Anything else you want to share?

Alisha Walker:
Love you guys. That’s it.

Red:
We love you too. So much.

Donna:
Thank you so much.

Alisha Walker:
Aww. I have something that I want you to read. I’m going to have to call you back.

Red:
Yeah, babe.

Alisha Walker:
I don’t know when. Are you going to busy later?

Red:
No. Just call me whenever.

Alisha Walker:
All right. I’ll be on the 26th. So excited.

Erica:
Yeah, I’ll see you Sunday. You get to see the view from my window.

Alisha Walker:
Love you guys.

Red:
I love you. We love you.

Alisha Walker:
I love you.

Red:
We love you so much. Thank you for taking time.

Alisha Walker:
I love you so much. Bye.

Red:
Bye. Okay. Alisha is the goddamn best. I know I’m swearing a lot. I’m from the rural south. This is how we talk.

Erica:
It’s part of our whole being.

Red:
Exactly. I pretty much still know every single person on this. Eventually, once it is recorded, then people will know my true limited vocabulary swearing self, but until then. Oh my God, y’all. No one should be in a fucking cage. No one should be in fucking prison. I know we were cut off there at the end, so I wanted to read a portion of what Alisha had emailed about the conditions too. For the most part, could people hear even though it was a little garbled sometimes?

Erica:
Yeah. It cut out a little bit here and there, but I was able to hear most of it.

Red:
Okay.

Matilda:
We’ll make sure to do our best captioning it too. That should help a lot.

Red:
Thanks, Matilda. What’s been happening now that, since everyone is being condensed … Well, let me just go ahead. I’ll start with Alisha’s words. They’re more important. Then I can rhapse angrily about what that means for the phone quality after that. Alisha had sent this via writing, and I want it to be a part of this recording.

Red:
“Social distancing does not exist in prisons. They’re cramming us in here like sardines. None of these policies make sense or make us safer. They’ve condensed us to a few units all on the same side of the prison, creating what we all think is a death ward for when the virus gets in. Then they’ll isolate us over there. It feels like they don’t care if we get sick or if we die. A lot of us are already sick in here and they don’t care.

Red:
“Our phone use has been cut to 20 minutes max. Our video visits were cut down to only 15 minutes. The wifi barely works. Sometimes we can get the Connect Network emails to work, but we can’t reply, so we can read them, but we have no ability to write back to folks. Commissary has been restricted and shopping limited. For cleaning supplies, we get bleach water and a rag to share.”

Red:
“It’s a joke. It’s a deadly fucking joke. It’s hell in here. The fear and anxiety that the whole country is in a panic over this virus thing and we’re trapped, unable to be in contact with loved ones, but in direct contact with COs and who knows where the hell they’ve been. I want people to know we’re in here and that we want out. We want and deserve to be safe. Please do something. Get pissed and do something.”

Red:
I wanted to share out that written response as well. Also, say a few weeks back when Alisha and I were on the phone and the governor had been compelled to do a few releases, which I don’t know the exact numbers on, but they are not where they should be obviously because Alisha is still inside and there’s still people in prison, so the released are not mass and they are not what they need to be.

Red:
We were on the phone and I could hear all of a sudden this booming din of noise and I could barely hear Alisha’s voice. It was just the COs shouting. Just shouting what seemed like inches away from the folks who were using the phones. The very next day, I heard a second kind of din and it was the shouts of women being released and other folks being released. Their names were getting called up and they were having to move everything out on carts from their housing unit. It was this really mixed emotional space. It was super garbled.

Red:
I couldn’t distinguish all of what was being said behind Alisha, but I could just hear the exclamations, and screams, and cries mixed with the COs just shouting at people. It was really incredibly intense and the kind of sound that’s being heard now behind Alisha, the kind of noise that we’re hearing has typically now just been completely COs arguing with folks inside. Shouting at folks inside. Then folks inside arguing amongst themselves waiting for the phones because these tensions keep building and keep mounting and resources are being spread so thin inside. That sound that you could hear behind Alisha, I just wanted to give that some characterization too.

Red:
With everything that we’ve been talking about, we’re still also going to be talking about why we make things in the face of these conditions, and in the face of state violence, and dealing with criminalization, and our own mental health. I’ll leave it at that. We wanted to make space to talk about why zines? Why make these things? Why put our time, and energy, and resources into making these objects? Like LeLe was saying, zine and art making can be these practices of self care and collective care.

Red:
We all learn and process shit in different ways. Being able to creatively construct responses to criminalization, to oppression, and exercise our own narrative making is so important. We’ve been making zines as a collective from the beginning and our main creations have been taking the form of these yearbook perzines. Perzine means personal zines. It’s usually reflective-based that chronicle the year’s actions and events and our feelings. Right? The hardships and the breakthroughs. The things that made us feel like we were grasping onto some powerful activity and also feeling disconnected and feeling shot down. All of that stuff has been pumped into those zines.

Red:
Our first zine, which is Support Ho(s)e Year One, this one was an amazing joint project that included all of our political education reading circle comrades in Chicago. A lot of us have been making, and trading, and collecting zines since our teens. There’s a really rich tradition of radical sex worker made popular literature in zines. I’m just thinking right now of Gender Trash, Maggies, Be Easy, Stay Safe by Jinjavitis, Leave Us Alone. I’ve got that one here. Also thinking of Our Voices. I’ve also got that one here. Ho Lover. Who can forget this phenomenal read about relationship building? Also the incomparable Don’t Hate My Heels. Incredible work here. Basically all of Annie Koyama’s work. This is the one that I just happen to have at the ready here right now. All of Annie’s zines are incredible.

Red:
I could go on and on. There’s such a rich tradition and legacy of ho zines. Also, just sex worker literature and popular print material and ephemera. Sex workers love to make a flyer y’all. We love that. Zines are also a way for us to tell our own stories, right? Without relying on mainstream media or book deals. Although if you are in publishing and are listening to this, you need to give whores more book deals. Please fucking call us. We could really use that. We want to tell stories.

Red:
Zines are way more affordable than books. People can make their own copies and pass these things around and trade them. We can tell our own stories more accessibly for ourselves by using images and text, right? That helps to actually set the record straight around things, do political education, chronicle activity. For instance, Alisha uses her art practice to mediate and alleviate stress, right? I make collages to calm the fuck down. Donna creates poetry and reflective embodied performances of resistance and memory. Erica speaks her truth Riot Grrl style, taking down our enemies by cutting and pasting and likely farting on those images while making them. Amazing powerhouses. Both of these [inaudible 00:55:11]. Aaron writes. A lot and beautifully about all the pain that we hold. He has sung and writhed around on stage in an anarchic frenzy to raise money for Alisha’s commissary.

Red:
We’ve all documented these experiences and these ways of engaging with the world in our zines. We hope that these bundles of paper, these little talismans of resistance and ink, become tangible proof that whores fought back and that our voices and art have power together. That we can make powerful narratives together. I want to give a special shout out to Julia Arreddondo, formerly of Vice Versa Press, who’s now making art under Curandera Press. Also, want to shout out Chartreuse Jennings for all of their artistic support in the making that has helped as get these beautiful visual representations of what we’re all about, which is this high heel stomping on this little dude.

Red:
I also want to thank Jonas Cannon of Midwestern Cuisinefest, Fixer Eraser, and We, The Drowned zines. We’re always making sure that sex workers have space at their table and at any zinefest. Also, our dear comrade, Martin Cassa, for ensuring the same. I think that zinesters have this incredible community-based response to stuff. We have these beautiful things that we want to share in the world and we get fiercely passionate about ensuring that people get these things right into their hands, into their laps, and into their lives in whatever way we can.

Red:
We do zine readings to make things accessible. We experiment with different kinds of zines, whether they be digital, whether they be the xerox-copied things that I’m a little bit more familiar with and more comfortable with. There are zines that are just all images. Whatever the shape they take, they can be really powerful organizing tools and also just tools of healing. That’s one of the reasons why we do these things. Why we make. I wanted to move into some time now to share some readings.

Red:
I wanted to kick things off by sharing a piece of Alisha’s poetry. It’s a piece that’s just called Whore. It’s by Alisha Walker and it’s from the zine A Survivor: Alisha Walker. This is a joint project of the Support Ho(s)e Collective which we basically had Alisha just mail us everything. Hand written poems. Different pieces of art that were mostly graphite on paper with some colored pencils. She also was making this incredible nail polish art for a while. She is making her own nail polish.

Red:
I won’t go into the details on here because I don’t want to out anybody’s ingenuity and get that contraband taken from them because everybody needs their nail polish. She was operating at this level of ingenuity to make art all the time and was just sending us stuff and wanted it compiled into a zine. We took all of those things, retyped, transcribed, did stuff over the phone, and we’d just like to have all that stuff in one place, so that’s how that zine came to be.

Red:
Sorry. I’m trying to read the chat at the same time as talking and clearly I can’t do that even at 12:30 in the afternoon. I want to start with that piece from Alisha. “I wrote the poem Whore because I’m an incarcerated one and I’m incarcerated for being a whore who survived, so I’ll never turn my back on whores. Hasn’t the government done enough to try and separate us? I’m writing this as a young queer mixed woman. I wrote this poem to celebrate International Whore’s Day. Whores are the hardest working people I know and I’m proud to be in their ranks. I didn’t know about this day when I was working, but now I’m locked up and I know about it and I need it. I want to be connected to whores around the world who are fighting. I want us to shut down the shame. Shut down the racist pigs. Whores will rise.”

Red:
“Whore. Why use such a nasty word? Wait, was this word nasty and tasteless not too long ago? Sex workers, prostitutes, escorts, strippers. A list could go on and on, including the word whore. Whores provide. We give love, attention, and a listening ear for coin. Being a whore is work. This ain’t all I am, but it is an important part. Honestly, I thought we all evolved as a society. Putting the reigns on a word because some like it and some don’t? It’s ridiculous.”

Red:
“When International Whore’s Day started in 1975, the whores of France banded together because they were sick and tired of being harassed and abused by the same people who use their services. They were tired of the cops. They were tired. Isn’t that our fight? To bring awareness to us whores? To stop the neglect and abuse caused to us by the ones who still can’t stamp us out? Being a whore isn’t a category of sexuality. It is a right to express oneself as a worker. Why is everyone scared of whores? Well, shit. Maybe they should be. Whores are taking power back. In solidarity and ho love, signed a whore for life. LeLe.”

Red:
That’s from this zine here. I excerpted it because I’m sneaky and if you want to read the entire thing, you’ve got to buy it, which goes directly to Alisha’s commissary. That’s this piece, which is just one of 20-some-odd beautiful, and intense, and deeply upsetting, and deeply empowering pieces that Alisha has in this collection. I also wanted to share Donna’s reflection from the zine, which is Support Ho(s)e Year Two. It’s this one here. I’m also going to excerpt it because you don’t get all of Donna’s words for free. Here we go.

Red:
“I’ve never been good with dates or timelines. There isn’t an exact date or moment where I felt more or less like an organizer or an activist. I just remember too many high school nights spent huddled with my poetry team around the tv watching another white police officer get away with murder. I wondered what it was doing to us to watch as judges, jurors, and prosecutors keep indictment at bay and to know as young people we could be murdered on camera and that there would be no form of justice.”

Red:
“My politics has always been deeply tied to my poetry. To the people I shared that poetry with and the people I wrote poems about. The first poem I wrote that mattered to me was about my time as a houseless young person. Then next about my phone calls with my brother on the inside and so forth. I was finding my words at the same time as I was going to the protests and leading chants. I never confidently picked a political party because that’s not what determined for me whether someone deserved to live a life with dignity and care.”

Red:
“Showing up for vigils and jail support at the Cook County Juvenile Corrections, fighting for bail reform at city hall, demanding police accountability and exposing militancy in the CPD, walking out when schools were closed and supporting Chicago teachers on strike, fighting for a living minimum wage was always connected to holding it down for incarcerated sex workers and moms at Slutwalk Chicago. Showing up, whether that be virtually or in person, was about demanding folks be heard and that we mattered to somebody.”

Red:
“Even if it wasn’t, the people who were impacted in all these spaces usually overlapped. Even if they didn’t, there was never a good enough reason for me not to go if I had the time and energy. When people ask me why I’m here, I say, ‘Why not?’ Why sex workers? Why sluts? Why queers? Why disabled people, Donna? Why? I say why not show up if I’ve got it in me? Would I want someone to list the reasons not to give their time if I were in need? If my family was in need? If my people’s life was on the line? That’s not solidarity. We all need each other and we all have something to offer and only we can offer what we got.”

Red:
That’s from this one and, Donna, I hope I did you justice. I hope I did your words justice. This is in this zine here and it’s excerpted. Wanted to just read one last piece. This one is from Aaron in Support Ho(s)e New York. It’s also from this zine and it’s the closing remarks for this zine.

Red:
“It turns out the political is personal insofar as the personal is political. The movement for sex workers rights has a necessarily short memory in some regards and a notoriously long one in others. We don’t forget the White Slave traffic Act and we keep receipts on FOSTA and SESTA for a long while, but we understand that radical community must morph and reorganize. Galvanize at sunset as conditions change and as tactics are proven more or less successful. As new formations become necessary and others outlive their usefulness. The enemies and adversaries are numerous. Some inadvertent. Many whose charge is predicated completely on eradicating not just a set of professions, industries, and survival strategies, but the very idea that people, mostly women and femmes, have the capacity, self awareness, and responsibility to govern their own bodies, time, and way of living.”

Red:
“Those who make the laws, adjudicate, and enforce them are hardly surprising obstacles to getting free. Political expediency, moral panic, and furious impotence expressed as power over are far from limited to state violence towards sex working people. Through another year of this project, it’s those who opt to have a stake, the radicals, the workers for whom federal legislation isn’t a near death sentence, the Marxists who preach solidarity of the working, the underclass, the choice activists, the prison abolitionists, the better world anarchists to whom we sound the alarm. It’s not personal for you perhaps, not yet.”

Red:
“Even if someone you love is a former or current sex worker. Possibly because this work seems secondary. It seems based on choice. It might be that somehow you figure that when the bigger problems are taken care of, this one will naturally follow. People die. Risk harm in various levels and valences of working conditions markedly unsafe due to criminalization. They’re harassed by cops and other agents of the state in unspeakable ways. They are stigmatized at levels which magnify those experienced by women, queers, trans folks, and people of color. That’s what we all struggle against anyway, no? No, I think not. This is your flash point. Your crucible for your leftist politics. For people’s control over their own bodies and futures that they choose and seek.”

Red:
“Any activism, any organizing, any conversation about women’s rights, or queer rights, or trans rights, black and brown liberation which misses sex work it misses. You can call the workers miner’s canaries or you can call them vanguards. Either might be apt in its way. I’m another year into the struggle, having moved my own activism back into a classroom. Honestly, it’s fish in a barrel. Anyone with a heart and half a brain when presented with the facts is forced into empty platitudes and vacant moralizing when attempting to argue against the full decriminalization and immediate de-incarceration of people.

Red:
“That students who have not reached their quarter century can pick up on this in all of its immediacy while anyone involved in whatever leftist quote unquote movement struggles to keep up, is boggling. You see in these pages a mixture of the bullhorn and the pamphlet. Another score of months off of our incarcerated comrades’ caging. Another set of tragic utterly preventable losses and screaming into the sky both literally and figuratively resistance. Sign on or get the fuck out of the way.”

Red:
That’s, again, a piece excerpted from Support Ho(s)e Year Two zine written by one of our comrades. Y’all, in closing, we’ve created artistic resistance through visual works, amplified Alisha’s poetry practice, fundraised, held demonstrations, made consciousness-raising zines for ourselves, and fellow sex workers and demanded our comrades on the left center sex workers’ experiences and everyone in the trade when developing their analyzes. We’ve only been able to do that work because of intentional relationship building and learning alongside LeLe and other incarcerated sex working comrades that she’s connected us with. There is no one without the other. I want to be really clear about that.

Matilda:
Great.

Red:
Since all of Alisha’s appeals have been denied, we focus more intensely on a clemency campaign. Honing in on Governor J.B. Pritzker’s purported progressivism and of course maintaining material support and commissary aid for Alisha while she’s inside. We’ve been fortunate that we’ve been able to help some of her friends, and chosen family, and lovers who also need help when we can. I want to shout out The Third Wave Fund for helping to make that a reality for us to continue to do our work.

Red:
The Third Wave Fund is so important. They are modeling what it actually looks like to support people who are doing the work. Who never get grants. Grassroots organizations who are just completely abandoned by mainstream nonprofits and grant givers. Third Wave Fund shows up for people and primarily shows up for youth, and trans youth, and trans youth of color and they keep showing up. Many thanks and appreciations to give for Third Wave for helping us realize our organizing work. We’ve established a post-release fund that people can contribute toward. Again, we’ll provide all these links and resources, both in the description of our recording, but these are also things that are all on our website that you can drop in the chat as well.

Red:
We’ve started this post-release fund for Alisha that focuses on we’re encouraging y’all to also amplify and give to if you actually have money to give. We’ve working with Hacking Hustling, which is another sex worker lead collective, to co-create a funded project for Alisha when she’s out that she’s helped design. When she’s home, she’s got not just housing and not just a post-release fund, but this project-based work that she’s tailored and created the parameters for.

Red:
Housing and material support when folks get out is overlooked by lots of mainstream organizations. By lots of nonprofits that work with folks who are incarcerated. I’ve just got to be really real about that. If you’re not showing up and literally housing our people when they come out of prisons, we’re not doing enough. I’m just hearing Monica Cosby in my ears right now sitting and having beers with her months ago. Just hearing that and that is the lesson that I think we need to take back to all of our formations. How do we get smart, and get safe, and get working on housing justice for folks when they come out? Alisha has 19 months left y’all unless Jimmy Pritzker can be forced to do the right thing and free everyone who’s incarcerated in Illinois during this pandemic.

Red:
We can do a lot more as a broader community and we need to. We’ve got to keep lifting up our incarcerated sex worker family and agitate to get them free. Especially now amidst this global health crisis and pandemic. I want to urge people to look into the work and also the calls to action from Survived and Punished, from Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, from Love and Protect, and also from Free Them All For Public Health. Please, please, please look into those organizations and formations who are just spearheading, and guiding, and leading with such force of love, and care, and action.

Red:
Also, read zines made by sex workers. We talked about several of them just on this call as I was just sharing a few out, but read zines made by sex workers. Make your own. Make your own zines. Subscribe to prison abolitionist newsletters like Free Survivors and write to incarcerated people. More people right now are learning about and deepening their own mutual aid and mutual care practices. That is so hopeful to see and it is incredibly life-giving. Also, it’s going to take all of us to resist the death blows of capitalism and the racist whorephobia incarcerality. We need to get to work and we need to support one another in this work.

Red:
It can look like creating for one another and creating to bring people on board with these struggles. With that, I will shut up. I want to just thank Bluestockings again and thank all y’all for joining us this morning and this afternoon to just talk zines, and newsletters, and listen to Alisha’s voice together, and to be made together, and to lift each other up. So good to hear Donna and Erica’s voices on here as well. I love y’all so much. Thank you for everything that you do and for being such and intrinsic part of this collective.

Red:
Please y’all, follow our work online since we are online all the time now. Follow the projects that we’ve mentioned too. We’ll continue to drop those things into not just the recording description, but I’ll make sure that they’re all boosted and lifted on our socials pages right now. So the second you go to them, you can access those things too. Matilda, do you have anything to send us off with?

Matilda:
Red, I want to say thank you so much for your strength, and your message, and for holding this space with us, which is a fraught but important space. I’m going to close out by thanking everybody who attended and reminding you to if I’ve just shouted too many links at you, follow Bluestockings and we’ll get you the rest of them. Thanks so much y’all.

Red:
Thanks, y’all.

Matilda:
Bye.