#nonewjails

New York: "No new jails -- close Rikers Island now!" Rally and march at City Hall to tell City Council and Mayor Bill de Blasio #NoNewJails, October 17, 2019.

The Support Ho(s)e Collective sends its love and solidarity to our comrades in the No New Jails NYC coalition and to all of you today who want an end to the criminalization and caging of our sex working and hustling communities.

Our collective is comprised of current and former sex workers and militant co-conspirators. We seek to build radical community for sex workers in Chicago, comrades who are incarcerated at Decatur Correctional, and here in NYC. Our organizing is directly guided by the insights of our currently incarcerated collective member and insider organizer, Alisha Walker, and by our formerly incarcerated comrade, Judy.

Alisha wanted to directly share the following thoughts about what her time spent in jail, in pre-trial detention for 18 months, meant for her and fellow prisoners:

All the jailers did was dope us up on psych medications while awaiting trial. They tried to make us docile and complacent in our caging. We were barely fed, and when we were, there was never nutritious food. We regularly found roach eggs and pieces of plastic in our “meals.” We were actively pressured to take horrible deals to escape the abusive treatment and isolation. We were routinely dehumanized, drugged up, exposed to emotional and physical violence. We had no shower curtains or doors on our toilets, COs stared at our naked bodies and as we menstruated or shit. This is a system that works as designed. All jails and prisons do this. Call them humane, and I’ll call bullshit. I’m in downstate Illinois and I’m fighting against jails in New York City for this very reason. No person belongs in a cage.

Corey Johnson, do you hear Alisha? Do you hear us?!

For our comrade and for ourselves, we rise up with you today to demand the immediate closing of Rikers. We rise up with you today to shout “no new jails!” As sex workers we are keenly aware of the police and prosectutors roles in caging and criminalizing.

The violence of policing like raids on massage parlors, or in-call spaces in the name of rescue has never been justifiable. The targeting of vulnerable communities like migrant or new immigrant workers must stop. The police-led propaganda campaigns to incite people to report on their neighbors whom they suspect to be selling sex must stop! We want an end to police demanding sexual services for free and entrapping workers! We want an end to police coercing people to become informants! If you’re concerned about labor trafficking, remember this, the police traffic survivors of violence into the courts and jails.

DAs and prosecutors aggressively prosecute sex workers, especially Black and Brown, queer and trans folx to the fullest extent of the law, and migrant workers are pushed through the Human Trafficking Intervetion courts and into a system of surveillance.

District Attorneys, so-called “progressive” prosecutors, do you hear us? We are done with you! We have been done with you!

We will not have safer communities through policing! We will not have safer communities through jailing. We will not have safer communities so long as elected officials only care about their wealthy and well-connected constituents who are dripping with respectability politics that shames their neighbors!

We know that we must insist on and demand community-led solutions to harm. We know what’s best for our lives, our families and our broader communities--because we and our fellow hustlers live this shit everyday!

Comrades, accomplices, queers, fellow radical hos, it’s going to take all of us, advocating and fighting to build a better world—one that recognizes our value, humanity, bodily autonomy and agency as sex working or trading people. A world that protects our trans and gender non-conforming fam, a world that is free from white supremacy and bigotry. A world that truly believes Black lives matter. A world that fully acknowledges sex work is work. A world without police, without prisons, and without the criminalization of survival.

We will only see personal and political safety when those directly impacted lead their communities, develop solutions that do not rely on fear, arrest, entrapment, deportation and incarceration that the police bring.

We will only see safety when the cops are out of our communities, and sex workers are able to freely and openly address the real harms, grievances and struggles they already self-organize to address every single day without the threats and harassment they currently survive!

No cops, no new jails, not here, not anywhere, not ever!

By Greg Butterfield

“Close Rikers now! No new jails!” The chant was loud, the demand was clear, as hundreds of prisoners’ family members, former prisoners and prison abolition activists rallied and marched at New York’s City Hall on Oct. 17. That day, the City Council was set to vote on a proposal backed by Mayor Bill de Blasio to close the city’s notorious Rikers Island prison complex by 2026  — but only to replace it with four new high-rise jails at a cost of at least $8 billion.

By Ngozi Alston, Marlene Nava Ramos and Brittany Williams

Mayor Bill de Blasio is selling a shiny plan to spend at least $11 billion to build the infrastructure of the criminal punishment system for generations to come. We reject the audacity and entitlement of this mayor to believe he can do with his Department of Correction (DOC) what none of the jail-building mayors before him could.

Brooklyn, NYC:  FTP Emergency Action Against NYPD and MTA

Friday, November 1 - 5:15 pm to 7:00 pm

McLaughlin Park, Tillary & Jay streets, Brooklyn

Last Friday afternoon in Brooklyn, the NYPD went hunting for Black & Brown youth on the subway. On the Franklin Avenue stop, 19 year old Adrian Napier was held at gunpoint by a gang of police aiming their weapons through the subway car windows as commuters screamed and ran for cover. 

New York City: City Council Must Vote NO on New Jails

Thursday, October 17 - 10 a.m. to 12 noon

City Hall, Manhattan

Hosted by No New Jails NYC and DRUM - Desis Rising Up & Moving

In three days, City Council will vote on the Mayor's catastrophic plan to spend over $10 billion on 8-12 new jails. We'll be at City Hall all day, starting at 10am, this Thursday October 17. Join us! 10 AM: We will gather on the steps of city hall to ground ourselves in powerful abolitionist, transformative, community. We need you there. If you're able to join us, take off work, do phone zaps offline, please do! 10:40 AM: We will march! 11 AM Onwards: We will hold community care space in City Hall Park. Join us in Abolition Square: https://forms.gle/SwCpxaaPdfcaQMjo6 The consequences of Thursday's vote will resonate for generations. Just last week, de Blasio boasted that these jails would incarcerate our community members for a century to come.The Mayor has marshaled the usual forces against us in recent weeks: big foundations, complicit media outlets, and fellow jailer and City Council Speaker Corey Johnson. Meanwhile, grassroots organizations, movement elders, and other campaigns for liberation have shown up in droves to endorse and support No New Jails. The city and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex are desperately scrambling to secure their votes, and we are gaining ground every day. We need your support right now. Whether you've been out with us before, or haven't been able to come through yet, now is the time. A win on Thursday will be a historic step forward for New York City, and for everyone fighting for liberation and a future without cages.

“Rikers killed Kalief Browder. It’s sickening that the largest mental health facilities in this country are jails. Today we’re shutting it down b/c we believe in a world that invests in the safety + wellness of Black + brown community. We deserve it. Let’s win today #NoNewJails” - BYP 100

If you can’t go out and protest, please call the NYC city council and let your voice be heard! Here is a call script taken from this doc.

“Script: Hello, my name is {your name}, I live in {neighborhood} in {Councilmember’s} district. I’m calling today to say that [Councilmember] must vote no to the borough-based jails plan. The only things guaranteed by this land use proposal are that we will have more jails, more cages, and more brutal policing of Black and Brown communities to fill those cages. We can and must close Rikers without new jails. If {Councilmember} believes that our youth have a right to high quality public education and housing, to living free of violent police enforcement, to a bright future, then they will vote no on the Mayor’s jails plan.”