Just Women

Part I

Women do time differently than men. I say this often. We do time differently because the Injustice System has designed how we do time to maximize the profit from our enslavement. This machine that we know as the Prison Industrial Complex didn’t just magically come into existence. It was planned; each tedious detail drawn out by architects who build cages with intricate devices that encourage recidivism. Women do time differently than men because those architects seek to capitalize on every division they can exploit.

The American Corrections Association has a revised and improved genre of Injustice. They have drawn up a plan that serves to 1) Pacify those who think Prison Reformation is good idea and 2) Assure recidivism on a magnificent scale. There are several steps in their new scheme, but for the purpose of this paper only one aspect is relevant, Humanization.

Humanization entails speaking to us, convicts, as if we are human. It entails pretending to be kind, to maybe even have respect for us. Humanization is a form of manipulation that eases the rage of the convict, makes us more comfortable, and incentivizes us to just go with the flow. Humanization, if they do it right, will cause convicts to start to see the pretend humanity of the slaveholders as genuine, to believe they care about us, and to forget what’s really going on. Humanization is a brilliant tactic to slaughter more souls inside the beast. And the advocates for Prison Reformation shout for joy when they see Humanization at work. 

This paper isn’t about either of them—Prison Reformers or Prison Administrators. This paper is about us, convicts. It is about a very specific us among the convict population who won’t be so easily swayed by the plastic surgery to the face of the beast. Humans have a tendency to re-wrap systemic abuses and re-inflict them on ourselves and others. We should strive to stay mindful of Humanization tactics and not repeat them on each other. We do not want to choke the life out of truth in the guise of seeking peace. We know peace cannot be built on foundations of deceit. We must stay honest and real. Even if the whole world calls us to water down, sugar coat, or bury the truth.

We will look at the American Injustice System and how it destroys so much. We will try to find a way to do things differently. We will look at real situations on the yard and think of ways to not repeat the evils the Injustice System has inflicted upon us, our families, and the whole of society. We can remain honest, we can remain sincere, even when the whole world submits to fraudulence in word and deed.

Words matter at least as much as deeds. The ways the American Injustice System subverts entire communities begins with how they define things, including us. We do not have to agree with their definitions, but we should learn their language. And as we learn it, we should be careful not to be enticed by their distortions. Let’s see how they define the topic of this paper.

Justice – judgement involved in determining the rights and the assignment of rewards and punishments. 

Just – fair, ethical. 

Ethical – conforming to accepted standards of social and professional conduct.

I write about Injustice, it’s what I’ve always known, but I didn’t know it had its own language. On Tuesday, January 27th, 2025, I did some writing for Professor Graham’s class. I call him Professor because of the position he holds here in the convict world. He is an instructor technically, not a professor, but those technicalities don’t concern us inside the wire. The distinction between professor and instructor is money, and I will not submit to that distinction. It seems like a small rebellion, to refuse to use terms defined by an expenditure of funds, but it isn’t small at all. No act of rebellion is small. Professor Graham teaches very much like the few other professors I’ve met in the last year. Another professor teaches us that we can give new meaning to things, we must if we are going to make a difference.

I had written something for Professor Graham to send to the kids. The kids are University students who critique our work with big words and fancy concepts to educate us and help us write better. Their willingness to share their education with us is an extraordinary gift.

After finishing the paper for the kids, I wanted to start reading a new book. But I didn’t want to read it in my own voice. I wanted someone to start reading it aloud for me. I took it to the field for our secret PRISM meeting. PRISM—Prisoners Refined In Strategic Motion—is a small collective of female convicts striving to live in a better, more just, way. We try to find ways to help each other, and ways to avoid being harmed by cops, or their pets that wear orange but serve the beast. They consider themselves better than convicts, and they call themselves residents. Arizona State Women’s PRISM seeks to give convicts a place to argue, learn, grow, and express ideas and lay out grievances without restraint. An attempt at autonomy. A place where it’s safe to be real.

PRISM was meeting to discuss revising our 13th edition of HTMD—”Hidden Transparency of Monarch Dandelions”—PRISM’s underground newsletter. I asked Malayka, who was already there when I arrived, to read it a little of the book aloud while we waited for others. She read a little, but it wasn’t what I needed. She was having a day, and I didn’t want to hear that tone in my mind as I finished the book on my own later.

Lynn (not her real name) came late. I hadn’t thought she’d come to the meeting at all because she was upset with me. I had refused to write up some capitalist, pro-prison bullshit she wanted drafted. Instead, I wrote her something based on Zapatista principles we’d learned about that didn’t suit her programming agenda. She was very upset that I wouldn’t help her draft a 

proposal so she could get funded. I’ve lost a lot of friends over this turning Left thing, both religious and secular. I fully anticipate losing more. She can kick rocks, too.

Several of us were discussing Critical Race Theory when she approached. We are new to this type of exploration and sometimes our discussions are heated. PRISM has no rules of engagement, so learning is wild, loud, unrestrained, sometimes hilarious, sometimes hysterical. One sister and I have such fantastic conversations that cops felt the need to come to break us up a couple of times. We laughed at them and continued our talk. 

When Lynn sat down, I handed her the book and asked her to scan the index for something to read aloud to us. She flipped through and asked, “What about Marx?” I thought she was mocking me because of a paper I’d written to display the differences between convicts and residents on the yard. That paper delineated the unique class system, and the peculiar hierarchies inside this particular wire. I’d used a Marxist model in an amateur way to make my point. But I realized quickly she wasn’t mocking me. I understood that if she didn’t see the connection between that paper and Marx’s work then she didn’t know why I’d viciously refused to help her with her wack-ass proposal. I asked if she was mocking me, and she said she didn’t know who Marx was. I felt like a complete asshole. As Lynn read to us in a tone of discovery and excitement, I could tell by her pauses that she was bothered. That’s what I needed. Thank you, Karl.

We should all be bothered as we begin to understand the depth of the biblical truth King Sulayman taught us, “There is nothing new under the sun.” We should all be distressed by how much we live by rote. By how unquestioningly we fall in line. By how we’ve been taught to see grave injustices as justice. We should be disturbed to our core, and we should begin to question everything, even things as simple as the terms we use to define all things, even our teachers. 

Teachers come in all forms in all walks of life. I was awakened to the devastating specifics of our plight in these cages by one not long ago. I was shown the links between all of us who live and die in cages all over the world and all throughout time. I have grown distressed about the women around me being here. I am increasingly furious about how things are defined in this country, and by those who get to define things. Whatever justice is, mass incarceration isn’t it. For anyone. Even for murderers like me.

I am not certain if there should be a comparative analysis of the worth of human lives in court rooms, even for murder cases. But if they’re going to use comparative analysis to elevate a victim, then they should use comparative analysis to debase one too. If my main victim was such a colossal piece of shit that no one cared if he lived or died, and my second victim was a convicted pedophile who would inevitably re-offend, then how could the sentence of Unnatural Life be just? What does this society really use to measure what they call justice? And consequentially, what do we, the women in these cages, use to measure justice?

How can justice ever be accomplished in an Injustice System that is really an elaborate, artfully deceptive sporting event? A show where this piece of evidence is allowed, but that piece isn’t? A theater where you can say this, but you can’t say that? An arena where the lawyers and judges all know each other. They all have history together. They educate together, work together, party together. They eat together, sleep together, cheat together. We don’t have a wing or a prayer in there. Pasts don’t matter on their stage, all that matters to them is money. 

On January 19th, 1976, when I was 49 days old, I was still Carla LouAnne Brummett. Was it just or ethical that I be sold on the side of that dark road in Indiana between the cornfields, given a new name, a new birthdate and official paperwork to erase who I had been and where I had come from? My trajectory was set. Recently I needed my birth certificate for something, and it made me sick. There was never a certificate made with my birth mother’s name, my true birth name, or the true day of my birth. I have existed, legally, for fifty years only as what my purchasers defined me as. Every victim in my life is a victim of that moment. 

People should never be commodities. Some may argue that somewhere in my infant brain I hold a memory of my white mother’s face when she realized she’d birthed a nigger baby and refused to hold me or feed me. A memory of a relative who had to come and breastfeed me until they could sell me. Carla from my Christian Pastor grandfather Carl who orchestrated my sale. LouAnne from the aunt who breastfed me to keep me alive for seven weeks. If I died, they couldn’t get paid for me. People tell me that I overreact to my past, that I should accept it. They are white, after all, what is the point of resisting their lies? They’ll never be honest. They don’t have to be.

This introduction is not disconnected. A sold infant who goes through life disconnected from their roots by a government-sanctioned sale of a black baby to white people. A system of mass incarceration built from a foundation of black people bought and sold, generations born to be sold. An Injustice System so ingrained in our society that there is no real way out of being bought and sold. They have put the same picture of enslaved human commodities in a new shiny razor wire frame. They have trapped us in boxes of redefined words, age-old concepts with a tiny twist. Words can unite or divide. Words build or destroy. Words limit or liberate. Teacher, Professor, Instructor. Reformer, Administrator, Pacificationist. Carla, Angela, Shajiyah. Rebel, Organizer, Criminal. Prisoner, Convict, Slave. 

Words are where they begin injustice. Injustice flourishes everywhere we look, painstakingly cultivated. Those of us who have the audacity to question the cultivators of deceit are classified as weeds that must be removed or destroyed. Dandelions to get the Roundup. There are injustices all around us every second. Some of us grow up knowing nothing except injustice. 

Is never knowing my true birth date an injustice? Is limiting the scope of good one can do because they don’t buy the most expensive piece of paper an injustice? Is the annoying grunting of the pedophile when I hit him with my tire iron an injustice? Is torturing a man who took so much from so many injustice? They say angrily that People who take justice into their own hands are criminals? So then, they admit what we do to right wrongs on our own is justice? 

What exactly is justice? What is ethical? And do they get to create new realities as easily as they create a baby’s birth certificate, fabricated to accommodate a purchase? Can we use their language differently, like calling an Instructor a Professor, a Prison Reformer who rejects abolition a Prison Administrator? Can we redefine words to fit our reality inside? Can we refashion meaning as an anti-capitalist, anti-carceral tool of resistance? 

Ethical — Conforming to accepted standards of social and professional conduct.

Ethical — Conforming, To Accepted, Social and professional conduct? According to our culture, anything less than violent rebellion/crime would be unethical in many situations. Those 12 upstanding registered voters are not our peers; they are not from our culture. According to their own definitions their systems have nothing to do with ethics or justice. 

As a spiritual person I’ve pondered divine justice for years. And now that I’ve been awakened politically, I see that we, humans, have no idea what we are doing. I will sit in a cell for the rest of my Unnatural Life and strive to make sense of what we are doing. I will attempt to understand to the limits of my capacity, and then even further. I will motivate my sisters who are also caged, enslaved, enraged to embark on this search for knowledge and understanding with me. 

In these cages we wrestle with thoughts, ideas, beliefs, and contradictions. We fight against what society is, what it has done, and continues to do. American society can never be just. The foundation of this country is genocide and slavery. Such a heinous and depraved foundation cannot sprout justice from blood-soaked, screaming, stolen soil. But maybe we can develop small pockets, cells if you will, of people doing things differently. Maybe a couple of my beautiful sisters will accompany me on this journey to try to become just women, enslaved in an unjust world.