On November 17, 2021, Texas After Violence hosted a panel reflecting on Sheltering Justice in 2021 with Jennifer Toon, Lovinah Ignabi-Perkins, and Samantha Benavides, moderated by our Community Advisor Dr. Susannah Bannon.
Each of our panelists had spoken in our previous oral history interviews with them about navigating their work advocating for people who are incarcerated during an unprecedented pandemic. Jennifer shed light on the horrific and inhumane conditions she had faced – and that other women and girls continue to face – in Texas prisons. Lovinah, who is also formerly incarcerated, discussed organizing her first protest in order to advocate for those trapped behind bars during COVID. Sam mapped her journey to working to promote cite and release, which would prevent people from being taken to jail for ticketable offenses, and how incarceration and arrest has affected her family and community. Below we’ve collected some recollections about those interviews from Jennifer, as well as from Murphy Anne Carter and Amy Kamp, who conducted Lovinah and Sam’s interviews, respectively, as a supplement to the panel.
I didn’t know what to expect when I was asked to be a part of a Sheltering Justice interview. All I knew was that it would be a great opportunity to expose what was really happening in the women’s prisons during the onset of the pandemic. I quickly noticed though that there was something organic, natural, and thoughtful in the way the conversation flowed that as a formerly incarcerated person, that I had never experienced before. I am usually a bit on guard when I speak to people who are not directly impacted but the interviewer’s skills allowed me a space for vulnerability and raw honesty. As we talked, I began to fully trust the intention of the project. Other organizations, and certainly many journalists, seem to just glean and sift for information that serves their purpose, but this was different. I felt like there was a genuine concern about my narrative being my own, and it being preserved or shared only in ways that I felt comfortable and important. I was confident for the first time that, even as our narratives and histories continue to be white-washed by the systems that oppress us, there is at least one place, an archive, where the truth of our experiences will never be altered.
– Jennifer Toon
It was everything. That was the line I can still hear in my mind — the tenor in her voice capturing this emotion that I hadn’t witnessed before in any previous interviewing experience, much less over Zoom. She was speaking about a protest she had organized, how it was her first, and more specifically, how seeing 200 people outside the governor’s mansion in Austin, all socially distanced and carrying posters in the middle of a pandemic, had meant everything. I saw children carrying posters saying that my father is more than a number. My mother is more than a number. It means something.
I remember interviewing Lovinah vividly. I remember her saying: “We keep going, we keep planning, we keep strategizing. That means that there is no stopping until we see the change we know needs to happen. It is not a one-day event. We have to continue to go, we have to continue to build the momentum, continue to build the numbers, continue to do everything we can within our rights to make our voices heard, because I believe in my heart that as long as we don’t give up we will succeed. We’re going to make it happen, and I believe, I just know I can see it now. I just have this vision that what we’re doing is not going to be in vain. Change is definitely gonna come from it, mark my words. I know it. I just feel it in my bones. I feel it in my soul. This is going to be different.” And I remember it not only because it was the first interview for Sheltering Justice, not because my first interview with Texas After Violence Project, but because of her words and her action — her activism.
Lovinah’s activism is a part of everything she does, and this interview captures an early moment in her own journey of discovering more dimensions to her own activism, which continues, and will continue, to make a difference.
– Murphy Anne Carter
The interview I did with Mano Amiga Fellow Samantha Benavides was a joint interview with her and Mano Amiga Policy Director Eric Martinez. I was interested in discussing how Mano Amiga has had success with what I consider to be a pretty DIY approach, and what it looks like to advocate for criminal legal reform in smaller central Texas cities like San Marcos, Lockhart, and Kyle. I was struck by how much of Sam’s work is similar to Texas After Violence’s in its emphasis on centering the stories of directly affected people. Her first time participating in an action organized by Mano Amiga was when she told the story of her former grade school superintendent, in order to advocate for cite and release:
“During that council meeting, I testified and I talked about how my former superintendent from my – not just high school, but all throughout my K through 12 education – he had actually been arrested for possession of marijuana and he lost his job because of it. He was an incredible superintendent. I don’t know another one like him. He would make music videos every year where he would rap in them, to talk about how fun and cool school is. He was at every sports event, every extracurricular activity. He knew so many of us by name. It was just so shameful that he lost his job and so many people lost a great role model because of a joint.”
As Sam’s work at Mano Amiga has continued, she’s continued to focus on those individual stories in her advocacy, whether it’s meeting speaking in front Texas State students to explain how something like cite and release could affect them personally, or reaching out to people who have been jailed in order to allow them the opportunity to talk about how our current system has harmed them. It’s wonderful to see how advocates are using the power of narrative to fight for a form of justice that’s transformative rather than punitive.
– Amy Kamp
