I can remember counting the trees as a 4-year-old little girl and I would be "one, two, three" and when I got tree 22 danger would get in the car with me. I have two really strong memories, and one memory is sitting in the back seat of the car as my mother drove my auntie to Camarillo State Hospital where she would pick up the boyfriend who would sit across from me, who I knew was going to harm me. On being sexually abused by her aunt's boyfriend when she was 4 But, she adds, "It's not hard for me to go back, because I'm going in with the purpose of freeing people up."īurton traces her journey from prison to recovery - and her efforts to help others - in the memoir Becoming Ms. "So many nights after I've gone into a prison and lay my head on the pillow, it's a heavy head that I lay on the pillow," she says. In addition to housing, it offers 12-step programs, counseling and other help to women coming out of prison.īurton acknowledges that her work - which brings her back to prison regularly - can be draining. Gradually Burton's organization, A New Way of Life, expanded from one home to five. Knowing what it was like to get out of prison with no money and no safe place to live, Burton started a home for women in the same position. Slowly, she began to rebuild her own life - then she turned her attention to others in Watts, the Los Angeles neighborhood she had grown up in. After her sixth release, she finally received the addiction treatment and counseling she so desperately needed. And each time the task became more and more and more daunting."īurton's prison sentences were all drug related. "Each time I left prison I left with the resolve to get my life together, to get a job, to get back on track. You lose all of your identity and then its given back one day and you're ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it," Burton says. "One of the things about incarceration is that you're deprived. It's an experience she lived through six times, once for each of the prison terms she served. “We can help them become knowledgeable and better people.Susan Burton knows just how hard it is to get back on track after being released from prison. “We tell our people they had a normal response to a violent society,” she told the Los Angeles Times. She speaks out against the Trump administration effort to maximize drug-sentencing laws and eliminate federal prison halfway houses. They celebrate birthdays and have barbecues.īurton wants to develop these women into leaders and advocates. for meditation and then set off to school or work. The program’s attorney will help residents gain custody of their children, who can live there too and visitors are welcomed.Īll houses have a mandatory sobriety policy. “I feel like I’m building an underground railroad.”Ī New Way of Life has fewer restrictions than most halfway houses, making it feel less like prison. “I try to be humble, but I want you to know I am powerful,” she told the CIW inmates. Some refer to her as a modern day Harriet Tubman. Burton has used her voice to fight against long prison sentences, and has created a movement to restore full rights to ex-felons. Today, her New Way of Life Reentry Project has grown to five residences, and staffs 25 employees, including a social worker, public policy advisor, and various organizers. Even though most of her charges were for drugs, she never got any treatment in prison. The culmination of these events led her into deep depression and substance abuse. She had a daughter at the age of 14, following a gang rape and later lost her 5-year-old son when an off-duty LAPD officer ran him over. She suffered continuous sexual abuse, first at the hands of her aunt’s boyfriend at the age of four and then by a man she met going door to door for a program for underserved children. Burton grew up in the Boyle Heights projects in South L.A. “We tell our people they had a normal response to a violent society,” She said she received counseling and resources unheard of in the Black community. “People are treated differently in Santa Monica than they were in South L.A.” Burton told the CIW audience, drawing “um-hums” from the largely black and Latino crowd. She was inspired by the treatment she finally received at a substance abuse center in Santa Monica California, a predominantly white area. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (2010)īurton’s Watts-based group, A New Way of Life Reentry Project, has thrown a lifeline to approximately 1,000 formerly incarcerated women trying to break the cycle of repeated incarceration.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |