Activist Evie Litwok was the featured speaker at an LGBTQ criminal justice policy roundtable event March 31 at Chicago law firm Hinshaw & Culbertson.
Litwok is a formerly incarcerated, Jewish lesbian feminist and founder and director of Witness to Mass Incarceration. She is currently on probation.
Witness to Mass Incarceration is a digital library of interviews with formerly incarcerated LGBTQ people. The interviews document their stories and experiences during incarceration and the challenges they face upon re-entry into society.
Mike Ziri ( director of public policy at Equality Illinois ) and Alexis Paige ( paralegal at Lambda Legal ) welcomed the attendees and spoke about the work their organizations are doing around LGBTQ criminal justice issues.
Naomi Goldberg ( policy and research director at the Movement Advancement Project—MAP ) introduced Litwok and noted the "Unjust: How the broken criminal justice system fails LGBT people" report that was provided to the attendees.
Litwok explained that her parents were Holocaust survivors and for her family the Holocaust did not end in 1945. She noted that her parents spoke around the country for 20 years to high school and college students about their experiences. Litwok said that, like what Steven Speilberg's USC Shoah Foundation is doing to document Holocaust survivors stories, it is vital for everyone's stories to be told so they cannot be erased from history.
"Where there is no information, there will be no history," said Litwok. "Witness is my way of memorializing mass incarceration, specifically of LGBTQ people."
After interviewing many people for her Witness to Mass Incarceration project, Litwok surmised that they should never have been incarcerated in the first place.
Litwok noted that despite the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, almost no prison is enforcing this law nationwide. She explained that she has been in two federal prisons and in one of them, Tallahassee FCI, 20 out of the 21 male officers sexually harassed and abused four to six women prisoners a day. Litwok said the officers use intimidation tactics on women prisoners to get sexual favors out of them and no one in prison has an easy time of it because of unwarranted abuse by prison officials.
There are currently 20 million people who have lost their freedom whether they are in prison or jail, in detention centers, on supervised release or are awaiting trial and cannot afford to pay bail, said Litwok.
"The whole system needs to be overhauled, otherwise it will get worse, especially in the age of Trump," said Litwok.
In terms of re-entry issues, Litwok explained that she left prison in a physically, emotionally and mentally damaged state and it hasn't gone away.
"I have no peace or serenity," said Litwok. "I will never be the same person I was before prison for the rest of my life. I was homeless for 16 months and for the past two and a half years I have been unable to get a job because of my age and felony conviction."
Litwok called on LGBTQ folks to put their money where their mouth is and pledge to hire one formerly incarcerated LGBTQ person like herself so they can house and feed themselves upon re-entry.
In speaking about her sentencing hearing, Litwok said her mom ( who required 24-hour care ) told the judge she could would die without her daughter's help. Litwok noted that after the judge heard her mom's statement he called her a monster that hurt hundreds of people. She said prosecutors win cases, not on the issues, but through character assassination of defendants. Litwok explained that, when she went to trial, she was innocent, but lost because a prosecutor engaged in character assassination against her.
Litwok noted that each prisoner is strip searched within hours of arriving at prison.
"It is devastating and humiliating to have to be checked for paraphernalia in your private parts," said Litwok. "You immediately withdraw into yourself to survive."
She said prison, and especially solitary confinement, makes one have life-long triggers about any noise or law enforcement official, which is why she has a service dog named Ali to help her with her panic attacks.
"Once I came out as a lesbian to the guards they put me on landscaping and snow shoveling duty to torture me," said Litwok.
Litwok explained that she did not sleep at all in prison. She said that although there are physician assistants in the prison, proper medical care does not exist.
When Litwok accused the medical staff of causing the death of another woman prisoner on a blog ( via email ) she said she was shackled and put in solitary confinement for the remaining 30 days of her sentence and more. She spent an additional 12 days in prison for posting that information.
"Solitary confinement is unimaginable," said Litwok. "There is no way to recover from that. … It was such a horrific experience I did not care if I came out of solitary or not."
Litwok explained that the only way things will change is if people speak out about mass incarceration the way they did during the recent town halls concerning the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Following Litwok's remarks, representatives from the Illinois Attorney General's office, Cabrini Green Legal Aid, Legal Council for Health Justice, ACLU of Illinois, National Network for Safe Communities, Trans Life Care Program at Chicago House, Transformative Justice Law Project, Black and Pink, Pride Action Tank, AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University, Center on Halsted, ALMA and Elaine Soloway ( activist, writing coach, tech tutor and Transparent creator Jill Soloway's mom ) spoke about the work they are doing and why they think it's important to address LGBTQ criminal justice issues.
Litwok called on attendees to spread the word about her project so it gets more funding.
Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP hosted the event, with Equality Illinois, Lambda Legal and MAP co-sponsoring it.
See witnesstomassincarceration.org/ for more information and/or to make a donation .
