All Our Trials

During the 1970s, grassroots women activists in and outside of prisons forged a radical politics against gender violence and incarceration. Emily L. Thuma traces the making of this anticarceral feminism at the intersections of struggles for racial and economic justice, prisoners' and psychiatric patients' rights, and gender and sexual liberation.

All Our Trials explores the organizing, ideas, and influence of those who placed criminalized and marginalized women at the heart of their antiviolence mobilizations. This activism confronted a "tough on crime" political agenda and clashed with the mainstream women's movement's strategy of resorting to the criminal legal system as a solution to sexual and domestic violence. Drawing on extensive archival research and first-person narratives, Thuma weaves together the stories of mass defense campaigns, prisoner uprisings, broad-based local coalitions, national gatherings, and radical print cultures that cut through prison walls. In the process, she illuminates a crucial chapter in an unfinished struggle––one that continues in today's movements against mass incarceration and in support of transformative justice.|

Contents

Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1

1. Lessons in Self-Defense: From "Free Joan Little" to "Free Them All" 15

2. Diagnosing Institutional Violence: Forging Alliances against the "Prison/Psychiatric State"
55

3. Printing Abolition: The Transformative Power of Women's Prison Newsletters 88

4. Intersecting Indictments: Coalitions for Women's Safety, Racial Justice, and the Right to the
City 123

Epilogue 159

Notes 165

Bibliography 199

Index 219

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