Contemporary Authors

• Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women ( foreword by Michelle Alexander) New Press (New York, NY), 2017

1.  Becoming Ms. Burton : from prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women LCCN 2017288868 Type of material Book Personal name Burton, Susan (Founder of A New way of life (Organization)), author. Main title Becoming Ms. Burton : from prison to recovery to leading the fight for incarcerated women / Susan Burton and Cari Lynn ; with a foreword by Michelle Alexander. Published/Produced New York ; London : New Press, 2017. Description xxiii, 304 pages ; 22 cm ISBN 9781620972120 (hardcover) 1620972123 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER Not available Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• Wikipedia -

  Susan Burton
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  Susan Burton is an activist based in United States who works with ex-convicts, and founded the nonprofit organization A New Way of Life. She was named a CNN Hero in 2010, and a Purpose Prize winner in 2012.[1][2]

  Contents  [hide] 
  1
  Life
  2
  Activism
  3
  Awards
  4
  Books
  5
  Further reading
  6
  References

  Life[edit]
  Burton was born and raised in housing projects in East Los Angeles.[1] Her upbringing was full of turmoil, and she struggled constantly.[3] Her five-year-old son was accidentally hit and killed by a police cruiser in 1982.[4][2] Consumed with grief and heartbreak, and without any access to therapy, Burton turned to drugs. She became addicted to crack cocaine, while living in an impoverished black community. She eventually was arrested and jailed for crack cocaine. She went in and out of jail six times during the 1980s and the 1990s, each time she was released with limited money, no ID, and no social security card. She was trapped in a vicious cycle, where she could not find a job, did not have housing, and would eventually get caught and placed back in prison again.[4][1] Upon her last release, a prison guard told her that he would see her in prison again soon. Determined to prove him wrong, Burton tried to find a drug treatment facility that was away from her home neighborhood, where it would be too easy to fall back into her old patterns of addiction.[3][4] It was hard to find a rehabilitation center that she could afford, and finally she found the CLARE Foundation in Santa Monica.[5][3] She stopped doing drugs in 1997, because of the help she received from the CLARE Foundation. While receiving treatment, it dawned on Burton that there were not facilities like this where she lived, and she began helping other women in similar situations.[1][6][4][2]
  Activism[edit]
  Burton founded the organization A New Way of Life, where she works with ex-convicts fighting problems of re-entry.[1][3][6][7][4][2] After her recovery at the CLARE foundation, Burton looked for other opportunities to continue her life outside of prison. She found that resources like food stamps and housing assistance were not given to her because of her record, and it was hard to find support that was affordable.[2] Because of this, Burton was at a loss for ways to continue her life successfully after prison – an issue that far too many individuals face daily. This inspired Burton, and in 1998, Burton bought a house and converted it into a house for recently released female offenders. She started the program by going to the bus station where parolees were released, and inviting women she knew from the system to stay with her. She originally had 10 women living in the house, but after a year she began to lose money – and did not have enough to support everyone.[1][3] A friend helped her apply for a grant to form this system into a real non-profit organization, and in 2000 A New Way of Life was officially born.[2] Eventually, Burton became a certified chemical dependency counselor, and she now has five transitional houses in Los Angeles. The program helps women transition back into society, find work, and recover from drug addiction, 75 percent of the women in her program stay drug-free and do not return to prison for 18 months minimum.[1] The organization now runs a free legal clinic, and each woman receives her own caseworker. She has helped more than 1,000 women, and all can stay until they are ready to move on to somewhere else.[3] Further, the organization's legal department has provided pro bono services to over 2,000 formerly incarcerated and incarcerated people.[2] Recently, the organization expanded and now provides $2 million in donated goods each year, which has helped more than 3,000 formerly homeless people get the necessary items to gain a home and live a healthy life.[2]
  Awards[edit]
  In 2007, Burton was appointed to the Little Hoover Sentencing Reform Commission and the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2010, Burton was awarded the Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.[7] In 2011, CNN named Burton a CNN Hero.[1][7] In 2012, she was named a Purpose Prize winner. In the California Wellness Foundation, she has been a Community Fellow. She has also been a Women's Policy Institute Fellow and a Soros Justice Fellow. She is also a board member on the Los Angeles Sober Living Network.[7] In 2014, Burton received the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award. In 2015, she was named one of the United States's 18 New Civil Rights Leaders by the Los Angeles Times.
  Books[edit]
  (2017) – Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton, Cari Lynn, and Michelle Alexander

• CNN - http://edition.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/02/18/cnnheroes.burton/

  'Magic happened' after she gave ex-cons a chance at new lives
  By Kathleen Toner, CNN
  February 19, 2010 -- Updated 1232 GMT (2032 HKT)

  CNN Hero: Susan Burton
  STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  Susan Burton has helped more than 400 female ex-convicts get back on their feet
  75 percent of program members stay clean and out of prison for at least 18 months, she says
  She meets new arrivals at bus stations or prison gates, saying "welcome home"
  Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2010 CNN Heroes
  Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- At the bus terminal in downtown Los Angeles, they're easy to spot. Dressed in blue jeans, they carry boxes, bags or large envelopes with their name and a number on it. They are ex-offenders, just released from California's prison system. When they step off the bus with $200 in "gate money" in their pockets, many have hopes of making a fresh start.
  But in this seedy area just blocks from Skid Row, the new arrivals are easy targets for pimps and drug dealers. For some, the temptation is too much. While not everyone succumbs to the streets so quickly, nearly 60 percent return to prison within three years, according to California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
  It's a cycle that Susan Burton is striving to break through her reentry program. Having served six prison terms for drug offenses in the 1980s and '90s, Burton knows from experience how hard it can be.
  "Every time I was released, I swore I wasn't going back," said Burton, 57. "But I know now that without the resources and support, it's next to impossible. ... If you don't have a new door to walk through, the only thing is the old door."
  Do you know a hero? Nominations are open for 2010 CNN Heroes
  A new door is what Burton's program -- A New Way of Life Reentry Project -- gives to just-released female offenders. By providing a sober place to live and other support services, she's helped more than 400 women get back on their feet.
  Burton was raised in the projects in East L.A., and her own life took a turn for the worse when her 5-year-old son was accidentally hit and killed by a car in 1981. Amid her grief, she started smoking crack cocaine and ended up in prison -- beginning a pattern of addiction and incarceration that continued for years.
  "I couldn't get off the turnstile," Burton said. "I knew I had a problem but didn't understand the complexity."
  Burton ultimately got clean at a rehab facility in 1997 and realized she wanted to help other women offenders when they were released. She worked as a live-in caregiver and saved up enough money to buy a house in Watts. She put bunk beds in the bedrooms, converted the breakfast nook into a bedroom/office for herself, and at the end of 1998, she opened her doors. Right away, her program took off.
  "Magic happened," she said. "There were 10 women in the house, just working together, helping each other, recovering together."

  Video: Not everyone makes it

  Today, Burton -- now a certified dependency counselor -- has five houses and supports up to 22 women at a time, largely with funding from a variety of private foundations. She receives 20 to 30 letters a week from inmates and answers each one, promising them a place to stay.
  Burton personally picks up most new arrivals at the bus station or at the prison gates, greeting them with a simple "welcome home."
  "To me, there's this real window of opportunity to get people from incarceration into a positive lifestyle," she said.
  She and her group provide food, clothing and transportation, along with helping them register for benefits, get ID cards so they can find work and begin regaining custody of their children.
  To me, there's this real window of opportunity to get people from incarceration into a positive lifestyle.
  --Susan Burton

  RELATED TOPICS
  Prisons
  Crime and Law
  California
  In return, Burton asks that residents stay clean, attend 12-step meetings, and enroll in school, get drug treatment or find work. She also asks them to contribute $500 a month when they can, but says she won't turn anyone out as long as they're making progress. When the women are ready to live independently, Burton finds them housing and helps furnish their homes.
  It's a formula that seems to achieve results. According to Burton, 75 percent of women who enter the program stay clean and don't return to prison for at least 18 months.
  Charsleen Poe is just one of Burton's many success stories.
  "When I came here ... the only thing I knew to look for next was a hit," said Poe, 50, who struggled with addiction and homelessness for 15 years. But in the 18 months since she entered Burton's program, she's stayed sober, taken computer classes and is now looking for a job and her own place to live.
  "Today, I am not that same person that I was," Poe says. "Miss Burton made me want to change my life."
  Burton's program may be needed even more in the future. In August 2009, federal judges ruled that California's prisons were overcrowded and ordered a release of 40,000 inmates over the next two years. The state is appealing, but it seems likely that more prisoners will be released, at a time when state-funded rehabilitation programs for inmates are being cut.
  Burton worries about how inmates will deal with these new challenges and said she is constantly looking for new ways to help ex-offenders succeed. She runs a clinic with UCLA's law school that helps expunge people's records so they can find work more easily and encourages all of her residents to become politically active.
  "I want the women to realize that ... they have something to contribute," she said.
  For Burton, her hard work "is giving life, hope, courage to people to give back to the world," she said. "I just wanted my life to count towards something good, and this was the way I could do it."
  Want to get Involved? Check out the A New Way of Life Reentry Project Web site and see how to help.

• Fresh Air, NPR - http://www.npr.org/2017/05/16/528587632/after-6-prison-terms-a-former-inmate-helps-other-women-rebuild-their-lives

  < After 6 Prison Terms, A Former Inmate Helps Other Women Rebuild Their Lives May 16, 20171:11 PM ET Listen· 36:02 36:02 Queue Download Embed Facebook Twitter Google+ Email TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. After serving six prison terms, my guest, Susan Burton, dedicated her life to stopping the cycle of recidivism, not just in her life but in the lives of other women she could reach out to. Knowing what it was like to get out of prison with no money and no safe place to live, she started a home for women in the same position. That expanded into her organization, A New Way of Life, which now runs five such homes and provides 12-step programs, counseling and helps women complete their education, find jobs and regain custody of their children. Burton also became active in the movement to restore the civil rights of those who have served time. She's a fellow of the Soros Open Society Foundation and in 2010, was named a CNN Top 10 Hero. Burton grew up in a housing project in Watts. Like many women in U.S. prisons, Burton was first a victim. She was abused sexually and physically as a child. After being gang raped, she became pregnant with her first child. Her second child died at the age of 5 after he ran out into the street and was accidentally hit by a car driven by a police officer. Looking back, she thinks her crack addiction was a way of self-medicating after she lost her son. She tells her story in her new memoir, "Becoming Ms. Burton." Susan Burton, welcome to FRESH AIR. So the times you got out of prison before you got out and stayed out - and you were in six times before staying out and becoming a prison activist - the times you got out, did you find it impossible to get a job? Like, did you look in the legit economy before turning to the alternate economy, the underground economy? SUSAN BURTON: Yeah. Each time I left prison, I left with the resolve to get my life together, to get a job, to get back on track. And each time, the task became more and more and more daunting. You know, when you leave prison, you don't even have a California I.D. It's been destroyed. You don't have a Social Security card. And, you know, you're given back this opportunity to make decisions for yourself. You try your best, but the insurmountable obstacles that you face are just really difficult to overcome without support. I wanted to be brave and I wanted to be strong and I wanted to be successful but being totally unprepared for all of that. One of the things about incarceration is that you're deprived. You lose all of your identity. And then it's given back one day. And you're ill-equipped to actually embrace it and work it. So I tried to find employment. I tried to stay clean, but it's a really sad and hopeless situation that people are released back into. That's one of the reasons that I started A New Way of Life. GROSS: So one of the problems you had when you would get out of prison is you'd end up using drugs again. And it sounds from your book like you wish you had been given, you know, some kind of, like, drug treatment program, some kind of program you could be in that would have, like, counseling or a 12-step group or something. Did you not have access to anything like that? BURTON: So long before I ever got incarcerated, I should have been able to access services that help me deal with the grief and the loss of my son, that help me deal with the trauma, the abuse that I experienced as a child. That should have happened long before I ever got incarcerated. Those things just weren't accessible in a community like South LA in the community of Watts. We as community members experience violence, trauma, loss almost on a daily basis. And there are no places that we can actually go to begin to address the trauma, address the violence, to find solutions to the violence and resolve the trauma that can make our community safe. So we're over-policed and under-resourced. GROSS: Let's talk a little bit about the trauma that you grew up with. And it's really just an incredible story. You were sexually abused by several people before you were 14. I mean, you were gang raped by boys in the neighborhood. You were abused by your aunt's boyfriend when they babysat you. You were selling brownies door to door for the equivalent of, like, the Girl Scouts and you were abused by a guy whose door you knocked on. You were abused by him repeatedly because he ended up paying you, and it was your only way of making income and you helped support the family. Did you think at all at the time, like, this is probably having a really bad effect on me, like, maybe I'm traumatized, like, maybe I need help? Like, did you have any way of processing any of that? BURTON: You know, when I think back to my childhood and my memories, 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. I can remember counting the trees as a 4-year-old little girl. And I would be one, two, three. And when I got to tree 22, danger would get in the car with me. And all while counting, I can remember trying to just fade into the upholstery of the car because he was going to harm me. And I didn't know how to talk about the harm that he was going to do. And my auntie, when she realized what was happening one day, she gave all the responsibility to me and called me a dirty little girl and swore me to secrecy. So I didn't know what to do with that. And I carried it with me. And I carried other instances of abuse and trauma with me until I was 46 years old walking through the hall of a prison. GROSS: And you also mentioned your son. Your son was killed at the age of 5. Would you describe what happened? BURTON: Yeah. So, you know, I went to pick my son up from school and walked him back and was in the house preparing dinner. And, you know, he came in the house and gave me this flower, a chrysanthemum that was full of ants. And he went back out to play and ran out in the street and got hit by a car. The car happened to be driven by a LAPD detective. So he hit my son, killed him and never even got out of the car. All of a sudden, there are - just seemed like hundreds of police all around. And at the hospital, hundreds of police walking back and forth. And, you know, the doctor comes out and tells me that my son is deceased. I ask, can I see him? And I go in and my son's laying there and, you know, he's dead. And I fall into a depression and an anger and a rage. And I begin to drink. You know, I drink for the loss of my son. But I also drink because this police department never even acknowledged, never even said, Ms. Burton, I'm sorry that you've lost your son - I mean, never. And between the sadness, the rage, the anger, the loss, I began to drink heavily, and that escalates into drug use. The war on drugs is about to take hold of all the communities across the country. And South LA - Watts - is one of those communities that was hard hit where crack became so plentiful. And I began to smoke it. And that sent me to prison. And I went to prison over and over and over again until I found help. GROSS: So you had this kind of intersection in your life of tragedy - losing your son - a history of being physically abused and raped, and then you also have the crack epidemic and the get tough on drugs laws coinciding and at the same time. And you had a boyfriend who was selling cocaine and crack, which... BURTON: Yes. GROSS: ...Wasn't helpful either. BURTON: No. GROSS: He was the one who got you using cocaine. BURTON: Yes. So - yes. My son's father was in the underworld, what they call the life. And, you know, he exposed me to cocaine. I used it occasionally recreationally with him, but after the death of my son, you know, I just really fell in so heavily. And at that time we were broken up, me and my son's father, so - yeah. GROSS: So just so we have a sense of perspective, would you mind describing what the convictions were that sent you to prison six times? BURTON: They were possession charges I served six terms for. And at the whim of the DA or the arresting officer, there might be possession for sales even though it was clear I was a user. You know, I can remember pleading with the court that my son had been killed by a police officer, and I needed help. You know, there were - there was no help for poor black people during the drug war. GROSS: Well, I tell you what. Let's take a short break. We'll be right back. If you're just joining us, my guest is Susan Burton. And she's the founder of the Group A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project which is dedicated to helping women when they get out of prison. She's also written a new memoir called "Becoming Ms. Burton." This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. And if you're just joining us, my guest is Susan Burton. She's the founder of the Group A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project which is dedicated to helping women when they get out of prison by providing housing, counseling, case management and pro-bono legal services to women. She also co-founded All of us Or None, which is an organization dedicated to restoring basic civil and human rights for formerly incarcerated people. Her activism came out of her own experiences in and out of jail six times. She has a new memoir which is called "Becoming Ms. Burton." You mentioned earlier that it wasn't till the age of 46 that you were able to actually talk about what had happened to you as a child and as a teenager when you were sexually abused. What happened at the age of 46? BURTON: At the age of 46, in my sixth prison term, it was the second prison I was in - California Rehabilitation Center. The California Civil Education program kind of opened up all of the experiences that that I had dealt with in my life, that I had experienced. All of the instances where I had been abused and had been molested and had been raped and had been beaten, had been burned, all of that abuse woke up. It woke up, and I didn't know what to do with it. So the teacher for the Civil Education program, I saw her one day walking it down the sergeant's hall at the California Rehabilitation Center. And I said to her, Ms. Tucker (ph), at night I can't sleep because I'm having these memories as I lay in my bunk. And I begin to tell her about the experiences of my lifetime. And she said to me, don't worry about passing my class, you have too many other things to deal with. And at that instant, it was the first time that I had received any validation that my life had went really wrong. GROSS: How was that helpful, knowing that somebody validated that you had been traumatized... BURTON: Yeah. GROSS: ...And that that had had a really deep effect on you? BURTON: It was the first time somebody had legitimately said, honey, this shouldn't have happened. Something went really wrong. And being able to have that verified by someone outside of yourself, it gave me the ability to actually begin to seek further, to get further validation with the individuals who the experiences had happened through. And that was part of with my family, with my mother, with my brothers, not with the actual molesters, but those that were around me during the times that it happened. You know, there was a time that my brothers burnt me really, really bad. And there was a time that I thought my mother knew what was going on, and it gave me the ability to start to probe that. And it came to light that she did know. GROSS: She knew that you were being abused and had done nothing? BURTON: Yes. She knew I was being molested by the man who was buying the brownies from me, and she did nothing. And... GROSS: Was that because he was paying you, and you were giving that money to the family, so it was actually like... BURTON: Well, I think because... GROSS: ...Being physically abused was financially helpful to the family, so? BURTON: Right. I - it was - so I believe, you know, he was both giving me money and giving my mother money. And my mother was having it hard with six children all on her own, but it does not excuse what happened. GROSS: You think he was giving her money, kind of like hush money? Is that what you're saying? BURTON: Yeah. Well, I mean, he would not - it wasn't like - I don't know how to call it hush money, but I had to look at, you know, where my mother came from out of the Deep South. And there were ways of living and getting along and getting by that had been passed down through generations. And I think my generation is the generation that broke it but that my mother and father came here with trying to escape the abuse of the South, but much of what they learned they brought with them. So I remember the day that I confronted my mother. She said to me, Susan, you know, I couldn't do anything about that, just go away. So it was a white man who was molesting me. You know, my mother and father were scared of white people. So there were ways of their upbringing and their environment that they carried with them from the South. They were running, but they brought some of that with them. GROSS: So we've been talking about your early life, the trauma that you experienced, your times in prison, six different terms. After getting out the sixth time, you founded the group A New Way of Life. What led you to thinking that, you know, that you could become an activist and become helpful to other women who faced the predicament that you had faced several times in the past of getting out of prison and not having a place you could return to with security and some comfort? BURTON: So I had reached a place that I could no longer contain the sorrow, the grief, the pain of all of those years of my life. And I was seeking some relief and help. And over a cheap can of beer, a friend of mine Joe (ph) told me about a place in Santa Monica that could help me. So he gave me the name of the agency. It was called CLARE Foundation, and I called it the next morning. And I began the road to recovery. What I saw and experienced in Santa Monica was a community that was really well resourced. I also began to realize that people in Santa Monica didn't go to jail for possession of drugs like we did in South LA. And I - as I got stronger and became healthier and more mentally clear, I began to sort of inspect and analyze what was going on, the difference in Santa Monica and South LA. And I began to heal and get stronger. And after a hundred days of treatment, I returned to South LA, continued my recovery. I'm actually this year 20 years sober. GROSS: My guest is Susan Burton. Her new memoir is called "Becoming Ms. Burton." Coming up, we'll talk about her work advocating for prisoner rights, like the right of incarcerated women to have access to tampons. And Milo Miles will review a collection of dance music from Cape Verde. I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Susan Burton. Her new memoir, "Becoming Ms. Burton," is about her life before, during and after serving six terms in prison on drug charges. After that sixth time, she decided to help poor women like herself transition from prison back to the outside world. She's the founder of A New Way of Life, which now runs five houses that offer women just released from prison a safe place to live, 12-step programs, counseling and help finding jobs and regaining custody of their children. Susan Burton has been sober for 20 years. So getting sober with the help of treatment, is that what led to you being able to become an activist and start your program for women transitioning out of prison. BURTON: As I began to take women into the home into a new way of life, I began to recognize the barriers, the discrimination, the way our children was being taken, the way their children were being taken from them. It wasn't because they, you know, couldn't be a good parent because they didn't want to be a good parent. It was financial. They couldn't earn enough money to get a house to bring the children back to. It was because they had a criminal record. They couldn't get a job. They could maybe get a under-the-table job, but not a living-wage job even when they were qualified. So that began to spur me toward activism, and I went to the community coalition. And I met Saul Sarabia, and we started a work group called Relative Care Not Foster Care. I began to understand the power of my voice, understanding how to analyze and how to build a power analysis. It was on from there I began to show up at meetings and put myself into the conversation, even when there was uncomfortable conversations, even when they didn't want me there. I had a right to be there, and I stayed. And I spoke. And that's when activism was birthed in me. GROSS: So through the program that you created A New Way Of Life, you now run five homes housing 32 women who were formerly incarcerated. So when you started this program, it was in part a house for you. I mean, part of it was like you wanted to buy a house. You couldn't afford it on your own, so you went in on it with your sister-in-law who had also come out of prison. And you thought - right? - you'd make a home for other women, too, who were in the same position. And so you were running this. What kind of place did you want to provide for them? Like, tell us about what it was like early on when you were figuring out, like, who were the women who were going to be living with you... BURTON: Yeah. GROSS: ...What the rules of the house were going to be, what would you require from them in terms of their contribution, you know, whether it was financial or cleaning or just staying sober? BURTON: Yeah. So when I got the house and me and my sister-in-law started out together, I had worked a minimum wage job, and I had saved $13,000. Part of it went to the down payment of the house, and we pulled our money together, went to Ikea and brought bunk beds. And I would go down to the bus station where women were getting off the bus where I had gotten off the bus so many times before. And I would offer them a bed, offer them a place that was safe, that was drug and alcohol free, a place that they could rebuild their lives and be in community. And I looked up one day and, you know, I recognized this was a loving community of women. And we were, you know, laughing together, crying together, struggling together. Most of the women were eligible for general relief. And general relief would give you about $230 a month. And each woman would pitch in $200 dollars. And I would scrape money from here and there, and we would be able to pull that money to pay the bills, to supply the house with food and begin to grow and heal. So there was some structure in place. Eight o'clock in the morning, we would read from the morning meditation book, sit in a circle and set goals for ourselves. I had goals. They had goals. I mean, for some of us it was a first time in our life we had ever even ever set goals. And the goals as humble as they were, they were goals that we could achieve. And from that - achieving those goals build confidence and self-esteem. And there was a 10 o'clock curfew where everybody would be in the house by 10 o'clock. Everybody had a chore to clean up a part of the house, and I would tell you it was one of the - it is one of the most beautiful community to see women sharing openly and caring sincerely and supporting one another to just be better. GROSS: I'm trying to think what it was like for you to go to the bus stop where the prison dropped off women just getting out of prison and go up to strangers who had just gotten out of prison and say would you like to be part of this new experiment that I'm setting up where we're - have this house it's going to be for women who have just come out of prison who have no other means... BURTON: See, they weren't strangers. GROSS: Did you actually literally know them? BURTON: They were my friends. I... GROSS: Oh, these are people you literally knew? BURTON: Yeah. I had been traveling in and out of prison for the past 20 years, the past 16 years or 17 years. So we knew one another if not by name, by face. And they were women who, like me, had repeatedly been arrested and sent through the revolving door of incarceration. So it wasn't like they were strangers. They were women I knew. GROSS: And were these women who you had some faith in that they could - that they could stay clean, that they could contribute to the kind of healthy environment you were trying to create? BURTON: So it wasn't a matter of me having faith in anyone, it was a matter of extending that opportunity to someone that could change their lives. GROSS: That's an interesting distinction you just made. BURTON: Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's not like I have faith in you. It's, you know, do you want this opportunity? You know, we have to have a opportunity to excel, to build faith and confidence of things to come. GROSS: And what if a woman relapsed and started using drugs again? BURTON: If a woman relapses and starts using drugs again, it's really on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes I'll refer her to a more therapeutic-like community to get a hold of the drug or substance misuse. Or she might not want to go to a treatment facility and want to just leave. And sometimes we'll try to start all over again from the beginning. So when women first come into the house, there's, like, 30 days that you don't do weekend passes, 30 days that you're working on getting your I.D. and you're getting your Social Security card and you're getting accustomed to the home and the environment. One of the things that I recognize is that there's this period of after being released that people just need to detox incarceration. So there's a 30-day period for people to get back acquainted with the community. You know, I think of one woman who just got out of prison after 35 years of incarceration. And she wants to say, everything is OK. But I asked her to walk - I asked her if she wanted to walk from the office of A New Way of Life to the home of A New Way of Life. And she was terrified of the cars. She said, Ms. Burton, I don't know how to cross the street. I can't walk out there like that. Two weeks later, she was walking to the office for her therapy session that she has once a week. So that 30 days, I think, it's really important that people get to get accustomed to their environment. And I get accustomed to them. GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Susan Burton. She's written a new memoir called "Becoming Ms. Burton." We'll talk more about her work for prisoner rights and for the rights of people getting out of prison after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR. (SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) GROSS: This is FRESH AIR, and if you're just joining us, my guest is Susan Burton. She's the founder of the group A New Way of Life. It's dedicated to helping women when they get out of prison by providing housing, counseling, case management and pro-bono legal services. She also co-founded All of Us or None, an organization dedicated to restoring basic civil and human rights for formerly incarcerated people. Burton's activism came out of her own experiences in and out of jail six times. She has a new memoir called "Becoming Ms. Burton." So you've done a lot of work trying to change prison conditions. And this is, in some ways, a small detail but it's a really telling one. One of the things you worked on in California was trying to make tampons and sanitary napkins accessible for women in prison. It seems like a really basic thing. What were the obstacles to getting that? BURTON: In prison, you're issued a number of sanitary pads per month. And many times, even when you're issued a number of sanitary pads, the guards will just come in and rip your room apart, rip your locker apart and take them. So you'll find yourself unable to access enough pads for your cycle. And that's just one of the cruel treatments that women have to go through and endure as a part of their incarceration experience. So we fought to have that changed and to bring it to the public's attention what was happening inside the prisons around women's menstrual cycle. It's so degrading, so humiliating, first of all, to have to beg a male guard for sanitary pads and then to get a supply 'cause you know your cycles cycle's coming and have that supply taken from you. At A New Way of Life, one of the lingering sort of ways of being from that is that women will literally take the roll of toilet paper to bed with them. And I'll have to remind them that they have enough of everything now. They don't have to hoard the toilet paper in their beds. I mean, that's sort of like something that you would never think of of a way a person would become to operate in the free world, as we call it. But, yeah, it happens, and it's the conditioning that happens as a result of incarceration to women. GROSS: One of the things you want to see happen is having people who have criminal records get the right to vote. They have that right in some states but not in others. Why do you think it's so important for people getting out of prison to have that right? BURTON: For the last five years, I've been going into the jails and registering women and men to vote. One of the attorneys at our offices filed an intent to sue when the sheriffs kept us out and wouldn't allow us to register to vote. But across this country, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are waiting, just charged with crimes but not convicted, who are eligible to vote. And we need to make sure people can vote for African-American people. Our ancestors went through so much in a fight for us to vote. So I believe that we should engage in all civic participation. It's healthy engagement. You know, I also am fighting here in California for the right for me to be able to serve on a jury. Right now for the rest of my life, I can never serve on a jury. And people laugh and say, you really want to do that? Yes, I do. GROSS: Why? BURTON: Because a person from my community will never get a jury of their peers if that whole community has been criminalized. So across America, we have entire communities who have been criminalized. GROSS: Can you vote in California? BURTON: I can vote. Once I discharge parole, I'm eligible to vote. And do I vote? Yes, I do. GROSS: What are some... BURTON: And I'm registered. GROSS: What are some of the states in which convicted felons are not allowed to vote? I know Florida. BURTON: Florida is a big one. There are many states across this nation that bans people from voting, even after they serve their time. So we talk about continued exclusion and punishment long after you've served your time. You know, it's almost like you think about your credit card. And you charge up a bunch of things on your credit card. And at the end of the month, you pay your credit card in full where it doesn't incur interest. Well, at the end of a sentence, at the end of the time served, you know, our debt should be paid in full and we should not continue to incur interest. GROSS: You have to go back to prison to work with people, to visit them, to talk with them. Is it hard for you to return to prison? I mean, I know you're not there to stay. You can get out. But still, is it hard to enter one? BURTON: It's not hard for me to go back because I'm going in with the purpose of freeing people up. But it's troubling for me to see the conditions in which we incarcerate people, the continued horror of it and it hurts to see us in America treat people so harshly. So many nights after I've gone into a prison and I lay my head on the pillow, it's a heavy head that I lay on the pillow. GROSS: Susan Burton, thank you so much for talking with us. BURTON: You're welcome. GROSS: Susan Burton's new memoir is called "Becoming Ms. Burton."

• A New Way of Life Website - http://www.anewwayoflife.org/about-us/

  Drawing on my own experiences, I founded A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project (ANWOL) in 1998, dedicated to helping women, families and our communities break the cycle and heal from the formidable experiences of incarceration. ANWOL provides housing, case management, pro bono legal services, advocacy and policy development on behalf of women rebuilding their lives. Today, we are in the midst of a critical moment in the criminal justice reform movement. We have locked hands in solidarity in advancing several initiatives, measures and calls-to-action. I believe this period will be noted as the time we positively moved the needle for a wide consortium of citizens, voters, stakeholders and policy makers with monumental shifts in consciousness, steering us from punitive, outdated and counter-productive approaches to wise, compassionate and redemptive forms of fairness.
  Consider the Ban-the-Box ordinances taking hold from city to city across our state, signaling a significant change in the employment application process for thousands of job-seekers shackled with the stigma of a criminal record. Then, in November 2014, we proudly witnessed California take the national lead with the overwhelming passage of the Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act (Proposition 47). This historic measure reverses decades of antiquated approaches to community safety and justice, properly redirecting costly prison construction and management resources to education, re-entry and victims’ services. All of these efforts bring light to the issues we address and humanize those we are called to serve. In this climate we have greater reason to believe.
  We are focused and grounded in our humanity. At the core and foundation of our work are the people, the women, children and families in our community re-entry mission. You remain the face and heart in all that we do. Your strength, courage and perseverance steer us in our services and remind us daily why we believe in A New Way of Life.
  We thank all of you for supporting the cause, committing to the movement and bringing the spirit. If ever there was a time to seize the moment and build on the momentum, this is it ….

  Susan Burton
  Founder & Executive Director

• From Publisher -

  Susan Burton is the founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit that provides sober housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women. She is nationally known as an advocate for restoring basic civil and human rights to those who have served time. Burton was a winner of AARP’s prestigious Purpose Prize and has been a Starbucks® “Upstander,” a CNN Top 10 Hero, a Soros Justice Fellow, and a Women’s Policy Institute Fellow at the California Wellness Foundation. She is the co-author, with Cari Lynn, of Becoming Ms. Burton (The New Press). She lives in Los Angeles.

• Publishers Weekly - https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/authors/profiles/article/73466-life-on-the-outside-pw-talks-with-susan-burton.html

  Life on the Outside: PW Talks with Susan Burton
  Susan Burton, who spent years in and out of prison and is now a tireless advocate for formerly incarcerated women, tells her story in Becoming Ms. Burton
  By Judith Rosen | Apr 28, 2017

  Comments

  Photo by Mia Munoz
  Two dates mark turning points for Susan Burton: 1981, when a police officer speeding down a street struck and killed her five-year-old son, K.K., and set her on a path of drug and alcohol addiction, and 1997, when she became clean and sober. During the decade and a half in between, Burton, who is now 65, was imprisoned six times, becoming part of a disquieting trend: the incarceration rate for women has risen more than 700% since 1980, with most convicted of nonviolent offenses.
  If losing her freedom and being imprisoned was hard, what happened each time Burton was released, with no resources to help her make a life on the outside, was also devastating. “The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery other than in prisons—but it was a lie that you regained your freedom once you left the prison gates,” Burton writes in the prologue of her book, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women (New Press, May), which she wrote with journalist Cari Lynn. “Upon release and for the rest of your life, you faced a massive wall of No.”
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  Burton and Lynn intersperse her story, including her rape at age 14 and the subsequent birth of her daughter a day before her 15th birthday, with statistics about incarcerated women. “It was important [to me] that it was not too academic, or heavy with numbers,” Burton says. Among the troubling facts that open each chapter are that nearly 80% of formerly incarcerated women are unable to afford housing after release and that most female offenders are under 30 years old, are disproportionately low-income and black, and have not completed high school.
  While the focus of Becoming Ms. Burton is Burton’s life, many of the statistics she cites show how closely her experiences hew to those of other imprisoned women. “For so many years, I, too, had come up against these seemingly insurmountable barriers,” she writes. “But I’d convinced myself that my failing was personal, that it was all on my shoulders. Now, a larger picture was emerging.... A criminal history was like a credit card with interest—although you paid the balance, the interest kept accruing.”
  Despite the parallels between Burton’s early years and the experiences of incarcerated women in general, what makes her stand out—and has earned her accolades, including a Citizen Activist Award from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and being named a CNN Top 10 Hero, a Soros Justice Fellow, and a Starbucks Upstander—is her ability to break the cycle of incarceration and help others. After gaining her sobriety, Burton, in 1998, founded and continues to head A New Way of Life Re-entry Project in Los Angeles, which offers housing and other assistance to women recently released from prison.
  “The last 19 years has been working nonstop for change, 14 hours a day,” Burton says. “I don’t know anything else.” She began by establishing a home for formerly incarcerated women and their children. Today there are five homes and an administrative office that houses A New Way of Life’s organizers and lawyers. “Our tagline,” Burton says, “is, ‘Linking promise with opportunity.’ There are so many bright people who just need an opportunity to help others and pay it forward.”
  Burton also cofounded All of Us or None, a grassroots movement to restore civil rights to the formerly incarcerated. The group has been active in the Ban the Box movement to remove from job applications the question (often in the form of a box to check) about whether a candidate has ever been in prison.
  “We continue to work on policy to end discrimination against people with criminal records,” Burton says, adding that in November the local chapter helped get an ordinance passed that banned the box in the city of Los Angeles. An attorney from A New Way of Life also helped represent Jane Roe in a recently settled class-action lawsuit (Roe v. Frito-Lay Inc.) regarding the way Frito-Lay used background checks and consumer reporting agencies to “compile information from various sources including state and federal criminal record repositories that are often inaccurate or outdated.”
  Writing a book was a departure for Burton, although she says that she always had to be creative to avoid being “crushed.” Burton tried several times to write the memoir before Lynn approached her at a screening of Susan, a short film about Burton by Tessa Blake and Emma Hewitt, released in 2012. The hardest thing about writing the book, Burton says, was dealing with the feelings it stirs up. “You think you’re healed,” she explains. “I’m better, but I’m not healed.”
  For Burton, there was no question of bringing the book to anyone but New Press publisher Ellen Adler. “I knew Ellen because I think I bought more copies of The New Jim Crow than anyone, including bookstores,” Burton says. “I felt like everybody in America needed to read that book. So, from the day I got an advance reading copy, I was just ordering cases.”
  Publishing the book was a departure for the New Press as well. Becoming Ms. Burton is the first memoir it’s published since it was founded 25 years ago. “When [The New Jim Crow author] Michelle Alexander asked us to consider publishing [it], I figured that I’d take great care with the inevitable rejection letter,” Adler says. “But when I read the proposal, I was dazzled. The question became not whether we should publish it, but how we could find the widest audience for Susan’s story.”
  The New Press has announced a 40,000-copy first printing. In addition to placing the book in trade bookstores, Adler is working with recovery bookstores and treatment centers. The press is also fund-raising for a special paperback edition for incarcerated women. On her author tour, which includes Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York City, and Washington, D.C., Burton plans to visit prisons. “My hope,” Burton says, “is that people will read [the book] and realize how we’re addressing women with harsh punishment.”
  Burton’s latest project, JustUS Voices/Storytelling for Change, is a “multimedia anthology” that features the stories of women who have been touched by mass incarceration. The W.I. Kellogg Foundation and the Weingart Foundation have awarded $850,000 in grants to support the project, which will focus on women in California, the state with the largest prison population and the largest women’s prison in the world.
  “Telling your story is transformative,” Burton has said. “For both the storyteller and their audience, a new bridge to understanding is created.”
  A version of this article appeared in the 05/01/2017 issue of Publishers Weekly under the headline: Life on the Outside

• Democrary Now! - https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/19/repair_the_damage_from_the_drug

  “Repair the Damage from the Drug War”: Susan Burton on A New Way of Life to End Mass Incarceration
  StoryMay 19, 2017Watch Full Show

   

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  Topics
  Drug War
  Prison
  Women's Rights
  Department of Justice

  Guests
  Susan Burton
  founder and executive director of the nonprofit A New Way of Life. Her memoir is titled Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women.
  Michelle Alexander
  civil rights advocate and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

  Links
  "Becoming Ms. Burton" by Susan Burton
  "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander
  Susan Burton and Michelle Alexander at Abyssinian Baptist Church
  We are joined by two leading voices in the fight against mass incarceration: Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness,” and Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit that provides housing and other support to formerly incarcerated women. Burton is the author of the new memoir, “Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women,” in which she describes her journey from a childhood filled with abuse to drug addiction as an adult, and then to the fight to address the underlying issues that send women to prison. Alexander writes in the book’s introduction, “There once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair who freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety. She welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter, and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. … Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman. I know her as Susan.”
  See Burton and Alexander speak in New York City Friday night at 7pm. More details here

  Transcript
  This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
  AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to the story we will spend the rest of the hour on. Juan?
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, “Most women in U.S. prisons were, first, victims. It’s estimated that 85 percent of locked-up women were, at some or many points in their lives, physically or sexually abused, or both. Disproportionately, these women are black and poor.” Those are the opening words of the powerful new memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, by Susan Burton.
  AMY GOODMAN: Susan Burton’s book comes out as Attorney General Jeff Sessions is vowing a major revival of the so-called war on drugs. This is the attorney general speaking at the Justice Department headquarters as he rescinded two Obama-era memos that encouraged prosecutors to avoid seeking inordinately harsh sentences for low-level drug offenses.
  ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS: Going forward, I have empowered our prosecutors to charge and pursue the most serious offense, as I believe the law requires, most serious, readily provable offense. It means that we’re going to meet our responsibility to enforce the law with judgment and fairness. It is simply the right and moral thing to do. … And we know that drugs and crime go hand in hand. They just do. The facts prove that so. Drug trafficking is an inherently dangerous and violent business. If you want to collect a drug debt, you can’t file a lawsuit in court. You collect it with the barrel of a gun.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Sessions has a long backed lengthy prison sentences and mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, including for marijuana use, which is now legal for either medical or recreational purposes in many states. Sessions’s escalation of the so-called war on drugs was met with widespread outcry. NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said in a statement, quote, “The Attorney General’s directive suggests that this long ugly era of mass incarceration now has eternal life. … The racial disparities in arrest, prosecution, and incarceration have led to the devastation of African American families and communities.”
  AMY GOODMAN: Well, our next guests today know this devastation all too well. After Susan Burton’s 5-year-old son was run over and killed by an off-duty Los Angeles police officer, Burton fell into a deep depression and a 20-plus-year cycle of drugs and incarceration. She found her way to a rehab program in 1997 and made it her life’s work to help other women re-enter society after incarceration.
  The foreword of Becoming Ms. Burton is written by another leading voice in the fight against mass incarceration: Michelle Alexander. She’s the author of the best-selling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
  We’re thrilled to have her back with us today, Michelle Alexander. Susan Burton, for the first time, it’s great to have you. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Susan, let’s begin with you. The title of your book is Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. Tell us your story.
  SUSAN BURTON: Amy, I was born in the housing projects in East L.A. and struggled most of my life to become, struggled for stability, struggled for safety. And it wasn’t until October 4th of 1997 I found that, after many, many years of abuse, suffering, and then, finally, the death of my son, which led to my substance use and incarceration. But the journey after, you know, October 4th of 1997 is when I was able to stand up and come into the community and fight for not only my right, but the right of other women, to come back and have a life that is just not survival but offers a lane to thrive.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in your book, you talk about the—especially the—it’s a very power—I mean, I was reading it last night. It’s a very powerful book in terms of the personal relationships within your own family, the community, the support groups that you had, and how you felt for many years that you had failed so many of these folks who had provided you support. But you also talk about how the impact on your family of your father’s—
  SUSAN BURTON: Yes.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —loss of work and the deindustrialization of Los Angeles—
  SUSAN BURTON: Yes.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —and the effect that that had on your family and the community.
  SUSAN BURTON: Yes. So, my father, you know, he was a great family man, and he took us to the drive-in every weekend. And him and my mother came to Los Angeles running from the racism of the South. And they settled in the housing projects, or, rather, they were directed to this area, is what I understand now, where they could be contained, suppressed and surveilled. And, you know, my father—they began the deindustrialization of America, and my father lost his job. And with that went much of his esteem and his proud “I’m the, you know, breadwinner, and I’m the family man.” And, you know, we know that until things like the deindustrialization and unemployment hits white America, it’s a problem that, you know, “You’re lazy. You don’t want to work. You have no skills.” So, you know, that’s part of what I capture when I describe my early years and my mother and my father and our family.
  AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk, Susan Burton, about 1997, about how, after just several decades of the cycle of addiction and imprisonment, you found your way to a rehab center, and what happened there?
  SUSAN BURTON: Yeah. A friend of mine told me about this rehab center in Santa Monica, California. And I arrived there October 4th of 1997. And what I found there—I stayed in this rehab for a hundred days. After six prison terms, a hundred days in a rehab. And, you know, this was a wealthy beach community. And there was this huge buffet of services that I was able to, you know, partake in just anything I wanted: therapy services, recovery services, clothing, job, medical, dental, mental health—just everything. And it was delivered in such a friendly and opening, warm way. And in that community, what I found is that people arrested for the same things that I was arrested for was not sentenced to prison. And I thought, “What is this? You know, why is—why are we treated so harshly, and other people given help, given a pass, given a court card, given diversion programs, sent to rehab instead of to prison?” And I began to really look closely at, you know, the difference in being black in America and white in America, being—having income, having wealth and not having wealth, and where that left us. And that was one of the driving factors that had me come back to South L.A., where our community had been devastated by the war on drugs. So many women were sent away to prison. I came back there to create what I found in Santa Monica. But I didn’t have the wealth, you know, and my skin was not white. But I did have the commitment, a little of the anger, to get the job done.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Michelle Alexander, I’d like to ask you, first, how you first came in contact with Susan, and your decision to write the foreword for her book. And I’m wondering if you might even be willing to read the opening graphs of your foreword, as well.
  MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Sure, I would be happy to. You know, it has been such a privilege and honor to know Susan. You know, I met her shortly after I published my book, but I had heard of her sometime before. I actually stumbled across an interview with her while I was doing research for my book. And in that interview, she described so clearly and so powerfully and with such deep conviction what it meant and felt like to be a second-class citizen in this country because you become—you’ve been branded a felon. And she described what it was like to check the box on employment applications, housing applications, and to be denied even food stamps because you’ve once been caught with drugs.
  And I came to learn that she had founded several safe homes for formerly incarcerated women in Los Angeles and that she was helping to birth a movement, led by and for formerly incarcerated people who are demanding the restoration of their basic civil and human rights. And after I published my book, she invited me down to L.A. to visit the homes that she created and to do an event for me. And when I got there and saw these homes and met the women, I was just blown away by what Susan had created.
  And she’s been a profound inspiration to me. And I believe this book will be a profound inspiration to millions of people, particularly those who have themselves found themselves ensnared by our criminal justice system and are struggling to make a way out of no way. Susan has made it possible for hundreds of women not just to survive in this era of mass incarceration, but to find a path to thriving and to see that they, too, can be movements—leaders in this movement for justice.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: So, if you could read for us the opening of your foreword?
  MICHELLE ALEXANDER: OK. “There once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair who freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety. She welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter, and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. This courageous soul knew well the fear and desperation of each one who came to her, seeing in their eyes all the pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom.
  “Deep in the night she cried out to God begging for strength, and when she woke she began her work all over again, opening doors, planning escape routes, and holding hands with mothers as they wept for children they hoped to see again. A relentless advocate for justice, this woman was a proud abolitionist and freedom fighter. She told the unadorned truth to whomever would listen and spent countless hours training and organizing others, determined to grow the movement. She served not only as a profound inspiration to those who knew her, but as a literal gateway to freedom for hundreds whose lives were changed forever by her heroism.
  “Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman. I know her as Susan.”
  AMY GOODMAN: Those are the words of Michelle Alexander in those opening three paragraphs in this stunning new work, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. Michelle, before we go to break, how you see Susan’s story fitting into this larger narrative, the way you have framed your book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, especially in the era of Trump?
  MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Well, I think when you read Susan’s story carefully, you see that it’s not only a story of individual trauma and struggle, survival and heroism, it’s also a story that explains how a system has been born in the United States that criminalizes people in the era of deindustrialization and globalization, that has criminalized individuals, families and communities, locking people up who are now deemed disposable, their labor no longer needed, their services no longer required in the current economy, and how we have chosen to treat drug addiction as a crime rather than a public health problem, and how the literal war that has been declared on poor people and people of color has led to the birth of a prison system unlike anything in world history.
  You know, if Susan Burton had been white, if she had been solidly middle-class, she would have had access to legal drugs that would have helped her cope with her trauma and depression following the death of her son. But instead, Susan had no choice but to turn to illegal drugs and self-medicate herself. And when she was arrested and released onto the streets, she forced a legal—faced a legal system of discrimination that kept her locked out of jobs and housing, denied her access to food, and ensured that she, along with millions of others, would cycle in and out of prison, potentially for the rest of her life.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Susan, I’d like to ask you, your response to the foreword that Michelle wrote, to her comparing you to Harriet Tubman, and also the—how her book had an impact on your life and on your understanding of your own journey?
  SUSAN BURTON: I can’t get through the foreword without tears. I’m touched very, very deeply, the way in which Michelle wrote that. And while I embrace it to be real and true, it just touches me very, very deeply. Like a tear is falling right now.
  When I—much of what Michelle wrote in The New Jim Crow allowed me to examine more deeply my life, my family’s life, my mother’s and father’s life, to understand what happened, how my family, my mom and—my mom and father’s dreams got dismantled, their hopes got smothered, with deindustrialization, with racism, with the treatment that they had prior to coming here. I used to—I remember my father talking about the hanging in trees. And, you know, he had that horror that came with him. I can remember how my father never was able to look white people, white men, in their face. And, you know, this all drowned and dismantled, derailed their hopes and dreams, this systemic oppression, racism and no value of the black man or woman in America. So, Michelle’s book, as I flipped the pages, you know, I began to understand more about my life and the life of black people in America and this cruel, really cruel system that we have that drives people into being criminalized, entire communities criminalized.
  AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Susan Burton—her new book, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women—and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. We’re going to go to break. When we come back, after Susan Burton came out of prison for the final time, we’re going to talk about A New Way of Life, the nonprofit that she has founded that provides support and housing for formerly incarcerated women, why Michelle Alexander calls Susan Burton the Harriet Tubman of our time. Stay with us.
  [break]
  AMY GOODMAN: “They Can’t Take That Away from Me” by Ella Fitzgerald. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman in Los Angeles, headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico, then Arizona and Houston tomorrow. And Juan González is in New York.
  JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, we’re spending the hour with two leading voices in the fight against mass incarceration: Michelle Alexander, author of the best-selling book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, and Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit that provides housing and other support services to formerly incarcerated women. She’s the author of the new memoir, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. I want to go to a clip from a short documentary by the digital channel WIGS about Susan Burton and New Way of Life. This is Angela, who was released from prison just 11 months before this was filmed.
  ANGELA: They drive you to the bus station, and, you know, they give you $200, and they buy your ticket, out of your money, and put you on a bus. And you’re just headed to wherever. And so, I arrived downtown L.A., and it was really scary. It was really scary. And I looked like I came from prison, you know? I was dusty-looking, you know, with jeans and a paper bag. Everybody knows that you’re from prison. They know, just by the way you look. And they know. You get approached by everybody. There were people asking you if you needed a ride, telling you that you look fine; drug addicts, people living that life, and you know they are. It’s so easy to get lured, especially if you’re scared. And I’m going to be honest: I was scared. And I felt like I was just standing there buck naked. I didn’t have anyplace to go. I really didn’t.
  And I called Ms. Burton, and I told her—I said, “I received a letter from you, and you said for me to call you and that you would pick me up.” And she says, “Where are you?” And I told her. She says, “I’ll be there in about 15 minutes.” And she came and picked me up.
  AMY GOODMAN: That’s a clip from a documentary about our guest, Susan Burton. We are also joined by Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. So, Susan, talk about this New Way of Life, your nonprofit, and what it is that you’re doing with women who are coming out of prison right now.
  SUSAN BURTON: A New Way of Life is a safe house that women can come to after they’re released from prison in South Los Angeles. It’s a place for women to detox the trauma, the torture of incarceration, be welcomed and embraced and live and begin their new path to—if it’s recovery or receiving mental health services, go back to school, get their children back. Whatever their goals are, we support them to obtain those goals.
  You know, it’s criminal that we spend $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year to incarcerate someone for minor drug charges or petty crimes, and then put them on a bus and send them back into Skid Row without ID, without government papers, after years of torture and trauma inside of a prison system, and say, “Go make a life for yourself,” and give them that $200 and nothing else. It’s criminal and such a waste of not only financial resources but human potential.
  I’ve seen some of the most amazing women, with just a few months of support, come back and actually their lives soar. They become organizers. They become caregivers. They become mothers again. They become, you know, social workers and drug therapists and just all types of walks of life, you know, hairdressers, just fit back into the community. But without that support once they leave those gates, all that potential is just wasted. It just goes down the drain.
  So, from what I received in Santa Monica, California, and my goal to transplant it back into South L.A., you know, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people have been touched, and lives changed, hope and inspiration given back. And, you know, what I believe and have witnessed is that, you know, women are sort—women are the glue of our community. You know, we put the Band-Aids on. We hug the kids. We raise them. We bring that love into the community and that grounding foundation. And when you come through a community like South L.A., and you just criminalize the entire community and just suck all the women out of it, you know, that community hurts and bleeds as a result of it. So my goal, my hope, is to actually repair that damage from the war on drugs and replant the women back healthy and whole and able to function and put those Band-Aids on their kids’ knees.

Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

Valerie Hawkins
113.16 (Apr. 15, 2017): p2.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
* Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. By Susan Burton and Cari Lynn. May 2017. 336p. New Press, $25.95 (97816209721201. 365.6.
Burton, along with journalist and writer Lynn, presents an unflinching account of Burton's life, told in two parts. First, Burton recounts her early years, revealing a girls life not interrupted but derailed by sexual abuse and emotional neglect. The damage done was made worse later, when her five-year-old son was struck by a car and killed in Los Angeles. Burton self-medicated to treat her pain, became addicted to drugs, and ended up in prison several times, facing seemingly impossible obstacles each time she was released. In the second half of the book, Burton shares her step-by-step path to not only getting herself back on her feet but also to founding the standout nonprofit organization, A New Way of Life Reentry Project, to help other women burdened with a criminal record. Burton has received a Top 10 CNN Hero award and a James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award, and the Los Angeles Times named Burton one of the nations New Civil Rights Leaders. Burton has helped thousands of formerly incarcerated and homeless individuals, and now, by telling her story, she continues to advocate for a more humane justice system guided by compassion and dignity. --Valerie Hawkins

Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
Hawkins, Valerie. "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 2. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA492536031&it=r&asid=82365236a3ea0999fec23d8f12e3f143. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A492536031

Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

264.11 (Mar. 13, 2017): p71.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women
Susan Burton and Cari Lynn. New Press, $25.95 (336p) ISBN 978-1-62097-213-7
Burton founder and executive director of A New Way of Life, a nonprofit organization that supports formerly incarcerated women, joins coauthor Lynn (Leg the Spread) to write a compelling memoir about her own journey into social justice activism after multiple imprisonments. A survivor of domestic violence and sexual assault during her childhood, Burton turned to cocaine and crack after her five-year-old son was killed in a hit-and-run incident. Once caught up in California's prison system, she spent nearly two decades incarcerated or on parole before she was able to break the cycle by fighting for the drug treatment and trauma therapy she needed. The latter half of the book documents Burton's tireless efforts to effect change--first helping individual women, released from prison with few resources, to make a new start, and then snowballing advocacy efforts at the state and national level to reshape how the United States treats those with criminal records. Too often, national debates about mass incarceration take place in the abstract world of economics or social science data; rarely do individuals who have been or are currently incarcerated have a place at the policy table. This first-person account of the trauma that incarceration inflicts on individuals and families ties those policy discussions to lived reality. It may also help the incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated, and their families know that they are not alone. (May)

Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 71+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485971671&it=r&asid=14d15059ee92a30ca077fe871c7c8738. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A485971671

Burton, Susan: BECOMING MS. BURTON

(Mar. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Burton, Susan BECOMING MS. BURTON New Press (Adult Nonfiction) $25.95 5, 9 ISBN: 978-1-62097-212-0
How one woman finally broke away from a cycle of imprisonment and went on to help hundreds of other women re-enter normal life.In this engrossing memoir, Burton shares the details of her painful childhood and adolescence: she was sexually molested as a young child, which her mother was aware of but turned a blind eye to; raped at 14, which led to a pregnancy and the birth of her daughter; and worked as a prostitute for money and drugs. But it was the death of her 5-year-old son that threw Burton into a spiral of despair, and she wound up in and out of jail numerous times over the course of 15 years. All those years in jail gave Burton time to question why she continued to use drugs, why she wasn't offered any counseling, like the white prisoners received, and why the judicial system was so biased against black women. When the opportunity arose to make a difference after her final incarceration, Burton embarked on a 20-plus-year campaign to provide the kind of support she knew was missing for women recently released from prison. She successfully executed a complete turnaround of her life, which she chronicles in the second half of this powerful memoir. Burton explains how and why women, especially of color, find themselves at the bottom of the barrel, and given few chances for improvement, and how she has fought to change legislation and the overall handling of prisoners in the state of California. The author speaks a hard but necessary truth, one that should be heard so all prisoners are given a fair chance to re-enter society. Through her strong will and determination, Burton has proven that former prisoners can offer real value to the community and should be given the opportunities to do so. A dramatic, honest, moving narrative of how hard life can get and how one can still overcome seemingly insurmountable adversity to do good in the world.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th Edition)
"Burton, Susan: BECOMING MS. BURTON." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA485105186&it=r&asid=8a5d52231a3f43b62c713f898a441531. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A485105186

Hawkins, Valerie. "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2017, p. 2. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA492536031&asid=82365236a3ea0999fec23d8f12e3f143. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017. "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women." Publishers Weekly, 13 Mar. 2017, p. 71+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA485971671&asid=14d15059ee92a30ca077fe871c7c8738. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017. "Burton, Susan: BECOMING MS. BURTON." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA485105186&asid=8a5d52231a3f43b62c713f898a441531. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.

• Nation
  https://www.thenation.com/article/what-i-learned-from-susan-burton-a-modern-day-harriet-tubman/
  Word count: 2900

  What I Learned From Susan Burton, a Modern-Day Harriet Tubman
  Reading her life story will change the way you view the world.
  By Michelle Alexander
  May 11, 2017
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  Activist and author Susan Burton. (Courtesy of The New Press)
   

  T
  here once lived a woman with deep brown skin and black hair who freed people from bondage and ushered them to safety. She welcomed them to safe homes and offered food, shelter, and help reuniting with family and loved ones. She met them wherever they could be found and organized countless others to provide support and aid in various forms so they would not be recaptured and sent back to captivity. This courageous soul knew well the fear and desperation of each one who came to her, seeing in their eyes all the pain she felt years ago when she had been abused and shackled and finally began her own journey to freedom. Deep in the night she cried out to God begging for strength, and when she woke she began her work all over again, opening doors, planning escape routes, and holding hands with mothers as they wept for children they hoped to see again. A relentless advocate for justice, this woman was a proud abolitionist and freedom fighter. She told the unadorned truth to whomever would listen and spent countless hours training and organizing others, determined to grow the movement. She served not only as a profound inspiration to those who knew her but also as a real gateway to freedom for hundreds whose lives were changed forever by her heroism.
  This essay is adapted from the foreword to Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton and Cari Lynn (The New Press, April 2017) and published with the permission of the author and The New Press.
  Some people know this woman by the name Harriet Tubman. I know her as Susan.
  I met Susan Burton in 2010, but I learned her name years before. I was doing some research regarding the challenges of reentry for people incarcerated due to our nation’s cruel and biased drug war. At the time, I was in the process of writing The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness—a book that aimed to expose the ways the War on Drugs had not only decimated impoverished communities of color but also helped to birth a new system of racial and social control eerily reminiscent of an era supposedly left behind. The United States has become the world leader in imprisonment, having quintupled our prison population in a few short decades through a drug war and a “get tough” movement aimed at the poorest and darkest among us. I was writing a chapter that explains how tens of millions of people branded criminals and felons have been stripped of the very rights supposedly won in the civil-rights movement, including the right to vote, the right to serve on juries, and the right to be free of legal discrimination in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits. I had mountains of policy analyses and data, but I was disturbed by the fact that few voices of those who actually had been impacted by these modern-day Jim Crow policies could be found in the research.
  I scanned dozens of articles online, then paused when I stumbled upon an interview with a woman named Susan Burton. The integrity and authenticity of her voice was undeniable. She told the reporter plainly and directly what it felt like, as a recovering drug addict released from prison and struggling to survive, to be forced to “check the box” on the ubiquitous employment, housing, and food-stamp applications that asked the dreaded question, “Have you ever been convicted of a felony?” She knew full well that, once that box was checked, her application would be thrown straight in the trash. How would she survive without food, shelter, or a job? She described with clarity and conviction what it meant to be a second-class citizen in the so-called land of the free, and she insisted that she was determined to do everything she could to ensure that the laws, rules, policies, and practices that authorize legal discrimination against people with convictions are eventually abandoned, and that we begin to provide drug treatment rather than prison cells to people struggling with addiction and drug abuse. I learned Susan had created several safe homes for formerly incarcerated women and that she was part of a small but growing movement for the restoration of basic civil and human rights for people who have spent time behind bars. The interview moved me, and I thought I have to meet this woman.

  Shortly after The New Jim Crow was published, I had my chance. A mutual friend introduced us via email, and Susan invited me to come to Los Angeles and visit the nonprofit organization she founded, A New Way of Life. She thanked me profusely for my book, and said that she, along with the formerly incarcerated women currently residing at the safe homes, wanted to organize a book event for me at a local community center. I told her that I would be thrilled to come and hoped to learn more about her work and lend support as best I could.
  I was not prepared for what followed. Upon my arrival, Susan gave me a tour of the safe homes for formerly incarcerated women that operate as part of A New Way of Life. I’m not certain what I expected, but probably something similar to various halfway houses I’ve seen over the years. Instead, I discovered something else entirely. These were not facilities or shelters or way stations or simply housing for people released from prison who need support services. These were homes. Loving homes. Susan took me from house to house and showed me where the women slept and worked. The residents and staff greeted Susan with a measure of formality—“Good afternoon, Ms. Burton!—yet the warmth and love was palpable. In some of the bedrooms, paint was peeling off the walls, and mattresses for children were on the floor along with a few scattered stuffed animals. Clearly, every penny raised was immediately invested in providing more beds, houses, and services. The accommodations were sparse, to say the least. But they were also immaculate, and every woman I met expressed enormous gratitude for Susan and the lifeline she provided. Susan offered not just a place to sleep and to get desperately needed assistance but also emotional support as the women struggled to meet the seemingly endless and impossible requirements of parole and probation officers, as well as the demands of the most feared agency of them all: child protective services.
  In California, like most states, women released from prison must meet a dizzying list of requirements if they hope to regain custody of their children, including showing they have secured employment and housing. Meeting these requirements is no small feat, particularly when hundreds of categories of jobs are off-limits to people with felony records, discrimination is still legal against them, public housing agencies routinely deny access to people based on criminal records, and—until recently—even food stamps weren’t available to people with drug convictions. Susan and her staff work tirelessly to help women at A New Way of Life meet these conditions, but they also go to court with them, hold hands with them, and pray with them, as judges decide whether custody will be terminated forever.
  I remember calling Susan one day, long after my first visit, and catching her when she was at the courthouse with a young woman who had just lost custody—permanently—of her daughter. Susan’s voice was cracking and breaking over the phone, failing to hold back tears, as she erupted: “I’ve been down here all week at the courthouse, watching and waiting as these families are torn apart. I see these women doing everything they can, and still their babies are taken away. How can we do this to people? Does anyone really understand what’s going on here? We’re willing to spend countless dollars putting people who need help in cages, and then when they get out we say you can’t have a job, and you can’t have housing, and because you don’t have either we’re going to take your kids too. Sometimes I think I can’t go on, that I just can’t bear to watch this or do this anymore.”

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  But she does. Day in and day out, Susan is always there, welcoming women returning home from prison, providing them with as much support and guidance as possible, and walking with them into the courthouse. Over and over again. Like Harriet Tubman, who famously helped to build the Underground Railroad for runaway slaves who yearned to be free and reunite with their loved ones, Susan has committed her life to helping those held captive today make a genuine break for freedom, attempt to rebuild their lives and families, and hopefully begin to heal from the trauma of it all.
  I don’t think I understood the full extent of the trauma experienced by people who churn through America’s prisons until I began taking the time to listen to their stories. Research suggests that people rarely change their minds or form a new world view based on facts or data alone; it is through stories (and the values systems embedded within them) that we come to reinterpret the world and develop empathy and compassion for others. Susan Burton’s life story—filled with trauma, struggle, and true heroism—is precisely the kind of story that has the potential to change the way we view our world. It is impossible to read her story and not feel challenged to reconsider basic assumptions about our criminal-injustice system, as well as the conscious and subconscious beliefs we hold about the living, breathing human beings we, as a nation, have condemned and discarded. In today’s political environment we are constantly encouraged—through the media, politicians, and government bureaucracies—to view certain groups of people defined by race and class as undeserving of care and concern, especially the drug addicts, criminals, and so-called illegals who are trapped in prisons, detention centers, and ghettos across the United States.
  During my first visit to A New Way of Life, Susan sat me down on a couch in an empty safe home—the residents were out for the moment—and quietly began to tell her story. She explained that her odyssey with the criminal justice system began when her 5-year-old son was accidentally killed by a police officer employed by the Los Angeles Police Department. The officer was driving down her street in her South Central neighborhood and ran over her boy while he was crossing the street. The LAPD initially offered no compensation, no counseling, no trauma support—not even an apology. She fell into a deep, seemingly bottomless well of grief and depression.
  I have no doubt things would’ve turned out differently if Susan had been wealthy and white. Even if she had been middle class and had access to a good health-insurance plan, she could’ve afforded years of therapy and been prescribed the best legal drugs available to help her cope with her trauma. But things were different for Susan. Lacking money and a support system, she turned to illegal drugs and became addicted to crack cocaine. Living in an impoverished black community under siege during the height of the War on Drugs, it was only a matter of time before Susan was arrested and offered her first plea deal. It would not be her last. Susan cycled in and out of prison for 15 years, trapped in a virtual undercaste—a parallel social universe that exists for those labeled criminals and felons in the era of mass incarceration. Every time she was released, she faced a web of discriminatory rules and laws that made survival next to impossible, and continued to self-medicate with illegal drugs.
  By no small miracle, Susan was eventually granted admission to a private drug treatment facility and given a job. When she became clean, she decided to devote her life to ensuring that no other woman would ever have to suffer what she had been through. She began meeting the prison bus, as it released women onto the streets carrying nothing but a cardboard box with their belongings and a few dollars in their pockets. She said to these women, who were strangers to her, “Come home with me, sleep on my couch or on my floor. I’ll make sure you have a roof over your head and food to eat. You don’t have to turn to the streets tonight.”
  Susan explained to me that, in the beginning, she simply wanted to give women who were struggling to make it on the outside food, shelter, safety, and some support as they pieced their lives back together again. But now, Susan said, she sees her mission and purpose as much broader. She aims to help build a movement, a human-rights movement that will provide a path to a new way of life for all of us. She co-founded All of Us or None, an organization dedicated to the restoration of basic civil and human rights for formerly incarcerated people, and has begun training the women who are part of A New Way of Life to be leaders, spokespeople, and organizers. She views the women who live and work with her not merely as people to be “helped,” but women who are joining in a shared struggle to remake their individual lives, while transforming their communities and the nation as a whole.
  Since that talk on her couch several years ago, Susan and I have had many conversations about the future of movement building and advocacy to end mass incarceration. She has become a friend and a confidant, as well as my personal shero. Every time I speak with her I am reminded of why it is so critically important for people who have been directly impacted by injustice to emerge as partners and leaders of the movements for justice we aim to build. As a lawyer and as an academic, I am often surrounded by people who think they know the answers, as well as how to define the problem, and have endless opinions about what to do next. They’ve done their research and studied the data and read the reports and they know how to navigate the halls of power. Yet often what they lack is relevant life experience—the deep, profound ways of knowing and seeing that come from living through severe racial and social injustice and making a way out of no way. What I have found is that I have much more to learn from Susan Burton than she does from me, despite all of the research and writing I have done on these issues over the years.
  Susan’s book, Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women, is not simply a story about a formerly incarcerated woman dedicated to working for justice and freedom in the era of mass incarceration. It is a story of a black woman who, as she often tells me, is “nothing special” and yet has somehow managed to transform her own life as well as hundreds of lives around her. She has emerged as a leading figure in the movement to end mass incarceration, always leading by example and never leading alone. This book tells a story of one woman known to staff and residents as Ms. Burton, but it is also tells a much broader, universal story about the utter fragility and breathtaking resilience of the human spirit—even in the face of severe sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. In the end, this is a story about how an entire system of oppressive rules, laws, policies, and practices has failed to permanently crush one woman’s spirit and the spirits of the many women who have walked through the doors of A New Way of Life, though surely that system has tried. To borrow the poetry of Maya Angelou, “And still like dust they rise.”

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  Michelle AlexanderMichelle Alexander is a legal scholar, human rights advocate, and author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (The New Press).

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