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For me, the time for silence and learning is over. I am speaking up for people who cannot speak for themselves: incarcerated women all over the planet who are suffering new forms of abuse and degradation. Women are being locked up with violent and abusive men. They are crying out for help.

This song was inspired by the story of Tomiekia, an incarcerated woman in the state of California. The lyrics are based on her actual words, which moved through my heart into this song. Like over 85% of women in prison, Tomiekia was a victim of domestic violence by her husband. She and other women in California are now forced to share cells and showers with male criminals, most of whom still have fully intact weaponizable body parts. This is terrifying, demoralizing, and cruel.

How could this be happening? For Tomiekia and her fellow female prisoners, it is because a "self-ID" law passed and was signed into law in the state of California. If a biologically male inmate claims to not identify as a man, he has the option of being housed with women inmates--even if he is a convicted sex offender, pedophile, or domestic abuser! This policy annihilates women's sex-based rights: rights based on the truth of our immutable female bodies.

These laws are being implemented in countries all over the world, in violation of International Human Rights agreements regarding women prisoners.

In most places, women's prisons are very different from men's prisons because women are very different from men. There is less security, and more community. A sisterhood develops between women across races and classes and ages. Women work to heal from trauma from very difficult life experiences that too often include male violence. Women as a group are statistically far less violent than men. Men as a group not only are more violent than women: they are also much larger and much stronger. It is beyond cruel to subject such vulnerable women to being retraumatized and to disrupt the web of female connection women have with each other. Mental breakdowns, sexual assault, intimidation, and rape results when this policy is implemented, as is happening throughout the world.

Whatever one believes the problem to be, endangering women like Tomiekia is not the solution. Yes, women in prison have committed crimes. But in a fair society, the punishment should fit the crime. It is never fair to inflict torture or psychological trauma. Female inmates should not ever be used as human shields. Our governments should be protecting the human rights of women because WOMEN ARE HUMAN TOO.

These incarcerated women need us to speak up for them, as they cannot speak for themselves. With this song, I hope to give voice to Tomiekia and the stories of incarcerated women all over the planet who are being locked up with violent and predatory men.

There is light and love in the darkness of the song, in the hope for Tomiekia's daughter and all the daughters to come.


Learn more at the Women's Liberation Front: www.womensliberationfront.org/chandler-v-cdcr

Please sign this petition for Tomiekia get back home with her daughter:
www.change.org/p/gavin-newsom-grant-commutation-for-incarcerated-survivor-tomiekia-johnson

Thank you to the wonderful male allies who helped me create this song and bring it to the fight for women's safety, dignity and liberation.