Speaking Across the Walls

Shumate in her Fire Inside shirt, circa 1997 from The Fire Inside 2011 commemorative issue. Courtesy of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. 

Mary Shields, friend, and Shumate circa 2000 Courtesy of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. 

Although conditions in the California prison system drove many incarcerated people and their advocates to form a variety of activist organizations, the story of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners and their struggle for adequate healthcare is particularly relevant today when medical neglect is becoming more deadly than ever before.

Their mission statement reflects their commitment to simultaneously struggling against the prison industrial complex, racism, and gendered violence. 

“CCWP is a grassroots social justice organization, with members inside and outside prison, that challenges the institutional violence imposed on women, transgender people, and communities of color by the prison industrial complex (PIC). We see the struggle for racial and gender justice as central to dismantling the PIC and we prioritize the leadership of the people, families, and communities most impacted in building this movement.” 

The story of the CCWP began on April 4th, 1995, when Charise Shumate, a survivor of domestic violence and sickle cell anemia, led a group of 24 women incarcerated at the Central California Women's Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla and the California Institution for Women (CIW) in Corona in a legal struggle against the Department of Corrections and Governor Pete Wilson, charging them with violating the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause of the 8th Ammendement after years of deadly medical neglect. Shumate’s “godsister” Mary Shields recounts that 22 women died in November 1995 from nonexistent or inadequate treatment before the lawsuit. These women were already endangered by conditions including AIDS, tuberculosis, cancer and fibromyalgia, but they persisted despite the retaliation they knew they would suffer. Shumate’s steadfast determination to find allies as well as the Shumate v. Wilson case itself prompted the formation of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, which included members on both sides of the walls.

Shumate’s will to survive both domestic violence and the violence of the prison system is chronicled in the Freedom Archives and CCWP documentary Charisse Shumate: Fighting for Our Lives. Long before the documentary’s inception, in June of 1966 CCWP members began to tell their own stories in a newsletter called The Fire Inside, which served the dual purposes of making incarcerated women visible on the outside and providing a medium for them to communicate the reality of their lives and organize for change across institutions. ¹ .