Good afternoon, Shanatova. I'm Elizabeth Sackler and it is a great pleasure and actually it's a privilege for me to welcome you this afternoon and to be your mistress of ceremonies. We have a long and wonderful program today that I am very excited about and I think you'll be very happy with as well. If you are Twittering and Twittering, we are in hashtag States of Denial BKM and this is our fourth series of programs and you can see our other nine programs on www.brooklymuseum.org slash EASCFA slash videos. And there are many hours of very important programs that I think you might be interested to see. Sunday, Monday, sundown today begins the holiest day of the year for Jewish people. It is Rosh Hashanah starting this evening. It is the head of a new year and it's for us a time to reflect how we have been in the world, what we might have done better, things we wish we had said or things we wish we hadn't said, what hurt we have caused and I would like to add today ways in which we have been complicit to the hurt and the pain of others. For my family and my community and my tribe the coming week is a time to ask forgiveness from those we have hurt and of those we have harmed either knowingly or unknowingly. Rosh Hashanah is actually the perfect day for all of us Jewish or not to be together for the first of our fall series of states of denial, the illegal incarceration of women, children and people of color. Shana Tovah and I welcome you here for that. So we're quite perfectly titled as well. Touching humanity, creativity and transformation. This has been a year of transformation, shared dining's journey from York Penitentiary in Niantic, Connecticut to the Brooklyn Museum was inspired by the women of York and is now sitting next to the dinner party by Judy Chicago. If you haven't seen it as yet I hope you'll go up to the fourth floor and have that pleasure. Shared dining from start to finish has been groundbreaking. It has been enlightening and I think for surely it's been healing and I think maybe if not it's also been kind of in its own wonderful way a downright miracle. We have had an incredible partnership with the women of York. The women of York have experienced renewal. They have experienced love and I believe many if not all have experienced healing. Two years ago when I was first introduced to the prison to a librarian Joe Lee and it was made by the introduction was made by Joanne Tucker who is a veteran prison workshop leader and the worlds of incarcerated people or victims of police brutality were the same then as they are now but not in the public eye and that's changed as we know. The public is now aware of the inhumane and inhuman conditions and the illegal actions by law enforcement agents too often. We are faced knowing the problems the unacceptables I call them. We know where we need to work to make justice true not injustice and we can no longer and we should never have turned a blind eye and today is a celebration. It is a celebration of an achievement and a call for more. It is achievement of 10 women who two years ago did not know one another all that well. Some had never made art some had never explored or had an opportunity to explore their inner selves no less to have an opportunity for what they have found inside to emerge in a new way. For six months the women of York and I list them in order of their place settings. Kelly, Shannon, Jahara, Chassidy, Trisha, Lizette, Pama, Shakima, Kara and Tracy created shared dining as we know now they are known women of York. Each woman came when I met them with distinct characteristics. They emanated maturity, confidence, earnestness, certitude, gratitude, interest, shyness, intent and excitement. They were grounded as a group grateful for the opportunity in the moment without artifice or pretense. Education, art, writing, dance all kinds of forms of learning and creative outlet are essential for all people and vitally essential for incarcerated people to feed the spirit, the soul, to keep the human brain alive and healthy and to heal and nurture the confused and the damaged and the lost. Today it is a very big honor and a great honor to have the governor and first lady of Connecticut, Danelle and Kathy Malloy here. The governor and first lady are both prison reform activists. Each has become their stations, their commitment and success in reforming, stabilizing and rehumanizing the prisons in their state and I thank them. We almost thank them partly for that. Yes, first lady Kathy Malloy for the past four years. Kathy Malloy has led the greater Hartford Arts Council as their chief executive officer. During her tenure, she has spent time at the York Correctional Facility to foster the education and programs there. Before her move to Hartford, Kathy was the CEO of the Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education. Kathy received the National Sexual Resource Center's 2012 Visionary Voice Award and is establishing the Family Justice Center in the state of Connecticut, which is going to be one of 48 centers planned nationwide to provide comprehensive care for those victims of sexual assault and domestic violence. Thank you Kathy. Kathy is an outspoken leader and dedicated advocate for the arts and community of greater Hartford. Governor Danelle Malloy, I would like to introduce you to him and we will have the pleasure of hearing from him and all that he has accomplished. He has been a true leader in making Connecticut a second chance society. An effort to continue driving down crime and the cycle of violence and poverty and give people who have erred a fresh start. Governor Malloy has been fighting for a fairer criminal justice system his whole life. First is a prosecutor, then as a mayor and now as governor. And because it's about being smart on crime, not just about tough on crime. His second chance society initiative eliminates mandatory minimums for simple, nonviolent drug possession revamps. Yes please, we must. Thank you. Revamps training programs for nonviolent ex-offenders and helps people get back on their feet. You have spawned nationwide attention, Governor. He has launched a transformative initiative because he believes that for too long we were building modern jails instead of building modern schools. We are investing in permanent punishment instead of permanent reform. It is my deep pleasure and join me in welcoming please Governor and First Lady Danelle and Katherine. Thank you, Elizabeth. It's actually a great honor. I get very emotional when I talk about this subject for us to be here today. It's it's just incredible. Lots to say. I think the first thing I want to say is actually I noticed up in the exhibit, one of my board members that was on my board when I was running the sexual assault crisis center in Stanford. She's here and so it's great to see the support from that. That was probably the best job I ever had in my whole life. Can't wait to get back to that but I'm still working very hard to establish the First Family Justice Center in Connecticut. It's actually one of 98 in the nation. And the important thing about that is is victims of sexual assault and domestic violence right now just have to run all over the place to get help. So it's a huge effort for us to make sort of in a crude sense one stop shopping so they can go to one place one stop and get all the care that they need and as we say, this isn't just a good thing. This is something these women and men and children deserve. So we'll be cutting the ribbon this month which I'm very, very proud of. In terms of the work at York, I was very involved at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility when I was running the rape crisis center and actually my clinical advisor, Jeanette Trujillo is the lead clinical psychologist at Bedford Hills. So I learned a lot about women in prison from Bedford Hills but then when I came to Harvard to run the sexual assault crisis center, my whole direction in running the center is really to use art for social change and knowing how important that is and as fate would have it, in public life, we get to meet some incredible people and a woman named Judy Dorn came into my life and she's here, Judy, stand up and say hi. And she's just an incredible person.  She's really the hero here in addition to the women of York and she's just done an incredible thing, things there. And if you think about art for social change, she's doing it all. So I love you, Judy. Thank you so much for your work. And of course, Wally, another hero who's done so much with women of York. But for me, today we're going to hear a lot of stories and Judy helps these women articulate their stories through written word, music, dance, song. And of course, Wally takes those stories and gets them out to the public. But I think the biggest message today here is for you also to become storytellers after you leave here today. Make sure that you are telling the story of these women that are incarcerated and how important it is for us to get the word out that the majority of these women deserve a second chance. It's absolutely critical that we support these women. I probably have the statistics off by a little bit, but 98% of these women at York, which are a prison in general, are going to be coming out back into society. And we need to give them a chance. We need they've paid their dues. They've done what they've been told. They've spent their time in prison. And it's our job and our responsibility to give them another chance and make sure that they come back out and reenter in society to a healthy life and move forward. So that's my ask for you today to listen to the stories, tell your friends. You know, I was saying to somebody up in the display, so many times when I go out and speak about those individuals that are incarcerated, I can look in a crowd and I can just see that people don't want to hear anything about it. They have no interest and they would just assume that they just want these people just rot in prison for the rest of their lives. And that's not right. It's not going to happen. And we need to support these individuals. So thank you very much for being here today and please speak out on behalf of these individuals. Thank you. So before we came up here, Kathy said, I don't want to say anything. And I said, I think you better say something. So I didn't know how much time I was seating. But you can tell that Kathy and that I'm quite passionate about this issue. It's very interesting that we're here in Brooklyn from 1980 to 1984. I worked in Brooklyn not far from here. At the municipal building was where my office was. I was a prosecutor, assistant district attorney in New York City, in Brooklyn specifically, Kings County for that period of time. And as I am speaking about this issue, you should understand that I come from that background. I tried 23 felony cases here in Brooklyn. Four of those were homicides. I had convictions in all but one of those cases. By the way, as governor, I spend a good portion of every single day with Connecticut State Troopers who are with me constantly. I have that kind of background, but when I was done as a prosecutor in New York City, I went home to Stamford where I did defense work. And some of that as an appointed counsel in Bridgeport as well, where I tried yet another homicide on the defense side. I came away over a period of time, both as a prosecutor, then as a mayor, as a father, now as a governor, to understand that we have these great disparities in our society. And we're collectively responsible for a number of those disparities. They're not just happenstance. They didn't just come about. Actual things were done that created situations of great despair and great difference in outcomes and treatment of individuals. One of those we took on or a series of those we took on this year legislatively, a battle that we came very close to losing. And quite frankly, only one when I decided that I was going to be quite obvious and pointing out the racial disparities that some of our laws in Connecticut and most states actually present. One of those disparities were like a lot of states, we had passed drug legislation that increased the penalty if you possessed drugs close to a school, close to a medical facility and other places. And what we started to do in Connecticut was to make maps and demonstrate that there was no place in New Haven, practically speaking, or Hartford or gigantic swaths of Bridgeport. In fact, any community with a sizable Hispanic or Black population had disparate zones of mandatory treatment for exactly the same offense. And part of what we decided to do in Second Chance Society legislation this year was to undo that and quite frankly to say that we appoint judges and we have judges to carry out justice. Tying their hands, requiring that they incarcerate someone for exactly the same offense that they would be entirely differently treated in another community makes no sense at all. And it was predicting and it was manufacturing situations where many more Black and Hispanic people were being incarcerated. Now why do I think that that's a difficulty? The reality is for many people, prison, that first prison experience represents an advanced degree in crime. So the idea that we would take people treat them differently and then put them in a situation that was almost certainly, if not certain, much more likely to lead to further arrests, further difficulties, difficulties in obtaining housing, jobs, even a student loan made no sense at all. And I am fond of saying that as a society in America we became far more invested in permanent punishment than we were permanent reformation. On doing this is going to take years to do in our society, in our state by state and our federal alignment. But getting to York as I have on three occasions, getting to other prisons in our system, having visited prisons on other occasions and now having visited prisons in different systems, in different countries, you come away with the knowledge that there is a better way to do this than how we're currently doing this. We should be at least as invested in turning people's lives around if they have to be incarcerated as we are in the punishment factor. And quite frankly, we should do as much as we can to delay, put off, and quite frankly, eliminate to the greatest extent possible incarceration because it represents, in many cases, an advanced degree in criminal behavior. It does not make sense. And then of course, the work that's not done in most prisons is the other side of the story. Not good education programs in most prisons. Not good art or humanities training programs. It's not happening in most of America. I visited this past spring and I'll stop and get off the stage. A prison in West Germany in Berlin. Berlin is both a city and represents the equivalent of the state. About three and a half million people, exact same size of Connecticut. In Connecticut, as I stand before you, we have 16,000 people thereabouts incarcerated. In Berlin, they have 4,000. In Berlin, when you go to prison, you get a good education. The programs are actually offered. You have a job while you're in prison. You have responsibility. Even on the longest sentences, eventually you get visitation home. And they have job programs where 98% of the people are placed as soon as they leave prison. So this idea that prison should mean you never get housing, you never get a job in America, you can't get a student loan is not, does not need to be the way that we do this in the future. And the disproportionate impact on women, of course, is one of the things that we talk about here today. So as my wife has said, our sharing this story, since I suspect that most of us are believers in what we're attempting to do collectively, is a wonderful and empowering thing because we'll develop strength from it. But as Kathy has said, it is about telling that story, having that understanding, understanding what the disproportionate impacts racially, financially, geographically, and in their outcomes. Understanding all of those things and then doing something about it is what we're here at least in part to do. Thank you and have a good day. I just forgot to mention one person, a very, very dear friend, Joe Lee who's left the prison to go on to some different things. But Joe was a dedicated librarian and ran the library for many, many years and had great relationships with the women at York. And thank you for all your time you spent there, Joe. Appreciate it. We get to see the woman behind the man and the man behind the woman. And what great work and how lucky Connecticut is to have a governor and first lady doing the work that they're doing. Thank you very much. And I have other thanks also for us, the Three Guineas Fund, and Catherine Moother who's supported the Women of York Shear Dining Exhibition, which is in the Sackler Center upstairs on the fourth floor. And I thank you, Susan Mizellis. I don't know where you are here for making available your beautiful photographs to us. And to both Susan and Catherine for having audio taped the Women of York so that many of our visitors who come have had the joy really and the interest of listening to the voices of the women. And I would like to also thank the NOVO Foundation because the NOVO Foundation is funding this year's six series of programs of states of denial. And we are very appreciative to them, to the executive director Pamela Schiffman and of course to Jacenia Santana who is the program officer for the initiative to end violence against girls and women. Thank you, NOVO Foundation. It is, yeah, thank you. It is thrilling to have author and educator Wally Lamb in conversation with Kelly Donnelly and Lisette Oblitos, crews both of whom participated in my workshop at York creating their place settings, Feminine Energy and this is Lisette's Phyllis Porter. It's wonderful to have you out and have you here. We are all of us indebted to Joe Lee without whom shared dining workshop and exhibition wouldn't have happened. Joe, as Kathy has said, was the librarian at York for more than 20 years and made all possible for all the women of York. He championed and hosted workshops, created and cared for an extraordinary library at York with an unwavering belief in the power of education and the power of art and of the goodness of people. And I thank you, Joe. I am, it is a pleasure for me to introduce you.  Joe began his career as an educator at the York Correctional Institution for Women in Myantic in 1994 and in 2003 he became the library media specialist. From the start, Joe incorporated arts into his teaching, realizing creativity was not limited by a lack of previous academic success and knowing the skills learned or utilized in the arts would enhance other areas of study. For the past four years, he has assisted with the college programs, offered at York and this year he helped establish the free to succeed program, a collaboration with Trinity College the resettlement program, Judy Dwarne Performance Project and Manchester and Capital Community Colleges. Free to succeed, free to succeed creates the opportunity for women leaving York and we hope there will be many, many women leaving York and many of the women who worked on shared dining, joining us for another state of denial but giving the women an opportunity to continue their education and to attain an associate's degree. Joe has taught also as an adjunct professor at Central Connecticut State University in Trinity College. He earned his MA in applied theater at the University of Manchester, Manchester, England, England across the Atlantic Sea and after 20 years with the Department of the Corrections Joe is recently retiring which we haven't seen yet and he plans to be active with several of the arts and nonprofits and teach at Trinity College as well both here in the United States and in the Euclid. So Joe is going to introduce our panel which will include as I have said Wally Lamb and I please welcome, join me in welcoming Joe Lee and our panelists today Wally Lamb, Kelly and Lizette. Ray, you're here for me and historic. And what an incredible turnout it's like a family reunion. It's a bit surreal for us to be here today. I think that's fair to say. I think the last time the group of us were together it was at York Sea Eye sitting on plastic chairs in a circle in a workshop or attending a performance. Today is a lot different and it feels a lot better. So we're happy to be here today we're happy to share with you, share dining which thanks to Elizabeth Sackler and Rebecca Taffel and Joanne Tucker and Susan Mizellis and Catherine Muthur who were the guiding lights behind the project that brought shared dining to the Brooklyn Museum. So we thank them for all of their work and their dedication. And I know that Elizabeth mentioned it before but there are 10 women the women of York and two of them are with us today which is phenomenal. Eight couldn't be here they're still in Carstead at York Kelly, Shannon Yahaira Chassidy Trisha Lizette Panna Shakima Kara and Tracy and they all agreed to come to a one-day workshop that lasted for nearly two years. And that's pretty typical of DOC we kind of miss our time inside prison takes a lot longer than it does on the outside so it takes two years to get a doctor's appointment and two years to get in a school and two years to finish a one-day project. But what it does is it shows the willingness of the women to risk themselves and their stories and to stay with a project and help develop on its journey. None of us had a vision for this project to be here today and to go on as it's going to go on in other iterations and I just think it really exemplifies the women and I'm going to have the panelists introduce themselves because they'll do a better job and just tell you who they are and how they were connected to York and just one quick piece on expectations when I've attended workshops and Wally's used this before as well we usually ask to do a where I'm from poem or where I'm from prompt and my phrase always begins with I'm from a place I'm from a place with low expectations and unlimited possibilities and to me that really signifies prison and the women in prison in that we unfortunately as a society have been conned into believing by the media that the women do not have value and we do not have expectations for them but when given the opportunity time and again they amaze us with how much they have to offer so thank you for honoring them and for being here today who I know at York at York we always have boxes of Kleenex because we're always crying all the time it's just a hormonal thing and even if you're a guy sorry it's sympathy hormones we have to we have to we have to we have to follow suit so if we could just introduce ourselves tell everybody who you are and maybe how you became associated with York CI just so people have an idea of who we are and who we're on the panel so if Kelly if you want to just introduce yourself and my name is Kelly Donley and I entered York in the fall of 2004 and I left in the spring of 2015 I spent nine and a half years behind the walls of York and I'm still getting my sea legs you know getting off that island but I'm so grateful to be here to be part of this amazing project that grew amazing huge wings and flew to great heights and I'm honored and humbled and privileged to be here thank you good afternoon everyone my name is Lisa Oblides Cruz and I entered your correctional institution back in June of 2010 and I served four years and almost four months behind bars and throughout this journey I finally was able to see the light at the end of the tunnel upon my release day back in a year ago I was released on August of 2014 so I just celebrated my first year of freedom and life never tasted as good as this past year so the experience had been incredible extremely painful but within all that pain a lot of great things came to life and I appreciate people like Joe Lee and Wally Lam among many others Judy Norwin and Connie and all the people behind the facility that never gave up on us never judges or looked at us based on our crime label that really sat with me and really allowed me to see that light at the end of the tunnel for those long four years so for that and more I am very grateful to be here thank you hey everybody my name is Wally Lam looking out on this crowd I didn't expect that you're all going to be so distinguished had I known I would have worn my full length socks but sorry about that next time so I'm back in 1999 I had just come off a double ride on the Oprah Book Club roller coaster and I was looking for ways to give back I was scratching my head and saying you know if karma is going to give me something like this what do I owe karma so shortly after that the then librarian of York called and she said we're in trouble down here a couple of women have committed suicide there have been other attempts at suicide and we're just trying to find ways to distract the women would you come down and talk about your writing reluctantly I said I would and procrastinated a great deal and then finally I went down one afternoon for what I thought was a one-time deal and so we were sitting around in a circle and talked about my writing and when it was time for questions and answers about writing all the hands went up I said yes you met Oprah yes I did next question yes you over there was Oprah like will she be wearing false eyelashes and anyway at the end of that at the end of that one and a half hours I'm packing up my stuff to go thinking that my duty has been dispatched and one of the women the scariest looking women in the group who sort of looked at me like this the whole time and she raised her hand and I said yes ma'am and she said thank you for coming and I said oh you're welcome and she said are you coming back and I think it's just because I'm such a damn chicken that I said okay and that was 16 years ago because as most of you know you give a little you get so much back I have been a teacher all my adult life I taught about 25 years at the North Korea Academy I taught at UConn but I have not ever worked with students who are so dedicated to learning and so driven to revise their work and make it as good as it can get so right now I'm going to share with you some of the work from the workshop five short pieces by five different women the first one is by Robin Ledbetter and it's one of those where I'm from poems Robin entered the prison I believe in 1996 as a 14 year old she has a 50 year sentence 5.0 and she is due to get out when she's 64 she's made a couple of suicide attempts she has told me that when she tries to imagine a life starting at age 64 she loses ground and gives up hope but then she comes back again this is Robin Ledbetter's piece where I'm from I'm from brick buildings and concrete parks from a place where government cheese and oodles of noodles make a meal and roaches lay face up in a puddle of raid I'm from weed smoke crack smoke coke heads and dope heads from swim lessons and an open fire hydrant and street games like red light zoom zoom and the one grown-ups want to play called can you keep a secret I'm from secrets from grandma carrying a bible she cannot read from a daddy gone missing and a mommy stolen by smack and HIV her love just a memory I'm from you better be home before them street lights go on and what happened when lured into the shadows I disobeyed wandering in and out of concrete parks and brick buildings with no basements in a place called longing this next piece is by a woman who unfortunately has passed away Nicole Pierce was in her in her late 20s when she died of cervical cancer a couple of years ago she was she had not yet been sentenced but she had been at York for a number of years for a very serious crime it was connected to the fact that she made an impulsive decision and decided to go off from her California home with a boy that she was sexually attracted to she became an addict and then she became a criminal this is her piece my muscles are sore but I can't keep still my skin feels clammy my eyelids are posted wide open despite how tired my body feels my elevated heart rate thumps loudly the heat is on and the room is roasting fogging up the windows but I'm cold shivering my stomach cramps up and I fight the bile from traveling up my throat there isn't anything worse than feeling this way where is he I'm so sick I need it when he walks in a sense of relief comes over me it's not him I yearn to be with anymore but the drug he's concealed in the inner pocket of his jeans he's holding a bottle of Poland spring and looking wasted I sit up grab the bottle of water from him it's time to get down to business my clothing is drenched in the stench of day old sweat I scoop myself up to the top of the bed and lean back my head against the headboard I crack the cap of the water bottle and pour a small amount into it take a 50 cc syringe from my bedside table I remove the orange protection cap and put the needle's tip in the water draw it up watching the liquid fill each unit the sweat rolls between my breasts and down my stomach my palms are slick and slippery and it's difficult to get a good grip on the plastic syringe the bent scorched metal dinnerspoon lies on the table he tosses me a handful of those stamped translucent baggies I'm in love with what's inside of them I tear the bags open one after another and pour the contents into the wrecked spoon then taking the syringe I drop water into the bowl of the spoon and watch it form a moat around the powder turning the needle around I use the plunger to blend the water in the dope the mixture thickens and then a murky turns a murky light brown I pick up the spoon grab my bick placing the flame beneath it the dirty water begins to boil I place the spoon back down on the table pull the cotton from a q-tip and roll it between my fingers and when I drop it into the spoon its clean white color turns dark I draw the tainted water up into the syringe placing the needle prick onto the cotton so that I can better suck up the heroin I fill each unit until in this unit in the syringe leaving only a small space for my blood to register as I search my bruised arm for a vein my dreams and aspirations drift even further and further away one of the things that's very difficult for women who enter prison is that so many of them are moms and so their kids have to be taken care of by grandmothers and friends and sisters and so forth this is a little poem by Christina McNaughton who happily has been out for a number of years now this poem was published in The Sun magazine a while back its title is pictures of a daughter viewed from prison you set the photos down spreading time around you panorama style button nose baby toddler little girl bigger girl your eyes roam the chain of living paper dolls the side by side smiles posed just for you time cannonballs you in the gut and you think when the hell did all this happen how did I miss so much too late to cry too late to mourn the baby smell the small heft the music of her giggles the middle photos blur become the space between your first photo and your latest you look up at the clock time has just stolen another hour Lynn friend has one of the saddest stories of any of the women that I've worked with over the years and she survives largely through comic relief she also makes us cry Joe mentioned that there's always Kleenex but sometimes in Monica Lord's room there is no Kleenex but there is one of those giant rolls of toilet paper it's about this wide and so we use that in a pitch anyway here's one of Lynn's funny pieces she writes during the ceremony I looked from the bridal couple to the gathering of friends and family who had come to witness their union swept up in the magic of the day I was listening intently to the minister's meaningful words about holy matrimony and unconditional love when without warning it happened the elastic waist of my elegant hand sewn underwear had just broken and that fancy underwear was heading south oh no I thought this could only happen to me my sister Andrea was standing next to me I leaned toward her and whispered you're not going to believe what just happened Lynn she whispered back I swear to god if you make me laugh there's going to be held to pay we had a history my sister and I I would make her laugh at inappropriate moments and in an attempt to stifle ourselves our shoulders would move up and down with silent guffawing yeah but the elastic on my underwear snapped and they've fallen down to my knees I shifted my position whoa make that below my knees Andrea's shoulders started moving up and down that started me going the shoulder sisters were at it again if only I had worn pantyhose I placed my hand just below my knee along the outside of my dress of course and managed to pinch a little of the lace trim I tried inching the underwear a little by little back up toward my rear end I couldn't get a strong hold of though and they kept slipping back down to my knees oh my god I thought they'll be saying their vows soon I had better figure out something quickly because once the minister invites the groom to kiss the bride I'll have to take Dan's arm and walk back up that aisle and how the heck am I going to get myself out of this one I'll let her know about that applause she's still she's still serving time finally the last one I'll read is by Barbara Parsons she was she was incarcerated at York for about I think 15 16 years out of her 25 year sentence for how having killed her abusive husband she some of the writing that she did was awarded the Penn American Center's First Amendment Prize which is funded by by the Paul Newman Food Company when that happened and she won that prize which came with a $25,000 award I was kicked out of the prison for a while and and and the prison I was investigated the women were investigated and then and then in the cruelest cut of all about five years worth of the women's work was deleted from the hard drives of the computers it all came out okay the the stuff came back eventually thanks to Tex Barbara was able to get get her her her prize money when she served her sentence and got out of prison ironically that was about the same month that our then governor John Rowland went into prison so they they waved to each other I I had when I you know when I hear Governor Malloy and Mrs. Malloy talk it's it's like it's like the air has and the prison has become oxygenated oxygenated again thank goodness we have a much more enlightened leadership than we did back in those very dark days anyway this is Barbara Parsons it's strange they say women often without realizing it marry versions of their fathers but Mark was more like my mother sweet and loving at first and later angry needy and unpredictable two years into our marriage he was diagnosed with the same disease that mom had suffered paranoid schizophrenia but unlike mom he refused to take his prescriptions medicating himself instead with alcohol mark was my second husband our relationship began when my roommates amazon parrot landed on his head as he walked out of my cottage with a peanut butter sandwich in his hand it ended 11 years later with dead chickadees lying on the ground beneath my bird feeder mark had grabbed one of his guns and used the birds for shooting practice the freedoms that I've begun to reclaim on the prison's minimum security side have helped me cope with post-traumatic stress disorder color is healing for me and so green vines and pastel blossoms border the window and bulletin board of my room sunflowers and butterflies adorn the walls I don't know how old my mother's father was when he first molested her but I was four when he molested me after he finished and we left the small storage room where he had taken me the trees the sky the neighbors lawns had all turned gray the night I shot mark our bedroom was a wash and yellow in an out-of-body experience I watched the woman pick up the gun unable to stop her and now I sit in the circle with other inmates baffled by what my fellow survivors of abuse are saying how could all our men strangers to one another have spoken the same phrases I'm going to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it no one else would ever want you so you better get used to it where could you go where I wouldn't find you sweetie I swear it's never gonna happen again hearing marks words come out of these women's mouths I flash back to the night I confronted him about his affair with a 15 year old girl I see his smirk hear the way he turns things around so that the problem is my unreasonableness why can't I just be patient while he decides whether he wants to stay or leave me I know I can't win this argument I never win it he is an imposing overweight man six foot two to my five feet five and he's strong as hell he has many more guns than he needs and he has hinted that someday if I push him hard enough he might have to make me disappear the voices in the women of the women in my group drift back and I understand the fatal error we have in common we stayed with our abusers because we both loved and feared them and because they were talented manipulators masters of the bait and switch who kept us constantly off balance as Sandra speaks about the sexual abuse she endured I remember my pain during and after marks violent poundings tears blur my vision how could he have done those things to me and called it love how could I have allowed him to do it in tears abor tells us what her husband did to their four month old daughter it was hard for me to register what I was seeing she says he was bent over her licking up and down her legs licking her private area nauseous I begin to sob I blame myself my stupid uneducated denial for the fact that my husband molested my granddaughter as my grandfather had molested me when my children were growing up I had tried so hard to keep them safe to break that cycle of abuse but I had failed my sweet beautiful granddaughter she had been harmed because I had stayed with Mark convincing myself that his failings were my fault my responsibility and in the middle of that worst night the room had gone yellow and I had taken his life an irrational and horrible act of last resort in defense of the child of my child that night my life as I knew it collapsed 24 hours later I had been processed into this sisterhood of misfits called York see I thank you I think the the title of today's program um touching humanity creativity and transformation couldn't be more poignantly brought to light than by sharing the stories of the women at York that you shared and touched on issues of abuse and drug addiction and tragedy from young people throughout the spectrum of life and so we're going to kind of get into our program and I have some questions prepared for the panelists and then we're going to really do what is more important is we're going to open up to questions from you all because as I can see since the lights are up thank god in the house many of you all have had contact with the criminal justice system as either residents or family members friends volunteers or staff members and I really encourage you to ask questions or share your experiences based on the issue of creativity and transformation so we'll get to that point and then we'll do that and then we have a wonderful reception outside we'll be taking lots of pictures and sending memories back to the women at York so we encourage everybody to do that and do upstairs to see share dining if you haven't so the first question and basically I'm hoping it's an engaged conversation that I'm going to try to steer a little bit which I doubt what's going to happen and keep us on on topic but just to set the scene is like why art in prison prison when you think about prison I don't think you think about art I think you think about a lot of things and I don't think art is one of them so I really want you to think back and and just try to feel what was it that made the connection for you all in art whether it's writing or visual arts or performance poetry movement dance what was it about prison and art that made the connection for you and if you can share some some of that I think it'd be enlightening to see how art enters a prison that is not typically thought of well for me one of the first experiences I had was letter writing you know to literally sit down and write my family and I know and to really express myself and I know you know being in Wally Lair's writing group kind of helped me hone that it's a beautiful art it's a lost art to be able to sit and share your most intimate thoughts and and what's really going on and to tell a story and to tell it well was you know the beginning you know to get in touch with writing again you know and for me how I introduced was you know getting a hold of a colored pencil was like gold especially in assessments in the very beginning coming in so I would make little doodles on my on my stationery and you know do hand handmade stationery make it really personal and pretty and and what have you but my first experience with art was through the prison prison arts I had a roommate who sketched and she would bring out her sketches and and colorful pictures and and I said I want to you know I want to tap into that you know just to bring a little little bit of color into into the space it's so void of color you know ourselves and to be able to put those sunflowers up on the bulletin board or you know little creative expressions you know took away you know made you not such a number that there was individuality you know going on so that was my first but I I really discovered I really unearthed uh an inner artist within myself at the you know during my time and in a poet that I didn't know existed you know in a dancer and I really explored through the arts and so yeah that was that was my early take on being creative for me can quite really pinpoint when exactly I thought of myself as an artist or or found this is my refuge I think at my lowest which was the very beginning of being stripped away from your identity or whatever you thought or I thought they find it me as an individual um the moment I entered a facility and I was just handed this uniform and this ID number and then officers constantly will say you are numbers go there and you go there and you don't talk and and I feel so constricted and so deprived and I guess all the the feeling of guilt and shame and and and the sadness and anger it was just all like entwined in myself and I felt there was no way of letting it out and um I remember um within my first week of incarceration I was provided within the fourth fifth day of pen the first time I saw a pen and I was like I need to do something and I grabbed a piece of paper and I drew the picture that I will be handed and I was to wear whatever I want within the facility if my mom picture next to my inmate number and I drew myself just made a replica of that with the pen and as I was working on this black ink paper drawing this picture of a sad face looking straight at a camera that's the moment when I think I said I need to find a way in which I can redefine myself um in other words I am not a person in this picture and from that moment on I just cling on to anything that will allow me to reinvent myself whether it was through a book getting to a character uh a program eventually I joined uh Wally Lam's writing class which to me was very healing I think it was more therapeutic um in the sense that I got to learn more about myself and things that maybe I didn't know want to look within me in my experience um but thanks to the program and and how well connected the women were and to open about talking about the funny experiences as well as the bitter ones was okay um so little by little starting from that one moment that I got the pen uh as I incorporated myself in the lifestyle of an inmate following certain rules um and eventually getting myself around people like Mr. Lee and holding a job and being able to join other programs that were provided in the facility I slowly transformed myself and reinvented myself trying to be more than just my number and my crime great and Wally well I think a lot of people think of prison as a place where somebody who's been convicted goes to be punished and then many of us believe that prison is a place where there is opportunity um for a woman or a guy to rehabilitate themselves and when you punish people as opposed to being merciful and giving them giving them access to the arts um um you are creating recidivism are you helping you're you're helping that that equation um one of the one of the people sitting out here today is Robin Cullen who I worked with in the early days of the program Robin you want to just wave there say hello yeah Robin if you don't mind my sharing was she was in um at York for a DUI fatality and when she got out she has done wonderful work with uh with um uh mothers against drunk driving she's uh uh she's worked very very hard and very long at um at uh you know trying to prevent the kinds of of crime that uh she was she went in for but one of the things that Robin I remember her saying is that you can't beat a person well you know you can't beat them until they're cured somehow um so um so the arts is a way to rehabilitate um the to make art of any kind is to take a risk um and prison is a place where it's probably a good idea not to trust too many people because some people are there that are going to exploit you um but the women one of the things that I observed in our group is that the women created this sort of oasis of trust for themselves and one another and once you bear your soul and and tell your history and and and other people are bearing witness and saying oh yeah that happened to me too then your your burdens light the secrets come out of you and are shared and you know if you carry a heavy object among several people it's not as heavy as carrying it by yourself so that's the first step getting getting to trust the others in in a group making art and then from there um then you got to get down to business and practice craft and that's what you know the women really invested in and and why they became you know successful enough to be published authors and that the process of the story telling that Kathy Moloy gave us a call to today to to go out and share these stories so people really understand your experiences and how they resonate with individuals and the connection to the dinner party uh that elizabeth was had so much foresight to bring to york uh really resonated because that was judy chicago's reaction to the elimination of women from a recorded history and and women at york and women throughout the country in prison and and inmates in prison are removed not only from our recorded history but from our current consciousness um so to be able to become storytellers to share your stories to take control of your story not to let other people control your story and to have it be heard is really important and I think what I think we just heard is that that both kelly and and elizabeth spoke about telling a story and how that impacts your own personal identity and how it how it hopes to change your identity and walley's constantly uh saying in in his writing program is to edit edit edit and that's exactly what's happening in any form of art that you have going on at the prison and and I and we also have we've been very very fortunate and thank god joanne tucker uh is here but thank god she's on the planet uh because joanne was was the first person who came to us and and asked if we if we wanted to do an arts-based residency because she'd received a grant from the phenomenal nathan cummings foundation here in in new york um and i'd asked her to come and do a one day workshop and she wanted to do a week long residency and how could you say no to that um and so she was able to help us really kick off the residency programs that we have at york and and the value and the benefit um that we get from those and from those projects have led to the performance pieces through avodah and judy dorn and and and i just also want you to reflect on what's it like to have a piece that you've written or created performed and performed one of the great things we have at york is we have a family's performance so families come in and they're able to witness their loved ones performing and sharing their stories and growing and transforming through creativity and the arts and so maybe we could speak to what's it like to have a piece that you've created performed either performed by yourself or performed by others um for me um i i've i've been fortunate enough to have uh work published and i'll fly away with walley lamp had pieces uh performed uh finally by myself uh with the judy dorn performance arts project as well as my pieces had been brought out by her company while i was still incarcerated so to be able to have my works and and my stories uh be told while i was still incarcerated was just enormous uh you know my to have my family and friends and uh to see me in a in a whole new light uh just uh totally embraced brought uh brought me closer uh with with friends and family and just a wonderful connection i was also part of the prison arts uh program while i was in there and i had my pieces showcased at different art shows and so uh that really helped it really enriched the arts enriched my life uh deeply and still continues to do to do so and um it uh helped me to find a new way of expression find a different voice a different way to uh to express myself there was a time in my life when i got wrapped up and you know run in you know run in 100 miles an hour work uh taking care of my my ailing mother uh taking care of everyone in my life that i that i lost my voice i lost who i was uh just in the rat race of life and through addiction with alcohol um so when life you know uh slammed the brakes on and and uh i ended up incarcerated uh i was able to find new ways of expression through the arts and um i'm just grateful uh you know to have discovered all these great treasures uh you know within and uh the arts helped me transform my life and uh shine light and just um it's just been an amazing journey and um very very happy to be here so yeah mr leo what was the question again i kind of got all like i know what you say and i'm just getting other ideas of my own experience so what was it again i mean i think really looking at how what you've created and how when you see it performed or exhibited how what is that experience like what does it mean to you whether it's been a family's performance or a public or even a prison-based exhibition um i don't think i know it was throughout the experiences that i had um involved in the arts i felt the end result was very liberated um i felt astof from i think i was in was it avada um and judy dorwin and there was one one i think one time we had that um mobile theater happened at york a little workshop and so also with avada it's a workshop that lasted a week if i'm not if i don't if i'm remembering correctly um and uh with judy dorwin it was a more of a longer uh long term workshop as well where women were encouraged to write whatever there was a theme uh each year would change just as the case with judy dorwin performance uh and women will write their stories at the very beginning i was very hesitant i felt um i'm originally from peru and i migrated to the state when i was 17 so uh when i was incarcerated i entered a facility when i was 29 so maybe was i was 30 31 when i um entered uh and was able to join all these programs i felt somewhat hesitant and very doubtful of myself and my writing skills and being able to really articulate what i wanted to say so i said you know what i'm not going to do any writing anything that's standing in front of public maybe just be the dancer be in the background and that's just the way i always wanted to be and the way that i thought i could navigate and get through my time without getting in any trouble just stay in the background and just don't move if you don't have to till you're out of there um so with all that all those hesitations i will join these programs but always very uh just you know always just holding back and little by little through these programs i was letting myself lose i learned through the programs that i am an individual and and i am not perfect that is clear i make awful mistakes and but there's a way which i can make them better i can i can be a better person i can stand today and and do something that doesn't only describe the negative part of me or the dark side of me but it can also enlighten the positive one which i do have um so being in the programs and seeing the end result and have family come and see it and see me perform and see do the art that i did as a backdrop or have me just watch me do certain movements among another couple of inmates when we create these scenarios was very rewarding and liberated and for those moments that the workshop lasted i felt as though i was not in prison i was i was in a theater workshop where i was trying to be someone other than myself at the present moment and to me that was just something that i always look forward to because without them then i was back to be in my crime because to me prison that's what it was you know wearing the burgundy shirt jeans and skippies and walking the same walkway to get to a childhood at a certain time and have a meal and then walk back then be locked in yourself and just being in a tiny bunk bed and the next day repeated and repeat the same thing over and over again to me was just a constant reminder of what i was there a crime and um it was exhausting for me to constantly be reminded that i am this crime and that's how i'm known and that's all anybody will know of me so it was um because of this programs that eventually i was able to let go of that of that past of that definition of myself and reinvent myself so it was liberating i think it's incredibly profound and when you come to york and come to performance to see especially to see the performances um because it really does change the dynamic because i think everybody who goes to prison goes here with the shadow identity of who of what they did the act that brought them to prison and the performances really allow you to see the whole being that we're all flawed we all make mistakes we all need to move forward and many times we don't allow certain people to do that and prisons are made of concrete and steel and they encase people's lives in the actions of their past and i so i think the the arts really helped to kind of break some of those things down i went to to york to visit just on thursday even though i've retired and i still try to sneak in the front door because often as they let me in and so some of the women share their thoughts as well and shannon and i believe shannon's family is here today so thank you for coming uh shannon reflected on what life in prison would be like without art and shannon said without art and inmates time would definitely be impacted as an inmate we have no sense of identity we wear the same clothes and we are identified by a six-digit number it doesn't matter if you're here for 30 days or 30 years we're viewed the same art gives us back our identity and i think that's what we're we're sharing today yahira and yahira's families here as well i saw them earlier um yahira said art helped me to learn about who i'm trying to become art is the way i show all of my emotions is a way for me to be safe within my own thoughts it is a way to express what i feel in a place where authenticity is frowned upon art shows who i am and tracy i don't know tracy's family's here i hope they're here yes wonderful thank you for coming tracy said what some may not realize is women in prison are not merely devoid of freedom and materialistic possessions many lack self-love and self-esteem as well learning that i'm capable of creating beautiful things was an amazing realization women like me are unfamiliar with feeling proud of themselves hearing someone compliment your work can be overwhelming at first in exhibiting or publishing our work you give us validation at long last we feel worth so there's some of the words from the women at york as well um so joe joe i just wanted to share um one uh anecdote about robin led better whose work i i read first uh this afternoon and she's the one who has the long very very long sentence um and when i'll fly away was about to be published um i went with a lot of excitement to you know pass out copies to the women and show them you know so and they were all flipping through to see their name and print and so forth and i happened to be seated next to robin and i noticed that she didn't open her book and that she was kind of hyperventilating and i i leaned over and i whispered i said robin are you okay and she said yeah she said but um this is something good that's happened and whenever something good happens in my life it's scary i'm uh i'm afraid i'm afraid of that and um you know that's the that's the extent to some people are are sort of beaten down and to be afraid of success um so you make that bridge or you help the person make that bridge over to the other side of those feelings of self-worth um so it's it's really i have learned so much i think i've learned more than any of the women that i've you know that i've worked with in prison and i would imagine that um judy and um yeah i see i see you uh uh joey i'm nodding over there um and while i while i have the mic i just wanted to make uh one more acknowledgement uh two people who um are here today uh who have been really wonderful uh to the women uh they are on the on the staff of york they're colleagues of of joes or former colleagues of joes i guess now um leslie richway who is the the school counselor would you stand up and just wave leslie and next to her is uh monica lord who is a a teacher teaches a lot of the g ed classes um monica really cracks the whip so instead of monica lord we couldn't think of her as lord monica just so you know she thinks of herself as lord monica as well but anyway they are they are great and uh and and they're they're my they're our handlers at the uh in the in the writing program i'm so dangerous that i have to have handlers when i go down there thanks um i was just given the five minute warning and because we're going to open up to questions and i also wanted to make sure that i had a couple more pieces to share from the woman at york and then i want to touch on what i think will obviously be our last question but you'll have time to bring us back to more questions so talking from the voice of the women again uh shekema shared that art has helped me with my personal healing that i never thought could happen art has become my personal outlet for my built-up anger and bitterness it has helped me look at life differently the shared dining project brought my mother and i closer i am able to talk to her about things i never would have been before and trisha and i know trisha's family is here i met them at saw them at lunch trisha shared art has allowed me to find solace in being able to honor the women that have raised loved and supported me unconditionally i am so thankful that this venue has provided a place for my family and friends to gather although i am not at the program i know that there's a part of me there today and that was trisha from york ci and then just for our last formal question um and we can all kind of just jump in on this one is do you have to defend your beliefs about the role and necessity of art and prison and how has that come about in your life and how have you reacted to it um and so i don't know i know walley has um many times um but also for lisette and for for kelly as well um how do you have to defend the necessity of art in prison or how have you defended the necessity of art in prison defended the the role of art yeah many people feel art has no place in prison our tax dollars shouldn't support it which they don't by the way because we spend no you know connect the tax dollars on the programs they're they're funded through private donations and nonprofits um but that many people feel that art doesn't belong in a prison so how have you or would you defend um the role of arts in prison i would absolutely defend um the the the role of art in prison um simply because not only have you know have i watched myself uh bloom and blossom and grow as an artist um i've also witnessed other women you know who used art as an amazing vehicle to transform their life to express themselves to build confidence um and you know just uh just expand and enrich the quality of uh you know their human experience um you know in life in life you know behind the the walls of york to be able to uh witness that you know in all areas of the of the arts i watched one woman dear friend who could barely put a sentence together and now she has become one of the star writers for the judy dwarren performance uh project her confidence she was meek and broken and just a mess when she first came in and we went to our very first uh group a grief and loss group and we learned that you know grief and loss was not only from losing you know i loved one but you know going uh being incarcerated you know there's there's great grief and loss and it could be materialistic things uh you know the grief and loss of of the disconnect from our loved ones and so many but to be able to witness her uh you know nine years later taking courses at Wesleyan University and uh just you know flying high just has been what you know what a what an honor to uh to see a dear friend flourish because of the arts so i think um every um prisoner at this moment at york will um um truly support and defend the idea that the arts should not be um should not only be um um provided to prisons but more likely uh it should be more of a human right to have um because of the positive effects it has in every single human being especially those seeking for change and growth um and although many walk into the facility in my experience um women walk in no because they want to be in prison um they commit a crime we commit crimes and we are broken we are broken dolls that do not know how to deal with our issues and our struggles um and the arts i think provide it creates this leeway where you not only find yourself but you also learn to accept yourself and with that acceptance you open room for growth for change um and i think that it should definitely be a law to instead of um perceiving punishment and incarceration as well you owe us this time you are going to sit in prison for four years and just you know like your nails just eat or just sleep all day you know made a demand as a society that you seek the change that you need so that when you come out you no longer go back to prison and you continue to help us grow at the society and with if we were to come out with more programs that will mandate most of the inmates i think great changes will happen um and in the nation because that is exactly what it does and unfortunately we think well the art is just for you know kids or somebody that really earns to have fun with the arts but no when you're broken when when you are in so much pain you have this anger in yourself and this sense of shame and guilt what a better tool than to use the arts so that at your own pace little by little as you open certain doors within yourself you not only will discover yourself but you seek to change for the better so definitely make it a law well i think we have the right audience and we have the governor of connecticut and we have uh kathy milloy who's the head of the arts council in greater harvard and i think kathy would agree that she would love to make art a law in the state of canada and throughout the country um and certainly make fundraising a lot easier um if it was mandated by law so i think that was a really great way and a great poignant way to to sum up uh today's discussion and and we really have a little bit of time we have a great reception i don't know how much time we have uh five minutes which york time that's two years uh but five but we're on but we're on elizabeth sakler time so we've got five minutes um if anybody wants to go to the mics on either side of the auditorium and pose a question um or a comment we'd love to hear from you and we'll give you all a minute or two to muster up that courage um to ask the that question and then we probably can get in one or two questions hello yeah i just wanted comment on um you know the walls keeping the women and inmates in general in i've come to realize is also a way of keeping them hidden so that the rest of the world so that we don't have to we don't have to look we don't have to see what's going on and i think that the art is aside from the amazing power it has for anyone who participates it's an amazing conduit to bring those stories out into the public because i know for one before you know recent exposure uh to the whole system you know it does so much to humanize rather than just numbers the people who are behind the walls and as an example of how it really does humanize oddly enough my hairdresser's husband is one of the co's at york um and oh yes a lot a lot of chatting um but but i had the privilege of going in and seeing one of the performances um in the facility and when i next time i was there i was talking to the stylist and mentioned i had been there i had met her husband and she said oh he talked about that and he talked about how powerful it was and how he it really changed the way that he looked at the women the women with whom he had been working for years and years and years so it's so powerful not just for the people who participate on the inside but for all of us and if we want to see any kind of reform we need to increase those highways of information between the inside and the outside thank you thank you yeah you know when i um when i started at the prison is my my stereotypes about how who i thought you all were uh were were sort of you know they blew away immediately and i had no um i had no idea that we were going to do books of of writing um but one day shortly after um i started at the prison i met a woman while i was christmas shopping a friend of mine and she said what do you you know what's up what you've been doing and i started talking about this program that i had just started and she said um with this sort of smirk on her face oh gee maybe i'll go commit a felony so i can go down there and and join all the fun and um you know i took that comment and that's what drove me to drive the women to get so good so that their voices could get outside of the prison so that we could um you know defy those kind of stereotypes and say think again and think more deeply they are more than just their crimes right we have chance for just one last question i'll try to make a short first thank you for offering your stories thank you for being here uh i'm interested in what you suppose the role of art might be in instead of fixing a situation that's broken and and what it might be as a preventative measure you know um would you be in the place that you are or would you have been in the place that you were if art was more prevalent in your life when you were growing up good question that's a great question uh yeah yeah no that's a fantastic uh question um i didn't uh i didn't i didn't realize that uh you know i had that inner artist in me so i i didn't even know who she was when she showed up you know kind of but um i think so um i went to a i went to a very very good school and and there was art uh present in my life so i think um you know i think to you know i i really embraced the arts once i got uh to york because i was introduced to art at a very young age um you know through through my schools uh by the time i was uh maybe in the latter part of junior high was when they started plucking the the uh the art side of the schools so um you know i was fortunate to to have our present in my schools growing up so was that can you react quickly or no i couldn't understand the question okay if art was present in your life earlier might that have made a different art was present in your life earlier would that have made a difference in your trajectory or your life journey well art was present in my life before um because uh when i first migrated to the states i felt in a sense somewhat a prisoner uh within my own self because i when i when i came i had no um knowledge of english and i struggled that was a teenager so i had a lot in my mind um so i think i utilized the arts back in high school to better adjust myself to a different culture and kind of get to know myself better so art was um introduced to me as a young teenager um so i guess um going to prison with that somewhat experience as though the prison one was more dramatic i think the need really uh present itself rapidly uh upon um um incarceration where i needed to have some way of dealing with these emotions and this fear and pain and drastically just like grab the pen and i just went straight for for the arts as a way of coping okay i'm just gonna answer this quickly even though i have not been in prison uh but what but for me it's all about validation um i had no idea that i wanted to be a writer or that i was any good at it until eighth grade i had a small intimate moment with my eighth grade teacher mrs kramer we were all silent reading and she came up to me and she whispered in my ear i suppose you know that you're a very good writer it's like what me and then at the end of that year eighth grade graduation um i was called up to get a writing award i opened up the envelope there was five dollars in it and i thought they had made a mistake and i went down to ocean beach with a friend and i spent my five dollars on ski ball because i figured if i spent it that i wouldn't have to give it back but uh you know i might not have become a writer had it not been for somebody saying you're a good writer go for it excellent thank you have a law that art continues and stays in our education system yes of the women of york i want you to know what uh joy what a pleasure uh what an incredible experience it was for me for rebecca to work with the women of york and i love you all dearly and i'm very very proud that um shared dining is here and has been achieved and that we are going to celebrate it now in a reception and uh this thursday i want to tell you that we do have another program for states of denial it's the barred prison initiative and max kenner is who's founder of the he's the executive director of the barred prison prison initiative is coming with two of his uh alums actually and he is fighting for education in prison in prison and he is uh i think he's just 25 years old and he's already out there he'll be here at seven o'clock on thursday and so i hope uh those of you who can will join us for that but in the meanwhile i want to thank walley i want to thank lizzette heli joe thank you thank all of you um know that with programs like this with people like joe with men like walley um that your loved ones behind walls at york are being cared for and supported thank you very much


The data tells us we get things wrong a lot and I think often though we get caught up including as entrepreneurs certainly as politicians in wanting to be right and so I think we always have to embrace and even celebrate each other's failures and we have to be open and vulnerable and know that we never know what we don't know and yet also not have that undermine our confidence to believe that we have something meaningful to offer and contribute and so trust is a big thing for me I think when people really trust each other they can work together in service of a shared intention and it doesn't matter if I'm right or I'm wrong along the way to doing something to make the world a better place it really matters that I trust that I can be working authentically with other people to do it and that they trust me that I'm working in service of that so there's a human vulnerability a human connection aspect of this that I think is fundamental to making technical teams build solutions that actually work that don't get caught up in the sort of the need to be right.


I seek refuge with Allah from Satan the accursed. In the name of Allah, the Gracious, the Merciful. May Allah bless Muhammad, the Merciful. Peace be upon you, dear viewers, and welcome back to this final edition of this series where we are examining the life and legacy of Fatima al-Zahra, insha'Allah, today's final episode. We'll be looking at the Salah of Fatima al-Zahra, and what we can learn from the immense prayer of this fantastic lady. And it's hard to help me guide through this topic. I'll be joined by my dear guest, Sheikh Muhammad al-Halil. Thank you for joining us once again. Really appreciate you being here. So when we look at the prayer of Fatima al-Zahra, I'm sure there's a plethora of lessons that we can learn in our own lives. Of course prayer, as we know, is something that we do five times a day. That's if we don't do the extra mustahab prayers. In terms of the way we perform our prayer, I feel like praying day to day, you can almost lose track of what you're doing. It becomes more of a habit than a conversation with God and something to elevate you. So insha'Allah, hope that in this episode we can look at the prayer of the greatest woman that ever lived and ask ourselves how we can improve our prayer based on that. So just to begin, tell us how PB Fatima al-Zahra performed her prayers. There's no doubt that one of the most beloved actions of the Ahal al-Bayt was Salah to them. In every angle we look at their lives, we see that they were so eager. Starting with Rasulullah, you would say, O Bilal, give me ease, give me comfort by reciting the adhan. Then you have, of course, Amir al-Mu'mineen, Salam al-Lahi, believing and saying firmly that his greatest moment was in Salah when he was struck first to Arab al-Kaaba. And you have Imam al-Husayn, alaihi salam. When it comes to the planes of Karbala, he would make sure that despite the arrows being showered at him, he would perform the Salah, Salat al-Khawf at that time. And you have Imam al-Husayn, alaihi salam, who would be pale when approaching Salah and would say, do you know who I'm about to stand before? And you have Imam Zayn al-Abideen, alaihi salam, who is Sayyid al-Sajideen, you know, Prolonges al-Sajda and so on. And you have therefore these examples of individuals who did not perform Salah only because of obligation, but they did it because it's something beloved to them. This is a key aspect in the development of the human being, because if we love Allah, we know that He has instructed us to do certain deeds for our own benefit. There is not a single iota or benefit that comes back to Allah when it comes to SubhanAllah, when it comes to Salah. It is all to do with us. And so when we recognize that we approach Salah in a different manner. Now, one thing I would like to mention about Sayyid al-Nisa, Lady of Light, Fatima al-Zahra, Salamatullah, and Salamu alayhi salam. There are a number of narrations which highlight her association and her connection and relationship with prayers. One of them is regarding the performance of the prayer and the reward of those who perform prayers. In a conversation she had with her beloved father, the Holy Prophet Muhammad, Salallahu alaihi wa salam, remembering that sometimes we get lost in this discussion of how we should perform our Salah, our concentration, and we have to remind some people to actually pray. I remember once in a center I was giving a medallist about how Qur'an speaks about punishment in Jahannam and how we should be wary. Someone after I finished came to me and said, you're talking about punishment in Jahannam, but there are some people who don't believe in Jahannam. So you have to prove, you have to show that there is Jahannam. Sometimes we forget the first step and that is actually to pray. This is a key because not everyone does so and we have to constantly remind ourselves. Now, Qur'an tells us that there is a conversation that takes place in Jahannam. The conversation is between the people of Hell. They would say, Why are you in an area in Jahannam known as Saqr? So the response would be, The first thing that the people of Jahannam would respond in answering why they've ended up where they are is because they have not performed their prayers. And similarly, we are told the famous Hadith of the Holy Prophet, Salallahu alaihi wa salam, Salatu Amud al-Din, If prayers are accepted, everything else will be accepted. And if it's rejected, everything else will be rejected. Now, what is interesting is there is this narration which is from the Holy Lady of Light which highlights the importance of performing the Salat. This is a conversation she says to her father, the Holy Prophet, What is the repercussions of those who take their prayers lightly from men or women? The Holy Prophet says, Those people who take their prayers lightly or don't pray will receive 15 things and Allah will punish them by 15 ways. So it's interesting that these 15 are then mentioned. The Prophet says 6 in Dunya, 3 at the time of death, 3 in the grave and 3 in Qiyamah. So let's just remind ourselves what they are. 6 things that will happen in Dunya if you don't pray, the Prophet says to Fatima. Number one, Allah will remove barakah from your lifespan, meaning that in our understanding, and this is a lengthier subject but summarized, we have an opportunity to expand or increase our lifespan due to our own deeds to a certain level that Allah has promised. But if we don't do certain deeds, it will go to the minimum. So the Prophet says, You don't pray and the barakah, the blessings, the divine favours upon you when it comes to your life will be removed. Number two, rizq is also reduced. Some people come forward and say, I've been trying my hardest to increase my business. It's not working out. Can you give me a du'a or a tasbih or a ta'weez? People say that. Have you been praying? Have you missed fajr? Because fajr is one that a lot of people miss, not in the winter but in the summer often, isn't it? Because the fact they have to wake up at 4 or something like that. And so it seems to be that the only fajr that some people pray is June the month of Ramadan because they have to wake up before to make sure that they eat, especially when they have a 20 hour fast. So the Prophet says, rizq will be removed. Then he says to Sayyid-ul-Fatima, there's a message for all of us. Yemhu allahu az-zawajil si'ma'u s-salihina min wajhe. You know, there is some kind of a light or some kind of a facial element associated with those who are righteous. Allah says that is removed from them if they miss prayers. Number four, every deed that they do, they will not be given the thawab for it. This is heavy. This is very strong. Allah, you know, the Prophet is saying, whatever you do, because it's related to that narration. If it's accepted, everything else is accepted. If it's not, nothing else will be. Number five, the dua will not be answered by Allah in dunya. And number six, the dua of others will not be answered for them. So please bear in mind these six things in dunya for those who miss prayers, those who take their prayers lightly or do not perform them deliberately. Now, the three are death, he says to Sayyid-ul-Fatima.   This hunger is not physical hunger, it's spiritual hunger as well.  Really desperate for water or quenching of their thirst. Very scary points. Very, you know. And then the three in the grave, the Prophet says, the repercussions of not praying, he says Allah will make sure that there is an angel with that person always that will annoy him or her in the grave constantly. Number two, there will be more pressure and the squeezing of the grave. And number three, the grave will be dark. Now remember, all graves are dark. But we're talking about the soul here, not the body. We're talking about how the soul then experiences and what sees and so on and so forth, missing of prayers has severe repercussions. Then finally, the Prophet says three things will happen on the Day of Qiyamah. Allah, Subhanahu Wa Ta'ala, will appoint an angel who will constantly strike him on his face whilst the other of his creation look at him or her. So it will be a source of disgrace. He will be severely held accountable. He will be held accountable. He will be held accountable. He will be held accountable. He will be held accountable. He will be held accountable. Which is the worst of the worst. Absolutely cannot get worse than this. Allah will not look at him in compassion, does not purify his deeds and for him or her there is severe punishment. So it's a reminder for us not to really take Salah lightly in case we think that we will have the intercession of Sayyid-ul-Fatima. Salah will say, yeah, I have the Ahlul-Bayt. I'm not going to pray, but they will help me on the Day of Qiyamah. The day of Qiyamah, the Shafa'ah. And Imam Al-Sadaq gives us categorically, لن ينالوا شafa'atuna من استخف بصلاة. Anyone who takes their prayers lightly will not gain our intercession. Just to interject, you mentioned it's not just about people who don't pray, but also about those who take their prayer lightly. What does that mean specifically? Well, that's important that you ask this question. It means that when I come to pray, I don't respect the Salah the way it should be. Meaning that, for example, I'm dressed inappropriately, for example. I don't pray and it's time. I leave it till the last minute. I have distractions around me that make me think about all kinds of things. I do not encourage the establishment of prayers wherever I am in the mosque or wherever I'm thinking of other things. It's not a major thing in my life. It's something that I just have got to do and leave. So it is about taking prayers to a level which is disrespectful towards Salah. We're going back to actually the prayer of Fatima Zahra. How did she pray? How is the antithesis of all of this? So we have a beautiful narration which highlights how Sayyida Fatima used to pray. It's from the holy prophets. It's the narration that we use. To deduce the name of Sayyida Fatima as Zahra. You know, as Zahra means the illuminating one. And so this is from this narration. My daughter Fatima, she's the chief lady of the women of the past and the future from the beginning until the end. She's part of me and she's the apple of my eyes. She's the joy of my eyes. She's the soul that exists between my two shoulders. She is the one who is formed from Jannah and also a human being. This is the part. Every time she stands in her place of Salah between before her Lord, the light from her illuminates the heavens for the Malaika. Just like how the comets and the stars, they illuminate the night for the people of the earth. Then the prophet says, Be a witness or look at my servant Fatima. She is Qa'ima. She's standing there praying. I bear witness that I have safeguarded her from Jannah. What is interesting is this is later on described by some people who said that There was no one in this community who was perhaps out of the ladies who was as devout and worshipped Allah just like Fatima. Every time she stood in Salah, her knees would be swollen and her ankles would be swollen. This is not to be understood wrongly because some people will force themselves. This is due to the love of Allah in worshipping Allah in such a manner. I would call her Salah, the illuminating light, a prayer. Because the Hadith of the prophet says when she stands, she illuminates the heavens. Such was the powerful Salah that not only was she performing it in this earth it actually impacted the heavens. And the other aspect that we have to remind ourselves about what the Salah of Fatima is is what she said in her Khutba. Very, very important. What can we learn from that? I know it's quite self-explanatory but what can we pick up from that thing of Fatima?  You have to do it in a sense if you don't say, oh, you know what, fine, I'm arrogant, I won't pray then. No, you have to perform it because it's a difference between performance of Salah and acceptance of Salah. Performance is just, I pray, it's a stick. I won't get punished if I don't. But whether I'm benefiting from it is another matter. So the Quran says in the Salah Tanah in Fahshai 1 Mulkara definitely, verily, prayers prohibit a person who does it from committing vice and evil. One of those that say the Fatima is demonstrating and one of the most important ones is self-settingness, selfishness or arrogance of feeling that people think that they are better than others. You see, at the time of the Holy Prophet, Salallahu Alaihi Wasalam, they came to him and said, Ya Rasoolallah, some of them, we, you know, want to pray but we can't put our forehead onto the ground because we've never done that for anyone. It's too much for us. Can you excuse us from that? Is there a possibility that we can do a prayer without the Sajdah? The Prophet says, no. You know, sometimes people compromise when it comes to Islamic teachings. The Prophet here said, no, you can't have a part-time half-fulfilled Salah. You have to do it properly. You have to do it completely. Sajdah is key. And Sajdah is putting the highest point of your body, lowest point to the ground. It is a demonstration of humility, nothingness before Allah, annihilation of the Self.  So Salah has to be a school of training. It has to be an institution where we gain every time we pray. If I've been praying for 30, 40 years and my akhlaq, my spirituality, my outlook in life is getting down, I have to go back to basics. Am I praying properly? Have I examined the fiqh? Am I making common errors and mistakes and wudhu and wusul and the actual Salah itself? Number two, do I understand what is it that I'm saying? Is it that just regurgitating some things that I've learned is the oscillation of the tongue? Or as the hadith says, As-Salatu Mi'raju al-Mu'min is the heavenly journey. And number three, I need to monitor that I need to ensure that I look after what is known as adab al-salah, the etiquettes of the prayers. For example, putting on perfume. For example, wearing good clothes. For example, doing the adhan and the iqam. For example, being in an area with less destruction. For example, praying in its time. All these, there are so many literature out there. So many recommendations, websites, lectures. It has to constantly play in our minds. It has to be something that is key that we always worry about in our lives. So, you spoke about how prayer should really be like a source of education. Learning from the prayer of Fatbun Sahara, what practical tips can we learn from her prayer to help improve our own Salah? Yes, well, I think one key thing that of course we have to realize when we look at the Ahl al-Bayt, Sayyida Fatima, peace and blessings be upon her, is what makes Salah so successful in the lives of this Ahl al-Bayt. And of course, as demonstrated by the Quran, because they are the walking Quran, is Khushuq. Qad-aflha al-Mu'minun, al-Ladheena hon fi Salatihim khasharon. Some people struggle. They say, you know, it's so difficult for me. These are all theoretical. It's so hard. You know, I come back from work or I'm in the middle of work and I'm all over the place in my mind. It's just all over the place. And, you know, in the moment I start and say Allahu Akbar, I remember where I've put something that I've misplaced. Or I've solved an equation for those who are doing GCSE level maths. They say, if you've forgotten something when you pray, you'll come back to you. Yeah, indeed. I mean, there's a number of people who actually would share this and actually agree that shaitan becomes so strong all of a sudden, you know, and it becomes, sadly, a means by which our attention goes somewhere else. One of the scholars famously said, if you want to know the relationship between you and Allah and how much you love Allah, examine the relationship between you and Salat and how much you love Salat. If you look at Salat as something that's a chore and you despise it and you just want to do it and you're seriously in trouble as far as your relationship with God is concerned because it is an appointment to refresh the soul. The Prophet of Islam says in a famous narration, don't you want to go and wash your body from impurities five times a day? That's what, essentially, you're doing. What we learn from the Ahlul Bayt, alaykum as-salām, is the approach and the mindset to come towards Salat has to be key and it has to be somehow supported by the family. See, the Quran says wa umur ahlaka bil salati wastabur alayha. Allah says to the Prophet, command your family with Salat, for Salat. So, the Prophet of Islam and his Ahlul Bayt would be individuals who would be commanded by Allah SWT to be the best in Salat. But the Quran then goes to say wastabur alayha. In Quran, the word istabur is not the same as sabr. Sabr means patience. Istabur has different meanings. Some say istabur means have more patience. But more likely istabur means be persistent and don't give up and ensure that as your time go on you're more and more inclined towards the Salat and the patience. Now, we need help in our lives. Sometimes people say I need help in my Salat. Interestingly, the Quran says if you're in trouble in your life you don't know what to turn to. If you're down, if you're thinking that everything is dark and everything is blocked wa sta'i no basabri wa Salat go and seek help in patience. Some narration says that's fasting and Salat. And then Allah SWT says Inna Allah ma as-sabri and another verse says wa inna ha la kabiratun illa alal khaasha'in Those who have khushu' will be the only ones who don't think it's a huge burden that falls on their shoulders. One of the lessons I feel that we can take from the blessed lady Fatima Salamullahi alayha is the prayers which are known as Nawafil because we struggle in our day-to-day lives as far as normal prayers are concerned and yes, concentration makes all we may not be focused but Sayyida Fatima of course all the Ahlul Bayt love to perform Salatul Layl She raised her children with the love of performing Salatul Layl Sayyida Zainab would not miss Salatul Layl on that night of Shama Ghariba She would never, you know even sitting down Imam al-Husayn Salamullahi alayha on the night of Ashura would be performing Salatul Layl reading the Quran and performing dua This is all because they were trained in the school of Ali and Fatima who were trained in the school of the Holy Prophet all of them to love Salat but also to perform recommendatory Nawafil including Salatul Layl Imam al-Asgiri alayhi salam comes forward and says Alamatul Mu'un 51 these 51 how many of them do we do at least if we can't do the Nawafil if we can't do the two for Fajr and the eight for Zohar and the eight for Asr and we can't do the four for the Maghrib and two for the Asha let's do the eleven for the Salatul Layl and if we can't do the eleven for Salatul Layl let's do nine if we can't do nine let's do seven five three one if we can't do it standing we can do it sitting if we can't do it sitting we can do it lying on our beds as long as we have vovo we can do Salat and for ladies they just need to cover their head now this Salatul Layl is so powerful that we are told Sayyid-ul-Fatim was performing it and it's when Imam Al-Hassan heard her praying for others before praying for themselves and so we are told out of recommendation if we even miss Salatul Layl Imam Sadaq says anyone of us who doesn't perform Salatul Layl is not one of us you know what is interesting is if we miss it we can perform it as Qadar the next day Qadar it's so highly recommended for us to actually do we can actually do it whilst walking you know sometimes people are walking somewhere and they have vovo I can just do Salatul Layl or whilst driving but make sure their focus is on the roads yes and probably it's a good way to focus because sometimes people feel sleepy and so on but you know they are a bit have encouraged us and highlighted to us the need to perform these recommendatory prayers so that we enrich our Wajah prayers it's a major support and it really helps us to develop an understanding of the significance and the importance of prayers well it's been wonderful discussing this topic with you and I hope that inshallah our viewers and myself can really learn from what you've put forward which is of course the prayer of Fatima which is in itself a school of lessons for all the lovers of Salat and inshallah hopefully we can learn from and obey the narration of the al-Bait al-Islam who advises when it comes to Salat any final parting words? Yes I would like to mention that I think the subject of prayer is maybe overwhelming for some people and Shaitan plays a role here because there are some who think you know what I'm just barely praying you know I have to go through all this business of trying to know what is it I'm reciting and understand what is it I'm reciting and understand why I'm doing Rukh or why I'm doing Sujood any errors maybe too much for people I say take a step-by-step approach have groups of people have circles and seek knowledge and advice from alims and respected individuals check your Salat with them make sure you're doing it properly but don't be overwhelmed in the sense that for example a Yama Fatima use it to improve one aspect of your Salat the birth and the Shahadahs of the A'im use this to memorize or learn a Hadith about Salat the month of Ramadan make sure this month of Ramadan that's coming up is better than the last month of Ramadan so take step-by-step and that has been shown and positive encouragement from people around you sometimes if the family together they have a program in which they support each other in prayers and let's not forget the absolute necessity and the importance of Salat-ul-Jamaa the prayers which is congregational it's so key there's so much thawab and in the household husband for example the children the wife can all pray together it cements a very harmonious wonderful connection together and it's highly rewarding and it's a good example for the children as well take small steps rely on Allah beg Allah will definitely help you because he wants you to succeed in this particular objective and I can guarantee that the more you improve your Salat the closer you will become to Ali Muhammad including Sayyidat-ul-Nisa'a Fatima wonderful Thank you for those gems of wisdom of course gems of wisdom you've been providing for us over this past series we hope that inshallah Fatima Zahara al-Islam intercedes for you for me and for all of you inshallah you've been watching this series on the life and legacy of Fatima Zahara al-Islam as I mentioned before we pray that she intercedes for us and of course also that we take on both the lessons from her life and her legacy into her own lives and hope that inshallah each of us me included can do what little we can to serve the legacy of Fatima Thank you so much for watching As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wabarakatuh