Welcome Amy Gill, new Executive Director of Resolana

Amy Gill, new Executive Director of Resolana

We’re excited to introduce you to Amy Souders Gill, the new Executive Director of Resolana!

Unanimously selected by Resolana’s Board of Directors after an extensive search, Amy will take the helm of Resolana on April 9.

Amy joins Resolana at a vital turning point for the organization, according to founder Bette Buschow.

“The next steps for Resolana lie in organizational development and capacity building,” Bette explains. “Amy has the ideal background to take us to the next level in these areas. Her experience and passion for our mission uniquely qualify her to lead Resolana in the years ahead.”

Amy is the former Director of Development & Public Relations at Nexus Recovery Center, which
provides specialized substance abuse assistance to Dallas women.

Amy has a master’s degree in public administration as well as criminology, and began her
career as a parole officer for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Her background
includes work in the non-profit sector at the Mental Health Association of Greater Dallas and
with the Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance. She has also spent about seven years working in city
government in Frisco.

In talking about the transition to a new leader, Amy says, “I am honored to accept the reins from Bette — without her vision and leadership, the women within the Dallas County jail system would not have access to life-altering programs that empower incarcerated women. I am 100% committed to Resolana’s mission and look forward to working with all the people who make this wonderful program possible.”

“We are very fortunate that Bette will remain as Program Director,” adds Fran Tynan, President of Resolana’s Board of Directors.  “Programming is Bette’s first love, and her continued involvement with Resolana will ensure that there will be zero interruption in the vital services we provide.”

Amy Gill with Fran Tynan, Resolana President (far right) and Mary Beth Bardin, the chair of the search committee (left)

Women in [Prison] Photography

Kristin S Wilkins. Untitled #8, 2011. From the series 'Supplication'. When asked what she missed outside prison, she said, “I miss my hometown. Everything about it.”

In today’s visually oriented culture, it is difficult to draw attention to important societal issues without the benefit of value-adding images. And the women imprisonment theme, as important as it is, falls in this category. Although many texts have been written on the topic, the absence of images and the difficulties in creating them is very often  an obstacle for the words’ full impact and the wider understanding of this issue.

Pete Brook, a writer focusing on the politics of visual culture and issues of social justice in photography, has curated a series of images on prisons that helps fill that vast void. Although not exclusively related to women, the series offers some insightful points about women imprisonment and showcases some projects related to them. For example, photographer Marilyn Suriani visited a women’s prison in Atlanta, made portraits and then ran a six-week workshop in which the women could make their own images.

In fact, the most poignant photographs from the series are those related to women. They counter the invisibility of people in prison, reveal their humanity and spur our commitment in changing the worrying trends. From the curator’s statement:

In the past 40 years, America’s prison population has more than quadrupled from under 500,000 to over 2.3 million. This program of mass incarceration is unprecedented in human history. Women have born the brunt of this disastrous growth. Within that fourfold increase, the female prison population has increased eightfold. You heard right: women are incarcerated today at eight times the number they were in the early 1970s. Are women really eight times more dangerous as they were two generations ago?

Click here to view the full series:  Women in [Prison] Photography

International Women’s Day for women in prison, too

The International Women’s Day came to be, in part, to honor the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911, an industrial accident in which hundreds of women workers died in the heart of the garment district in New York City. The owners had locked the doors to the stairwells and exits, which was a common practice at the time. The justification – to prevent unauthorized breaks and pilferage – was accepted as totally legitimate by society since those women, poor recent immigrants most of them, were commonly seen as untrustworthy and lazy.

After that horrific fire some people, yet again, blamed the women themselves for their fate. They could have avoided it, if they had refused to work in those conditions; since they accepted working there, they consciously accepted the possibility of such an accident taking place, too.  Today it may seem strange, but at that time some didn’t understand that those young immigrants women lacked the social power to demand conditions

This practice of placing the responsibility on the victim can still be seen today, in a social system that does not recognize the factors of trauma, social limitations and pressures in the life of women who are currently in jail. Not to justify their transgressions of the law, but to understand why they take place and to prevent a growing social problem, it is important to recognize how the interplay of empowerment and choices works so that we as a society right the conditions to prevent it in the future. You can’t fully and freely exercise your responsibility if your life experience limits your choices and converts many of them into all that more difficult – and unlikely – to make. It makes much more sense to remove those obstacles rather than take the easier path of making the victim bear the consequences.

Here are two articles illuminating the process.

Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Human Rights Program, shared this article, “Record Numbers of Incarcerated Mothers Bad News for Women, Children, Communities“, about the reason the number of women in the criminal justice system have been increasing at twice the rate of men.

“People who commit nonviolent drug and property crimes tend to go in and out, over and over, because if it’s addiction or economic issues driving the crime, it does not get solved, it only gets exacerbated by people being removed from the community,” says one of the interviewees.

The article makes clear that heaping all the consequences on the victim makes the problem even worse and creates a vicious cycle that only generates more incarceration.

Denton Record-Chronicle in a piece, aptly titled “Minding the Gap“, shows the extent to which mental health issues both cause growing incarceration in the Dallas area and are further exacerbated by it.

Welcome to the Dallas County Jail, where the psychiatric unit treats more than 1,400 patients a day, nearly a quarter of the jail’s total population

… This ballooning predicament — more patients, fewer professionals and dissipating resources — means the county jail is likely to continue as the primary provider of mental health services in most Texas communities.

How do we stop this gradual, invisible yet growing avalanche accident from rolling? It is not sudden and highly visible as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which helped put in place working conditions for working women with little power and voice to demand them for themselves. We as a society need to put in place conditions today to prevent it – obviously the women involved don’t have the power and voice to just remove them from their lives.

Success in the Community

By Bette Buschow, Resolana founder and director

After incarcerated women are released back into the community, they have the responsibility to not follow the paths that had led them to jail originally. Common sense would predict that after the jail experience, they would and should do everything in their power to avoid getting there again. However, it may be much, much harder for them without additional help.

Why do incarcerated women need help when they are released back into the community? Stephanie Covington, co-director of the Center for Gender and Justice and the author of numerous studies in the area of women’s issues, talks about “level of burden,” defined as the number and severity of problems that women face. Most incarcerated women have a high level of burden compared to women from other walks of life, which means that they have to face more challenges trying to restart their lives.

The fact that two thirds of them have children adds an additional level of burden. And remember, in Texas, individuals with a drug felony (which means a lot of incarcerated women!) are banned FOR LIFE from receiving food stamps, Section 8 housing, and most educational or welfare assistance. Job prospects may be difficult for them.  To make it worse, their immediate environment, circle of friends or family does not offer the support necessary to get onto a stable life or may be even part of the problem. Instead of correcting the obstacles that prevented these women to find stability before going to prison in the first place, the rules society has put into place seem to make it even more difficult afterwards.

The WPA in New York has graphically listed some of the challenges in a very thoughtful chart at
http://wpaonline.org/pdf/WPA_Success_in_the_Community_Matrix_6.11.pdf

The obstacles are daunting . . .  But there are many things that can be done.

 

When night ends

By Ann Montgomery, Resolana volunteer

My first day at Resolana, Peggy Helmick-Richardson told our group a story about a rabbi who stumped his students with a question. He asked, “How can you tell when night has ended?”  Despite numerous attempts, his students failed to find the correct answer. Stumped, they gave up, asking him to share the secret. “It’s simple,” the rabbi declared. “Night has ended when you look in to the face of the person next to you and see the reflection of your own face.”

For me, the truth in Peggy’s story was revealed each time I visited Lew Sterrett with Resolana. As I looked across the room that first day, I heard echoes of my own past struggles, not to mention the voices of family and friends, reflected in the women’s fight against wrongdoing and affliction. I realized that only life circumstance had separated me from other women in the circle. The disappointments and hopes they expressed were ones I’d heard before. Despite circumstance that had distinguished our life experience, both volunteers and prisoners were involved in the human fight to prove ourselves worthy, if only to our own expectations and dreams.

A letter from Wendy

Note: Resolana participants must be out of jail and “off paper” a minimum of six months (and often much longer, depending on their offense) before they can reenter the jail as a volunteer. When Wendy A recently began volunteering in the jail, here is what she shared about her journey. This letter first appeared in the November newsletter.

I’m very excited to be given the opportunity to be part of a program that has helped shape me into who I am today.

I was incarcerated in Dallas County Jail for 18 months for aggravated assault and released in April, 2010. I attended Resolana for about seven months. I am so grateful for the things I learned in the classes like goal setting, effective communication and anger management. I also learned to love myself and embrace who I am as an individual.

Since I have been out, I have to admit life has been pretty good despite a few setbacks. There are many challenges; the main ones are finding stable employment due to my criminal history and repairing my relationship with my daughter who lives with her father.

Resolana helped give me the skills to be able to deal with challenges and setbacks in a positive way, helped me believe that I can achieve anything I put my mind to. I am a full time student at Tarrant County College and I am very excited to state that I made honors last semester. I am five classes away from my Associates degree; then I plan to transfer to UTA to work on a BA.

The first time I went back to the jail as a volunteer was a little nerve-wracking, but very inspiring as well. The hardest part was to look into the tanks and remember. I think the longer I was out, I just forgot or maybe blocked the harsh realities of jail.

The other volunteers were very helpful in helping me deal with my anxiety, and as we delved into the class I forgot my nervousness and felt more comfortable. I am glad that I faced my fears. Being on the other side this time helps me believe in myself more.

I hope that through volunteering I can make a positive difference in someone else’s life, the way that Resolana did in my life.

Thank you,

Wendy

Dance in the Jail

If you have attended any of Resolana’s volunteer get-togethers, you’ve definitely noticed the calm, radiant presence of a petite blond woman. If you have volunteered with Resolana’s dance program at the Dallas County Jail, you have experienced the transformative force of dance through the movement program that she helped found and shape.  This is Dr. Barbara Miller, a dentist by profession and healer by calling who sees dance as an integral part of her work. The Baylor Dental Journal recently honored Dr. Miller with an extensive article about her work.

Dr. Barbara Miller started dancing early, as a 3 year old, and credits dance for giving her ‘voice’ early in life when she was a shy girl.   She hopes it would give the women in jail the same sense of freedom, opportunity for expression and fun during the movement workshops. They would feel more connected to their bodies and so overcome the sense of powerlessness they’ve experienced through abuse from many sources; find fun in a physical activity that doesn’t involve drugs of alcohol.

Resolana’s creative movement program is unique not only for conceptually integrating dance in treatment with the goal of ultimately preparing women to get back to society transformed and empowered. The program is unique also in its holistic application.  Leadership is shared during the classes, establishing a model for the ladies to see play out.  Dance classes represent a wide range of styles and forms, from liturgical to ethnic, and allow for the search of internal freedom. Within the bare walls of the jail, dance allows eyes to turn inwards and create an internal space for each woman in which she can start build on her self-knowledge and potential.

Read more about Dr. Miller’s work in the Baylor Dental Journal article. Better yet, volunteer in one of the dance or other Resolana classes to experience how this transformation comes to life for everyone involved, no matter if they have to stay there, in the jail, after the class ends.

Resolana’s first six months in the dedicated tank at Dallas County Jail

By Bette Buschow, Resolana founder and executive director

Six months have passed since Resolana established a dedicated tank in the Dallas County Jail.  Here are some numbers to give a broad picture of what this work has accomplished so far.

Between April 1 and Sept 20, 2011, Resolana’s dedicated program tank served 278 (unduplicated) women.  We offered 398 classes to inmates in our classroom and held 57 community meetings in the tank for a total of 455 sessions.  The classes alone represent 5889 “touches” of women incarcerated in Dallas County Jail; with community meetings added, the touches total an estimated 8740.

Resolana has recently added a weekly four day intensive course for our intake group and “open call” classes on Friday afternoons; we will be adding Saturday NA meetings within the month.  Resolana has also begun expanding case management services for program participants, and our new full time clinical manager and interns from the UTArlington and USC School of Social Work will continue to develop this critical part of our program in the next months

Over 1600 in-jail hours were clocked by staff and volunteers during this six month period. This represents a monumental effort by a small staff and dedicated volunteers.

The cost, based on current records of program expenses for this time period, works out to about $6/woman/session.

A letter from Ida (Wilmer Drug Rehab)

This letter was sent back to her former pod-mates by a participant in Resolana’s program who is now at the Judicial Treatment Center in Wilmer, a county rehab center. 

Hey girls, ladies, sisters!

Right now I have been [Wilmer] for 2&1/2 weeks.  This letter comes at a time when I feel comfortable [and am settling in].

Some of you sisters remember me, some you don’t. But the matter at hand is: where all you ladies are right now in I Pod, better known as the Resolana pod, is a great foundation for where your next step of sobriety is gonna be.

Some of you are probably thinking that being racked up [confined to their bunks by the officer in the pod] for the noice level is silly. Ladies, when we were in the world we talked all the time.  God is just trying to get a message to us or if not to us, to someone else. The world is such a busy, noisy place already and not everyone’s paying attention.

I finally get the true meaning of [what may seem like] being spoiled and selfish.  This program is all about “me.”  All I thought about in the world was me being on my A game and getting ahead.  [Now I’m focusing on] me and my actions.  I don’t have to worry about no one else but me.  I clean up after only me. I don’t have to worry about anyone else’s needs or wants. This program is all about learning to take care of one’s self.

I miss all of the facilitators at Resolana.  I  learned a lot, plus Resolana is a great foundation even if you don’t get to come to Wilmer. Please take what you learn beyond the jail walls and push on. Don’t forget to set your weekly intentions: “I hear you, I see you, I affirm your intention with love.”  [Setting intentions and acknowledging the intentions of others with this phrase are a part of Resolana’s morning meetings.]

You are all in my prayers. And once I get off probation, I will be a wonderful volunteer for Resolana as an alumni.

May God bless each and every one of you,

Ida T.

Resolana Music Festival: rave reviews

The Westside Music Festival sponsored by Resolana has become a community factor growing in significance in its second year. It got some rave reviews coming from a variety of sources, ranging from the Dallas sheriff’s newsletter to DFW art media.

Sheriff Lupe Valdez, a strong supporter of the program, was honorary chair of the festival and she delivered some inspiring remarks about the collaboration with Resolana. The good girl/bad girl dolls she made were displayed at the festival along those made by inmate programs director Yolanda Lara and Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia. Read the DCJ Sheriff’s newsletter for some insights on the event (page 5).

Art + Seek, a powerhouse among the online art media in the DFW, published an enthusiastic article about Resolana and the festival titled The Jailhouse Rocks with Art. Westside is now an art tradition to take into account that also does good!