Hi, everybody.
Thank you so much for having us I'm Juliana Piccillo
and I am from The Sex Workers Outreach Project in Tucson.
I'm a filmmaker, a sex worker rights activist and a writer.
I earned my MFA here at the U of A
and I taught here as an adjunct in Media Arts for many years.
Right now I currently teach at the Tucson complex
of the Arizona State Prison.
I'm in what's called the Cimarron unit.
That is a four, five-yard, meaning a maximum security
yard.
The men don't get out of their cells much.
The only classes taught by outsiders
are religious classes besides this creative writing
class that I inherited from Madeline Kaiser, who
some of you may know, about six months ago.
The men in my class aren't all writers.
In fact, most of the men in my class aren't writers.
But they write anyway.
They write about loneliness a lot.
They write about their children.
They write about their grandmas, their lovers.
They write about yellow skies and the way
the rain smells on the Res.
About politics and race, they write about black walnut trees
and the Ozarks.
A daughter's pink barrettes and getting 29 years
at the age of 17.
They write a lot about God.
They write to make sense of lives interrupted
by incarceration and lives effectively ended
by incarceration.
They write to show what's beautiful in survival,
resistance, and struggle.
They write to get out for a little while.
They are surprisingly tender and raw, and it is humbling.
They actually fought over bell hooks' book.
[LAUGHTER]
I brought in The Will To Change and we read a chapter out loud.
And I had a line fighting to get a copy of that book, which
was incredibly moving.
They trust me and they trust each other
in ways that scare me.
Because we are in prison.
Because I'm going home.
Because I don't know if I can help them
with writing or anything else.
And because they aren't going home, some of them, ever.
I'm putting together a website right now to showcase
their writing and their artwork.
And in class, we were brainstorming names
and we were tossing around all kinds of things.
And somebody yelled out "The Forgotten"
and the entire class just unanimously erupted
in, "Yes, yes, yes."
Because that's what they are.
They are forgotten, and they know it.
And I know it.
And honestly, I'd like to forget, too.
It is heartbreaking, seeing up close
what we do to our brothers and sisters who are incarcerated.
It is absolutely heartbreaking.
It is hard to look at.
My classmates every Monday from 3:00 to 5:00,
I still struggle after six months
to compartmentalize what I do there
and what happens when I'm gone, that men in their 30s
die there because they don't get medical care.
Guys are moved hundreds of miles away from their families
with no notice.
And every Monday, I show up and talk about metaphors and show,
don't tell.
But I try to teach these things because I so want
them to tell their own stories.
As I said, I'm a sex worker rights advocate.
And there's a saying in the sex worker rights movement,
which I've been a part of for over two decades, "nothing
about us without us."
It's meant to remind the outside world
that these are our stories.
That who tells the stories of marginalized people,
marginalized people themselves or other folks, matters.
And this is what my students wanted me to tell you.
"We aren't monsters."
Several of them said that.
Another said, "It hurts that my identity and my humanity
has been reduced to prisoner when I am
and want to be so much more."
Another said that he's learned by being incarcerated,
that his life isn't measured by his successes
but by the mistakes that he's made.
My students' fierce resilience in the face
of a world they know will always see them as broken and suspect
is relatable to me as a former sex worker.
Sex workers also face incarceration, surveillance,
and lifelong stigma.
I used to say that being a sex worker
is like being a murderer-- you do it once
and it defines you forever, no matter
what else you accomplish.
Sex, work, art, power.
That's a slogan, an early slogan of the sex worker rights
movement in Tucson.
One that I conceived of with my friend
Erin Whitfield, although we argue over whose idea it was.
She insists it was hers, and I simply said, yeah, great idea.
I'm not so sure.
While we were getting at--
and what then was, and now is still,
a radical idea-- is that sex work is work.
From the lowest end to the highest end, it is a job.
It is something people do to survive and put food
on the table.
Sex workers are often artists.
And sex work can be a source of power.
The prevailing discourse controlled by non-sex workers
says that the work is demeaning, can't be a choice,
is always violent.
Interestingly, this discourse is often disseminated by artists,
by journalists.
People seem to love slumming it in the abject spaces,
missing wholly the most important parts--
our resilience, our fierce community, and our triumphs.
Art can append stereotypes.
But it can also instill them and reapply them.
And stereotypes are not benign.
They have consequences.
Repeating and refashioning stereotypes
twists them into a pseudo knowing,
which then informs policy from international frameworks
to local laws.
What other people think they know
about sex workers and incarcerated people
has resulted in increased prison sentences, increased
surveillance, and increased stigma.
And it is destroying lives, it's destroying communities,
and it is killing people, literally.
So tonight, I am especially proud to present
to you, people who make art from their lived experiences.
I met Erin almost 25 years ago.
I had just moved to Tucson, and she was reading poetry
about having been a sex worker.
Her work was brutal and gorgeous,
and I ran up to her after she finished.
I think I frightened her.
I grabbed a hold of her ankle and I have not let go.
She's also a capital defense paralegal,
an advocate for the abolishment of the death penalty.
She's a former host of Hotel Congress's performance poetry
show Drunken Word Poets and founder of the Hardcore Poetry
Slam.
I met Yolanda Gómez when she was an undergrad at the U of A
and she was running a drop-in group for sex workers
at the anti-violence project.
And she introduced me to a group of brilliant brave
young people, who I have been continually inspired by.
She makes fearless art and does fearless activism.
Yola is a first generation Chicanx femme,
a graduate student at Oregon State Cascades MFA
in Creative Writing Program.
She is co-editor of Red Umbrella Babies:
Sex Work And Parenting, An Anthology.
Her poetry has been published in several literary journals.
I'd like to welcome Yola to read.
[APPLAUSE]
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH] Yola.
Hola, me llama Yolanda.
Before I begin, I would like to take a moment
to recognize that we are settlers on colonized land.
This poem is for Charlie Landeros, a friend and comrade
who was recently murdered by the police in Eugene, Oregon.
I miss him dearly.
Miss them dearly, excuse me.
It's about 6:00 AM.
Started drinking with my friend.
The one who had a shootout with the cops and lived.
We're here talking about a flask, paper bag,
some kind of talk about getting in trouble in gin or whiskey
or about that bum jug of Carlo Rossi, Pacific Northwest
green scare and how they tortured
our friend into wearing a wire, locked him
up while coming down.
Yeah, we call him a snake now.
We exchange street stories and scars.
That one from a knife fight that looks like a centipede.
Proud scars, raised skin.
And through mispronunciations and slurred speech,
talked about the weather and the feel of the place
without ever really talking.
I was about 20.
Family had lots of run-ins with the law.
Held down, strapped down, screamed at, stripped down.
d it's about noon, or maybe it's only 10:00.
Me with my friend.
And we're on the porch.
And we're sipping and struggling to make sense of the world
without ever saying as much.
Someone calls us native or foreign.
My friend laughs, Ojibwe, and sips, passes it to me,
and I say, I'm nothing.
But I am, or I was.
And we have the feeling of being on display--
us on the porch, and them, staring from the grass.
Man, white anarchists are a trip, we say, with a glance.
And now it's later.
Maybe it's noon.
It's not 10.
And my white old man boyfriend comes
because they say I'm acting up.
Don't want the law to come.
The pigs, they say.
And the bomb jug pulls up, and we happen to get out of hand.
My white old man boyfriend tries it, but I'm a feral thing.
They say, she's wild.
And I say, I'm nothing.
So he chases me down, drags me in.
My friend gets away.
He knows better.
He fought a gun battle and won.
And here comes the law, flashing lights.
Welfare check, they say.
And I say something not in English,
but they know what I mean.
And we know they just lie by looking at them.
And they give chase.
And I'm caught for being unconcerned for my own safety.
Cop pulled his gun and pointed at close range at my head.
Said something like, he didn't take a shot
because officers in his line of fire.
And through the thin worn fibers of a grayish purple pillowcase
pulled over my head, slow motion beating by 5,
I'm kicking and wailing, but the sound is gone.
Now my head is ringing.
Killers in my house.
And they beat me till I can't see out my left eye
and my hands are black and blue.
And I spit, and a lady cop laughs.
And I'm caught, stripped down, bent over, invaded, thrown out,
and inside my kennel.
I'm groped by a guard that offers
extra food for a hand job.
Another gives me a Bible.
15 to 20, they say.
Hit that cop with his own baton, they say.
Wild girl, they say.
I say, I'm nothing, but I guess I was the threat of existence.
We all were, me and the others inside,
and we look at each other and talk
about the feel of the place without saying as much.
And the white girls sit on one side, and us on the other.
And I get up and walk around.
But that means that I can.
And I put my hair in braids.
And my pro bono lawyer says, she has promise.
Now I'm 21.
Just found out I'm pregnant by my white old man boyfriend.
And the judge, he looks at me and tells me,
just put another girl in for 15 for something
less than what you got accused of doing.
You know, he says her skin was darker than mine
without saying as much.
And I just look at him.
I got out.
And I didn't give birth locked up, cuffed, held down.
Didn't have my baby taken away.
Didn't get shot in the head.
Got to live another day, and I got friends that died in here.
Died out there, too.
Shot dead in front of a school.
Shot dead and had folks call it suicide by cop.
And I'm here.
Survivor's guilt. But that one time I was 20,
I started drinking around 6:00 AM
with my friend, the one that had a shootout with the cops
and lived.
We plan in whispers of backpacks, weapons,
some kind of government surveillance and gin
or whiskey, or about that bum jug of Carlo Rossi.
Through mispronunciations and slurred speech,
talked about why life is worth living
and of the feel of the place without ever really knowing.
Run-ins with truth and reality, born as though dead,
spoken of as numbers, mourned through clenched fists,
buried still alive.
I'm still alive, still on the outside.
And we all look at each other and know why
without saying as much.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Next, Erin Whitfield, beautiful writer, performer.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
I'm Erin Whitfield.
I'm honored to be here tonight.
This poem is about my experiences
as a juvenile offender or in the juvenile justice system
back in the 70s.
And it was really difficult to write.
Actually, I started writing in 2002.
You know that one poem that you have?
You just like working on like pretty much
for the rest of-- this is mine.
[LAUGHTER]
So.
Stars fall inside Jack's blue room on Congress Avenue.
And I can't tell if it's raining dime store rhinestones
or the light is playing tricks.
It is so quiet.
You can hear the nine ball click the three.
In the back room, Black men old as swamp tree stumps
toss bourbon and bones, eyes wet, tequila sunrise.
I'm drinking Southern Comfort because that's
what Janis Joplin drinks.
And the ice cubes inside my glass of whisky rocks
are translucent ballerinas.
And each of them are in love with me,
and because of their devotion, dance and swirl each time
I take a sip.
I would applaud them, but I am not yet drunk enough.
So I summon the bartender with a subtle float of a 5
from my purse to the wet lake of melting booze spreading
across the bar with a grace only a true alcoholic can
appreciate.
Outside, night's black hand fingers its way
through the open door.
Dinner hour comes and goes.
The air cools, and someone in the kitchen
is whistling a Cat Stevens tune.
And it reminds me of my bedroom on First Avenue.
Mom signed the adoption papers last year.
But I know my stepdad was behind it all.
Officially, I'm a ward of the state of Arizona,
a juvenile delinquent whose misdeeds
include running away from home and getting
caught smoking weed.
It's 1976, and yes, they let kids drink in bars.
This time next year, I'll be doing
18 months in a junior prison.
I've never stolen anything.
I've never hurt anyone.
And because it's the 70s, no one has ever asked me,
why all the running away?
It's not that I'm a case number on a pile of paperwork
that no one has ever explained to me.
There's just too many cracks to fall through.
Being locked up is bad enough because I never
liked myself that much anyways.
And that's probably why they have jails--
so you have to spend 24 hours a day
with your least favorite person.
And I even have to be grateful.
Whenever mom visits me in whatever facility
I've landed in, she brings me notes from my kid brothers,
pictures of my cat, Pyewacket, looks away
when I ask what she's done with my Alice Cooper
albums and my collection of ceramic mushrooms.
Sometimes, I can hear the football team
on the practice field at Tucson High or the brass band
playing an incoherent version of We Are The Champions.
And I wonder what my family is having for dinner just
six blocks away.
But tonight, I got my friends with me,
these ice cubes hopelessly melting, the bartender who's
thinking twice, this shit bag dealer
who thinks I don't know what a dime bag weighs.
I've been waiting on Jimmy for three days
now because he promised me a ride to California.
And all I want to do is curl into the backseat
of his Daytona, my coat pulled tightly around my thin body,
like the hug of someone who loves me.
So yeah.
Feel free, Mr Bartender, with your hateful eyebrow cocked.
Toss me out into the midnight with the rest of the ghouls.
My name is Erin Noreena Edgar.
I am barely 16 years old and I am flawed.
And I have made mistakes.
And my probation officer Ruben Salinas Gomez
is trying to fuck me and I don't want to go back to jail.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]