Website of Author Lauren Kessler — Lauren Chronicles

Time 2022-09-08 20:29:41

Web Name: Website of Author Lauren Kessler — Lauren Chronicles

WebSite: http://www.laurenchronicles.com

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The stories we need to hear

Catherine Jones is smart, articulate, vibrant, passionate—and was the youngest person ever to be tried as an adult for murder. She was 13. Now in her mid-30s, the mother of two beaming, high-energy toddlers, she is the co-director of Outreach and Partnership Development at Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, a national nonprofit that leads efforts to ban extreme sentences for children.

Arnoldo Ruiz is open-hearted and resolute, a compassionate listener, a tireless advocate for his community, and a devoted father. First arrested at fifteen, he bounced around the youth detention system until, at 18, he began serving a two-decade sentence in a maximum security prison. Today he is the program manager for the Youth Empowerment & Violence Prevention Department at Latino Network, working with at-risk Latinx youth and their families.

Sterling Cunio is a dynamo, as gentle and empathetic as he is powerful and compelling. Incarcerated at sixteen, he spent the next 28 years in prison. He is now an advocate, organizer and storyteller with Church in the Park, a nonprofit that works with the unhoused to restore dignity, relieve hunger, and increase awareness and understanding in the larger community. He also works part-time for the Criminal Justice Reform Clinic at Lewis and Clark College Law School.

Richard Mireles is dynamic, expressive, optimistic, hard-working—and an ex-felon who spent 21 years behind bars. He is now the director of Outreach and Engagement at CROP (Creating Restorative Opportunities and Programs), a California nonprofit whose mission is to reimagine reentry through a holistic, human-centered approach to advocacy, housing, and the future of work. He is the host of the Prison Post Podcast, which is focused on stories of life after incarceration and what success looks like in reentry.

These are people we need to hear about. These are the stories that need telling. More than 600,000 men and women are released from prison every year. Mostly what we hear about them—when we hear anything at all—is how many quickly return to prison. (Please read my Myth of the Math of Recidivism post.) What we need to hear about is those who make it. Making it is a major accomplishment given the structural and deeply imbedded obstacles they face, the twisted and rocky road from caged to free. These four I write about here are not just making it; they are devoting their working lives, their prodigious energy, their hearts and minds to helping ensure that others have an easier path than they have had.

They know they can never undo the harm they did. But they can try to live a life of meaning and purpose.

Photo: Dusk from my front porch

September 7, 2022 No Comments

Numbing numbers/ Action items

Not only does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world; every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on earth.

One in 7 people in US prisons (203,865) is serving a life sentence. This is more than the entire incarcerated population in 1970.

In California, it costs $106,131 a year to incarcerate an inmate.

New York City spends $556,539 to incarcerate one person for a full year, or $1,525 per day.

K-12 schools spend an average of $13,185 per pupil annually.

It costs the taxpayers of Texas $2.3 million to execute one person.

There are currently 199 people on Death Row in Texas. There are 2,436 people on Death Row in the US.

These are numbing numbers. They can also be action items.
Here is a list of prison reform organizations you can read about, support, and join.

August 31, 2022 2 Comments

Harm and Punishment…and harm

There is a difference between punishing someone for doing harm and harming them in the punishment.

I don’t mean the Hammurabian “eye for an eye” kind of punishment, which obviously inflicts grievous harm—and is meant to. Or any of the punishments humans have invented to kill other humans: burning at the stake, crucifixion, impalement, beheading, drowning, hanging, defenestrating. The list, unfortunately, is much longer than this. And more grisly.

No, I mean the punishment we dole out today to those who do harm. We, the United States, a rational, post-Enlightenment culture with a heritage of social norms, ethical values and empirical beliefs systems. We, the United States, a country believed to be, by more than 50 percent of its citizens, “the greatest country on earth.”

We punish people by removing them from society, from their communities and their families, by taking away their freedom. This is certainly humane compared to slicing off their head or throwing them out a window (that’s what defenestration is). But we don’t just sequester them from society so that they can do no further harm. We put them in cages. We depersonalize them. We take away their ability to make meaningful (or really any) decisions. We create an environment that breeds and reenforces violence and distrust. We create a dangerous, toxic, sealed-off world that, over time, traumatizes. That scars the soul.

The punishment itself, the caging and deprivation, is not designed to rehabilitate. It is designed to inflict harm.

Okay, you say, these people DID harm, Let’s do harm back to them. But here’s the thing: If the punishment creates emotionally and psychologically damaged people who have become accustomed to being treated as sub-human and have come to think of themselves as such, what exactly are we accomplishing? If hyper-alertness, distrust and helplessness become the stuff of everyday life, how is this punishment helping to create people we want to see back in our communities?

Ninety-five percent of those we incarcerate are eventually released. What harm has been done to them during those years—often decades—they spent inside? What if the punishment causes lasting harm, not just for the individual but for all of us?

When you read the reentry stories in Free: Two Years, Six Lives and the Long Journey Home you will see what it takes to transform the trauma of long-time incarceration into a well-lived life.

August 24, 2022 1 Comment

Costly, ineffective, unfair

“The current system of mass incarceration is costly, ineffective, unfair, racially discriminatory, socially destructive and legally infirm.” That is Robert N. Weiner talking, a Washington, D.C. lawyer and legal strategist, as he introduces the American Bar Association’s 10 Principles on Reducing Mass Incarceration. He is stating facts not opinions..

Costly? Total U.S. government expenses on public prisons and jails: $80.7 billion. On private prisons and jails: $3.9 billion

Ineffective? The U.S. Department of Justice itself states: “sending an individual convicted of a crime to prison isn’t a very effective way to deter crime.”

Unfair and discriminatory? Black Americans are incarcerated in state prisons across the country at nearly five times the rate of whites, and Latinx people are 1.3 times as likely to be incarcerated than non-Latinx whites.

Socially destructive? As researcher and sociologist Bruce Western writes: “America’s prisons and jails have produced a … group of social outcasts who are joined by the shared experience of incarceration, crime, poverty, racial minority, and low education. As an outcast group, the men and women in our penal institutions have little access to the social mobility available to the mainstream. Social and economic disadvantage, crystallizing in penal confinement, is sustained over the life course and transmitted from one generation to the next. This is a profound institutionalized inequality that has renewed race and class disadvantage.”

Legally infirm? Mr. Weiner is one of the premier legal minds in the country. He ought to know.

At the American Bar Association’s annual meeting in Chicago earlier this month, the House of Delegates passed a resolution to adopt these 10 Principles. These are not radical ideas. They are thoughtfully considered, sensible, humane—and evidence-based. Prison reformers and social justice warriors have been highlighted all these and more for decades. It is notable that the mighty and powerful ABA is now taking this stand.

Limit the use of pretrial detention.

Increase the use of diversion programs and other alternatives to prosecution and incarceration.

Abolish mandatory minimum sentences.

Expand the use of probation, community release and other alternatives to incarceration, and create the fewest restrictions possible while promoting rehabilitation and protecting public safety.

End incarceration for the failure to pay fines or fees without first holding an ability-to-pay hearing and finding that a failure to pay was willful.

Adopt “second look” policies that require regular review and, if appropriate, reduction of lengthy sentences.

Broaden opportunities for incarcerated individuals to reduce their sentences for positive behavior or completing educational, training or rehabilitative programs.

Increase opportunities for incarcerated individuals to obtain compassionate release.

Evaluate the effectiveness of prosecutors based on their impact on public safety and not their number of convictions.

Evaluate the effectiveness of probation and parole officers based on their success in helping probationers and parolees and not their revocation rates.

August 17, 2022 No Comments

When something RIGHT goes WRONG (part 2)

When something is not working, we want to fix it. When something causes harm, we want to stop it. The impulse to make it better is a good one. But sometimes, reforms backfire. Sometimes what we try to fix gets worse in the fixing.

Consider the innovative (and humane) method used to help reduce mass incarceration: electronic monitoring. This is the ankle monitor that tracks (by radio signal or GPS) the whereabouts of its wearer. What a good idea! Instead of putting someone in jail as they await trial, why not control their movements (and insure they will come to court) by attaching an ankle monitor? Instead of caging them for a nonviolent offense, what about an ankle monitor to severely restrict movement up to and including house arrest?

But, here’s the rub (pun sort of intended…yes, jailhouse humor): Localities that use electronic monitoring often contract with for-profit firms for the service. Rather than charge the governments, these companies generally charge the people being supervised. A national survey by NPR found that 49 states — every state except Hawaii, plus the District of Columbia — now allow or require the cost to be passed along to the person ordered to wear one.

A ProPublica story entitled “How Electronic Monitoring Devices Drive Defendants into Debt,” includes the experience of a 19-year-old St. Louis man arrested (his first offense) for driving a stolen car. His public defender managed to get his $1500 bail reduced to $500 (which was covered by the non-profit Bail Project) with the condition that he wear an ankle monitor. For as long as he would wear it, he would be required to pay $10 a day to a private company. Just to get the monitor attached, he would have to pay $300 up front — enough to cover the first 25 days, plus a $50 installation fee. (Fees can range from $150 per month to as high as $1,200. And this does not include the startup fee, which can be up to $200.

In another story, “Ankle Monitoring Practices Are Akin to Extortion,” a 49-year-old longshoreman arrested for a DUI chose 58 days on an ankle monitor rather than a 120-day jail sentence because he was the full-time caretaker for his paralyzed mother. He paid an enrollment fee of $200 plus $13 a day, which totaled more than $1600 for the length of his sentence. He began selling his personal possessions to keep up with the payments.

Others reportedly sell blood plasma to make their payments.

August 10, 2022 2 Comments

When something RIGHT goes WRONG (part 1)

Consider the Ban the Box reform. What a great idea! Get rid of the box at the end of a job application that requires checking if the person had ever been convicted of a felony. This checked box, reformers believed, caused widespread discrimination. Even before the candidate’s qualifications could be evaluated, the checked box gave the potential employer an immediate reason to reject the applicant.

The Ban the Box movement was incredibly successful. Nationwide, thirty-three states and more than one hundred cities banned the box. But, as the painstaking research of Rutgers economist Amanda Agan illustrated, removing this information from job applications did not prevent employers from wanting this information. In the absence of the box, they used another characteristic to discriminate: race.

In an audit study, Agan and a colleague sent 15,000 online job applications for entry-level jobs on behalf of (fictitious) young male applicants both before and after Ban the Box laws went into effect in New Jersey and New York City. On the applications, the researchers randomly varied whether the applicant had a felony conviction and whether the applicant’s name was “distinctly Black or white.” The results were stunning: The gap in employer callbacks between Black and white applicants grew significantly after Ban the Box. With the box, the white advantage for callbacks was seven percent; without it, that advantage leaped to forty-five percent. Without Box evidence, employers “inferred” whether the applicant might have a criminal record. Their inference? Black men were most likely to have convictions. Thus Black men—or rather those with “distinctly Black” names—were disadvantaged. This would include many with no criminal records at all. Their “crime” was being Black.

The employers themselves were not being any more racially biased than the criminal justice system itself, where racial inequality is well documented at every level, from policing to prosecutorial decisions to sentencing. The employers were right. It was more likely for a young Black man to have encounters with the law than for a young white man. Playing it “safe,” in the absence of documentation, they chose not to call back the Black applicants. And so Ban the Box, which had been designed to level the playing field, did the opposite.

I write about the search for employment after incarceration in my book, Free: Two Years, Six Lives, and the Long Journey Home.

August 3, 2022 No Comments

How’s THAT working?

Why do we put people in prison?

We are punishing them for doing something bad.

We are making our communities safer.

(Let’s forget the other reason that is sometimes stated—to reform and rehabilitate them—because virtually no one is pretending that this is a priority in the U.S*.)

So: How’s that working?

Well, losing one’s freedom, privacy, home, family, community, access to the natural world, access to information, and ability to have any meaningful control over one’s life is certainly punishment. No doubt about that.

I am writing this not to question whether some individuals deserve or do not deserve such punishment. I am writing this to state the well-researched, evidence-based long-term consequences of such punishment. These include: anxiety, depression, alienation, post-incarceration PTSD, inability to express emotions, difficulty in forming and maintaining healthy relationships, in making everyday decisions, in functioning in routine social situation. (Note I am not mentioning difficulty in finding housing and employment…a given.)

Why should we care? Because 95 percent of all the men and women we incarcerate get out one day, and many of them emerge with these difficulties and deficits. I write about these surprisingly nuanced challenges faced by those reentering after decades behind bars in my book Free: Two years, Six Lives and the Long Journey Home.

And now to the other reason: We are safer when we put people in prison for wrongdoing. Are we?

No.

The impact of incarceration on crime is limited and has been diminishing for several years. Increased incarceration has no effect on violent crime and may actually lead to higher crime rates when incarceration is concentrated in certain communities. A study conducted by Berkeley sociologist David J. Harding concluded that sentencing someone to prison had no effect on their chances of being convicted of a violent crime within five years of being released from prison. This means that prison has no preventative effect on violence in the long term.

And then there’s this just-published study by Penn State researcher Andrea Corradi that compared feelings of safety in counties and states across the U.S. Researchers found that people living in areas with high rates of imprisonment were no less afraid of being a victim of a crime than people living in areas with lower rates of imprisonment.

This was true whether the participants lived in a state like Vermont, with a relatively low incarceration rate, or a state like Louisiana, which has the highest incarceration rate in the country. The same patterns emerged among people of different racial and ethnic identities.

So we aren’t actually safer. And we do not feel safer. And many of the 600,000 previously incarcerated men and women who reenter our communities every year have been psychologically and emotionally damaged by their prison experiences in ways that make it difficult for them to become what we want them to be: trusted, productive, engaged members of our communities.

Makes you think, huh?

*In Norway, rehabilitation is at the core of the prison system

July 27, 2022 1 Comment

The author as relentless self-promoter

This essay appeared in Nieman Storyboard today. Click to see or read below.

It was the mid-1990s. I was sitting across a white damask table-clothed table at a midtown Manhattan steak house watching my editor, Bob Loomis, alternately cut into a ribeye and sip a dry Martini. This was it, and I didn’t even know it.

Loomis was then a septuagenarian, a very much living legend in the world of publishing, a man who had edited the likes of Maya Angelou, William Styron, and Calvin Trillin I didn’t know this at the time. I didn’t Google him because Google didn’t exist. I didn’t look him up in Wikipedia because there was no Wikipedia. What I knew is that I had a contract for my first book, “Stubborn Twig,” with Random House. What I knew was that an impressive older man in an expensive suit was taking me out for a pricey lunch and treating me like a was somebody.

In truth, I was nobody. So I put my shoulder to the wheel and wrote the hell out of the book, benefitting immensely from Bob Loomis’ frequent phone calls and quietly brilliant edits and queries (in pencil in the margins of my hard-copy manuscript). Three years later, when the book launched, it was greeted with reviews in more than a dozen newspapers. That was when so many newspapers had weekly book review sections. Meanwhile my publicity person sent me a multi-page itinerary that listed the bookstore events that had been arranged for me, along with my travel schedule, the hotels where I would stay and the names of the handlers that would be chauffeuring me around in each city.

All that, even though I was not a young, hot debut novelist. I was not a household word — even in my own household. I was simply getting the treatment that book authors got. I didn’t know it then, but I had gained entry to a world that would soon disappear. And my subsequent life as a writer would change in ways I could never have imagined back then and still struggle to imagine even as I am living that life.

The author as DIY marketing department

This is my life as a nonfiction author now:

“Free: Two Years, Six lives and the Long Journey Home,” my eleventh book of narrative nonfiction, launched this spring. I have never met my editor in person. The only sustained conversation I have had with her was early on, pre-contract, when we were sussing out each other. Her Track Change notes and edits in Word.doc were fine but minimal.

This is not because I am now such a great writer that I no longer need a great editor. It is, I believe, because many of today’s editors have decades less experience than the editors of yesteryear, lower standards — I am now routinely praised for merely delivering a manuscript on deadline — and less time to devote to each project. My agent (a true gem and, not incidentally, an erstwhile “editor of yore”) offered the most insightful comments.

When the manuscript was in the process of becoming a book, I did what editors of yore used to take care of: I wrote the copy for the flap and back of the book. I went begging my writer friends for endorsement blurbs, followed up with near-desperate pleas, extracted pull-quotes from their generous responses, then compiled and sent these to the editor. I spent countless hours researching award-winning book covers, sending images, color palettes and type fonts to my editor. I took this on because I had learned that out-sourced illustrators had most often not read the book they were assigned to illustrate and had, as outsiders, not been part of any editorial discussions.

When it came to the title of the book, however, I lost the control I had always had. The marketing department took over. My agent and I had to mount a concerted effort to secure a title we could live with.

This extra work might be considered part of, or at least connected to, the writing process. But there is so much more to being an author now, and by “now” I mean for at least the last decade. For those who have visions of being the courted and cared for, that woman at the midtown Manhattan steakhouse, the cherished writer who flourishes within the brilliant, clever, commanding, and attentive world of commercial publishing: Sorry. No.

Blogs, tweets and favors from friends

What follows is a chronicle of some of the many responsibilities I — and most authors — shoulder today, the jobs we now must do, the tasks that fall to us if we want to see our work have a chance of success. If this sounds like whining, it sort of is. But as I whine, please know that I am conscious of the extraordinary privilege of voice. I am conscious of the privilege of being able to practice my craft, even if it means, as I heard a fellow journalist-turned-author lament the other day: relentless self-promotion.

The “cover reveal.” When the cover for the book was finalized — note my use of passive voice as there were three rounds of (to me) opaque market-testing going on that determined the final decision — it was time for me to start promoting the book. The book would not be published for months, but revealing the cover was an “opportunity” to gin up excitement and get people to pre-order. To be clear: I loved the cover. We, my agent and I, went to the mattresses (as Sonny Corleone put it) to get the cover we loved. But the point of revealing it (across all my social channels…more on this in a moment) was not to revel in the design but to offer a one-click option to pre-order. Pre-orders matter. A lot.

The blog slog. I created a book-centric blog back in 2011 when “My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, A Daughter, A journey through the Thicket of Adolescence” was first published. I did this because, even after I was finished reporting and writing the book, my research into the mother-daughter relationship did not end. I wanted to share it. I did the same thing with my next book, “Counterclockwise,” which was my immersive investigation into the hope of the science of aging and the hype of the “anti-aging” movement. There was so much new research coming out and so much Internet-fueled garbage that I had to find a way to keep writing about the subject.

But all this subject-specific blogging was not, alas, helping to develop (and elevate) my platform, my (to quote from masterclass.com) “ability to market (my) work, using (my) overall visibility to reach a target audience of potential readers.” I was blogging to make new information available to those who might be interested. I was not blogging then to promote these books or to create a (Yes, I will use the B word. ) “brand” for myself.

Enter my now-branded blog (www.laurenchronicles.com) in which I labor to maintain my integrity while also creating thinly veiled promotional posts leading up to publication and during the important two to three months that follow. Because I am a writer who blogs and not a blogger who writes, I spend upwards of three hours crafting these 400-word posts, each a self-contained essay, ending with the implied or stated BUY THIS BOOK. I post links to the essay on my personal and author Facebook pages. I tweet it out. I try to figure out how to engage the largely visual audience that follows Instagram and mostly “likes” images of cats sunning themselves. Just in the last two weeks, I have spent more than a full workday creating reels for Instagram.

The maw of social media. I post. A lot. Much of it is book-related. I try — but I do not always succeed — to avoid those cringe-worthy “humble brag” posts ubiquitous on social media. (I am humbled by this glowing review of my new book… Humility? Really?) While I am on all these channels, I must pay close attention to such unwriterly but stunningly important things as optics, hashtags, SEO, followers, page views, bounce rate, device breakdown, referral sources. As part of my platform — without which I could not function in the book publishing world —I created and personally maintain and update my author site, my blogsite, my two Facebook accounts, my Twitter and Instagram feeds, my Amazon author page and my Goodreads page.

Is the tech stuff in my wheelhouse? Well, now it is. Does all this social-ing eat into reporting and writing time? You bet.

That’s why I was thrilled to hear that my “launch team” was going to play a big part in promoting my latest book. I heard this encouraging news during a three-hour webinar presented by my publisher. I have a team! I immediately jumped into chat to ask how I could connect with my team.

The self-launched team. It turns out that it was my responsibility to create this team by personally reaching out to friends, supporters, readers, my social media followers, anyone I knew who might be entreated to beat the drum for my book. I was to invite them to be “part of the team” and suggest different ways they could help: pre-ordering the book, posting pre-publication reviews on Goodreads, bombarding Amazon with five-star reviews the day after publication, liking my posts, sharing my posts, creating their own posts about my book, talking up my book to book groups or organizations they were part of. This would be ongoing communication. Every week I was to email my team with a new idea or a link to my new post or a review or interview that just came out or an announcement of a reading I was doing. I could, it was suggested, make little videos of myself talking excitedly about the book — a personal touch — and send these to the team.

Balancing the privilege and realities of authorship

And there is so much more that occupies me these days, including researching relevant podcasts and creating specific pitches for each; teaching myself how to produce reels for Instagram that are engaging but not silly or snarky; creating YouTube videos; immersing myself in TikTok (because #bookTok) to understand this Thing. And wishing that I was, instead, polishing the proposal for a new book. Wishing instead I was plunging ahead with research and reporting. Wishing I was living the life of a writer and not a self-promoter.

And yet, to live this (very privileged) authorial life, I must, like just about every other author today, spend a significant amount of my time not practicing my craft. Also, like possibly 98 percent of all book authors, I do not make a living wage from my books so must bolster my income and pay for my health insurance with teaching gigs and work-for-hire opportunities.

This is the reality for those of us who are not celebrities or “influencers,” those of us who do not have social media followers measured in the “Ks,” those of us whose life, work and thoughts do not go viral.

You know, we journalists. We who strive to tell important stories too big and too complex to fit into a newspaper article, or even a series. We who stubbornly dream about living the (vanished) life of the writer.

July 13, 2022 3 Comments

Thinking the (previously) unthinkable

I rejoice in the power of (some) corporations.

I vigorously support the doctrine of states’ rights.

I believe the South was right: If your values and beliefs, if your everyday and embedded culture, if your very way of life is at odds with the country to which you have previously pledged your allegiance, secede.

My younger self—and by “younger” I mean pre-2016—never could have imagined my 2022 self writing these words. Thinking these thoughts. Embracing these ideas.

Yet it is corporations–and not our elected officials, not our public servants–that are leading the resistance against the assault of women’s reproductive freedom. In this land where I used to despair that “money talks,” I salute and celebrate (and will do my business with) the big corporations that have publicly announced their opposition to the overturn of Roe by putting their money where their big corporate mouths are.

These companies are funding abortions and associated travel for their employees: Starbucks, Tesla, Yelp, Airbnb, Microsoft, Netflix, Patagonia, DoorDash, JPMorgan Chase, Levi Strauss, PayPal, Amazon, Reddit, Walt Disney Company, Meta, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Condé Nast, Johnson & Johnson, Warner Bros, Bank of America, Intuit, Zillow, Lyft, Uber, Adobe, Vox, H&M, Accenture, Expedia, URBN, Estée Lauder Companies, Chobani, Yahoo, The Body Shop, Discord, Rivian, Bumble, Bloomberg L.P., Ralph Lauren, Sephora, Neiman Marcus Group, Vanguard, Match Group.

And I am now in favor of that line of thinking that the federal government’s power ought to be limited to minting money and waging war (and really, forget the war thing) and all other powers reside with the individual states.

Especially if your state is Oregon. And your state passes legislation enshrining women’s reproductive freedom. And your state enacts an aggressive climate protection program with a plan to cut greenhouse gas emission by 90 percent. And your state creates and funds a plan that provides free (or very low cost) health coverage for tens of thousands of working families, pregnant women and seniors. And you know what: We don’t have to pump our own gas.

And about secession: Yes. I cannot pledge allegiance to this country we have become.

I am a citizen of Cascadia.

I am a citizen of Ecotopia.

July 6, 2022 1 Comment

Money Talks

(Boycott against Safeway until they employed African Americans in 1941)

When logic and reason get you nowhere, when compassion and empathy and understanding are absent, when integrity and principles and ethics are discarded, there is always, here in the U.S. of A. the Great God Money.

Money Talks.

As we move forward, as we transform our shock, fury and pain into action, as we consider what we can do to (once again) fight for the right to control our own bodies, let’s consider the boycott. Boycotts work.

(Brief historical sidebar)

In the 1920s, the auto tycoon Henry Ford ran a weekly newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, which regularly published anti-Semitic articles. In response, the Anti-Defamation League helped to organize a boycott of his cars. After a dramatic hit on sales revenue (and after Fox Film Corporation threatened to show footage of wrecked Ford vehicles before showing films in its cinemas across the country), Ford apologized and shut down the newspaper in 1927.

In July 2018, Ivanka Trump closed her fashion brand after boycotts from consumers following her father Donald Trump’s election in November 2016. The Wall Street Journal reported sales of her brand at Amazon, Bloomingdales and Macy’s fell almost 45 percent in the year to June.

Find more inspiring examples of successful boycotts here and here.

We know which states have so-called trigger laws that immediately abolished women’s reproductive freedom after the overturn of Roe. We know which states will soon follow. We know which states already have Draconian restrictions and will likely move to abolish.

Of the many actions we can and must take, let’s let our money talk. Do not travel to these states and spend your money there. If your organization holds a conference in one of these states, refuse to go. Do not buy goods sold by companies headquartered in these states.

Conversely, a number of companies have announced their support of women’s reproductive rights by covering abortion travel expenses for those employees living in states where the safe termination of pregnancy is no longer possible. Support these companies. Money talks.

June 29, 2022 1 Comment

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Lauren Kessler

is an award-winning author, (semi-fearless) immersion reporter, blogger, biker, hiker, barre-fly,chicken-wrangler, wanna-be ballerina, quadruple Aries.