Victoria Law

Image rights: Barnard Library Zine Collection

Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles Of Incarcerated Women isbn: 9781604861556 (EPUB) 9781604861549 (MOBI) formats: epub mobi published: 03/2009 pages: 288 price: 11.50 euros

Victoria Law is a writer, photographer and mother. After a brief stint as a teenage armed robber, she became involved in prisoner support. In 1996, she helped start Books Through Bars-New York City, a group that sends free books to prisoners nationwide. In 2000, she began concentrating on the needs and actions of women in prison, drawing attention to their issues by writing articles and giving public presentations. Since 2002, she has worked with women incarcerated nationwide to produce Tenacious: Art and Writings from Women in Prison and has facilitated having incarcerated women’s writings published in larger publications, such as Clamor magazine, the website "Women and Prison: A Site for Resistance" and the upcoming anthology Interrupted Lives.

In 1995, she became involved with ABC No Rio, a collectively-run arts center on New York’s Lower East Side, serving as Board Treasurer from 1997 to 2002. In 1997, she organized a group of activist photographers to transform one of No Rio’s upstairs tenement apartments into a black-and-white photo darkroom for community use. Since then, she has remained actively involved in coordinating (and sometimes co-teaching) free photography classes for neighborhood youth. In addition, she has participated in and curated numerous exhibitions at No Rio’s gallery, many with themes addressing social and political issues such as incarceration, grassroots efforts to rebuild New Orleans, Zapatista organizing, police brutality and squatting.

In 2003, she collaborated with China Martens to create "Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind," a workshop addressing the specific (and often unacknowledged) needs of parents and children in radical movements; and has co-facilitated discussions in Baltimore, New York City, Providence, Montreal, Minneapolis, Detroit and Boston. With Jessica Mills and China Martens, she is compiling a handbook for allies of radical parents by the same name.