How We Began: Lineages of the IWCSP

The Incarcerated Womxn’s Clemency and Support Project was founded and is co-led by incarcerated, New Afrikan writer and organizer, Uhuru Rowe. You can view his writing on his Conscious Prisoner blog and his organizing work at his linktree. The IWCSP emerged from the Justice for Uhuru Coordinating Committee (JUCC). Officially formed in July 2020, the JUCC has its roots in Uhuru’s friendships with abolitionist organizers, collectives, activists, and students that extend back to 2015. Made up of students at William & Mary College and New Afrikan students with Catch the Fire at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as organizers across the country, the JUCC supported Uhuru as he fought to secure his freedom and, as the result of hard work and collective struggle, Uhuru was granted clemency in January, 2022.

Empowered by the success of his campaign, Uhuru committed to utilizing the networks, relationships, and capacities that the JUCC had developed in order to help support other incarcerated people’s efforts to free themselves. To that end, Uhuru founded the IWCSP in order to advocate for incarcerated womxn, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people; help facilitate the clemency process; and build networks that can support people during their incarceration and upon their release. Led by incarcerated people, the IWCSP is directed by their needs, and it exists to give them a leadership role in securing their own freedom.  

Uhuru, pictured with a copy of David Hilliard’s Spirit of the Panther

The focus of the IWCSP comes out of Uhuru’s study of the prison industrial complex, and specifically a growing awareness that womxn and girls constitute the fastest growing population of incarcerated people: rates that are even more staggering for queer, black womxn and girls, and gender nonconforming people. As this group has continued to form a larger and larger portion of the incarcerated population, support for them has not grown with it. Inspired by the multi-racial, cross-class coalitions that were brought together to defend Huey Newton, Angela Davis, and Joan Little in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as decades of black radical, queer liberation, and feminist organizing, the IWCSP is a response to the growing need to support incarcerated womxn and queer, trans, and gender nonconforming people. Indebted to these struggles, the IWCSP centers the needs of the incarcerated people we organize with, and we emphasize practices of mutual aid and community care.  

In much the same way, the IWCSP focuses on clemency in order to fill a gap in organizing that has widened as the movement for prison and police abolition has grown: the need to support currently incarcerated people. While the IWCSP recognizes the limits of clemency campaigns, we also see abolition as a process rather than an act, and we believe this process should be furthered by every avenue possible. Offering a powerful way to organize people, build inside/outside relationships, support people during their incarceration, and fight to free people who are currently incarcerated, clemency campaigns represent a powerful short-term tool to advance our long-term goals. 

As the IWCSP continues to evolve, we are committed to naming, crediting, and honoring the lineages which this project grows from. While sharing this project with others, we ask that you do the same.