Susan Burton is an American activist, author and founder based in Los Angeles, United States.[1][2] In 1998, she founded of A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project, a nonprofit organization that supports formerly incarcerated people transition back to society.[3] She was named a CNN Hero in 2010 and a Purpose Prize winner in 2012.[3][4] Burton's advocacy work focuses on Criminal Justice Reform.[5]
Susan Burton | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | East Los Angeles |
| Occupation | activist |
| Known for | activism |
Early life
editBurton was born and raised in housing projects in East Los Angeles.[3] Her upbringing was full of turmoil, and she struggled constantly.[6] In 1982, her five-year-old son, Marque Hamilton, was accidentally hit and killed by a police cruiser.[7][4] The loss lead to Burton's substance abuse.[1][8] She became addicted to crack cocaine while living in Watts, Los Angeles.[8]
Incarceration
editShe eventually was arrested and jailed for crack cocaine. She went in and out of prison six times during the 1980s and the 1990s, each time she was released with limited money, no ID, and no social security card.[9] She was trapped in a vicious cycle, where she could not find a job, did not have housing, and would eventually get caught and placed back in prison again.[7][3] Upon her last release, a prison guard told her that he would see her in prison again soon. Determined to prove him wrong, Burton tried to find a drug treatment facility that was away from her home neighborhood, where it would be too easy to fall back into her old patterns of addiction.[6][7] It was hard to find a rehabilitation center that she could afford, and finally she found the CLARE Foundation in Santa Monica.[10][6] She stopped doing drugs in 1997, because of the help she received from the CLARE Foundation. While receiving treatment, it dawned on Burton that there were not facilities like this where she lived, and she began helping other women in similar situations.[3][11][7][4]
Activism
editBurton founded the organization A New Way of Life, where she works with formerly incarcerated people fighting problems of re-entry.[3][6][11][12][7][4] After her recovery at the CLARE foundation, Burton looked for other opportunities to continue her life outside of prison. She found that resources like food stamps and housing assistance were not given to her because of her record, and it was hard to find support that was affordable.[4] Because of this, Burton was at a loss for ways to continue her life successfully after prison – an issue that far too many individuals face daily. This inspired Burton, and in 1998, Burton bought a house and converted it into a house for recently released female offenders. She started the program by going to the bus station where parolees were released, and inviting women she knew from the system to stay with her. She originally had 10 women living in the house, but after a year she began to lose money – and did not have enough to support everyone.[3][6] A friend helped her apply for a grant to form this system into a real non-profit organization, and in 2000 A New Way of Life was officially born.[4] Burton worked with organizer Melissa Burch, a member of the Los Angeles Chapter of Critical Resistance to start the LEAD project, which stands for Leadership, Education, Action and Dialogue. The LEAD project offered regular workshops that provided a space for residents of A New Way of Life to dialogue and understand the history of the prison industrial complex and prison abolition.[13] Eventually, Burton became a certified chemical dependency counselor, and she now has five transitional houses in Los Angeles. The program helps women transition back into society, find work, and recover from drug addiction, 75 percent of the women in her program stay drug-free and do not return to prison for 18 months minimum.[3] The organization now runs a free legal clinic, and each woman receives her own caseworker. She has helped more than 1,000 women, and all can stay until they are ready to move on to somewhere else.[6] Further, the organization's legal department has provided pro bono services to over 2,000 formerly incarcerated and incarcerated people.[4] Recently, the organization expanded and now provides $2 million in donated goods each year, which has helped more than 3,000 formerly homeless people get the necessary items to gain a home and live a healthy life.[4] In January 2019, she made a trip to Uganda to not only visit prisons, but also to visit schools that house children of incarcerated mothers.[14]
Awards
editSusan Burton has received numerous awards and been appointed to several positions in her life time. Some of those accolades include:
- 2007, Burton was appointed to the Little Hoover Sentencing Reform Commission and the Gender Responsive Strategies Commission by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.[15]
- 2010, Burton was awarded the Citizen Activist Award from the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government.[12]
- 2010, CNN named Burton a CNN Hero.[3][12]
- 2012, she was named a Purpose Prize winner.[16]
- In the California Wellness Foundation, she has been a Community Fellow.[17]
- Through The Women's Foundation of California, Burton was a Women's Policy Institute Fellow as well as a Soros Justice Fellow through the Open Society Foundations.[18][19]
- She is a board member on the Los Angeles Sober Living Network.[12]
- 2014, Burton received the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award.[20]
- 2015, she was named one of the United States's 18 New Civil Rights Leaders by the Los Angeles Times.[21]
- 2018 she was chosen by the National Women's History Project as one of its honorees for Women's History Month in the United States.[22]
- 2019 she was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters honorary degree from California State University, Northridge.[23]
Author
editIn 2017, Burton published an autobiography which became a bestseller.[24] The book details her life journey and the founding of A New Way of Life.[24] She distributed 8,000 copies of her book to incarcerated women and visited 64 prisons within a year.[24]
- (2017) – Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women by Susan Burton, Cari Lynn, and Michelle Alexander[25]
Personal life
editThe death of Burton's son and her subsequent incarceration impacted her relationship with her daughter Antoinette (Toni), who was 15 at the time of her brother's death.[26] Burton has a granddaughter Ellesse.[26]
In August 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom granted a pardon to Burton.[27]
References
edit- ^ a b "Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley Tackles The 'PUSHOUT' Of Black Girls At School". Essence. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ "Journalist Jaime Joyce of 'TIME for Kids' in Conversation With Author Susan Burton, Antoinette Carter". Pulitzer Center. June 16, 2020.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Toner, Kathleen. "'Magic happened' after she gave ex-cons a chance at new lives". CNN. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Susan Burton". Encore.org. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ "Criminal Justice Reform Activist Shares Inspirational Story". Now & Ever the Campaign for Ole Miss. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ a b c d e f "Upstanders: Breaking the Prison Pipeline". Starbucks Newsroom. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ a b c d e Alexander, Michelle (10 March 2012). "Go to Trial: Crash the Justice System". The New York Times. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ a b Burton, Susan. "After 6 Prison Terms, A Former Inmate Helps Other Women Rebuild Their Lives". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
- ^ Edwards, Breanna (24 May 2019). "She, The People: Susan Burton On Leading Women Returning To Society To 'A New Way Of Life'". Essence. Retrieved 2020-02-28.
- ^ Abcarian, Robin (October 14, 2014). "Women suffer disproportionately under harsh California laws". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 20, 2017.
- ^ a b Price, Dick; Kyle, Sharon. "Getting a Finger on the Pulse With Susan Burton". Justice Not Jails. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ a b c d "Susan Burton Founder and Executive Director, A New Way of Life". The Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Stanford University. Retrieved 10 March 2017.
- ^ "Visions of Abolition". www.visionsofabolition.org. Retrieved 2020-06-17.
- ^ Fund, Art For Justice (2019-06-04). "Susan Burton Talks with Essence about A New Way of Life and Her Work Helping Women Returning Home from Prison". Art for Justice. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
- ^ "Susan Burton & Alyse Emdur". Clockshop. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
- ^ "Purpose Prize Winner Susan Burton". AARP. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
- ^ Lynn, Cari (2017). Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. The New Press.
- ^ "Grant Partners in the News – The Women's Foundation of California". The Women's Foundation of California. 2011-06-14. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
- ^ "A New Way of Life for Women Leaving Prison". Open Society Foundations. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
- ^ "Leadership Awards". www.irvine.org. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
- ^ Lee, Matt Pearce, Kurtis. "The new civil rights leaders: Emerging voices in the 21st century – Los Angeles Times". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2018-09-21.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "National Women's History Month: What is it, when did it begin, who is being honored this year?". kiro7.com. 25 February 2018.
- ^ Chandler, Carmen (April 29, 2019). "Advocate for Incarcerated Women to Receive Honorary Doctorate from CSUN". CSUN Today. Retrieved May 20, 2019.
- ^ a b c Toner, Kathleen (2023-08-31). "Some 60,000 people return from prison each year. Her program is now a nationwide model for providing second chances". CNN. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ Noble, Barnes &. "Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women|Paperback". Barnes & Noble. Retrieved 2024-04-12.
- ^ a b Dahlstrom, Linda (June 23, 2017). "'Becoming Ms. Burton': One woman's quest to interrupt the incarceration cycle".
- ^ "Gov. Newsom grants pardon to Susan Burton, who assists women returning to society after prison". Los Angeles Times. 2019-08-08. Retrieved 2020-05-22.
External links
edit- CNN interview with Susan Burton
- Susan Burton on the Starbucks Upstanders content series
- A film about the life of Susan Burton
- Visions of Abolition: From Critical Resistance to A New Way of Life A documentary film (2011) about the prison industrial complex and prison abolition that features Susan Burton, Angela Y. Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. A new updated version will be forthcoming in 2022.