Welcome to Comm In The Storm
This is my inaugural foray into the Blogosphere. I’m arriving with an eagerness to promote public relations with a conscience. We call this space Comm In The Storm… We will give myriad reasons, much like the forces of nature, that explain why we do what we do. Our work never ends with a single hit, a series of story placements or an audience engaged. We are always moved and changed as we try to give others a tiny peek into a world often impacted by forces both within and beyond our control. Like a voice that rolls beneath the thunder, we hope our musings will reach and resonate. Join me to face off against clouds and clamor.
Susan Burton helps tell a tale about the times we live in -- a fitting subject for our first Comm In The Storm post. Despite grinding recession, soaring joblessness and a housing crisis that has tossed untold legions of families on the street, there is hope. It thrives in the power of the indomitable human spirit. For Susan it starts at the bus depot near Skid Row (not a proverbial one, but the real Skid Row on the seedy side of LA), and ends with a safe house and a bridge from the prison compound to a life outside of those walls.
Four days before her 59th birthday, Susan Burton learned that she was selected from thousands of candidates for CNN’s 2010 Ten Top Heroes. The honor accords national recognition to “every day people changing the world.”
CNN captures her triumphant saga. Visit the site and vote for Susan to be #1.
Tortured Trail to Triumph
You don’t meet a Susan Burton every day. Along the tortured trail of abuse and tragedy, she has cleared extraordinary hurdles, landing on solid ground to teach and inspire criminal justice reform through her personal triumph and public example.
Susan Burton, one of six siblings and the only girl, never had the luxury of being “the precious princess.” The jagged edges of those formative years taught Susan to become who she is today. Caretaker. Fighter. Survivor. Six-time prison inmate. Serial rape victim. Substance abuser. A daughter of the streets, she could scoop up the despair in the air and breathe it as her oxygen.
Susan’s story and the message of A New Way of Life Reentry Project that she founded in 1998 is a clarion call for reentry. It nurtures redemption and advances reform. It is a lesson of forgiveness for individual acts of abuse and peels away the layers to systemic injustice that reduces people into broken war casualties. The victims lack access to a different pathway, forced to rely on their own fragile reserves.
But back to Susan’s story….
“I was abused physically, sexually and emotionally as far back as I can remember.” Susan confides. “I don’t recall the age when I lost my virginity because I can’t remember when I had it.”
From brothers to neighbors to “dirty old men,” Susan remembers being sexually violated and physically brutalized throughout her childhood. She still bears burns from three of her brothers pressing hot spoons on her arm. She has come to forgive them but not forget the trauma that she endured. Christmas Eve 1965, 14-year-old Susan was a victim of gang rape that resulted in conception of her daughter Antoinette, born the day before Susan’s 15th birthday. Only in recent years has Susan been able to rectify the breach between her and Antoinette whose relationship has become a centerpiece of Susan’s recovery.
Susan’s second child, Marque (“KK”), was born in 1976. At the age of five, the boy was crossing the street when struck and killed by an LAPD officer’s squad car. Susan’s spiral down into addiction and abuse became dark and endless until her last prison term in 1996. Susan entered a rehabilitation program in Santa Monica in early 1997. The hundred days that followed would put her on a path of recovery that remains a hallmark of her strength today.
“The community was heavily resourced. The people were nice; they understood what was needed and required. I got intensive counseling and for the first time in my life, I felt safe.” Susan realized that is what rehabilitation looks like.
Watch the following video for the CNN Featured Spotlight Video on Susan Burton, her background, and her A New Way of Life Reentry Project:
Redemption, Rehabilitation, Resources
Susan worked through the life-long grief and trauma to find the space and internal strength to heal. “I was grateful but I was still angry because it should not have taken so long to get to that place,” noted Susan who believes the energy that fueled her anger was transformed into an understanding of structural inequalities. This would be the building blocks for A New Way of Life Reentry Project.
Personal transgressions that so adversely affected Susan could be forgiven. But systemic abuse resulting in the grand theft of human potential could not be accepted or excused. “I was able to understand how fortunate I was to have a new beginning. But this also made me understand the necessity to have resources to create passage for other women and for communities. That’s the only way they can make it.”
Twelve years, five properties and 500 women later, A New Way of Life and its six fulltime staff provide counseling, social services support, legal services, housing support and family support for women condemned to life sentences.
A New Way defines Reentry as more than a physical process. Drawing from the personal barriers encountered by its founder, A New Way emphasizes legal advocacy and education to assist the women, employers and the community in restoring the rights of formerly incarcerated people. This includes education, job training, employment housing and political participation. Health services, especially drug and substance abuse treatment, are also critical components of the re-entry process. The organization is a vocal advocate of criminal justice reform that puts emphasis on drug treatment and rehabilitation as opposed to punishment.
In total, A New Way provides essential services beyond the women and the families that they support. The benefits to society are immeasurable. Real reentry makes an investment in redemption of the individual but also addresses the abuses of the system.
Financially strapped California – which claims a budget deficit larger than the GNP of most countries – pays more than $50,000 a year to keep women behind bars. Susan Burton’s New Way of Life spends about $15,000 to help keep them from returning to prison. The costs there are incalculable.
I end by inviting you to learn more about Susan Burton…please vote for her at CNN (you can vote as frequently as your time permits) and visit her at www.ANewWayofLife.org
Click Here to Cast Your Vote for Susan Burton for CNN Hero of the Year!
 |
| Click the Photo to Cast Your Vote 4 Susan! |
