Abolitionist Sanctuary
Join Founder and Executive Director of Abolitionist Sanctuary, Rev. Nikia S. Robert, Ph.D., in a podcast about Black women/mothers, religion, and mass punishment. Connect with us to be apart of a faith-based abolitionist movement!
Abolitionist Sanctuary
S3:E3 Susan Burton's Journey from Prison to Purpose
Susan Burton shares her powerful journey from cycling through prison to founding A New Way of Life, an organization providing housing and support for formerly incarcerated women with a 94% success rate. Her story illuminates how systemic racism criminalizes Black women's survival strategies while offering a model for healing through love, tolerance, and community care.
• Experiencing the tragic death of her five-year-old son and lacking access to healing resources in South LA
• Discovering the disparity between how addiction is treated in Black communities (prison) versus white communities (treatment)
• Creating A New Way of Life to offer housing, family reunification, workforce development, and time to heal
• Describing prison conditions as dehumanizing systems that strip identity and dignity
• Emphasizing how faith grounds her work as "a vessel for God's work"
• Challenging churches to move beyond judgment to practical support and abolition
• Extending her mission beyond reentry to community mutual aid during crises
Visit anewwayoflife.org to learn more about Susan Burton's work and upcoming events including the Justice on Trial Film Festival on October 4th and their annual gala on December 7th.
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Welcome to the Abolitionist Sanctuary podcast, where we talk faith, abolition and Black motherhood. I am your host, reverend Dr Nakia Smith-Robert, the founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. We are a national coalition leading a faith-based abolitionist movement. Thank you to our audio and visual audiences for joining us on YouTube, instagram, facebook and all streaming platforms. Let's build abolitionist sanctuaries together with this critical and candid conversation. For today's episode, I am excited to introduce our guest.
Speaker 1:Mrs Susan Burton is a leader in the criminal justice reform movement, founder of A New Way of Life and an outspoken voice to end mass incarceration. Following the tragic accidental death of her five-year-old son, Susan's world collapsed, coupled with past trauma and pain. Her loss snapped the final tether of resilience. She descended into darkness and despair. But, living in South Los Angeles, susan didn't have access to the resources she needed to heal. Without support, she turned to drugs and alcohol, which led to nearly 20 years of revolving in and out of prison. Out of prison, drawing on her personal experiences, she founded a new way of life reentry project in 1998, dedicating her life to helping other women break the cycle of mass incarceration. A new way of life provides resources such as housing, case management, employment, legal services, leadership development and community organizing on behalf of, and along with people who struggle to rebuild their lives after incarceration.
Speaker 1:Mrs Burton has received numerous awards and honors for her work work. In 2010, she was named the CNN Top 10 Hero and received the Glitzman Citizen Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School. She is a recipient of the Encore Purpose Prize and the James Irvine Foundation Leadership Award. In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches and the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Los Angeles Times named Susan one of the 18 new civil rights leaders in the nation. Released in 2017, her memoir Becoming Mrs Burton received a 2018 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in the Category of Biography and Autobiography. Becoming Mrs Burton is also the recipient of the inaugural Goddard Riverside Stephen Russo Book Prize for Social Justice. Mrs Burton holds an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from California State Northridge. Thank you for joining us, mrs Burton. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:I am so pleased to be here when I hear that I think from whence we come and what's possible when we extend support and help to people instead of judging.
Speaker 1:I appreciate your witness. You are definitely not just a CNN hero, but a shero of mine and so many others. So let's hop right into our conversation. Tell us about young Susan Burton what is your earliest memory of a time where you felt most joy and the most love?
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm picturing myself as about a five, six-year-old in Lincoln Park in East LA and it is the 4th of July, or it might've been Memorial Day, or it might have been Memorial Day and my dad was really big on taking us to celebrate holidays. We were out at the park and he was barbecuing. I had put a stick in with a line and a hook with a worm in the lake. I came up with I think it was a goldfish, but it was about three inches long and I wanted my daddy to barbecue it. She threw it back into the lake, but that's a really fond memory of my childhood. There are other memories, but I do have some where I was with my daddy who tried to keep me safe. There's a black man in America. He wasn't even safe.
Speaker 1:Tell me more about the struggles of maintaining that safety and survival.
Speaker 2:I was not able to maintain safety. We were not able to maintain safety as a family. Many things happened. They happened to my mom, they happened to my siblings. They happened to my father. You know he lost his work as jobs were sent overseas. I can only imagine what she went through doing domestic work and then that left us vulnerable and being harmed by people in our community. Great migration from the South my mother and father were part of that. They landed in a project in East LA called Aliso Village, designed for them to land into, and they, coming from the South, wasn't to understand the sophistication of the trap they had fell into.
Speaker 1:But yeah, Our organization focuses on the survival strategies of poor Black mothers who do anything necessary to provide for themselves and their children against unjust systems. And what we see? That society often blames Black mothers for their survival strategies, for trying to make a way out of no way, and we want to imagine a world where that's not the case, where Black mothers aren't blamed but we instead interrogate the systems, such as poverty and rentlining, that make survival nearly impossible in the first place. So this story of your mom resonates with me, particularly growing up to a single Black mother who had my brother at the age of 15 and watching her sometimes bend rules and break law to keep a roof over our head and food on the table. So you mentioned about the safety of your dad. You mentioned about the survival strategies of your mom. Tell us what is your survival story? What negotiations did you make in life to make ends meet? I?
Speaker 2:negotiated everything, dr Robert. I lost everything. I lost myself, but then I did find myself. I remember as a little child how I was being harmed and not have safety. I remember as a young woman how I allowed my body to be exploited.
Speaker 2:I remember when, after my son's death, how I turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with the lifetime of harm that I had endured. That was, you know, my mother used to talk about the straw that broke the camel's back. That broke my back and I fell into a spiral of addiction and substance abuse and alcoholism and spiraled in and out of the criminal justice system. Just lost All the while. I knew there was something more in me. I knew there had to be more to life for me, but I just didn't know how to get to it. So the community and the resources, the supports that we give in our community, the love, the compassion that we extend one another, is so important in a world that will judge us and trample over our hopes and our dreams, our skills, our intellect, our talent and our gifts, feels, our intellect, our talent and our gifts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this system is stacked up against us and we are blamed for it, for carrying our communities, our families, on our back and even our democracy.
Speaker 1:Black women are the most educated, we are providers in 80% of households, we are often the primary caregivers, and yet we are the poorest of every other ethnic group except Native American. We are often caught in the hard place, and I hear you in your survival story and the things that you had to navigate and how it became so crushing that you turned to substances and underground economies For abolitionist sanctuary. Your survival story is a source of salvation that you are seen in the image of the divine, no matter what those survival strategies were, because we know that this system is designed to crush us, but there is a God who does not want to see us destroyed, right, well, we believe in the salvific value of Black women's moral agency. So thank you for sharing your survival story, and particularly the nuances of Black motherhood. As we talk about your earlier childhood, the role of your family and Black motherhood in your survival story, how does this become the impetus for a new way of life? Why did you establish this organization?
Speaker 2:After recycling in and out of the prison system, october 4th of 1997, I found help in Santa Monica, and in Santa Monica there was this elaborate buffet of services, of social services, of support, of work, of love, of compassion, of tolerance and patience. And I began to think. And I began to think why was that not available in South LA? Why was I chained, stripped of my clothing, to work for eight cents an hour in a prison plantation, instead of given an opportunity to eat from the buffet of social services that were in Santa Monica? When they are caught with drugs in Santa Monica, they get to go to treatment. In Santa Monica they get to go to treatment, they get diverted from prison, they get to do a community service. They get a piece of paper from a judge that says go to Alcoholics Anonymous.
Speaker 2:No one ever told me there was a solution for the problem I had acquired through substance use. I began to understand that I wasn't a bad person, I was a harm person and I was coping with the harm with what was available. See, we didn't have therapy in South LA. We didn't have diversions. There was Alcoholics Anonymous there, but I didn't know about Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't know. I had the disease, of addiction. I didn't know there were 12 steps to help me. When I found that out, it really angered me that there was no willingness to invest in a Black woman full of potential but also full of harm.
Speaker 2:So when you discover something like I discovered in Santa Monica, I wanted to bring it to South LA. I wanted to bring it back to my community and I thought if I just helped a handful of women, everything would change. I worked and got a house and went to the bus station where we got off the bus and I would offer my friend that I had been in prison with a place to be, a place where it was drug, alcohol-free, a place that was safe. And then about six months there was a house full of women helping women and we created a community of healing and of help for one another.
Speaker 2:But then I discovered that there was a much bigger problem. It wasn't about a couple of women, a nation and a system within that nation that was hell-bent on harming all of us, keeping us oppressed, suppressed and existing, not thriving, not living, not honoring who we are. And I said this is a much bigger problem than I thought. And I said this is a much bigger problem than I thought. But that's when I began to get a little politicized and began to look at the other isms of the world. No-transcript. The cultures, especially Black cultures, in this nation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you for sharing your story, and what you are emphasizing is these disparities.
Speaker 1:There's this double system of justice and the disparities that construct Black women as unworthy and undeserving of the resources needed to secure quality of life and survive.
Speaker 1:Whereas white people who encounter misfortune in society maybe breaks the law, they are considered redeemable right that they can be treated, that they are deserving of resources, whereby Black women are just punished and a system is thrown at them and they carry the weight of mass incarceration. Why these interventions are important and why you are a hero to so many is you saw those disparities and responded with action. You didn't have much, you just went with what you had to that bus station, one woman at a time. You were able to help, and now you have this thriving nonprofit organization where you train others to create safe homes so that they can start a new way of life. It's interesting how Black women have limited options to survive, but then when we do anything we have to do to make a way out, of no way we're punished and we're not given the resources we need to heal or to reenter into society whole. Tell us what is life like on the inside for Black women and what are the conditions and the harms, the perpetual harms that happen on the inside?
Speaker 2:Life is undignified for all people incarcerated. But also inside of prison there is this same level of racism, classism and sexism. Black people are given the manual labor jobs. People with shortish sentences are given the hardest work. People with life sentences run the prison. They're the ones with the clerical jobs, with the admin jobs, with the supervisory jobs.
Speaker 2:But there's this level of daily harm. You lose all your sense of identity. You lose all your sense of self-direction. You lose all your sense of style. You are always in fright mode because you can't fight, because that's punishable at another level. You become quite submissive to whatever they want to do to you, because if you're not submissive you incur harm. But even when you are submissive, you are still being harmed.
Speaker 2:You have no control over your body. It belongs to them, same way the body of my ancestors belonged to the plantation slave master. They strip you and examine your body. They feed you food that you can't even really identify as food. I remember we go into the kitchen on chicken day, which is something you could identify because it was the shape of a chicken, but it smelled like antibiotics. It was just so horrifically dehumanizing.
Speaker 2:And when I reflect that I'm like you killed my son. You killed my son, this system of policing, of corrections. You killed my son and I tried to deal with his death and the only thing that was available in my community because it was during the war on drugs that saturated my community with this substance from out of nowhere. You put this crap in my community and I consume it and then you try to kill me with it. Jesus, you try to kill my spirit, my soul, like Andre say. But then I rose up. I rose like the day. I rose up unafraid, and I would do it a thousand times, over and over again, not only for me, but for every woman that crossed my path. I would rise up, I would help her rise up and we would stand and reclaim our dignity, our purpose, our meaning and our life's goal, over and over again.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like they say you tried to bury us but you didn't know we were scenes. Yes, yes, wow, that is powerful. I have chills, I'm moved to tears. I don't want to tell your story, and so I'm just going to encourage people to buy this book. Mrs Burton goes into detail about her son and state violence that stole him prematurely, and also her own experience with violence and overcoming, and so this story of rising like a phoenix from ashes is important, important to raise up the values of resilience that comes from the survival stories of Black women, because prisons and the prison industrial complex seeks to rob us of that story and to tell the false narrative that we are deviant, that we are bad, that we are undeserving of dignity and civil and human rights, when in fact we are worthy. We are worthy because we are born in the image of the divine. We are worthy because we are Black women, not in spite of it, and so I want to thank you for your transparency, and I want to thank you that you do not enter a door alone, but you bring a community with you, and with that comes our liberation, and this is why the project of abolition is so important. Right, because prisons don't work. Prisons do not keep us any safer.
Speaker 1:You mentioned the harms that continue to reproduce in prisons because of these systems of racial capitalism, sexism, classism, heteronormativity all the things that the prison systems are built on continue to hurt and harm the most vulnerable. Black women are 13% of the US population, but 30% of persons on the inside. 80% of women who are incarcerated are Black mothers. Black women are among the fastest prison population and oftentimes Black women are not there because of violent crimes, but for survival crimes related to drugs or substance abuse. We carry this history apart with sexual violence, right, and so it is not a solution to imprison people who are victims to an oppressive and violent system. Instead, we need help and resources. So thank you, mrs Burton. I also want to know about reentry, right. You told us about the inside. What is the importance of reentry? If you could help explain the reentry process to us and how a new way of life is a leader in the reentry space.
Speaker 2:And train people, because we have a 94% success rate, and one of the reasons for that is that we extend love and tolerance to people. None of us are perfect. We all make mistakes, and folks can make mistakes in the re-entry process also. But how do we walk into that? A woman comes to the way of life. We welcome her in, we provide family unification services. We have a workforce development department. We have all of the food, clothing and toiletries that's needed, but most of all, we allow people to know that it's all right for them to begin to heal and they can do it in their time.
Speaker 2:We have no time limits that says you have to leave in 30 days, nine days a year. Take your time to begin to dream again. Set your goals. Let us know how we can support you toward those dreams. If you want to go back to school, let's get you back in school. If you want to get trained, let's get you trained. Let's work. If you want to work, let us help you get to work. But it's like what is it that you want to do? We don't tell people what they should do. We do have a curfew. You have to be in by 10 o'clock and you can be out on the weekend. We have morning meditation at 8 am where we start our day. We have a cook that comes in and prepares the evening meal, because what is it like to walk in and you have the smell of smothered chicken and grains and cornbread or barbecue or spaghetti. You know what is it like when you come in and you walk into a home. So that whole smell in the food is really important. So we have a cook that takes food.
Speaker 2:We now have 12 houses in South LA and I was walking in today and there was a two-month-old baby and the mother was able to come here to New Way of Life and be safe while she's carrying her baby and bringing the baby into the world, safe and cared for and supported. She doesn't have to run out to work. She can have time to bond with her baby, she can have time to do what she needs to do and everybody's fed and comfortable and warm. Or in California, they're cool.
Speaker 2:We have two levels of housing here the initial re-entry homes. Where they come, they get their IDs, they get accustomed, we begin to build trust, we begin to establish you know what it is that they want to do when they do get to work or they enroll in school. They can move to our independent homes that are not staffed and they just live there and take care of the home, and one of the things that really amazing is the women take care of the home so well. Well, they are grateful and appreciative to be in a place where they are safe, protected, supported, encouraged, inspired and loved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. That sounds amazing. I want to come over for dinner. It sounds amazing. And you know, society wants us to think that Black Mother's survival strategy somehow is destroying the family. What you are doing is you're shifting the values of love and tolerance. These women will thrive, take care of their homes, build community and dream again. And so what I really like about A New Way of Life is and it gives me chills is that you are giving the women what you wanted, what did not get yourself, the safety that you deserve, the resources that you needed.
Speaker 2:I think that you hit the nail right on the head. I think about things that I was not affording, and what would have happened had I been affording those things? And so I can afford them now. And so I can afford them now. I can afford to give them, I can afford to be there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, wow, your story resonates me with so much. I don't know what this connection is that I feel to you. But man, woof, but man. So how does your faith ground you and inspires you throughout?
Speaker 2:your challenges, trials and tribulations, but also in the ways you are providing a new way of life for other women behind you. I have faith that we are important. I am important and you are important too. I have faith that all I need to help you understand how important you are will be given to me to extend to you. I know that I am a vessel for God's work in the universe and that God doesn't run out. All I have to do is be willing to stand and stay my course. So I guess that's sort of an unshakable faith. Yes, and it's not to say I don't get off course, but I try to stay on course and I try to stay available to be that vessel. Thank you.
Speaker 1:Staying the course, being faithful. How has the church been a conduit, a partner, a co-conspirator in this work, and how has the church been absent? What can the church do better? So both, how has it helped and how does the church harm?
Speaker 2:How can it do better? What can we do? I think the church was a part of creating the problem of mass incarceration. Yes, problem of mass incarceration. Yes, I think they didn't know anybody. They were into the judgment and the casting out and teaching our community to separate from one another and cast away from each other. But what I know is that there are no throwaway people. We are all valuable and some of us have a responsibility to help others to see past their shortcomings and to their values, now sees themselves as historically being a part of the problem and are opening and thinking about how to be a part of the solution.
Speaker 2:So the teachings that you do around ablational sanctuary every church needs to be trained in that. They need to understand that there's more to knowing besides you saving my soul, that's right, because don't try to save my soul when my stomach is grinding empty, hungry, or you're talking about my soul and I don't have a place to sleep. You got to do more than that. My soul and my spirit and my physical body. Yes, you'll be nourished enough to come back to be my righteous best self, but I can't get there when I'm thirsty and you're not giving me water. We have a ways to come, but the church is an exceptional vehicle to turn this whole thing around, as it was an exceptional vehicle to be a part of creating it. It's a responsibility I hold, it's a responsibility the church holds, to begin to understand more about this and step into a new frame of thinking, being and doing.
Speaker 2:I met you at the church, dr Labert, at a church where I was coming to offer help to the folks in Altadena who had been burnt out of their home. That's not my per se mission. My mission is to be a vessel of hope and help in my community. So it's beyond just women coming out of prison. When I saw the devast of response to them black folks in Alton Dana I knew what they were going to experience and what they're going through. I was like God, what can we do? How can we help? So we were able to extend men some support and, most of all, the biggest support is like I see you, I understand, I love you and here's $500 for everyone. Here is some household goods to help you, I shop for you, I deliver them to your doorsteps and that's what we did, especially for the seniors. One woman she's 89, miss brennan. She's still calling me she want to come over and get some blue, get some collard greens out my backyard. I'm like, come on and get some collard greens they're're abundant.
Speaker 1:I'm serious. They're hard to find out here. I want some.
Speaker 2:Girl. I got them. I'll be here all weekend.
Speaker 1:Yeah, ms Burton, thank you. The theology that you gave us speaks of the difference between Christianity that is religious, and following Jesus, who is a revolutionary Right, and this Jesus, he's a first century abolitionist. How do we know this is because he said I've come to set the captives free as followers of this revolutionary Jesus, who was a brown Palestinian Jew and a first century abolitionist. He says that we are to clothe the naked, give food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, heal the brokenhearted right, and that is the mission and the work that you are doing and that you are inviting the church to remember. It is that we are supposed to do as vessels and disciples of Jesus, this revolutionary.
Speaker 1:So thank you for also highlighting the ways in which Abolitionist Sanctuary is leading this work with our trainings that people can access at abolitionacademycom. I also am grateful for how you shared about the Eaton Canyon wildfires. Abolitionist Sanctuary has also given mortgage assistance to Black mothers. We created a prayer resource guide where we joined 50 clergy persons from around the country that people could call. So people go to our website, access that guide and reach a person in various religious beliefs the prayers for support they need, as well as we've given mutual aid fund in terms of gift cards and direct assistance. So we do want to partner with churches and with organizations like yourself in these recovery efforts.
Speaker 2:Let me just say though, that the folks in Altadena. It's a long road for reconstruction for them, and we must continue to support them with prayer, with resources, with whatever we can do.
Speaker 1:Fifty-four families in our church lost their homes, so when I saw you come through those doors, I knew that something transformative would happen. I'm just so grateful that you are a vessel and that you use your resources to bless others. Thank you for the ways in which you blessed our congregation at First AME Pasadena. I'm curious. You said what the church can do to help. I'm curious to know what you think about prison ministries, both from the perspective of being on the inside and for women on the outside. Are prison ministries welcomed? Are they effective? Can they be?
Speaker 2:better. There's a wide range of different types of prison ministries, from things like prison fellowship from things like prison fellowship. What I know is that anytime we can reach in and be with people that it's important. If we don't reach in and be with people, they will do anything and everything to us and we will be abandoned and left subject to such horrific harm. So it's important to have them committed, supporting and resourcing folks that need support and help, and it gives a gathering place, I believe, for people who want to do something but don't know how or what to do. So prison ministries even if you're writing a letter to someone, to know that there's someone that is thinking about them and someone they're connected to outside of that prison getting together with lotions and panties and clothing for people. I remember wanting a decent pair of panties. So bad, those things they gave me were like diapers. They were so big and thick and bulky and I remember just wanting a nice pair, just for the little panties. You know what I'm talking about Some tiny panties.
Speaker 2:So some of the things that churches can do with their prison ministry is to be intentional about connection, building community, bringing in resources, whether it's personal hygiene, having hygiene for people when they get home, but also keeping people connected with their children, making sure children know that their mother, you know there's so much we can do because that place has destroyed so much. In connection, and again, love, tolerance and patience for people.
Speaker 1:Excellent Love, tolerance and patience. Is there anything else you want to share with us about what's next for you? Anything you want us to do to make this book a New York Times bestseller? Well, you know, I just want to have a little fun for us all over with.
Speaker 2:I have a lot to give and offer. I'm thinking about writing another book about the safe network because I create the safe network after my book was published. I just continue to stay available so people can go to our website, a newwayoflifeorg. They can check us out, see how they might want to support. December 7th we're having a big gala. October 4th we have a Justice on Trial film festival here in Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. They can come and be with us at our film festival. We explore problems with the criminal justice system through film and we explore solutions to that problem through film. We have authors and speakers, so come out and share some time with us, so come out and share some time with us.
Speaker 1:You heard Ms Burton Visit anewwayoflifeorg, where you can find upcoming events and ways to support a new way of life organization and support a new film. Here at Abolitionist Sanctuary, we are also raising funds for a documentary to highlight stories like Mrs Burton and other Singapore Black mothers who are struggling to survive and overcome the stereotypes of criminalization and deviance. So please visit us at abolitionsthanctuaryorg to learn more about that documentary project as well and how you can support it. In closing, mrs Burton, we have something we call a rapid round. You did not see these words in advance. When I mention these words, tell me what's the first thing that comes to mind. I'm just going to shoot them at you and you tell us what you think. John Legend.
Speaker 2:Beautiful people Resistance.
Speaker 1:And who just sent you flowers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he sent me flowers. John is a warrior, he's an angel warrior.
Speaker 1:Safety.
Speaker 2:A new way of life.
Speaker 1:Prisons.
Speaker 2:Harm.
Speaker 1:Black women Excellence Children.
Speaker 2:Love.
Speaker 1:Love.
Speaker 2:Everybody.
Speaker 1:Freedom Fight. Abolitionist Sanctuary.
Speaker 2:Powerful.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Mrs Burton. Thank you for joining this conversation on the Abolitionist Sanctuary podcast. Please download and share on all platforms. Again, I am your host, Reverend Dr Nakia Smith-Robert, founder and executive director of Abolitionist Sanctuary. Find us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and download our social mobile app bringing together abolitionists and people who love freedom. Also, enroll in our courses and become certified at abolitionacademycom. Don't forget to become a member and write our mailing list at abolitionitionAcademycom. Don't forget to remember and write our mailing list at AbolitionIsSanctuaryorg. As we conclude this episode, remember that abolition is not only a practice, but it is a way of life, and for me, abolition is my religion. Thank you so much.
