In the readings, “Lessons in Self-Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism” and “Race, Reproductive Justice, and the Criminalization of Purvi Patel”, they talk about the role of the legal system in the lives of survivors, especially survivors that are part of the BIPOC community. The first reading, “Lessons in Self-Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization, and Anticarceral Feminism”, it spoke about the gathering of all the BIPOC community coming together for the concerns of isolation, alienation, and racism within RCCs (rape crisis centers) and battered women’s shelters in the U.S. and the second reading, “Race, Reproductive Justice, and the Criminalization of Purvi Patel”, it spoke the case of Purvi Patel, a 33 year-old Indian American woman who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted of feticide and neglecting a dependent. For these readings, I learned that the legal system either does nothing or tries to cover or convict in order to not deal with the repercussions from the system if they tried to defend the BIPOC community. What I think about the legal system, all I see is corruption written all over it, especially with working with the government to keep their records spotless. For example, in the second reading, they convicted Purvi Patel of feticide and neglecting of a dependent even though she thought the fetus was dead. All she did was took a trip to the emergency room due to complications of vaginal bleeding and then next thing, she’s being thrown into criminal charges that form to a legal nightmare. And the legal system want to alleged that Patel killed the fetus illegally using pills that she obtained illegally o the internet. Because of the legal system, most BIPOC because became a victim of the prison system just because of their race, culture, ethnicity etc. But I mainly felt that the legal system is threatened because they see BIPOC, mostly black people, our skin and race as a weapon. A weapon of destruction, because they know that we’re powerful when we speak and walk with our heads held high, ready to not back down from a challenge. I believe that the legal system is not doing their jobs correctly as they suppose to, and its because of the white supremacists that are sitting in Congress and the main person who is sitting in the office right at this moment. The one question I can really ask is, when is the world going to get better, not just for the women, but for the BIPOC community in general?
