Justice Now's statement about Tumi McCallum

It is with great sadness that we write to our allies
and friends about the recent death of one of our
former interns, Tumi McCallum. We hope to shine some
light on the person Tumi was, particularly given the
extremely limited discussion of her life in media
coverage of her death.

Tumi came to Justice Now through a class she took with
Julia Sudbury at Mills College.
While working with us, she provided invaluable
assistance to people in women?s prisons in a number of
extremely important ways. As an advocate, she provided
a vital lifeline to the outside for people in prison.
She corresponded with people in women?s prisons facing
severe and life-threatening medical problems,
providing them with crucial information and advice.
Even after completing her required hours for school
credit, Tumi
continued her work with Justice Now, far surpassing
what was initially required. Her commitment combined
with her skills allowed her to take on more complex
work.

Tumi advocated on behalf of a woman in prison who was
in need of medical treatment but had been told by
prison staff that nothing could be done for her.
Tumi?s strong conviction that this was untrue led her,
as an undergraduate, to research the law and determine
that the prison was in fact unfairly denying
treatment. Tumi also
advocated for a women in prison suffering extreme
medical neglect and identified her as a person who
might qualify for alternative sentencing. If
successful, this is a process that would allow the
woman to be resentenced and released from prison.
Because of Tumi?s identification of this woman?s
situation, Justice Now currently is working to secure
her release.

Tumi was a brilliant writer and a passionate advocate,
all of which was tucked behind a humble and patient
demeanor. She always had a smile on her face, and she
approached all of her work with tremendous energy and
careful attention. Through our Human Rights
Documentation Program, she focused on the issue of
hepatitis C and collaborated with a woman inside to
write an opinion-editorial to accompany the upcoming
release of our report on the pandemic of hep C in
prison. As an example of her dedication and
sensitivity, though the California Department of
Corrections refused to allow her to visit the prison
because she possessed a South African passport, she
took on the challenge of taking the words of a woman
with whom she could not visit face-to-face and turning
them into a powerful article. Because she took great
care to consider all available information from the
woman inside, even without meeting her she was able to
write a piece that our colleague inside felt fully
represented her.

As someone who had experienced living under a police
state as a child in South Africa, she had a
long-standing understanding of policing and
imprisonment, which, she argued, ?worked at oppressing
my community instead of making it safe and protecting
it.? She was born at the end of the Apartheid system
and was on the run with her family from the police,
who were pursuing her mother for her activism against
Apartheid for many years. She drew parallels between
those experiences, the prison industrial complex in
the United States, and the treatment of Black people
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, all of which
fueled her passion for racial justice. She was fully
committed to social justice work, in particular the
struggle against the PIC. As she wrote in the last
line of her letter requesting an internship at Justice
Now, ?[this] is the ideal place for me to begin my
activism against the policing system and to end
violence against our communities.?

Tumi had plans to come back to Justice Now in the fall
and had expressed her conviction that this was to be
her life?s work. Her sharp political insights, her
intense commitment to social justice, her quiet
assuredness, and her generous spirit are a great loss
to all of us. She will be greatly missed, and we join
her family, friends, and the larger community of
social justice activists of which she was a part, to
honor her life.

In solidarity and in hope for a world without violence
in all its forms,

all of us at Justice Now