History
JDI was founded in 1980 by Russell Dan Smith as People Organized to Stop the Rape of Imprisoned Persons (POSRIP) and was soon renamed Stop Prisoner Rape. In 2008, the organization changed its name to Just Detention International, in recognition of its work in all forms of detention and beyond the United States. Two of the organization’s early leaders were Tom Cahill and Stephen Donaldson (also known as “Donny the Punk”). Like many of the people involved in the beginning days of the organization, Smith, Cahill, and Donaldson were all survivors of rape behind bars. Donaldson died in 1996 as a result of AIDS, having contracted HIV during a sexual assault in jail
Read more about this topic: Just Detention International
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“The history of his present majesty, is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations ... all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world, for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)