Consuela Gaines: Organizer for Voices of the Experienced (Vote)

Consuela Gaines is an organizer for Voice of the Experienced/VOTE in the Lafayette, LA chapter. She’s a formerly incarcerated woman who served 22 years of a 47 year sentence. She’s a survivor of solitary confinement and currently serves on the Louisiana Task Force for Safe Alternatives to Segregation. While incarcerated, she participated in various leadership roles from being a counsel substitute to a literacy tutor;  graduate of Office Systems Technology and Welding, just to name a few.  Since her release from prison in 2016, she has been a member of the  National Council of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and  Girls (Andrea James) and presented a workshop about Pardon and Parole  Board Hearings for Incarcerated Women at the FreeHer National Conference  in 2018 in Montogomery, AL; is a member of the local NAACP in  Lafayette, LA, serving as the Criminal Justice Committee Chairperson;  served as a Worthy Matron and Grand Associate Worthy Matron of the Order  of the Eastern Star; won Best Essay prize in Popular Music in 2020,  which she co-authored, “Sounding Lockdown: Singing in Administrative Segregation at LCIW,” which was published in ‘Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions,’  with Georgetown University Professor, Ben Harbert; she was in the  second  cohort of Women Organizing for Justice and Opportunity  Leadership Lab (WOJO) under A New Way of Life Re-Entry Project (Susan  Burton/California) in 2021; in 2022 the African American Heritage  Foundation in Lafayette, Louisiana, named her as one of their Honorees  for Outstanding Community Leadership; she was also in the second cohort  for the 2020-21 Women Transcending Collective Leadership Institute  cohort out of Columbia University, New York; she received certification  as a Life Coach for Justice-Involved Individuals through Morehouse  School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, in 2022; is an instructor for the new  women’s re-entry curriculum, “Life Support”, at the Louisiana  Correctional Institute for Women; and currently studying to become a  certified doula through the Ladies of Hope Ministries (Dr. Topeka K.  Sam); Consuela is a proud registered voter who plans to vote in every election. She prides herself on being a voice for incarcerated women who’ve been silenced by fear of repercussions for speaking up and out.  She dreams of opening transitional houses for justice-involved people.