Criminal Justice Reform and Gender Justice Advocate Amika Mota Named Executive Director of Sister Warriors
SAN FRANCISCO, CA: Sister Warriors, a membership organization led by formerly incarcerated and systems-impacted women and trans people of all genders, today announced that Amika Mota has been named executive director. The move is part of a broader effort to establish an ecosystem of organizations working in concert to end the incarceration and criminalization of girls, women, and trans people of all genders and gender expansive people.
“Amika is the Sister Warrior we need to strengthen and grow our movement to end mass incarceration and push for community-based alternatives,” said Jessica Nowlan, President of the Reimagine Freedom Center and outgoing Executive Director of Young Women’s Freedom Center. “Her drive to revolutionize the criminal justice system comes from her lived experience and an authentic love for sisterhood. I look forward to continuing to work with Amika to actualize the vision of the Freedom Charter, which was imagined by hundreds of Sister Warriors.”
After experiencing the prison system first-hand, Mota dedicated her life to dismantling the punitive systems that harm communities of color and communities with low income. Most recently, Mota served as policy director at Young Women’s Freedom Center, where she led the ACA 3 campaign, an amendment that would have barred involuntary servitude in California. She also led successful legislative campaigns to end racist gang enhancements and a law supporting survivors of violence by requiring judges to consider a person’s survivor and trauma history in charging, sentencing and resentencing decisions, among other policy wins.
Mota began organizing for reproductive justice and young mothers’ rights over 20 years ago, as a teen mother and midwife. Her passion for criminal justice reform and abolition is rooted in her own experience. She began advocating for women in prison during her seven-year incarceration in the California Department of Corrections, where she served time at both California Institute for Women and Central California Women’s Facility. During her time inside, she was a jailhouse lawyer, paralegal, firefighter, and mentor to many young folks on the yard.
“I am honored to be Sister Warrior’s newest Executive Director, especially during this critical moment for the criminal justice reform and reproductive justice movements,” said Mota. “While we are in a climate of uphill battles, I see hope and optimism. Our lived experiences and our stories have the power to fuel movements, shift hearts and minds and create policy changes to end the mass incarceration of women, girls and trans people of all ages.”
As the new executive director, and in partnership with the 14 active chapters that make up the Sister Warriors coalition, Mota will spearhead policy and electoral strategies to shift power and lead local and statewide systems and policy changes.
In 2020, Sister Warriors launched Freedom 2030, a 10-year strategy to end the incarceration and criminalization of women, young women, and trans people of all genders in California. Created by over 400 formerly incarcerated women, girls, and trans people of color over the past two years and guided by the Freedom Charter, the campaign grounds the movement in the rights of Sister Warriors and their vision for California’s future: to end the racial and gender apartheid of the prison, criminal, legal and other public systems.
Analisa Ruiz, previous director of Young Women’s Freedom Center’s Santa Clara program, will now serve as the organization’s policy director. Ruiz is a third-generation Xicana, born and raised in San Jose. Having been systems impacted since a young age, Ruiz brings passion and commitment to dismantle the systems of oppression that target communities of color.