Nancy Sicardo

[Content warning: Suicide watch]

Nancy Sicardo was born and raised in Manhattan's Lower East Side. She was in and out of Rikers in the 1980s while struggling with addiction, describing Rikers then as "break (...) Back then, it was like a hang out." She recalls the loneliness and humilitation, and how she had to borrow shoes from fellow incarcerated women to avoid being barefoot after her shoes were confiscated. At Rikers, Sicardo worked as a suicide aide and in the captain's kitchen. She remembers how exhausting court would be and how she felt "like an animal, chained up." Sicardo now returns to Rikers Island for her work with the Women's Comunity Justice Association, where she says she's able to show the women there the care she was missing from the outside while incarcerated: "We are the backbones to our societies. We are the backbones to our communities." (Summary written by: Carson Stachura)