Consuela Gaines

Chapter Organizer | Lafayette

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 years 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.