Catalyzed by the defeat of a state plan to build a maximum-security prison in their backyard, the powerful women leaders and residents created the Bayview Citizens for Social Justice, a non-profit organization, secured $10 million in grants, purchased the proposed prison site land and are now building a new community from the ground up.

Under the leadership of visionary women, this new rural village challenges all conventional ideas of community development and includes not only improved and affordable housing, but a sustainable economic base to earn a living wage, a community center for educating its residents, a daycare center, laundromat, and a community farm, which not only provides jobs and income for the organization, but returns them to their roots, working on the land.

Bayview's story has been featured in national and international media including: CBS' "60 Minutes", the New York Times, Washington Post, People magazine, and the BBC.

Web Page: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/this.html

Reviews
"The tendency of today's policymakers to serve up prisons as the answer to rural America's economic plight comes with devastating consequences...The story of Bayview, Virginia provides a much-needed example of what can happen when indigenous rural leaders reach beyond the boundaries of race, class, and geography to fight back against the prison industrial complex. Teresa Konechne's inspired and inspiring chronicle of one community's successful struggle to defeat a plan to locate a prison in their town and pursue a sustainable future instead should be in the toolkits of all educators, organizers, economic developers, advocates for justice, and founders of innovation across the nation seeking an answer to the question: 'If not prisons, what?'"