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Topless Activist To Spend 16 Days In Jail, Calls It A "Death Sentence"
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Aug 9, 2013
Modified Aug 9, 2013
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By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Aug 9, 2013
Modified Aug 9, 2013
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Local topless activist Phoenix Feeley was sentenced to 16 days in a New Jersey county jail this week, after refusing to pay a 2008 fine for sunbathing topless at a Spring Lake beach. But Feeley is not going behind bars quietly; she warned the judge he had handed her a "death sentence," and says she is going on a hunger strike until her release.
33-year-old Feeley was arrested twice in 2008 for refusing to cover up—once at the beach, and once while leaving the county jail topless after being released for the first offense—and she was eventually fined $816. Feeley refused to pay that fine, though, arguing that a woman should have just as much of a right to go topless as a man does. "I have a direct appeal in to the U.S. Supreme Court about (these) criminal charges that are discriminatory against my gender," she told a Municipal Court Judge George C. Pappas at her sentencing on Thursday. "I refuse to pay the fines for an act that is legal for a man but not legal for a woman."
Since Feeley will not pay her fine, Pappas sentenced her to 16 days at the Monmouth County Jail; she's been in there since Monday, and has another 11 days to go. But Feeley's not taking her sentence lying down; "You just filed a death sentence. That's what you just gave me," she told the judge, arguing that the food is "inhumane, grade four, less than McDonald’s," the water is undrinkable, and says that she won't eat at all while she's in there. Feeley also told the judge that she has been abused and threatened by jail guards, was naked in her cell for 48 hours and has been denied access to the library, a lawyer and a phone call.
"None of my rights are being upheld while I’m in here. None of them," she said in court. And when Pappas urged her to file a grievance form, she told him she had been denied access to that too, adding, "OK, so, whatever, I’m dead. Well, I guess my dad will file for me."
In addition to her tireless topless activism, Feeley is a NYC-based performance artist who specializes in breathing fire; according to her website, she teaches both fireless and on-fire tool manipulation classes, and has performed with a number of circus troupes in the city, though she will reportedly be retiring from a few of the dangerous arts in September 2013, assuming she lives through her jail sentence. And her breast-baring crusade is not limited to Jersey beaches; she won a $29,000 settlement against the city of New York after she was arrested for being topless, since exposing breasts in public is totally legal here.
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monmouth county
new jersey
phoenix feeley
topless
Rebecca Fishbein
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