 Prosecuted for three capital felonies, including conspiracy to murder, and held in jail for over a year, she was ultimately acquitted of all charges in 1972.She visited Eastern bloc countries in the 1970s and during the 1980s was twice the Communist Party's candidate for Vice President; at this time, she also held the position of professor of ethnic studies at San Francisco State University.Much of her work focused on the abolition of prisons and in 1997 she co-founded Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex.