Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition is essential to effectively resist the rise of fascism globally. This year, Critical Resistance (CR) has continued to generate sharp abolitionist analysis and produce several tools, political education materials, and resources for our communities to use near and far in their struggles for liberation and self-determination. Throughout the past year, CR has worked to offer and distribute practical abolitionist organizing tools and provide political education support through workshops and trainings to a range of communities in order to resist repression across prison walls and build power against policing and criminalization.
In addition to publishing two timely issues of The Abolitionist newspaper - issues 41 (on ecological justice and PIC abolition, printed in June) and 42 (on anti-war organizing printing this week in December!), CR worked to seed abolition and bolster prisoner-led resistance against repression by creating and distributing another “Surviving Solitary” resource (inspired by a similar American Friend Service Committee / AFSC guide and Issue 40 of The Abolitionist on control units, printed December 2023) to share various techniques for imprisoned people struggling to survive solitary confinement. Additionally CR participated in Community Justice Exchange (CJE)'s distribution to imprisoned people of a printed booklet of the online one-stop resource hub "Beyond Courts," a collaborative project between CJE, Interrupting Criminalization and CR in 2022.
This year, CR was also featured as the first case-study of “How We Did That,” a project of the Building Beyond Policing Network on CR's work in the Stop Urban Shield coalition–which successfully defunded and shut down the largest militarized police & SWAT training exhibition in the world in 2018 (a fight also featured in CR's most recent issue of The Abolitionist on anti-war organizing).
And, throughout 2024, CR members provided political education workshops and campaign development trainings for movement partner organizers and their members in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, New York, Chicago, Atlanta and more!
This Holiday Season: Sustain CR &
help CR raise $90,000 by the end of 2024!
For over 25 years, your contributions of time, effort, and funds have empowered CR to run campaigns against policing, imprisonment, and surveillance; create tools to strengthen abolitionist organizing and analysis; build and strengthen connections with movement partners across our interconnected fights; and more. Keep CR strong over the next decades of abolitionist work!
From the people's victory to expel the US Navy from Vieques in Puerto Rico, to targeted youth resisting military recruitment in Hawai'i, resisting "deadly-exchange" policing programs from California to Georgia and occupied Palestine, lessons from the war on drugs from both sides of the US-Mexico border, and more - Issue 42 of CR's cross-wall newspaper The Abolitionist is not one to miss. Subscribe now to receive your own copy straight from the printing press in December!
Contributing authors include movement partner organizations War Resisters League, Dissenters, Demilitrize ATL 2 Palestine, Media Against Apartheid & Displacement, the International Cancel RIMPAC campaign and Anakbayan Hawai'i, Hawai'i Peace & Justice, Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses, and others.
Sneak a peek inside Issue 42: Read Media Against Apartheid & Displacement' (MAAD)'s article on journalism, Gaza, and war resistance!
Lara Witt and Maya Schenwar examine how journalism either advances or resists war and genocide, as seen by mainstream western media's coverage of Israel's continued assault on Palestine and Lebanon.
Read the early-release article online for free on CR's website, share near and far, and subscribe to the newspaper today. All paid subscriptions sponsor free subscriptions for thousands of imprisoned people in jails, detention centers, and prisons across the US and some internationally.
Give CR Merch: LAST CALL for holiday orders!
Another way to show you’re on "Team Abolition" is by wearing CR’s merch! Give the gift of abolition today by treating yourself or a loved one to CR’s variety of hoodies, crewnecks, shirts, and totes. If you want your CR merch to arrive before the holidays, please make your orders no later than this Sunday, December 15.
