Help CR reach our mid-year fundraising goal!
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Abolition is the Antidote to Fascism:
When the state clamps down,
we organize across walls.
Dear Comrades,
As repression escalates, Critical Resistance (CR) is sharpening our fight—organizing under pressure, across cages, and across movements. From violent anti-trans legislation to prison censorship, from ICE raids to police expansion—the state is clamping down hard on our communities. But repression doesn’t silence us. It reminds us what’s at stake.
When the state clamps down, we organize across walls.
This Pride Month, we uplift that queer and trans survival has always meant fighting back against criminalization and state control. The prison industrial complex (PIC) targets queer and trans people—especially Black trans women and gender-expansive people—with brutal intensity. In response, abolition must be a queer politic, rooted in care, refusal, and collective power.
That’s the work CR is doing every day—and we need your help to keep going.
Help us raise $21,100 this month to fund abolitionist organizing under repression.
✨ Donate today — one-time or monthly. And check our updated ways to give here ([link removed]) !
Organizing Under Repression: What Your Gift Supports
Across the country and across walls, CR is fighting repression with strategy and solidarity:
Cross-Wall Strategy Retreat (August 2025)
Bringing together imprisoned and outside organizers to strategize against escalating censorship and retaliation—especially targeting queer and trans people and political organizers inside. Your donations cover travel, housing, stipends, and collaborative tool creation.
Dignity Not Detention New York Campaign
CRNYC is organizing to end ICE detention statewide, build grassroots power against deportation, and fight the expansion of immigrant jails and carceral control across New York.
California Prison Closure & Central Appalachia Anti-Expansion Campaigns
In coalition with Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), we’re fighting to permanently close 10 dilapidated prisons in California and block their repurposing as ICE detention centers or carceral psychiatric facilities. And with the Building Community Not Prisons coalition, we're fighting federal prison expansion in Central Appalachia.
National Prisoner Solidarity & Correspondence
Through CR’s mail program and phone line, we stay connected with thousands of imprisoned people—especially queer and trans comrades facing isolation, censorship, and retaliation. Donations fund the resources, relationships, and political tools that support survival and resistance behind bars.
Defunding Policing (Portland, OR)
CRPDX just helped win a $2M reduction in the police budget and is now launching a new campaign to push further divestment and build grassroots resistance to policing across the city.
Community Self-Defense against ICE (Los Angeles, CA)
CRLA is organizing with the Community Self-Defense Coalition to resist escalating ICE raids and surveillance in Southern California, defending our communities while building long-term abolitionist strategies.
Abolitionist Media, Education & Strategy
From The Abolitionist newspaper to popular education tools, political strategy sessions, and movement collaboration, CR is advancing abolitionist ideas that can’t be co-opted, criminalized, or ignored.
This is what it looks like to organize under repression.
This is abolition in action.
Repression is Rising—Let’s Rise to Fight It
We're in a moment where criminalization is the state’s answer to everything: migration, gender nonconformity, protest, survival. Whether it’s through prisons, ICE raids, police budgets, or anti-trans laws, the PIC is being used to crush our people.
But we know another way is possible—and it’s already in motion.
We organize together. We build power across walls. We resist.
✨ Support CR’s organizing today. ([link removed])
✨ Set up a monthly donation ([link removed]) to sustain the work.
✨ And consider more ways to give here ([link removed]) !
In solidarity & struggle,
-Critical Resistance
** More Announcements
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This whole month: Sustain abolitionist organizing & help CR raise $21,100 by the end of June!
We aim to raise:
* $6,000 for the organization at-large
* $1,500 for CR's Oakland chapter ([link removed])
* $1,000 for CR's Los Angeles chapter ([link removed])
* $600 for CR's New York City chapter ([link removed])
* $500 for CR's Portland chapter ([link removed])
* $500 for The Zachary Project ([link removed])
* $1,000 forThe Abolitionist newspaper ([link removed]) (Each paid subscription sponsors free subscriptions for multiple people inside prisons, jails, and detention centers)
* $10,000 for CR's Cross-Wall Strategy & Power Building Retreat ([link removed])
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#TakeTheMic: Why do you give?
One CR donor recently shared: “CR's sharp analysis and expertise provides vital support and structure to the movement, equipping organizers and campaigns with critical frameworks like "non-reformist reforms" that guide principled work toward collective liberation.”
This month, we’re collecting messages from our donor community: Why do you fund abolition?
#TakeTheMic toshare your testimonial on this form here. ([link removed]) We’ll lift up your words throughout June and beyond.
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Ways to Support CR This Month: New ways to give!
💫 Donate via Donor-Advised Funds: In addition to accepting DAF donations via check, we now accept DAF donations electronically through every.org ([link removed]) !
🗓️ Donate monthly! Help sustain CR for the long-haul by giving a monthly gift ([link removed]) to fuel our work.
💹 Donate Stock: We now accept stock donations via Every.org ([link removed]) !
🪩 Throw a House Party: Host a fundraiser with friends or community (in person or online). CR can provide you with lots of tools to help you plan!
🛍 Shop CR Gear: Every shirt, tote, and print ([link removed]) supports our organizing.
☕️ Book a Coffee Chat: Want to hear more about CR's work and how you can support? Let’s talk. Sign up for a call with our Development Team here! ([link removed])
🛠 Sponsor CR’s Cross-wall Retreat this Black August to build cross-wall power with our loved ones and comrades inside cages!
Check out more ways to give here. ([link removed])
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Fund Cross-wall Strategy: Sponsor CR's Black August Cross-wall Retreat
We’re raising $10,000 by July 5 for the Cross-Wall Strategy & Power Building Retreat—covering travel, food, materials, and mutual aid that fuel our collective resistance. While the retreat is invite-only for select movement partners, anyone can support or sponsor this critical convening. Donate today ([link removed]) and help us spread the word throughout June! Bit.ly/CrosswallFund ([link removed])
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Bay Area, Next Week: Join us for CR Oakland's Mid-year Mixer!
Calling all Bay Area supporters and friends! Come through to CR Oakland's mid-year mixer ([link removed]) at Understory's new location (3340 International Blvd in the Fruitvale) next Wednesday, June 25 from 5-8pm. We'll share updates on the chapter's organizing and plan for the rest of the year, connect, politick, dream, scheme and enjoy delicious food together. This is the chapter's main fundraiser, so come prepared to give & support CR's work! You can RSVP here ([link removed]) and donate ahead of time online here ([link removed]) (Specify you're giving to CR Oakland at the bottom of the page!).
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Issue 43 of The Abolitionist Prints Next Week — Sneak a Peek Inside: Voices from Families Resisting Bukele’s Prison Regime in El Salvador
We’re proud to feature a powerful article from El Salvador’s Movimiento de Familias—relatives of people disappeared into Bukele’s dungeons—organizing for dignity, survival, and collective liberation. As Trump and Bukele echo each other’s authoritarian tactics, this piece is a critical read for our movements. Read the article here ([link removed]) and subscribe now to The Abolitionist to get the full issue hot off the press. ([link removed])
Critical Resistance is majority grassroots-funded. Donate today!
#SustainCR with monthly donations or a one-time gift. ([link removed])
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Mural by Leslie “Dime” Lopez at 4400 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA, 2019.
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Oakland, CA 94609
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