Dear friends and supporters of Critical Resistance (CR),
This year is flying by! So we want to take a minute to share all the great work we and our movement partners have done this year and through this past summer. As we enter into fall 2022, we wanted to share about CR’s campaign and project updates, resources we have created or contributed to, how we are strengthening our organization, and how you can plug into our ongoing work. See below for campaign news, project updates, and new materials!
Thank you for continuing your abolitionist journey with us. Every contribution of your time, money, and people power keeps our campaigns and projects going strongly.
Please keep supporting and boosting our campaign work, engaging with our projects, using and sharing our materials, attending our events, and contributing to abolitionist organizing in your area! Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition is long-haul work, and it will take all of us to dismantle systems of oppression, change common sense toward abolition, and build the world we need!
In solidarity,
Shirley Leslie and Nick DeRenzi, CR Development staff
P.S. As always, please share this email with fellow staff, networks, and community. We appreciate you growing our movement and keeping people curious and excited about CR!
CAMPAIGN UPDATES:
#CloseCAPrisons: CR Oakland and CR Los Angeles with the CURB coalition
As part of the Abolish ICE NJ/NY coalition, CR NYC and our New York movement partners are part of the New York Dignity Not Detention campaign and working steadily toward the goal of ending New York state collaboration and contracts with ICE.
CR NYC and our campaign partners are in good fighting form to win this campaign, and CR NYC are specifically supporting media and outreach work!
CR Portland is part of the Oregon Prisoner Coalition, and is collaborating on a Know Your Rights tool for Oregon prisoners, and a general resource hub for imprisoned people. Both tools will compile different resources that exist in Oregon that imprisoned people have access to, including materials on mental health resources and access; disability justice; resources for trans and gender non-conforming imprisoned people; and more! Stay tuned for these resources to drop.
Prisoner Correspondence
CR chapters continue to correspond with thousands of people inside through their mail programs, and continue to share strategies for more effective mail programs. Through rigorous orientation workshops and political education, CR has heavily bolstered our remotely-run phone lines this year. The strengthening of our mail programs and phone lines has poised CR to more strongly hold relationships
with our comrades inside and support our ability to strategize with - and uplift the demands of - imprisoned organizers within our campaigns and projects.
So Is this Actually an Abolitionist Proposal or Strategy? is a collection of resources to aid in evaluation and reflection for prison industrial complex abolitionists. This collection is full of excerpts from resources frequently used as jumping-off points when thinking strategically about abolitionist organizing. This resource was compiled by Interrupting Criminalization, Project Nia, and Critical Resistance.
We have mailed out Issue 37: Housing Justice and prison industrial complex abolition, a new issue of The Abolitionist newspaper, to over 4,500 subscribers inside and outside of prisons, jails and detention centers near the end of the month. See more about the contents, read a sneak-peak interview and sign up here.
We did so much this summer to bolster our organizing efforts! We have had several exciting staff transitions, and all staff are just emerging from a planning retreat. We have continued providing PIC abolitionist workshops and informational sessions for movement partners. Additionally, our chapters are all in the midst of planning their work for the year, and CR Los Angeles is even recruiting!
Early this summer, we also hosted a fundraising drive to boost our monthly sustainer base. Thank you for helping us raise $5,000 – whether you chatted with us over the phone, or participated in our raffle to receive awesome prizes, your enthusiasm and ongoing generosity make our work possible!
Top Mural: Dom "TreatUNice" Villeda + Leslie "Dime" Lopez at 4400 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA
Bottom Mural : Leslie “Dime” Lopez at 4400 Telegraph Ave, Oakland, CA
