FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
From:
Critical
Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex
Northeast Regional Conference
To:
Workplace
Date:
December 24, 2000
Posted:
January 2, 2001
Subject:
CALL FOR PRESENTERS, PAPERS & WORKSHOPS
PLEASE POST, ANNOUNCE, AND DISTRIBUTE
March 9-11, 2001,
New York City
We are calling
on people to examine the prison industrial complex and
mobilize for
its destruction. In 1998, over 3,000 prisoners, activists,
scholars, policymakers,
advocates, cultural workers, revolutionaries
and former prisoners
came together to address the crisis of the prison
industrial complex
in the U.S. and internationally.
From that conference,
Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial
Complex, many
new networks were started. Because prison building continues
to be one of
the fastest growing industries, the United States now has
more people in
prisons and a higher percentage of its population in prison
than any other
nation in the world. With the help of national Critical
Resistance, we
in the Northeast have decided to join our energies in
organizing and
strategizing to resist the prison industrial complex.
The Northeast
Regional Conference will focus on the impacts of the prison
industrial complex
in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
Connecticut,
Rhode Island,
New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
and Washington,
D.C.
This conference
not only looks to see why this is happening and who it
benefits.
We also hope to find real solutions. Our mission is to analyze
the problem and
then develop strategies of resistance that will not only
inform people
of the facts but will make more effective action possible.
This conference
will be more than opportunity to gather and share
information.
It will include
skills training workshops, informational and inspirational
plenaries, panel
discussions, and video and audio presentation, including
phone call-ins
from prisoners. Through discussion, information sharing
and cultural
expressions, those gathered at the conference will work
to build a new
movement to resist the prison industrial complex. The
conference will
make it possible for people from a range of movements
and organizations
to exchange ideas and strategies. We encourage prisoners,
grassroots organizers,
academics, former prisoners, people from different
communities of
faith, policymakers, lawyers, and other advocates, and
activists and
organizations that traditionally have not worked together
around prison
issues to submit proposals. The goal of the conference
is to establish
a broad network of individuals and organizations committed
to critical policy
transformations.
We are structuring
the conference program in order to encourage participants
to connect with
people outside their own fields of activism or expertise.
In order to facilitate
these connections, we encourage people proposing
conference sessions
to include two or more of the following issue/interest
areas in each
workshop, panel or other session. Each session should
also include
presenters from diverse backgrounds who are capable of
addressing issues
of race, gender, sexuality, age, etc.
ISSUE/INTEREST
AREAS:
> Prison as Industry
> Law and Policy
> Research and
Activism
> Abolitionist
Alternatives
> Human Rights
and Conditions of Confinement
> Education
> Media and Popular
Culture
> Direct Action
and Civil Disobedience
> Policing, Containment,
and Control
>
Proposals should
be brief--no more than one page in length and do
not need to conform
to any particular format. Proposals must be postmarked
by October 1,
2000. You may attach videotapes, photographs, audiotapes
or other supportive
materials. (If you want us to return these materials,
please indicate
that and be sure to include a self-addressed, postage
prepaid envelope.
We don't have funding to cover postage for the return
of materials).
Send proposals
to:
Critical Resistance/Northeast
Regional Organizing Committee
PMB# 4053
341 Lafayette
Street
New York, NY
10012
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