Critical Resistance East to take up prison crisis
By Sarah
Sloan
New York
Hundreds are expected to attend "Critical Resistance
East," a conference examining many aspects of the U.S.
prison-industrial complex, in New York March 9-11.
Conference organizers define the prison-industrial complex
as "encompass[ing] human-rights violations, the death
penalty, exploitative industry and labor, policing, courts,
media, community disenfranchisement, the imprisonment of
political prisoners and prisoners of war and the elimination
of dissent. Additionally, the PIC intersects with and depends
upon the oppressive systems of racism, classism, sexism and
homophobia."
The conference is expected to feature dozens of workshops
on a wide range of topics, including racism and the phony
"war on drugs," youths and the prison-industrial complex,
women in prison, lesbian/gay/bi/trans people in prison, the
corporate connection to prison profits and the cases of famed
political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier.
The New York conference follows a 1998 gathering in
Berkeley, Calif., that drew 2,000 people from the region. Its
objective: "to raise consciousness [about] the prison
industry and, in turn, to galvanize action to resist the
Prison-Industrial Complex." Among its goals is "to tear down
the Prison-Industrial Complex!"
There are now over 2 million people, disproportionately
people of color, imprisoned in the United States. This
represents 25 percent of the world's prison population, drawn
from the U.S. population that is 5 percent of the world's
total.
Those expected to attend the conference include students,
youths and other activists from the Northeast who were
involved in organizing for the Jan. 20 protest at George W.
Bush's inauguration, the campaign to free Abu-Jamal, and the
demonstrations coinciding with the meeting of the Free Trade
Area of the Americas set for April in Quebec City.
For more information about Critical Resistance East,
readers can visit the Web site
www.criticalresistance.org/creast.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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