Critical Resistance East
Conference scores U.S. injustice system
By Leslie
Feinberg
New York
More than a thousand people took part in "Critical
Resistance East" here on March 9-11. The three-day conference
dealt with many facets of the U.S. prison-industrial
complex.
Activists young and old traveled from all over the Northeast
and as far away as California to attend, including many people
of color and lesbian, gay, bi and trans people. The conference
drew former prisoners, family members of prisoners, students,
scholars and activists from diverse struggles.
Some 2,000 people attended a March 10 evening program held
in Riverside Church in Harlem. Former political prisoner Angela
Davis delivered the address at that event. Exiled political
prisoner Assata Shakur sent a message of solidarity from her
safe haven in Cuba. Marilyn Buck, who is serving a total of 80
years behind bars, also sent a message.
Packed workshops left many standing in the halls listening
to the discussions. Dozens of workshops and round tables took
up many aspects of the prison-industrial complex, including the
corporate exploitation of prisoners for profit.
The impact of prisons on people from oppressed
nationalities, women, youths, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and
trans individuals were topics of various workshops. So was the
struggle to free political prisoners Mumia Abu-Jamal and
Leonard Peltier.
In a media release, organizers explained, "The three-day
conference is designed to initiate a dialogue on the issues to
collectively build new strategies against the systematic
injustices in courts, policing and prisons. Critical Resistance
East is a regional conference, which will focus on 12 states in
the mid-Atlantic region and the northeast."
The New York conference grew out of a similar 1998 gathering
in Berkeley, Calif., which attracted 2,000 activists .
Today in the United States 2 million
people--disproportionately people of color--are locked away
behind bars. The U.S. population is only 5 percent of the
world's total. But this country's prison population is 25
percent of prisoners around the world.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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