No More Prisons

cross-posted from action figures sold seperately:

Critical Resistance and Incite! have issued a joint statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex:

We call on social justice movements concerned with ending violence in all its forms to: 1) Develop community-based responses to violence that do not rely on the criminal justice system AND which have mechanisms that ensure safety and accountability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Transformative practices emerging from local communities should be documented and disseminated to promote collective responses to violence.

read the whole statement here. CR has other excellent materials, which i'll be linking to soon.

and while we're on the subjuect, Incite! -- Women of Color Against Violence has this "Myths and Facts" sheet which does a good job challenging what they see as the unrealistic portrayal of domestic violence in the movie Enough with Jennifer Lopez. And while i didn't see the film, the distortions like this one are present in countless other movies:

MYTH #1: J. Lo would walk away a free woman after killing her batterer because "self-defense is not murder". FACT: J. Lo probably would've been convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In California, there are at least 70 women serving life for killing their batterers in self-defense. Thousands more are in prison for domestic violence-related crimes.

if you are in a Southern state and want to plug in to ongoing work to dismantle the prison industrial complex, then get ready for April 4!

The CR South Regional Conference and Strategy Session is being organized by community organizations and individuals from across the South with support from Critical Resistance, a national grassroots group that fights to end this nation's reliance on prisons, police, and surveillance as an answer to social, political, and economic problems.

from the newly revamped Critical Resistance site.

HEMMER: Governor, let me just stop you there. You mentioned about three things I really want to pick out here. You say you looked at every case individually.


RYAN: Right.


HEMMER: But ... the man raped and murdered this woman's sister, [he was] convicted, [and] on death row for nine years. What is the excuse for allowing him to have his life spared then?


RYAN: Well, Bill, I don't know if you know all the statistics about Illinois' death penalty system. But we had 40, 37, 39 people on death row. Seventeen of them have been exonerated after having been found guilty by a jury of their peers, been through every appellate process that we have in Illinois, gone to the Supreme Court of Illinois, to the United States Supreme Court, only to have their convictions verified in each case, only to come back and find that they, in fact, were innocent. And it took journalism students from Northwestern University to find that three of them were innocent. People had recanted their testimony. DNA evidence and lots of things that turned that around.


In the meantime, we executed 12 people out of that number and exonerated 17. That's a 60 percent error rate. I don't know who can survive any business in a 60 percent error rate.

Illinois Governor Ryan: "I looked at Every Case."
Also at Google News.

January 2003


Dear Activist:


As a leader in the criminal justice reform movement, we are inviting you
to attend the first meeting of a newly-forming coalition to lower - once
and for all - the outrageous phone bills paid by those with loved ones
in New York State prisons, and to stop the continued exploitation of our
communities by the Department of Corrections and MCI. The Fifth Avenue
Committee's Developing Justice Project will host the first meeting on
Thursday, January 23, 2003, at 5:30 p.m.


As many of you know, the NYS Department of Corrections garners an
additional 60% commission for each collect call placed by incarcerated
men and women. Their claim is that these monies are utilized to
administer the Inmate Benefit Fund, which is ostensibly allocated to
provide services to current inmates. These fees cause tremendous
hardship for many working class families, and effectively charges family
members for services that the state is legally required to provide.


Many of us throughout New York State have long been outraged by this
practice. As we enter into the New Year, it is time for us to join
together and launch a cohesive, organized campaign. Our hope is that
working together, we can strategize ways for family members, advocacy
groups and the legal community can coordinate our efforts and build a
strong, unified coalition. The purpose of our first meeting will be to
strategize a campaign built on multiple levels: combining legal efforts,
public education, media campaigns and carefully targeted community
actions.

DATE:                       Thursday, January 23, 2003

TIME:                        5:30 pm

PLACE:                     151 Fifth Avenue Conference Room

                                  Brooklyn, NY (between Lincoln Place

and St. John's Place)

*By subway: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, M, N, Q or R train to Atlantic

Avenue/Pacific St.

Walk 1 block to Fifth Avenue and 4 blocks to St. John's Place

Family members who have been core leaders within our group will be in
attendance. As this is a grassroots movement, we encourage you to
invite any directly affected persons you know.

Your leadership and expertise are critical for this campaign to
successfully move forward. Please RSVP to let us know if you will be
attending. If you cannot attend this meeting but would like to join our
coalition, please contact me at 718/857-2990 x41.

In struggle,



Kym Clark

Criminal Justice Organizer

Prison Families Community Forum



Kym Clark, Organizer

Developing Justice

Fifth Avenue Committee

141 Fifth Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217

718/857-2990 x41

718/857-4322 (fax)

IN JANUARY 2003, The Prison Families Community Forum meets on Second
(2nd) and Fourth (4th) Thursdays of the month from 5:30-7:00pm! (that's
January 9th and January 23rd). Call for details...

schooling the masses

looking for something to show at your next community forum or house party benefit? if you haven't see it already, mediarights.org has over 280 listings of documentaries on criminal justice issues (not to mention their other categories like economic justice, racial justice, human rights, and gender/women). they even break it down into subcategories like police brutality, juvenile justice, and prisoner rights. so now that you know, go! (and don't forget the popcorn).