Twenty years since the first Critical Resistance conference seeded abolition as the solution to the devastating violence of the prison industrial complex, the analysis, ideas, and, increasingly, the strategies of Critical Resistance have flourished. Over the past 20 years, we have demonstrated that abolition is a practical vision and organizing strategy. To this end, our local campaigns, projects, and speaking engagements (over 175 workshops and presentations in 2018) are demonstrating the victo- rious impact that abolition can have.
In 2018, Critical Resistance forged ahead:
> Fighting Cages: no New Jails
In three major U.S. cities (Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco) CR and our partners in No New Jails coalitions and campaigns challenged harmful jail expansions, the legitimacy of cages as public safety infrastructure, and amassed popular opinion against imprisonment.
> Fighting Policing and Defending Community Needs
With our movement partners in Stop Urban Shield, Care Not Cops and the Oakland Power Projects, CR drove campaigns and projects that confronted the violence of policing and challenged its encroachment into healthcare access and emergency response resources.
> Building Politically with Imprisoned People
Through our bilingual newspaper, chapter prisoner mail programs, collaborative prisoner reports, and Inside-Outside Reading Group, CR exchanged mail, political ideas and organizing strategies with over 10,000 imprisoned people in 2018.
> Advancing Abolition into Many Walks of Life
CR strengthened relationships, built strategies and shared materials with educators, faith groups and leaders, health workers and public health advocates, labor organizers, legal organizations and inter- nationalist community groups.
We are at a pivotal point for our organization—and our movement—to influence the local and national criminal legal reform discourse with abolition. We’re hopeful and ready to explicitly increase national abolitionist consciousness. With your support, we will uplift abolitionist campaigns, materials and analysis as beacons to uplift and guide the way forward through these treacherous times.
Onward, toward liberation,
Jess Heaney, Lily Fahsi-Haskell, Mohamed Shehk, CR Co-Directors and the CR National Fundraising Committee