Critical Resistance presented 3 workshops at the 2018 International Conference On Penal Abolition in London.
Resources from CR workshops are also available below for your use.
Abolitionist Strategy & Vision –
In this workshop, we will introduce CR’s motivating definitions of the prison industrial complex and abolition, and then share our principles for organizing an abolitionist campaign. As we discuss our “7 Easy Steps to Abolition,” we will highlight different pieces of our chapters’ current work and invite participants to discuss how our work applies our own principles (or doesn’t). Participants will also have a chance to design an abolitionist campaign that applies to their own community, using our tools as a guide. Participants will leave with a more concrete sense of how abolition can be put into practice, and how it can take place at every scale. This is also a space where everyone is welcome to share challenges and victories from their own work so that we can grow together as a global movement.
Anti-policing Strategies in Campaigns for Community Care and Health –
We will share an overview of projects and campaigns promoting community care and health decoupled from policing. Portland Chapter will share the strategies of the Care Not Cops campaign for mobilizing in opposition to police bureau funding increases, resisting liberal reforms, and raising public awareness of how increased police presence and funding for the purposes of protecting businesses and private property harms communities. Oakland chapter will share on our work through the Oakland Power Projects, specifically the Anti-Policing Health Worker Cohort, which mobilizes health workers to skill up communities to respond to health-related emergencies without calling the cops. CR-OAK will also discuss our work in the Stop Urban Shield campaign to end a police/SWAT militarization program in the Bay Area. We aim to generate new strategies, discuss how we can support each other’s work, and consider ways of adapting existing strategies to strengthen anti-policing campaigns.
Anti-Imprisonment –
Organizers from anti-imprisonment campaigns and projects will share organizing strategies CR has used for prison and jail abolition work and examine some of our successes and challenges. We will give examples of our efforts to organize with imprisoned people across walls and together examine parallels and differences in international organizing strategies to think about how the PIC – and our resistance to it – crosses borders and nations.
Please credit Critical Resistance when using materials below.
General CR Materials:
What is CR?
What is Abolition?
Workshop Definitions (PDF, Word Doc)
Workshop Materials:
Abolitionist Strategy & Vision
Seven Steps for Abolition
CURB glossary of terms – Spanish and English
Anti-policing Strategies in Campaigns for Community Care and Health
Abolition of Policing Timeline
Definition of Policing
Abolitionist Reforms to Policing
Oakland Power Projects 2018 Booklet
Stop Urban Shield Website
Stop Urban Shield Report
Care Not Cops
Care Not Cops_ timeline
Oakland Power Projects Website
CR Portland Campaign Updates
Scenarios to think about abolitionist practice
Anti-Imprisonment
Abolish Jailing Chart
Abolish Jailing
8 Steps to a Jail Free San Francisco
No New SF Jail Coalition
Close Rikers
PRISONERS SPEAK OUT: ANALYSIS AND PERSPECTIVES
The Meaning and Impact of Package Restrictions in NY State Prisons Report
Delano II: Prison in the Fields video clip