Dear friends and supporters of Critical Resistance (CR),
As we continue the fight for liberation, we reflect on 2025 and the many complex threats we have weathered at the hands of authoritarianism, colonial violence, and repression. Critical Resistance is grateful to be a part of a resilient and committed movement landscape, with movement partners and comrades who remain firm in the knowledge that the antidote to fascism is prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition.
Through robust strategy, critical analysis, and coordinated action, we have continued to advance our mission to make PIC abolition tangible and irresistible, while achieving significant campaign victories, creating concrete organizing tools to further abolitionist analysis and action, and actively supporting international and cross‑sector liberation struggles. All of this is to ensure CR’s work is powerful, that we are ready for the uncertain times ahead, and that we are poised to support and be supported by others with shared political purpose. Together, our movements are stronger than the forces that seek to repress us.
2025 was year two of CR’s five‑year strategic plan, developed through sharp analysis of conditions and updated to account for the shifting landscape. This strategic plan calls for CR to bolster the skills and organizing capacity of our membership, deepen connections between PIC abolition and other liberatory organizing fronts, advance abolitionist campaigns and projects, and bring currently and formerly imprisoned comrades more meaningfully and consistently into all facets of our work. This long‑term work of movement‑building, including the collective process of creating and articulating it, is a steadying force for CR during this period of rapidly escalating repression that seeks to destabilize our communities and movements.
In the second year of our strategic plan, CR continued the fight to close California prisons and keep them closed, built community support to end immigrant detention in New York, seeded the ground for anti‑policing work in Portland, bolstered our political relationships with imprisoned people, shared organizing strategies with other liberatory formations, and supported the growth of our newest chapter in Central Appalachia! Additionally, CR released two bilingual issues of The Abolitionist newspaper to over 5,000 people inside prisons, jails, and detention centers for free – Issue #43 on censorship and repression and Issue #44 on cross‑wall organizing.
We’ve witnessed huge shifts in our conditions already in 2026. Though the tumult continues, we invite you to reflect with us on CR’s work in 2025: campaign and project updates and wins, political education resources, and more. We utilize these materials in our analysis-building and organizing, and we hope you will too.
CR remains true to our work to abolish the PIC as part of global struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The need for abolitionist advances has become even more dire in this current era of rising fascism and increased deployment of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance against our communities. No matter the threat, it is essential to grow and fortify our struggle across movements and geographies. This is especially true as we fight to resist the organized abandonment of marginalized communities and intensification of fascist policies. So, whether you are an organizer, movement partner, volunteer who sustains us with your time and effort, CR donor, a general supporter of CR and PIC abolition, or abolition-curious, we invite you to take up the mantle of abolition alongside us! Wage PIC abolitionist work in your communities and regions, join up with others working to build bases of power, continue donating to support material needs of organizers, and spread abolitionist analysis. Continue to be in relationship with CR and other radical organizers and organizations, wherever you may be, and bring more people into the struggle for freedom.
A world without walls and cages is possible. Together, let’s fight like hell to bring it into being.
In solidarity,
– Critical Resistance Co-Directors, Development Team, and National Fundraisers