CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH: AN ABOLITIONIST PERSPECTIVE ON BLACK LIBERATION PAST & PRESENT WITH CHARLENE CARRUTHERS & MARC LAMONT HILL

This year, the poignancy and the urgency of Black liberation is front and center of national, if not international, consciousness and action. On Saturday, June 13th, we humbly and enthusiastically hosted Charlene Carruthers and Marc Lamont Hill for “Celebrating Juneteenth” to share their insights, wisdom, and to help guide us towards a liberated future from our current circumstances.

This event provided a megaphone for the vital work happening now led by grassroots organizers. We uplifted calls to action (see below) from our movement partners at All of Us or None and Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, BOP (Black Organizing Project), CCWP (California Coalition for Women Prisoners), and RAPP (Release Aging People in Prison). We listened to inspiring music from Y.O.C., the Youth Organizing Collective with H.O.L.L.A.!, our K12 Abolitionist Educator youth partners. In the opening sequence of the event video, below, we also feature the new CareNotCages and #CuomoLetThemGo websites, BOP’s campaign to get police out of Oakland schools, and the Y.O.C.’s music.

Together, we celebrated a big anti-policing milestone for our CR Portland chapter and the Care Not Cops coalition: last week, they and their allies won decision-maker commitment to disband the anti-gang unit of the Portland Police Bureau and to end both school police and transit police!

While we must continue to apply pressure to see these commitments enacted (“Tell no lies, claim no easy victories,” as comrade Amilcar Cabral would advise), we share this news as a beacon for what is possible with abolitionist approaches to building coalitions and guiding strategies, year in and year out.

Through this event, you helped us raise $45,000 to support CR in this urgent time! Over 60 groups and organizations (see list below) and over 2,000 people attended, sponsored, and donated to this special evening. And now over 5,000 people have viewed the event online. We appreciate your continued support for bold, visionary demands and grassroots organizing to dismantle the prison industrial complex and remove it from our social infrastructures.

We encourage you to save the video of our event, as well as these images (click on each one to see the full media file). Use each as organizing resources. Continue to rewatch & re-examine them (study is organizing). Share them with your communities, networks, organizations, collectives and coalitions.

Thank you for joining us in celebrating the legacy of Juneteenth and helping advance an internationalist movement for abolition!

Onward, toward freedom,
Critical Resistance

Thank you to our GENEROUS sponsors!

CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH: AN ABOLITIONIST PERSPECTIVE ON BLACK LIBERATION PAST & PRESENT WITH CHARLENE CARRUTHERS & MARC LAMONT HILL

CELEBRATING JUNETEENTH MOVEMENT PARTNER SPONSORS:

Study, learn and share the “Celebrating Juneteenth” video here.