With a far-right regime rearing its ugly head next month, we know that a cornerstone of fascism is imprisonment. Once Trump’s new administration takes office in January, the practice of imprisonment as a tool of repression will continue to expand and crack down on our communities ever so fiercely. Having already announced mass deportations of immigrants and threats to rid the US of “wokeness” and punish his enemies and opponents, the Trump administration will likely orchestrate cooperation from local jails, prisons, detention centers, and various police departments to pull it off. Meanwhile, we’ve been seeing a worsening of prison conditions across the country as austerity measures roll globally and as censorship also intensifies across prison walls.
Now, more than ever, abolitionists must work together to build broad alliances and cross-sector, cross-wall power to wage winning campaigns against policing, criminalization, repression, and imprisonment. Despite what’s around the corner for both of our statewide campaigns in California and New York, CR made several gains in the fight to dismantle imprisonment through the California Prison Closure campaign with Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB) and the Dignity not Detention campaign with Abolish ICE New York New Jersey coalition.
In 2024, CR Oakland and CR Los Angeles continued to organize with CURB to bring the state’s prison closure fight to four prison closures down and compelled a $750 million cut to California’s corrections budget (the first reduction in years). CR members continue to contribute to coalition planning, community outreach, legislative strategy, and media and communications efforts, in addition to housing the coalition’s prisoner correspondence infrastructure that allows us to build intentional relationships with people inside California prisons and their loved ones.
This year, CR’s prison closure campaigners have done extensive community outreach to build momentum around the closure of the California Rehabilitation Center (CRC), a dilapidated prison in Norco, CA. Alongside CURB, our California chapters’ regular outreach efforts at the prison across the past year have resulted in connections with over 100 family members and loved ones of imprisoned folks, centering their voices at a rally in July at the prison that displayed the people’s will for prison closure.
CR’s resilient organizing has persisted amidst a range of legislative opportunities and threats. While CURB gained support in both the assembly and senate of the state legislature for a bill that would have shrunk the prison system’s excess bed capacity, in opposition to widespread community and decision-maker enthusiasm, Governor Newsom shamefully vetoed it. Additionally, the unfortunate passage of Prop 36 in California – a proposition aiming to harshen sentencing across the state among other obstacles for abolitionist change – will have a definitive negative impact on gains made in prison population reduction and anti-prison organizing generally. Yet, CR and CURB’s movement partners are coordinating strategy to combat these repressive measures and ensure prison closures. We remain steadfast in our resolve to at least 10 prisons in California. This coming period will be crucial for PIC abolitionists to defend their gains, and your consistent support sustains necessary strategy and action against caging in California.
On the East Coast, Critical Resistance NYC (CRNYC) and Abolish ICE NY NJ’s relentless organizing to pass Dignity not Detention legislation would effectively end immigrant detention across the state. CRNYC members have continued to support overall strategic planning for the coalition, engage in outreach and base-building, advance media and communications work, and support the participatory defense of people caged in immigrant detention. This year, CRNYC helped organize community forums, develop political education workshops, organize legislative mobilizations, and hold weekly phone zaps to contribute to media and outreach work within the campaign. Your contributions foster our strong campaign organizing against the caging and criminalization of immigrants.
While CR’s California and New York chapters have longstanding histories of waging campaigns against prisons and jails, and California at one point led the US in imprisonment rates due to its notorious prison construction boom from the 1980s to early 2000s, a site of rapid prison expansion can be found in Central Appalachia. In fact, Central Appalachia now has one of the highest concentrations of federal prisons and is a ripe region of resistance and abolitionist organizing, as examined in Issue 41 of The Abolitionist (see the feature analysis article by Judah Schept). Throughout 2024, CR worked with local organizers in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia to start a new regional chapter of CR: CR Central Appalachia (CRCAPP). CRCAPP is hitting the ground running this next year with an experienced and strong membership core already engaged in a national campaign with the Building Community Not Prisons coalition to halt the construction of a federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky, FCI Letcher, on a mountain top removal site. Your generous support is needed to help lay a strong organizing foundation for our new chapter and propel CRCAPP’s ability to stop federal prison expansion in the US-South.
Your time, effort, and funds all resource strong abolitionist campaigns against imprisonment! We invite you to make a monthly gift or provide a one-time donation this December to sustain CR’s work into 2025. Fight fascism with abolition!
In struggle and solidarity,
-Critical Resistance
Curious what else CR has been up to in 2024? Check out our year-end letter rounding up all the work we’ve done here.
For over 25 years, your contributions of time, effort, and funds have empowered CR to run campaigns against policing, imprisonment, and surveillance; create tools to strengthen abolitionist organizing and analysis; build and strengthen connections with movement partners across our interconnected fights; and more. Keep CR strong over the next decades of abolitionist work! We invite you to become a monthly sustainer today and continue contributing to the long-haul project of PIC abolition.
This year-end season, we are working to raise $90,000 across the entire organization for our chapters, projects, and overall movement building work. We aim to raise –
- $56,000 for the organization at-large
- $15,000 for The Zachary Project, a mutual aid fund for community organizers
- $10,000 for CR’s New York City chapter
- $3,500 for CR’s Oakland chapter
- $3,500 for CR’s Los Angeles chapter
- $2,000 for CR’s Portland chapter
- $1,000 for The Abolitionist newspaper through 100 new paid subscribers at $10 each or more! Each paid subscription by outside supporters sponsors free subscriptions for multiple people locked up inside prisons, jails, and detention centers.
We appreciate donations of your time, effort, and funds to sustain our organizing, this year and the next!