Prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition is essential to effectively resist the rise of fascism globally. This year, Critical Resistance (CR) has continued to generate sharp abolitionist analysis and produce several tools, political education materials, and resources for our communities to use near and far in their struggles for liberation and self-determination.
Throughout the past year, CR has worked to offer and distribute practical abolitionist organizing tools and provide political education support through workshops and trainings to a range of communities in order to resist repression across prison walls and build power against policing and criminalization.
Resources for resisting repression across prison walls
This year, CR published two timely issues of The Abolitionist newspaper: Issues 41 and 42. Issue 41 printed in June and covers articles that examine the intersecting struggles of ecological justice, environmentalism, and PIC abolition, spanning across the globe from Palestine to South Africa to Appalachia and Argentina. Distributed in print throughout the summer and fall to thousands of organizers, activists, and allies inside and outside of cages, the issue is now available for free download along with all past issues.
Our second and final issue of the year, Issue 42, features anti-war organizing with contributing authors from movement partner organizations like War Resisters League, Dissenters, Media Against Apartheid & Displacement, the Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine coalition, Hawai’i Peace & Justice, the International Cancel RIMPAC campaign, the Alianza de Mujeres Viequenses (Alliance of Viequense Women in Puerto Rico), and more. Issue 42 prints this week and is being shipped to over 5,000 subscribers internationally, about 4,700 of whom are locked up in prisons, jails, and detention centers. Moving into the new year, CR will be distributing 2,000 copies of the issue to new subscribers and movement partners inside and outside of cages throughout the winter and spring of 2025.
Additionally, when CR printed Issue 40 on control units in December 2023, members from CR’s The Abolitionist editorial collective and prisoner correspondence programs created another “Surviving Solitary” resource (inspired by a similar American Friend Service Committee / AFSC guide and others) to share various techniques for imprisoned people struggling to survive solitary confinement. Since the spring of 2024, CR has been sending this new guide to any imprisoned person who requests it through CR’s prisoner mail program. If interested in sharing with your loved ones and comrades inside, suggest they write to CR and request the guide themselves, or download it and send it in to them from our website here.
Resources for building beyond policing & criminalization
In 2024, CR was also chosen to be the first case-study of “How We Did That,” a project of the Building Beyond Policing Network aimed at spotlighting successful abolitionist campaigns against policing, in order to delve into how the campaigns were won, and to share lessons and offerings to abolitionist organizers. The first issue is on the campaign to Stop Urban Shield – the largest militarized SWAT/police training exchange program in the world that CR, along with a broad coalition of local organizations, successfully defunded and shut down in 2018. The work of the Stop Urban Shield Coalition has been heavily revisited because of the clear connections between it and Cop City in Atlanta. View & use the resource here!
Previously in 2022, CR had contributed to Beyond Courts – a digital resource hub of resources and tools for building the organizing-power we need to defund, divest, and ultimately to dismantle criminal courts for good. A project of Community Justice Exchange (CJE), Interrupting Criminalization, and CR, Beyond Courts invites organizers, advocates and community members to learn about criminal court processes and to deepen an abolitionist analysis of criminal courts. It also offers a vision for alternative ways of investigating, evaluating and adjudicating harm, and presents ideas for organizing to build power to ultimately defund and dismantle criminal courts.
Since, CJE printed a booklet version of the digital resource and organized CR and other movement partners to share the resource with imprisoned comrades locked up in jails, detention centers and prisons nationally. Throughout the summer and fall of 2024, CR has been sharing the Beyond Courts booklet with prisoners through CR’s prisoner solidarity mail programs. Support CR’s efforts to distribute the Beyond Courts booklet across walls by purchasing your own copy from CR today or gifting it to a beloved comrade you know for the holidays.
Growing abolition through trainings and workshops
2024 also saw an ongoing practice of CR providing several political education workshops and trainings for movement partner organizations across the US. Each chapter in Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland and New York hosted introductory workshops teaching community and movement partner organizations and their members about the PIC, abolition and abolishing policing. We also spoke on panels connecting abolition and decolonization, engaged heavily in Palestinian solidarity work including contributing to a “sumud” mural centered on resistance and liberation, and supported strategies to combat policing across the country. CR provided campaign development support to the Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine coalition in Atlanta, the Final 5 Campaign coalition in Chicago, Healthcare Workers for Abolition (formerly DPH Must Divest coalition) in San Francisco and others. And, CR facilitated another major training at Haymarket’s Socialism conference for the second year in a row – this time on coalition building for abolition. Check out the workshops and trainings CR can facilitate with your organization if requested here.
Your support bolsters CR’s ability to create and share political education opportunities for broader movement building and produce concrete organizing tools to strategize toward PIC abolition. We invite you to become a monthly sustainer or provide a one-time donation this December to resource CR’s political education work into 2025.
Thank you for your commitment to radical political education for PIC 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!