Reflections on Critical Resistance.
Rodriguez, Dylan ; Stoller, Nancy
Four members of the Critical Resistance (CR) conference organizing
committee reflect on the conference and its aftermath.
CR: When you initially became involved with the CR organizing
committee, what were you envisioning for the three-day event?
Andrea Smith (AS): I thought this event could be very successful in
assisting the building of a mass movement against the prison system.
This vision was very compelling to me because I believe that the
repressiveness of the state is growing tremendously under the guise of
protecting "law and order." Even political progressives
sometimes do not question the need to "stop crime" and
therefore support measures that strengthen the criminal justice system.
In particular, I felt this conference could help to challenge the
anti-violence against women movement's reliance on the criminal
justice system as the primary avenue for addressing sexual/domestic
violence. That is, the anti-sexual/domestic violence movement has become
increasingly depoliticized and professionalized. It emphasizes providing
social services and legal advocacy to survivors instead of developing a
grass-roots political movement against violence. Domestic/sexual
violence service agencies now depend primarily on the state for their
primary funding s ources. Consequently, they emphasize cooperation with
the state rather than mobilization against state violence. I thought
Critical Resistance could provide a starting point for injecting a
critical analysis regarding state violence into the sexual/domestic
violence movement. At the same time, I believe prison activists have
neglected to seriously address the safety concerns of survivors of
domestic/sexual violence in their work and hoped that this conference
could provide a point of dialogue between these two movements.
In addition, Native communities are often in the vanguard of
developing alternatives to the incarceration system, and I thought this
conference might bring greater visibility of these models to non-Indian
communities. Restorative justice models are largely inspired by
indigenous models of justice (although non-Native proponents of
restorative justice largely forget this fact). Indigenous forms of
justice are often evoked by non-Natives in the restorative justice
movement in the absence of Native peoples. I was hoping Critical
Resistance could bring greater visibility to the Native peoples who are
actually doing this work.
Julia Sudhury (JS): I was invited to join the committee at a time
when I was fairly new in the area and in the country. I did not know a
great deal about prison issues in the U.S. and thought that this would
be a way for me to learn more and incorporate that new knowledge into my
research and activism. I did not have a clear idea of what the
conference would be like, but felt it was a lot of money for a onetime
event. In my previous work in community development, the funds being
proposed would have funded a small advocacy group for a few years! I
therefore hoped that the conference would lead to ongoing networking and
activism greater than the event itself.
Terry Kupers (TK): I saw the conference as an opportunity to give a
voice, as well as a collective audience, to activists and ex-prisoners
who had been silenced for far too long. As the gap between rich and poor
widens, and the people at the bottom of the economic ladder are deemed
dispensable and "disappearale," the prisons become warehouses
for a growing number of forgotten people. Cruelty inside grows in
proportion to society's forgetting. A lack of media coverage for
their efforts, gag rules for prisoners, very restricted visitation, and
increasing repression against those who care about prisoners begin to
wear down prison activists until they begin to feel disappeared
themselves, alone in their courageous organizing efforts. I saw the
conference as an opportunity to bring activists and ex-prisoners
together to share our ideas and experiences and recognize the strength
of our collective movement. Meanwhile, the event could serve to educate
the public about the plight of prisoners and the folly of the pris
on-industrial complex, links could be forged between activists on the
inside and the outside, and out of the conference would come renewed
resolve to do what needs doing and an improved network and strategy for
waging the struggle.
Bo Brown (BB): I didn't really have a clue. I never worked on
a big conference. I thought it was good that this wide assortment of
people was doing something around prisons and thought that anything they
did would be good. It was a very intellectual circle, but basically I
felt: "Yea, about fucking time! Let me check this out!"
CR: How did your view of what CR would be change and how did your
original and changed visions keep you motivated?
BB: It got bigger and bigger and bigger. It became a monster. But I
thought it was way overdue and needed to happen. The main people that I
knew about who were doing prison work were the ones who were doing it
since the 1970s and had carried it on in the 1980s and 1990s. We focused
mostly on political prisoners. We wanted to do more and tried to do
more, but we didn't have enough people. And now there were more; it
was a good thing.
JS: I don't think the vision of CR was clear to me during the
organizing prior to the conference. By this I mean I felt I was
constantly fighting against time to hold down three jobs and do an
immense amount of organizing, rather than having time to reflect on what
CR was about. I think my understanding of CR's vision emerged more
out of the "where to next" sessions after the conference. The
reason I stayed involved was more from having made a commitment than
from seeing CR as having a compelling vision.
After the conference, I realized the huge amount of energy that CR
had generated. My students' excitement about the issues also
affected me as I realized that we really were changing opinions and
opening up minds. I found that CR's vision was important to me in a
number of ways, which I did not find in my previous organizing:
* CR makes explicit the link between corporate profit and the
prison system and gave a practical angle from which to challenge the
global capitalist economy.
* CR has a feminist approach, which highlights the experiences of
women prisoners, unlike most black community approaches to criminal
justice, which focus on men.
* CR points toward alternative ways of thinking about crime,
punishment, and community safety that go beyond the logic of
incarceration.
* CR challenges feminists and anti-racists to deal with domestic
violence and racial hate crimes without fuelling the prison-industrial
complex.
* CR has the potential to unite communities of color against the
prison-industrial complex globally.
CR: What positives and negatives do you now see in the initial
organizing and the conference itself?
TK: Essentially, we accomplished what I'd envisioned and more.
The excitement at the conference was palpable. A lot of people reported
that they could not get over the fact that there are so many others who
believe as they do and are committed to the struggle. A reunion of 11
survivors of the Attica rebellion happened, almost as a mini-conference
within the CR conference, adding inspiration for the rest of us. We need
to remember that no single event will accomplish the goal of tearing
down the prison-industrial complex. An ongoing struggle is needed, and
it needs to be linked with other progressive struggles. The conference
provided an important step in that direction.
BB: The positive thing is that in spite of the initial organizing,
CR was allowed to grow and become itself. No one could control it and
that was okay. That it was a nonhierarchical organization was a
positive. After all, 3,500 people attended a free conference on prisons
and many exprisioners got transportation grants.
Another thing that was excellent was the cultural work: the films
and other art that was incorporated into the CR construct. The
participation by so many young people was extremely important, and I was
very happy to see their presence all over the place. I really enjoyed
the puppets on the last day's march. We need to give special credit
to the young people; they are the future.
AS: Organizing the conference was a tremendous feat. However, in
celebrating the conference, I believe it is important not to overlook
the serious flaws within the organizing process. One of the reasons it
was so successful was that some very prominent and influential people
were involved in the conference, either as speakers or as organizers.
The result was that many people would attend the conference regardless
of how well it was organized. This "star power" enabled the
conference to be successful despite the major flaws in the organizing
process. Many people on the organizing committee believe that the
conference's success indicates that the organizing committee did a
good job organizing the conference. This belief has prevented us from
looking at the flaws in our organizing structure and process as much as
we need. Now, we are suffering the consequences of these organizational
problems. [Andrea's critique is elaborated on below.]
JS: I felt the group was a bit more disorganized than I had
expected. I was surprised when members took on tasks and then did not
complete them for weeks, without comment. I was not used to this type of
very consensual organizing and worried about accountability. I felt that
if we had employed a coordinator earlier on, and set up some systems,
the organizing prior to the conference would not have been so fraught. I
felt exhausted and overwhelmed in the weeks before the conference and
was hugely burned out afterward. On the positive side, I felt the group
made opportunities for everyone to get involved and learn new skills.
For example, I learned a lot about films in the process of organizing
the film festival. I was also hugely impressed with the Web cast, Web
site, video, and prisoner phone-in; they were great. Also, our
integration of culture and politics, including the film festival, was
groundbreaking and has created a sort of cultural/political renaissance
in the Bay Area.
TK: Of course there's room for self-criticism. While we
attempted to avoid a "star system" and to provide air time for
as many of the great people in attendance as possible, not everyone had
an opportunity to share their work and ideas in a public setting, and
the "big names" did get to address the larger audiences. In
addition, because so much energy was put into arranging the conference
and bringing people together (one of the great decisions of the
organizing committee was to put most of the money raised into bringing
ex-prisoners and activists of color to the conference), we did not do
sufficient planning of the kind of networking and campaigning that would
evolve after the conference closed. That's where a lot of ongoing
work is needed.
AS: In terms of the long-term viability of CR, I think the major
problem with the conference is that we did not go into the conference
with a long-range plan to make it a viable organization and campaign. I
think it is always a mistake to go to a conference hoping that a
movement will just materialize without putting some structures in place
to maintain and build momentum after the conference. Sadly, I have
noticed that CR has provided a negative example of doing organizing
work. In many events I have been involved in since, a common phrase I
often hear is, "Let us make sure we do not do what Critical
Resistance did." The major critique I hear is that Critical
Resistance did not carefully think through the follow-up work after the
conference and hence lost much of its momentum.
BB: One problem that Iran into early on with CR was that I
didn't have a computer. So I got kicked out of the communication
loop; people mostly discussed things over e-mail. Much human conflict is
about race or class. As a white working-class lesbian, most conflict
comes to me as homophobia or as straight-up class differences.
Here's an example: After my work schedule changed, I tried to stay
in touch by telephone so people could let me know what was going on and
include me in the process. But they didn't return calls and I felt
ignored. Intellectuals talk a lot about class, but they often
aren't very good about being aware of how they exercise their class
privilege. Finally, I was put in touch with Naneen, and she downloaded
about 200 pages of the discussion that had been going on over e-mail and
sent it to me. I read all of this and then I went to a meeting. People
said to me, "Oh, we didn't know where you were." I was so
angry, I was ready to quit right then. But some good sisters took me
aside (over to a corner) and chilled me out and convinced me to stay. Of
course, there was similar class stuff throughout, but that is the nature
of class conflict. Because I was convinced that CR was important in the
world, I was determined to stick it out.
Eddie Hatcher, a Native man and former political prisoner, was
brought to the conference by CR, but he wasn't utilized at all --
he wasn't used as a panelist or speaker. It's too bad, because
his story is extremely important. He had to ask himself, "Why the
fuck am I here?" Eddie also doesn't have any money, he's
a gay man, he's HIV positive, and he just doesn't have that
pushy arrogance that he would've needed to interject himself into
the workshops as an afterthought or whatever. I don't think a
middle-class man would have been treated the same way; even if he had,
he would've faired better at CR.
CR: What is your most severe critique of the CR conference, both in
terms of the organizing process and the event itself?
JS: I think the most serious criticism is that burnout affected our
ability to organize an effective follow-up, which has negatively
affected CR. For example, our Web site still has not been updated,
giving the impression that it was all over after the conference. Second,
despite discussions about diversity, CR failed to bring meaningful
Latino and American Indian participation into the planning process. This
was revealed in a conflict in the closing plenary. Again, this affected
our vision and our effectiveness.
AS: The most significant problem to me was the marginalization of
Native peoples (as well as other communities of color) in the
conference. For instance, in the conference organizing, I seemed to be
valued only to the extent that I could bring other Native people to the
conference. When I tried to make other contributions to the conference,
I was completely dismissed and, in fact, was often actively excluded
from participating. Other people were treated similarly: they were
valued only to the extent that they could bring in people from their
particular racial/ethnic group. In addition, I often felt that I was
seen as the only person responsible for recruiting Native peoples to
attend the conference. For instance, when I pointed out that there was a
dearth of Native peoples listed as speakers, I was informed that this
absence was not a problem because Ward Churchill would be speaking. So,
I secured a grant specifically to fund Native peoples to attend the
conference, at which point I was informed that the mone y should only go
to defray existing conference costs, rather than to increase the
attendance of Native peoples. Similarly, the conference has been
critiqued for the absence of Latinos in the speaker line-up. The
response by many is that the reason is that there were no Latinos on the
organizing committee. This response indicates that we are not taking
collective responsibility for ensuring equitable representation in our
organizing strategies. If there were too few Latinos represented in the
conference, then I need to hold myself personally responsible rather
than simply believe we need to have a Latino on the committee "to
take care of the problem." I also think CR needs to be more
critical of its own racism, classism, etc. For instance, I noticed that
many of the white people in CR tended to do a lot of finger pointing at
other white people's racism as if they were immune to racism
themselves. Some white people were ejected from CR for being "too
racist," as if the white people within CR were not displaying
racism themselves. Quite frankly, working with CR has been very
frustrating for me; there have been few organizing efforts I have been
involved in where I have been treated so condescendingly and
disrespectfully. I sense that many people of color have become alienated
from CR since the conference for the same reasons. At the same time,
however, I do not want to just blame other people in CR for being
oppressive, without holding myself accountable for similar behavior.
Many times I failed to intervene in a situation where I should have or
where I displayed insensitivity or thoughtlessness. There needs to be a
structure or space for CR to discuss its own oppressive dynamics more
honestly since no one is immune to being part of such dynamics.
BB: I think there was a lack of real communication. Take the
mission statement: I never saw it until four days after the conference.
I found out later that it was written up two nights before the
conference began. So, I didn't see it before the conference, let
alone participate in deciding what it would say. I did, however, stuff
1,000 of them into the registration packets that were handed to people.
That was another class thing: there was a lot of shit work, and I
didn't see too many people doing it. I made sure I did some of it,
but I didn't see many of those lawyers or professor-types stuffing
envelopes. Is my time worth less than theirs? I have another critical
question: who decided which workshops should be videotaped? On the last
day of the conference, Sunday, former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Rafael Cancel Miranda (aged 65), Attica brother Big Black (60), my
comrade from the George Jackson Brigade, Ed Mead (55), and I, Bo (50)
spoke on our experience with revolutionary organizing in prison. The fo
ur of us had never been in the same place at the same time before. Two
hundred and fifty people, or more, came to that workshop. I can't
tell you how many people have asked me for a copy of it, but it was not
videotaped. This was an important political discussion. How did that get
ignored? Another issue for me was lesbian invisibility. Many, many
lesbians worked on CR, but in all our publications, nothing was ever
mentioned about lesbians. Some sister actually thought that raising the
question of lesbian invisibility would somehow be the same as
participating in identity politics. I don't think so. This
confusion keeps lesbians quietly in the closets of left politics, never
getting credit for our contributions. And, it has been used as a
divisive tactic to cloud discussions of homophobia, sexism, etc. For me,
it's always better to be out there as a strong lesbian who is doing
strong work for all people. A lot of people came to the
lesbian/gay/queer workshop. Lesbians have been working in every movement
for th e last 20 years, and we never give ourselves any recognition or
credit. Who knows, maybe the movements wouldn't have survived as
well without us.
The areas overseen by the logistics committee were sometimes very
weak; a lot of things got lost. Like childcare and onsite medical
support. There were no provisions for blind people, and the panel on
disabilities in prison was held in an inaccessible room.
Sometimes I think people do the fun work first and leave the shit
work for last. It's good for people to enjoy themselves, but it
takes a fair amount of real hard work to build a strong foundation, and
that foundation has to hold up the rest of the structure.
CR: What effects (good and bad) have CR had on the political work
of movements, organizations, and individuals with which you are
involved? How do you see the influence of CR as having enabled and/or
transformed your work?
AS: I think the conference has been very important in mobilizing
support against the prison system and radicalizing people's
analyses of prisons. It now seems less "out there" to advocate
prison abolition, for instance. CR has given people a vocabulary to talk
about radical alternatives to the prison system. CR has been very
important in my work, which centers on challenging the depoliticization
of the anti-sexual/domestic violence movements and their overreliance on
the state. The conference and organization I am organizing builds upon
the work CR has done and the analyses it has put forth. After CR, I
coordinated a national conference, "The Color of Violence: Violence
Against Women of Color," in April 2000. Many people from CR
assisted with the conference and helped put together one of the
workshops on law enforcement. Two of the speakers, Angela Davis and Beth
Richie, were very central in critiquing the anti-violence
movement's reliance upon the state, based on CR's analysis,
which helped frame the entire conference. From this conference, we are
building a national organization of women of color against violence that
will attempt to accomplish this task. Within Native organizing, the work
of CR is also becoming important. For instance, one tribe is proposing
to build a prison on their lands as a business enterprise. I was
contacted by opponents of this plan for information that could be used
to educate other members of the tribe about the problems with prisons.
CR's materials were used to open negotiations with the tribal
council in order to reconsider the proposal. Another contribution CR has
made is providing a role model for bringing together academics and
activists to work collaboratively. The "Color of Violence"
borrowed this model, and I am seeing how powerful it can be. Academics
are held accountable by activists to make their work accessible to the
general public. Activists can be informed by critical analyses that can
inform their organizing strategies. Usually, when activists and
academics are brough t together, they talk past each other. But
CR's strategy of assuring that academics were not allowed to read
academic papers helped prevent some of these problems. Critical
Resistance's name alone indicates the need to resist both
depoliticized academic work and anti-intellectual activism, as well as
to encourage the development of scholar/activists both inside and
outside academic circles.
JS: There are too many to mention them all:
* Faith Nolan and I set up Empowerment Through Music, a
collaboration between students, musicians, and faculty at Mills College to bring "music circles" to San Francisco County Jail and the
federal prison for women at Dublin, California (FCI Dublin).
* The "Go to Prison Week" concert at FCI Dublin was a
powerful event that countered isolation for political prisoners
following the new warden's crackdown on them.
* About 20% of my students have done some project or research on
prisons, race, and gender.
* Many Mills College students are now involved in youth organizing
for "Schools Not Jails," especially against Proposition 21.
* The conference inspired the formation of Critical Resistance
Youth Task Force (YTF), a powerful coalition of youth groups located in
Northern California.
* Millions for Mumia used same format for its conference at
University of California, Berkeley.
* CR increased the use of music/culture/hip-hop for social change
and as a part of the anti-prison-industrial complex community in the Bay
Area.
* The "Schools Not Jails" benefit concert for CR, No on
21, and Barrios Unidos in Santa Cruz in March were organized by CR
activists and included such hip-hop giants as Black Star.
* "Project Rescue," set up in Hawaii, counters prison
construction on the Big Island and holds consultation forums on every
island in Hawaii.
* National black projects in the U.K. -- National Black Caucus and
the Association of Black Probation Officers -- are committed to
networking with CR and hosting a conference in the future.
* I have given presentations on the prison-industrial complex in
Canada, making the link between education and social service cuts and
the construction of five new "superjails" in Ontario.
Networking there continues.
CR also totally transformed my research. I was working on
transracial adoption, and now I am writing a book on women of color in
the global prison-industrial complex (PIC)! It transformed my analysis
of global capital and gave me new insight into how communities of color
in Canada, the U.K., and the U.S. are linked through the PIC. CR also
transformed my teaching. Nearly all my classes --- from Theories of Race
and Ethnicity to Mrican American Women's History -- deal with the
PIC in some way. Students are writing research papers on the PIC and
youth resistance. It transformed my life. I can't go anywhere
nowadays without trying to get inside a prison!
TK: CR has raised consciousness in all progressive organizations
and movements about the importance of the struggle to tear down the PIC.
I've been reinspired in my prison activism. Prior to my experience
on the conference organizing committee, I felt that I just happened to
have opportunities, for example, as a plaintiffs expert in class action
lawsuits, to enter the secret world of prisons and come out to report
the horrors I had witnessed. I thought that this was important work,
that the imprisonment binge and all the related injustices and cruelties
were reflections of the deep structural evils of our society, but not
necessarily the central act in our current social tragedy. Collaborating
closely with other prison activists led me to increasingly place the PIC
more at the core of my analysis of what's wrong with this society
and what we have to do to change things.
BB: CR's effect has been overwhelmingly positive for
prisoners. It raises hope to realize that this many people give a shit.
If you are in prison and you hear that 3,500 people -- including a lot
of young people -- came to a conference to brainstorm about how to
confront the prison-industrial complex, that is really meaningful.
Prisoners were able to call in from all over the country (Ohio, Georgia,
etc.) and speak with the people attending the panels. The women
political prisoners had their own call-in workshop. It is very important
that prisoners got to participate on a real level. The follow through
has been a bit slow, but we are working on that. A lot of new
organizations have sprung up in the wake of CR, which shows that people
were encouraged to go out and take initiative. CR obviously happened at
an opportune time, when people were becoming more aware of the cost of
the prison-industrial complex and thinking about how to confront it.
There are a lot more prison groups now than before the conference, a nd
that's not all due to us. A movement is flowering. It is
significant to note that the Prison Activist Resource Center's Web
site is getting 10,000 hits a day. CR was able to add some fertilizer
and other nutrients to the mix. I've seen this flowering all around
me. Out of Control's main support work is for the women and lesbian
political prisoners, and we produce a newsletter called Out of Time.
There seems to be more interest these days. More people write to the
women political prisoners and more people are visiting them. Again, what
I notice especially is more interest from young people. I think more
folks are just questioning: "What is this prison-industrial complex
and what are the alternatives?"
In terms of how it transformed my work, we are very out lesbians,
doing prison work; CR broadened our acceptability. We've already
been around for 15 years and already have built some respect. More
people seem to be doing more work around women in prison. More
networking is going on and fewer people are forgetting that we do exist.
A lot more young lesbian college students have contacted us for
information about lesbian and other political prisoners. There used to
be one or two requests a year. Now there are six to eight requests.
CR: What is your evaluation of developments within CR (the
organizing committee, steering committee, etc.) since September 27,
1998? How has it changed as an organizational entity, and what has it
become? What significant organizations, campaigns, or other committees
have emerged in connection with CR? Offer an analysis of the good, the
bad, and the ugly, if you can.
JS: CR has changed from a committee organizing a conference to an
organization in abeyance after the conference. In 1999, it became an
organization that swings from being an umbrella/resource at the national
level to being a grass-roots mobilizing group around issues like the
prison slated to be built in Delano, California, and Prop. 21 (juvenile
incarceration). There has been a dropping off of people of color at the
meetings I have attended. But the Youth Task Force has burst onto the
scene as a multiracial group led by youth of color. This is problematic
if the CR organizing committee is seen as being white-led. We need to
get back into working class, American Indian, black, Chicano, and Latino
communities. There are organizations that have emerged since the
conference: Project Rescue (Hawaii), Empowerment Through Music, YTF, and
CR-New York. CR-U.K. emerged, but now seems to have disappeared as an
organized group.
I think the new developments are positive, especially YTF. However,
I think CR risks losing its identity into the Freedom Winter coalition
(a group organized by CR members to fight Prop. 21). Also, CR's
relationship with the Youth Task Force is fragmented, with poor
communication at times.
AS: Since September 27, 1998, it seems as though the flaws in the
organizational structure have become increasingly apparent. It seems as
though fewer people of color are involved in CR. Many Native people I
know, who were initially interested in CR, have become alienated from
it. CR seems to be very issue-specific and is having difficulty coming
up with a more comprehensive strategic plan for the organization. We did
good work on the juvenile justice campaign, but we did not seem to link
this campaign to a larger strategy (something I might add that the Right
is very good at doing, and hence is more successful than we are). I
think one of the major problems inherent in CR is our inability to look
honestly at who holds the power in the organization. We tell ourselves
that we have a loose, democratic structure in which we make decisions
collectively. What we actually have is a situation in which a few people
hold much of the informal organizing power and are constantly able to
undermine collective decisions.
In addition, because of CR's loose structure, no one has been
designated with the responsibility of assuring that nothing falls
through the cracks. Such a person can make sure things run smoothly
without necessarily being given decision making power. Plus, we did in
fact have people who were in charge during the conference, but were able
to escape accountability for their decisions by hiding behind the fact
that they did not have a formal position within the organization.
Another result of this situation was that avenues for action became
blocked by certain individuals, which prevented many people (myself for
one) from making more significant contributions to the organization. I
should stress, however, that I do not think the problem lies with a few
people because each of us can end up in an organizing venture where s/he
wields a disproportionate amount of informal power. Rather, the problem
is structural. How can an organization develop a structure that is
democratic in practice, not simply in theory? I sho uld note that I
think things have improved tremendously since we hired a coordinator.
This person is doing an excellent job, I believe, of making sure all the
necessary tasks get done while ensuring that everyone has a say in
determining CR's direction.
BB: CR' s mass has dwindled. There has been a lot of burnout.
The organization expanded and swelled for the conference and then
deflated afterwards. That's probably a common cycle. We had to get
beyond our trend to own it or patent it. Now it's sort of settled
into a more modest but sustainable size. There is a smaller core of
truly committed people who understand that to change the world you have
to start with your own self and your own organization and do a lot of
hard work. CR is a construct, a new way of thinking and seeing, and not
just another gimmick for the opportunists. In terms of significant
organizations or campaigns that came out in connection with CR, "Go
to Prison Week" was a good idea, but a last-minute idea, and
therefore a bit of a weak idea. We needed to have a beginning, middle,
and an end. We should have had people start by building local prison
groups, with their first activity being to go to a prison. It's
about building a movement; it's not about building a moment. The
work around Prop . 21 was excellent. And now, the Delano lawsuit to stop
construction of yet another California prison is great.
TK: I think there was some confusion and difference among the
organizers about what would happen after the conference. Many of the
organizers had taken leave of most of their responsibilities in other
prison organizations to dedicate themselves to putting on the
conference. That dedication was needed--people worked extremely
creatively and hard, and without that dedication and work, the
conference could not have been the extraordinary success it was. After
the conference, some of the organizers returned to their other
organizations and withdrew a significant proportion of their energies
from CR. There is nothing wrong with their doing so. But to the extent
that we want CR to become an ongoing campaign, we need dedicated
organizers who will be there well into the future.
The problem in the organizing committee, in my opinion, was that we
never faced this reality head-on. We should have polled the membership
of the organizing committee and the Youth Task Force to see what
they'd be down to do on an ongoing basis, and then without any hard
feelings, replenish the membership of the organizing committee with new
people who would be willing to put in endless hours into the future. In
fact, that's what the CR campaign is in the process of doing right
now, and with the impressive leadership and energy of our new director,
Rose Braz, much will be accomplished.
Meanwhile, we have not done badly since the conference. I am
referring to the regional actions and organizing that has been going on
around the country in the name of CR, organized by people whose energies
were renewed by the CR conference.
CR: What is your ideal vision of the immediate future of CR as an
organization? What do you think its purpose, goals, and strategies
should be? What kind of infrastructure (if any) do you think it should
embody? Are there alternate forms of organization building that you can
imagine for CR?
JS: I think CR should have a clear national identity as an umbrella
group that gives good information, analysis, leads campaigns, and
provides advice for organizing, for example, our role in supporting
CR-New York and organizing in Hawaii. This would involve updating the
Web site, putting together resource packets on the PIC, getting national
groups together to endorse a focused campaign, etc. We need to win back
the national agenda and focus. I think there should be a national CR as
well as regionals, e.g., Hawaii, New York, Northern California, etc.
Perhaps we need to separate the Northern California and national groups
so that we do not get swallowed up in regional crises. I also think CR
should take its international commitment seriously, and we should
brainstorm about how we can support activism in Canada and the U.K., for
example, where analysis of the PIC is still emergent. Finally, we should
have a regional responsibility for projects such as Delano and Prop. 21,
but this should not detract from the n ational and international
actions. Also, we should prioritize working with communities of color,
building alliances and recognizing barriers to participation. CR needs a
staff to get the work done. This is not to say that we cannot work on a
voluntary basis, but realistically, we need some good fulltime people on
the job. This should be based on a collective structure and include
folks of color. CR needs funding for this. I think we can continue to
take funds from progressive funder s who do not attempt to water down
our message.
BB: CR should be a monster anti-prison network, like a giant
computer with a way of connecting people doing the work in their
communities with others doing similar stuff. There should be space for
broad concepts and discussions; people could share their local
information and see what other folks are doing. People could get local
facts by demanding them from their local department of prisons and then
post that information for all to see. Then, of course, hard copies of
everything have to be made available to the prisoners and others who do
not have computer privileges.
Beyond the work of facilitating the networking between prison
activists nationally, we need to do more work on a local, grass-roots
level in every community. We haven't done enough work to have a
strong enough foundation to be a national organization. We realistically
are more of an umbrella.
AS: I think there would be a dual structure to CR. There should be
a national office that is cohesive and very politically clear. However,
CR should also incorporate a number of local, state, and regional
organizations that are more loosely affiliated and that do not have to
specifically answer to a national office. That way, we can have a
broad-based movement that can attract people of varying political
persuasions, but we can also have a tight and cohesive national
organization that can offer political clarity. Regarding fundraising, we
need to emphasize grass-roots fundraising strategies, such as
"membership" development, canvassing, etc. Such approaches are
time consuming, but ultimately are necessary if we are going to build a
broad base of support and not become a foundation-driven organization.
TK: I am pleased with recent decisions to open an office, hire a
director, apply for grants, and evolve as a broad-based,
alliance-building prisoner advocacy organization.
CR: What relation should CR have to the nonprofit sector,
liberal-to-progressive foundations, and the state (meaning its array of
affiliated institutions, as well as its formal governmental structure)?
BR: CR should be fiercely independent for as long as possible to
protect its center. CR needs to be strong enough, and conscious enough,
not to get sucked up or bought out or absorbed into any of those
well-established institutions. Assimilation is always a danger when
radical ideas become popular trends.
JS: We should keep an arm's length relationship with the
state, i.e., no state funding, although we can work with progressive
individuals, e.g., probation officers, on an individual basis. The issue
of coalitions with agencies that are not progressive in some ways, such
as in the recent debate about working with environmental agencies that
are anti-immigrant, shows that we need to think carefully before we
"get into bed" with so-called allies. This type of alliance
could cost us our base in immigrant communities.
CR. Are there alternate forms of organization building that you can
imagine for CR?
BR: I'd like to see CR share the lessons it has learned with
new prison groups. I'd like to see us do a "How to Start Your
Own Prison Group" pamphlet, possibly in conjunction with other Bay
Area prison groups such as the Prison Activist Resource Center, the
California Coalition for Women Prisoners, or California Prison Focus.
This pamphlet could include information that a prison activist group
should have about the prisons near it, a bibliography of films and
books, and ideas on nonhierarchical organizational structure.
CR: How has CR made an impact on the political agendas of groups
that have traditionally not devoted their primary attention to prison or
prisoner work?
AS: I think CR did much to increase interest in prison organizing.
However, this impact may be short-lived as CR has not been successful in
sustaining its momentum due to its organizational flaws. I hope that
does not happen.
TK: I believe that most of the people involved in organizing and
attending the CR conference came to the realization that prison activism
is more central to a progressive agenda than we previously thought.
Groups that organize around labor, immigration, civil rights, welfare,
the homeless, or the WTO now see recent trends in the criminal justice
system, especially the disappearing of huge numbers of people of color
behind bars, as a critical part of the structure that maintains the
inequities and injustices their groups are campaigning to end. In that
sense, the conference helped to bring the struggle to tear down the PIC
into the Left's core agenda.
BB: We helped make links with education groups and local community
groups by drawing attention to the fact that the resources that have
gone toward community development are now being used to build the
prison-industrial complex. We helped others see this and ask more
questions: Were these effects expected or unanticipated? These things
were slowly coming -- CR sped up the process, and that's our job!
RITA (Bo) BROWN is a white, working-class butch dyke and
ex-political prisoner who served eight years in federal prison for her
participation in the George Jackson Brigade, an armed underground
revolutionary group that operated in the Pacific Northwest in the late
1970s. She continues to do anti-prison work wherever she is. TERRY A.
KUPERS practices psychiatry in Oakland, California, and is an active
member of Critical Resistance and California Prison Focus. He is the
author of Prison Madness (with Hans Toch, Jossey-Bass, 1999) and
co-editor of Prison Masculinities (Temple University Press, 2001).
ANDREA SMITH, a Cherokee, was a cofounder of the Chicago chapter of
Women of All Red Nations. She is the former women of color caucus chair of the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault and the coordinator of
the "Color of Violence: Violence Against Women of Color"
conference. JULIA SUDBURY (Assistant Professor, Department of Ethnic
Studies, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94613; e-mail:
jsudbury @mills.edu) is a Nigerian-British zami activist and writer. Her
book, Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the
Politics of Transformation (Routledge, 1998), was inspired by her
involvement in the black women's movement in Britain. She is
currently an organizing committee member of Critical Resistance. DYLAN RODRIGUEZ is currently completing his doctoral dissertation on radical
U.S. prison intellectuals in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley (e-mail:
dylan1@uclink4.berkeley.edu). He is a member of the Critical Resistance
organizing committee. NANCY STOLLER is a professor of Community Studies
at the University of California, Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz, CA 95064;
e-mail:nancys@cats.ucsc.edu), where she trains social change activists.
Her most recent publication is "Improving Access to Health Care for
California's Women Prisoners," published by the California
Policy Research Center.