Understanding Prison Abolition
-Critical Resistance, “What is the PIC? What is abolition?” http://criticalresistance.org/about/not-so-common-language
-Decolonize PDX, “Prison Statement.” http://decolonizepdx.weebly.com/prison-statement.html
-The Good Men Project, “Let’s Abolish Prison, Not Reform It.”
http://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/lets-abolish-prison-not-reform-it
Organizations That Inspire Us
–All of Us or None
All of Us Or None is a national organizing initiative of prisoners, former prisoners and felons, to combat the many forms of discrimination that formerly incarcerated people face as the result of felony convictions.
–Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective
The Bay Area Transformative Justice Collaborative (BATJC) is a community collective of individuals working to build and support transformative justice responses to child sexual abuse.
–Black and Pink
Black & Pink is an open family of LGBTQ prisoners and “free world” allies who support each other.
–Campaign to End the New Jim Crow
The Campaign to End the New Jim Crow seeks to remove the structural injustices inflicted on the incarcerated, formerly incarcerated, their families and the communities from which they come. The Campaign seek human rights for all members of our society non-violently, in opposition to our current system of justice, which is inherently violent.
–Chicago PIC Teaching Collective
The Chicago Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) Teaching Collective is an all-volunteer group that organizes interactive workshops, film screenings, and trainings which aim to inspire action.
–Communities Against Rape and Abuse
CARA is a Seattle-based 501(c)(3) grassroots organization that promotes a broad agenda for liberation and social justice while prioritizing anti-rape work as the center of organizing.
–Communities United Against Violence
CUAV works to build the power of LGBTQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning) communities to transform violence and oppression.
–Critical Resistance
Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to end the prison industrial complex (PIC) by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe.
–Creative Interventions
Creative Interventions was established as a resource center to create and promote community-based responses to interpersonal violence.
–Decarcerate PA
Decarcerate PA is a grassroots campaign working to end mass incarceration in Pennsylvania.
–Decolonize PDX
Decolonize PDX is a collective of people of color. We decolonize because we know this land is already occupied.
–generationFIVE
The mission of generationFIVE is to end the sexual abuse of children within five generations.
–INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
INCITE! is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and our communities through direct action, critical dialogue, and grassroots organizing.
–Justice Now
Justice Now works with women prisoners and local communities to build a safe, compassionate world without prisons.
–Prison Activist Resource Center
PARC is a prison abolitionist group based in Oakland, CA, committed to exposing and challenging the institutionalized racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, and classism of the prison-industrial complex.
–Project NIA
Project NIA is an advocacy, organizing, popular education, research, and capacity-building center with the long-term goal of ending youth incarceration.
–RedBird Prison Abolition
RedBird Prison Abolition is a group of people in Columbus, OH, who want to see the prison system come to an end.
–Rose City Copwatch
Rose City Copwatch works to reduce police violence, and to disrupt the police’s ability to enforce race and class lines.
–Sylvia Rivera Law Project
The Sylvia Rivera Law Project works to guarantee that all people are free to self-determine gender identity and expression, regardless of income or race, and without facing harassment, discrimination or violence.
–Transformative Justice Law Project of Illinois
The Transformative Justice Law Project of IL is deeply committed to prison abolition, gender self-determination, and transformative justice.
–Transgender Gender Variant Intersex Justice Project
TGI Justice Project is a group of transgender people—inside and outside of prison—creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom.
–Women On the Rise Telling HerStory (WORTH)
WORTH is an advocacy/consultant group comprised of currently & formerly incarcerated women, who have the expertise and understanding to engage, navigate and challenge policy and perceptions concerning incarcerated women.
Other Oregon Groups Working on Prison Issues
–Civil Liberties Defense Center
–Oregon Jericho
–Partnership for Safety and Justice
–Portia Project
Further Reading
–Abolition Now!: Ten Years of Strategy and Struggle Against the Prison-Industrial Complex by the CR10 Publications Collective
–Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You edited by Ryan Conrad
–Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Davis
–Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex edited by Nat Smith and Eric Stanley
–Fugitive Thought: Prison Movements, Race, and the Meaning of Justice by Michael Hames-Garcia
–Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore
–If they come in the morning: Voices of Resistance by Angela Davis
–Inside This Place, Not Of It: Narratives From Women’s Prisons edited by Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi
–The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration In the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander
–Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law by Dean Spade
–Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States by Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock
–Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women by Victoria Law
–The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani, and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
–Stories of Transformative Justice by Ruth Morris
–13 Women: Parables from Prison edited by Karlene Faith and Anne Near
Downloadable Documents
Creative Interventions Toolkit
generationFIVE: Toward Transformative Justice
Hidden Expressions
In a Time of Broken Bones: A Call to Dialogue on Hate Violence and the Limitations of Hate Crimes Legislation by Kay Whitlock
Inalienable Rights: Applying international human rights standards to the U.S. criminal justice system
INCITE!: The Revolution Starts at Home zine
This Is A Prison, Glitter Is Not Allowed: Experiences of Trans and Gender Variant People in Pennsylvania’s Prison Systems
A Way Forward: Lessons on Community Response to Harm
Films
-The Black Power Mixtape
-Broken on All Sides
-Cruel and Unusual
-Herman’s House
-The House I Live In
-In Prison My Whole Life
-Long Distance Revolutionary
-Visions of Abolition
Art, Media, Writing, & Miscellaneous
–Between the Bars
–Black/Inside: Exploring a History of Captivity and Confinement
–Chain Reaction: What Happens When You Call the Cops?
–Community Accountability
–Community Safety Chicago
–Criminal Injustice
–Everyday Abolition
–Journal of Prisoners on Prisons
–Juvenile-In-Justice
–Prison Culture
–Prison Photography
–The Sentencing Project
–Solitary Watch
–Women and Prison
