Dear friends and supporters of Critical Resistance,
2023 marks 25 years since the founding Critical Resistance (CR) conference, and we are proud to have steadily carried the spirit and vision of that conference in our work to the present day. In this momentous year, CR has forged ahead building the movement for prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition in our campaigns, projects, and organizing tools - and your support has made this ever-growing work possible! We worked in coalitions to achieve tangible campaign wins; created and distributed organizing tools; hosted events, workshops, and trainings; bolstered our connections with imprisoned comrades and movement partners; and hosted an anniversary event for CR and our community to reflect upon and celebrate the past 25 years of CR’s ceaseless organizing that has brought us here. As the connections between our interwoven liberation struggles - and the role of the PIC in upholding systems of oppression - become clearer than ever, we remain committed to our work to dismantle the PIC in all its forms, change common sense and the ways our collective resources are distributed, and build toward abolitionist horizons.
Your generosity is crucial to our campaigns and projects, correspondence with imprisoned people, and building with movement partners. Will you sustain another 25 years of CR’s essential organizing toward PIC abolition? With your help this year, we have:
- Collaborated with California movement partners to confirm the closure of one state-owned prison and one privately-owned prison - bringing our closure total up to 4 prisons since the campaign began!
- Organized with New York movement partners to build up community resistance against immigrant detention and work toward a veto-proof majority of legislature signed onto the Dignity Not Detention NY Act against ICE contracts
- Corresponded with thousands of imprisoned people through our mail programs and phone lines, sharing resources, information, and political dialogue to keep up the fight inside
- Shared The Abolitionist newspaper Issue #39: Reproductive Justice with 4,700 of people inside prisons, jails, and detention centers people for free; and hundreds of paid subscribers and movement partners. Issue #40: Control Units is coming soon in December!
CR’s work in the fight for liberation remains as urgent as ever. The past 25 years of our organizing to dismantle systems of imprisonment, policing, and surveillance were made possible by the people power of thousands offering their time, effort, and resources. In this era of increasing flashpoints and escalating crises, CR remains steady in our movement to abolish the PIC. Will you continue to support CR in our work toward abolitionist horizons? We invite you to donate what you can to sustain our organizing, this year and the next.