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I've been to many conferences and demonstrations, sometimes being amazed at the energy exchange and other times wondering what I'm doing there, but when I was sitting at the closing plenary of the Critical Resistance conference (September 25-27, 1998, Berkeley, CA) it was the first time I really got that spine tingling feeling that I was witnessing an historic moment. We were in an auditorium totally packed, with sound systems hooked up to the "overflow rooms", and I was sitting next to an African-American elder gentleman, who said, "I believe we have a movement—finally". The need for the overflow rooms was because the attendance far exceeded the expectations of the organizers. Before the conference began, 1200 people had registered, but 2000 more registered when they got there, and I know that there were many who had just dropped by for a few hours each day. So I imagine there were around 4,000 people of all ages, and all races, and from all over the country—and the world—who have now been touched with this spirit of a new awakening. What was the exciting frosting on the cake was the high percentage of youth, who are now going to take this first step and go forward.

That's what it was: a first step, a beginning to a national, sustained commitment to not only stop the Prison Industrial Complex's control of our country, but also to replace it with a consciousness that works toward healing the wounds of crime rather than perpetuating the pain of hate and revenge-type justice. We want a movement that works on building a world for all,without exclusivity, where all families can have the security of their own homes and jobs to keep them there and feed them, regardless of race or class. Prison control isnot an acceptable alternative to joblessness and homelessness. The goal is to have a true justice system that exhibits compassion, that looks at the individual offender and sees that person as someone who needs help to re-enter society, to learn how to read and write, to learn skills for jobs, to eliminate any substance addictions, and to learn how to maintain a compatible relationship with others. In order to do this, we must challenge the culture of punishment that has taken control of our world.

The three days of workshops covered a broad spectrum of prison issues, which meant that it brought together, in unity, people who may have always worked on one issue and now had an opportunity to see how it connected with all the other issues. The conference was the opportunity to experience how that connection can form a strong coalition, sustained and national.

There were 25 pages of workshops for the three days, so it's hard to zero in on examples, but just to randomly select: Concrete Strategies to Combat Criminalization of Youth; From the Welfare State to the Crime Control State; Histories of Prison Activism; Past, Present and Future; Critical Breakdown: Hip Hop vs the Prison State; Women Warriors: Developing Leadership Among Formerly Incarcerated Women; Communities Moving Beyond Prisons; National Organizing Against the Death Penalty: Strategies and Questions; Countering Attacks Against Pregnant, Substance-Dependent Women; Lesbians and Gays and the Prison Industrial Complex; Formulating Anti-Racist Responses to Sexist Violence; How to Build a Defense Committee for Political and Other Prisoners; Copwatching: Confronting Police Misconduct in the Street; How Can Juries Do More Justice?; Families to Amend California's Three Strikes; Community-Based Alternatives to Prison; Tribal Law Enforcement and the Prison Industrial Complex; The Prison Phone Industry: Who Profits, Who Pays, and How to Fight It; and on and on.

Because it was considered a "working" conference, there were notes at the end of each workshop description saying which taskforce that workshop augmented, then on Sunday, the taskforces got together to strategize for future actions. At the Closing Plenary, the moderator said that they had over 300 actions now in the planning stage!

An immediate action had already been planned for the coming week by OLIN, which means "movement" in Nehual. This is a group of high school students who have already staged one walkout of 2000 students in April of this year. After the conference, on October 1, there was another walkout in the East Bay that brought out 3000 students. They are protesting the use of funds to build prisons instead of schools and an increasing criminalization of students by placing fences around schools, police in the halls, metal detectors at the doors, and at one school in Daly City, the building of a tower that can only be described as a guard tower. Their slogan is Education not Incarceration",and they have a very valid concern. They are saying that the set-up now is for inner-city schools to be the first step towards incarceration. More effort and funds are being put into "security measures" than into a curriculum that would ensure their entering college, and as of last year, more tax dollars are going into building prisons than schools in California.

There are now 33 state prisons; that is more prisons than in the entire continent of Africa. Since 1982, 24 new prisons have been built and by the year 2000, 71 prisons are expected to be in place. In comparison, there are nine University of California institutions and in the past ten years, only one University has been built, though there is "discussion" about the possibility of another one. There has been a 95% increase in spending on prisons and a 6% decrease on spending for higher education in this state. The government spends $60,000 a year to incarcerate a person and $8,000 to educate one—which is the better deal?

It's not as if people are blind to the implications; 76% of the people would rather support more schools than prisons. Dan Kelly, vice president of the San Francisco Board of Education said (SF Chronicle, October 2, 1998) "The students are right to be outraged. If we don't give the kids the service in school, we'll have to give it to them in prison later." What a chilling revelation, from a member of the Board of Education, and makes me wonder why the opposite is being allowed to happen? With all the funds going to prisons, it can only mean that as far as the State of California is concerned, the inner-city kids are on a track to prison, not higher education, which would mean a constant supply of slave labor for the Prison Industrial Complex. So the students have a vested interest in getting involved: they are fighting for their lives and their futures.

The conference planners have said that if the Critical Resistance conference were successful they would organize more in other parts of the country, since this threat is nation-wide and growing. I believe these three days went beyond the word "successful", and I am relieved to see the vision of future actions, future conferences and future change, and to see a movement—finally.

Send Email to Charla Greene at Welcome to Hell

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