Committee on Women, Population and the Environment(CWPE Task force on Militarization, Criminalization & Surveillance)
Not surprisingly, these groups are multiracial, center the experiences and voices of people of color and poor folks, and often have strong participation and leadership - by people who have been incarcerated.
NH: I am inspired by the work of Critical Resistance, The Prison Activist Resource Center and The Real Cost of Prisons Project. All these grassroots groups require justice activists, educators, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work towards change. These powerful coalitions are the basis for real change.
Davis
(1997: 71-72) identifies three key dimensions of this work public
policy, community organizing, and academic research;
"In order to be successful, this project must build bridges between
academic work, legislative and other policy interventions, and
grassroots campaigns calling, for example for the decriminalization of
drugs and prostitution, and for the reversal of the present
proliferation of prisons and jails."
I am inspired always by the writings of those who are imprisoned -- Leonard Peltier and Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Assata and Sundiata, George
Jackson, , Angela Davis, Huey
P. Newton, and Stanley
"Tookie" Williams, Marilyn Buck, Jimmy Santiago Baca Kathy
Boudin and Rita Bo Brown, Wilbur
Rideau, and many more.
And I am inspired by those who work to carry these voices to the
outside. The writings of many political prisoners/prisoners of
conscience might have remained suppressed were it not for the efforts of
scholars to bring them forward. This coalition between what Mumia calls
"organic and radical intellectuals" is crucial to the uncovering of the
deep structural connections between race, political economy and crime.
The work of Angela Davis and Joy James is exemplary here. Their extensive writings on these matters and their careful attendance to connecting with those inside prison walls serve as a model for future work. In Imprisoned Intellectuals (2003), James gives voice to the range of political prisoners and traces the common thread of resistance across generations, nationalities, racial/ethnic differences, genders, sexual orientations, and political causes. She hopes that writing and reading will force a transformative encounter "between those in the so-called free world seeking personal and collective freedoms and those in captivity seeking liberation from economic, military, racial/sexual systems."
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