Category: activists

Critical resistance: organization against the prison industrial complex

Critical Resistance is an organization that seeks to eliminate the abuse of women, immigrants and people of color in the country’s prisons. If you want to know about the program of abolition of prisons, the objectives and conferences, take a look at this article and discover information of interest.

What is Critical Resistance?

This is a social movement, which was born in 1997. This private organization is located in the United States, and has several offices distributed throughout the country, for example, in Los Angeles, New York and Oakland.

Critical Resistance has held several meetings, each of which was held to demonstrate the low value of prisons and the harm suffered by people of color, foreigners and transgender people.

Angela Davis, Rose Braz and Ruth Wilson created Critical Resistance because they had a new vision, and they wanted to make the community aware that not all problems are solved with jail and abuse.

What do you seek to achieve Critical Resistance?

Critical Resistance is against the prison reforms and votes for the abolition of prisons.

Abuse is very present in prisons. For this reason, this entity wishes to provide education, a home and sustenance to the people who are imprisoned, so that their human rights are protected and respected, paying their respective penalties.

Over the years, this organization has had the mission of providing education to prisoners and eliminating sentences for drug addicts or prostitutes, and providing the help they need to get out of these harmful vices.

Its goal is to decrease the number of inmates and incarceration for people who want to redeem themselves and have minimum sentences.

First step of Critical Resistance

The first step that Critical Resistance took was to create a conference attended by individuals of all kinds, ex-convicts, activists, transgender people and people with low incomes.

With a total of more than 3,000 people, the campaign was a success. It took place in the United States, one year after the organization was founded.

The conference was called “Beyond the prison industrial complex” and caused many people to take an interest in his ideas and follow the activities closely.

The mission of this conference was to make known its position on the elimination of prisons, the construction of homes for the most needy and the formation of schools for the poor.

Each of the activities carried out by Resistencia Crítica is focused on the community, and on disseminating strategies to protect human rights throughout the country.

In this way, Critical Resistance made known the objectives of the organization, causing the movement to become important in the United States and for people to participate in different campaigns and projects for the collective welfare.

Because of this, the organization has received numerous honors, for its campaigns and conferences over time.

“Schools, not prisons”

In 1998, the “Schools, not prisons” campaign was created, which caused students from all over the country to protest for schools that provide a good education to those most in need, and that with the money from the construction of prisons, they open these educational centers.

Youth Crime Initiative

This campaign was carried out to stop the construction of a jail in California, being a great success for the organization, and it captured the attention of many people in the country.

Since 2001, prison construction has decreased, thanks to the work of activists and advocates who participated in the project proposals.

Currently, Critical Resistance continues with its objectives, setting goals and helping the community with the aim of building a better society, where freedom and equality are rights that really apply to all people and social welfare is no longer just a utopia, to become a reality.