Organizing Meeting for a National Day of Resistance
SAY NO TO MASS
INCARCERATION
Saturday, March 24, 2012, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
Hunter College, Room 506 Hunter North, 68th and Lexington Avenue
#6 IRT to 68th Street
This country imprisons more people than any other country on the planet. On Thursday, April 19th, everyone who is concerned about injustice must join in saying – NO TO MASS INCARCERATION - in a loud voice. There must be rallies and demonstrations in cities across the country. College and high school students must hold teach in's and other actions on their campuses. There need be cultural events held on that day. The architects and enforcers of mass incarceration must be challenged over the inhumanity of the policies they are inflicting on society.
Come to an organizing meeting to make this resistance real and nationwide.
A lot of important work has been done on this front. Michelle Alexander and others have done a lot of exposure of the horrors of mass incarceration. Prisoners, activists and others concerned about injustice, including a number of prominent have been involved in building resistance to this problem. It is crucial that this resistance be taken to higher level—NOW.
We must do this because:
- 2.4 million people, 60% of them Black or Latino, are held in prisons across the US.
- Racial profiling practiced by police and courts serves as a pipeline to these horrific numbers.
- People in prison are subjected to torture like conditions.
- The formerly incarcerated face discrimination, even after they've served their sentences.
We must do this now because in this very political time—with the presidential elections heading into full swing—the horror of racially targeted mass incarceration is being hardly mentioned. And when it does come up, it is raised only to call for even harsher measures. Only our independent mass action can puncture this atmosphere—putting this injustice forcefully before society and challenging everyone who is concerned about justice to take a stand.
The Call for this day of national resistance has been issued by:
(List in formation.) Gbenga Akinnagbe, Actor; Rafael Angulo, Professor of Social Work, USC; Nellie Bailey, Occupy Harlem; Kendra Castaneda, Prisoner Human Rights Activist with a family member in CA State Prison Segregation Unit; Solomon Comissiong, Executive Director, Your World News Media Collective (www.yourworldnews.org); Colin Dayan, Robert Penn Warren Professor in the Humanities, Vanderbilt University; Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist, co-initiator of Campaign to Stop "Stop and Frisk"; Kelley Lytle Hernandez, Professor of History, UCLA; Robin DG Kelley, Distinguished Professor of History, UCLA; Wayne Kramer, Jail Guitar Doors USA, Co-Founder; Sarah Kuntsler, Esq., National Lawyers Guild NYC*; Rev. Janet Gollery McKeithen (Unity Methodist Clergy), President, Methodist Federation for Social Action, Cal-Pac; Gregg Morris, Assistant Professor, Journalism, Department of Film and Media Studies, Hunter College; October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation (New York Committee); Mary Ratcliff, Editor, San Francisco Bay View Black National Newspaper; Joyce Robbins, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Touro College; Cornel West, author and educator, co-initiator of Campaign to Stop "Stop and Frisk"; Clyde Young, Revolutionary Communist, and former prisoner. [*for identification purposes only.]
Stop Mass Incarceration Network + 866-841-9139 x2670 + stopmassincarceration@ymail.com
Steve Yip, P.O. Box 941, Knickerbocker Station, New York, New York 10002-0900 * 866-841-9139 x2670, yipzzz@gmail.com
"If you don't have a poetic spirit -- or at least a poetic side -- it is very dangerous for you to lead a Marxist movement or be the leader of a socialist state." -- Bob Avakian, 1990
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