From: Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial Complex 

               Northeast Regional Conference

 To:   Workplace

 Date: December 24, 2000

 Posted: January 2, 2001

 Subject:  CALL FOR PRESENTERS, PAPERS & WORKSHOPS
            PLEASE POST, ANNOUNCE, AND DISTRIBUTE

  March 9-11, 2001,  New York City
  We are calling on people to examine the prison industrial complex and
  mobilize for its destruction.  In 1998, over 3,000 prisoners, activists,
  scholars, policymakers, advocates, cultural workers, revolutionaries
  and former prisoners came together to address the crisis of the prison
  industrial complex in the U.S. and internationally.

  From that conference, Critical Resistance: Beyond the Prison Industrial
  Complex, many new networks were started.  Because prison building continues
  to be one of the fastest growing industries, the United States now has
  more people in prisons and a higher percentage of its population in prison
  than any other nation in the world.  With the help of national Critical
  Resistance, we in the Northeast have decided to join our energies in
  organizing and strategizing to resist the prison industrial complex.
  The Northeast Regional Conference will focus on the impacts of the prison
  industrial complex in Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts,
  Connecticut,
  Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
  and Washington, D.C.

  This conference not only looks to see why this is happening and who it
  benefits.  We also hope to find real solutions.  Our mission is to analyze
  the problem and then develop strategies of resistance that will not only
  inform people of the facts but will make more effective action possible.

  This conference will be more than opportunity to gather and share 
  information.
  It will include skills training workshops, informational and inspirational
  plenaries, panel discussions, and video and audio presentation, including
  phone call-ins from prisoners.  Through discussion, information sharing
  and cultural expressions, those gathered at the conference will work
  to build a new movement to resist the prison industrial complex.  The
  conference will make it possible for people from a range of movements
  and organizations to exchange ideas and strategies.  We encourage prisoners,
  grassroots organizers, academics, former prisoners, people from different
  communities of faith, policymakers, lawyers, and other advocates, and
  activists and organizations that traditionally have not worked together
  around prison issues to submit proposals.  The goal of the conference
  is to establish a broad network of individuals and organizations committed
  to critical policy transformations.

  We are structuring the conference program in order to encourage participants
  to connect with people outside their own fields of activism or expertise.
  In order to facilitate these connections, we encourage people proposing
  conference sessions to include two or more of the following issue/interest
  areas in each workshop, panel or other session.  Each session should
  also include presenters from diverse backgrounds who are capable of
  addressing issues of race, gender, sexuality, age, etc.

  ISSUE/INTEREST AREAS:

  > Prison as Industry
  > Law and Policy
  > Research and Activism
  > Abolitionist Alternatives
  > Human Rights and Conditions of Confinement
  > Education
  > Media and Popular Culture
  > Direct Action and Civil Disobedience
  > Policing, Containment, and Control
  >
  Proposals should be brief--no more than one page in length and do
  not need to conform to any particular format.  Proposals must be postmarked
  by October 1, 2000.  You may attach videotapes, photographs, audiotapes
  or other supportive materials.  (If you want us to return these materials,
  please indicate that and be sure to include a self-addressed, postage
  prepaid envelope.  We don't have funding to cover postage for the return
  of materials).

  Send proposals to:
  Critical Resistance/Northeast Regional Organizing Committee
  PMB# 4053
  341 Lafayette Street
  New York, NY 10012