The Binghamton Justice Project

Resisting Criminalization Conference

April 13-15, 2007

The Prison Activist Coalitions at Bard College and Cornell University are

groups of students committed to combating the incessant growth,

inequality, racism, and oppression of the United States prison system.

Join us in an effort to build a stronger movement against the rapid caging

and degredation of our communities.

At Bard, we grew from a few students who volunteered for the Bard Prison

Initiative by tutoring in New York State prisons. We believed that our

tutoring efforts were not sufficient to address the systems failures.

This is now the groups third year in existence. Our efforts began

educating our campus and the surrounding communities about many prison

issues. From there, the Prison Activist Coalition engaged in supporting

prisoners through fundraisers, book-drives, art shows, letter-writing

campaigns, and other projects; fighting the Rockefeller Drug Laws and

other draconian legislation; and speaking out against the injustices of

the Prison Industrial Complex.

At Cornell, our work has grown from a group of students who wanted to

develop organizational capacity after attending events with Fred Hampton

Jr. of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee and Ashanti Alston, former

Black Panther and current chair of the Jericho Movement. We have also

developed a strong relationship with the Southern Tier Advocacy and

Mitigation Project (S.T.A.M.P.) to develop peer-to-peer relationships with

juvenile prisoners at the MacCormick Secure Center and the Lansing

Residential Center. Further, weve developed a strong relationship with

Jalil Muntaqim, who is a political prisoner of the New York 3 residing at

Auburn Correctional Facility.

However, our geography and our numbers limit the scope of our work. We at

Bard and Cornell realize that in order to adequately fight for radical

changes, we need to immerse ourselves within a larger movement. But where

is this movement now? Many prison activist groups are working separately.

In this time of apathy, heightened political repression, and a rapidly

intensifying crisis in our prison system, it is our responsibility to

unite. With Eliot Spitzer as the new governor of New York and the recent

victory of the Telephone Campaign for Justice to reduce the egregious

phone call costs of prisoners and their families, we feel this is an

opportune moment to develop a more unified and strategic set of goals for

this movement. Many students and community organizers in and around New

York State are active in doing prison work; thus, in response to what we

consider a state of emergency, we are extending an invitation to all

prison activists and community organizers - especially but not at all

limited to youth - to join us for a two-day conference at Bard College

April 13-15th. We recognize that coming from these two schools we hold a

great deal of privilege and resources. However, we do not presume to speak

for all prisoners or the communities most affected by criminalization.

Instead, we want to connect youth who will inherit this system with each

other, organizers with more experience with these issues, and members of

all our communities.

The goals of this conference are:

1. To form a unified prison activist movement with a strong network of

communication among its individual organizations/members.

2. To produce a collective statement in response to urgent prison

issues

and our proposal on what needs to be done.

3. To map out ways we can continue to work together and support one

anothers efforts (i.e. planning a campaign).

This is not a conference to teach people about the prison system. On the

contrary, we are building a working conference as a forum where prison

activists can come together to talk about current issues, what each

organization does, the obstacles they face, what they desire to do, and

how we can all work collaboratively to effect real and lasting change. It

will be an opportunity for us to link up, learn from each other, and form

a broader base of action. Though this will take place at Bard College, we

want to join forces with other groups in developing the conference. Our

workshops and strategy sessions will focus on:

Education in prison

Juvenile incarceration

Parole and re-entry

Rockefeller Drug Laws

Political Prisoners

Jail/Prison expansion

What issues do you want to explore and what do you wish to accomplish from

such an event? Any feedback, outreach, and support you can offer will

greatly strengthen this endeavor. Join us to support prisoners and to

counter the criminalization of our communities!

To obtain more information on the conference and to RSVP, please contact:

Jennifer Quick, jlq4@cornell.edu

or

Max Forman-Mullin, mm893@bard.edu