Planning Profile: Outreach Workgroup

CR10 Outreach Committee

CR10 is a two-year organizing project designed to make and strengthen connections between abolitionist organizers throughout the country. Ten years later, which strategies are working? Which have been co-opted by the state? Which communities need to be centered in the work? How can we continue to act both locally and in tandem?

The Outreach Committee began by creating a list of the 50 groups they thought were most highly impacted by the prison industrial complex. As Nat Smith explains, they strategized about how to create “a conference that’s not just about a weekend, but about movement building, and about what people have already been building.”

With this in mind, long-time CR members and new volunteers started meeting with activists and community groups around the country. Kool Black and Rose Braz made a week-long trip in the South and met with The Ordinary People Society (T.O.P.S) in Dothan, Alabama, the local NAACP in McComb, Missississipi and Safe Streets/Strong Communities and Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children in New Orleans. While a few more formal trips like this were planned and funded, outreach largely happened at a grassroots level.

Anywhere CR members traveled, they took hundreds of brochures and applications with them. From the STOPMAX Conference in Philadelphia to The Border Action Network in Tucson, Arizona to the Community HIV-AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) in New York City to The Partnership for Safety and Justice in Portland, Oregon, CR members went hear about local work being done to dismantle the PIC and to discuss visions for CR10 and future collaboration. People who have been working to establish Critical Resistance chapters around the country are also using the conference as an opportunity to gather momentum and get new people involved.

The Outreach Committee wanted to use CR10 as an opportunity to build stronger relationships with groups that have been on the margins of CR’s work and to get them meaningfully involved in the planning process, the weekend conference, and the continuing work afterwards.

First Nations members were one such priority. For three days before CR10, dozens of First Nations activists and other leaders will gather in Oakland to focus on strategizing against and healing from the devastating impacts of the PIC. This will be the first First Nations gathering of this magnitude with this purpose.

Since some aspects of the founding CR conference in Berkeley marginalized sex workers, the Outreach Committee also aimed to center the fight for decriminalization of sex work and sex workers’ rights. St. James Infirmary, the first occupational safety and health clinic run by and for sex workers, and Gay Shame, a radical queer direct action group, will both host strategy sessions at the conference.

Outreach to people who are currently imprisoned has occurred throughout the planning process. Imprisoned people have submitted art to the prisoner art show, recorded greetings and messages that will be broadcast at the conference, and served in an advisory capacity for many aspects of the planning. Transcripts and recordings from the conference will be sent into prisons, and currently imprisoned people will send notes from their own coinciding meetings to Critical Resistance.

The outreach process is far from over. As the conference approaches, CR10 organizers will focus on street outreach in Oakland. The Outreach Committee encourages people throughout the country to keep doing outreach locally. For materials, please contact Nat Smith at nat@criticalresistance.org