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Prison abolition

Seattle Council Votes To End Youth Incarceration

October 4, 2015 Marcus Harrison Green, www.yesmagazine.org , , ,
By Marcus Harrison Green for Yes! Magazine - After a three-year crusade of protest, agitation, and organizing, a Seattle City Council meeting on September 21 brought a major victory to a diverse coalition of youth-prison abolitionists and anti-racist organizers. In a 9-0 unanimous decision, Seattle’s City Council passed a resolution that fully endorses the goal of zero-percent detention of youth, and called for the city to develop policies eliminating the necessity of their imprisonment. While Council Member Mike O’Brien introduced the resolution in a committee meeting last week, it originated with three organizations that advocate for the abolition of juvenile incarceration: Ending the Prison Industrial Complex (EPIC), Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR), and the Seattle branch of the anti-racist organization European Dissent. “We wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the youth activists,” said Council Member Nick Licata prior to the resolution’s passage. “They’re the ones who created the huge pressure on the county and also the city.”

Jeremy Hammond Promotes Prison Abolition From Behind Bars

June 1, 2015 Kit O'Connell, www.truth-out.org , ,
By Kit O'Connell in Truthout - Hammond's message of prison abolition is closely aligned to his previous work as an anti-racist activist. A disproportionate number of America's incarcerated 1 percent are black (40 percent of the prison population) and Latino (20 percent), an effect that can only be credited to systemic racism since studies consistently show that people of color do not commit more or worse crimes than whites. It's not unusual for an activist-turned-political prisoner to emerge with a renewed passion for fixing the prison system - two members of Pussy Riot even started a prison reform charity. Hammond, however, is dedicated to total prison abolition and to expressing those views, even though his words are read by censors who can and will punish him for his views. Truthout spoke with Grace North, director of the Jeremy Hammond Defense Committee. North, who prefers gender-neutral pronouns, told us about how prison officials have reacted to Hammond's abolitionist viewpoint.

Why Prisons Don’t Work And How We Can Do Better

November 16, 2014 Victoria Law, www.wagingnonviolence.org , , ,
As prisons continue to devastate communities — particularly low-income communities of color — and drain government budgets, there’s been a shift from the ferocious “tough on crime” mentality of the 1980s to questioning whether so many people need to be locked up. The continued popularity of Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” daily news stories about prison atrocities, and the rise in prison justice organizing both inside prisons and in outside communities demonstrate that more and more people — including those who formerly advocated for draconian prison sentences — are questioning the need for mass incarceration. Conversations about ending mass incarceration often center on people imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. But what about everyone else? How do we address the harm they’ve caused without relying on locking them in cages? Maya Schenwar, editor-in-chief of the daily news site Truthout, starts to answer this question in her new book “Locked Down, Locked Out: How Prisons Don’t Work and How We Can Do Better.”
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