Critical Resistance
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| Formation | 1997 |
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| Founders | |
| Type | Social Movement |
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| Website | criticalresistance |
Critical Resistance is a national, member-based grassroots organization that works to build a mass movement to dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Critical Resistance's national office is in Oakland, California, with three additional chapters in New York City, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon.
Critical Resistance popularized the idea of challenging the prison industrial complex after their first conference in 1998, which drew thousands of former prisoners, family members, activists, academics and community members. Critical Resistance understood the prison industrial complex as a response to societal issues such as: homelessness, immigration, and gender non-conformity. It is considered to have re-invigorated anti-prison activism in the United States.
Critical Resistance was founded by Angela Davis, Rose Braz, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and others in 1997. The organization is primarily volunteer member-based, with three staff members based in Oakland.
Each chapter determines its own work independently. Projects included:
As of 2017, the Oakland chapter has three main campaigns/projects.
Critical Resistance takes an abolition stance against the prison industrial complex; it draws from the legacy of the slavery abolition movement in the 1800s. CR abolitionists view the current prison system as not "broken" as many reformists do, but as working effectively at its true purpose: to contain, control, and kill those people that the state sees as threats, including people of color, immigrants, and members of the LGBT community. CR's goal is not to reform the prison system but to dismantle it completely. The three key dimensions of Critical Resistance, as identified by the organization co-founder Angela Davis, are public policy, community organizing, and academic research. CR strives to bridge academic work, legislative and other policy interventions, and grassroots campaigns to reverse the expansion of prisons and to call for the decriminalization of drugs and prostitution. Part of CR's mission statement is that providing basic necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom, and not incarceration and punishment, are what will make communities safe and secure.
Critical Resistance (CR) was formed in 1997 to challenge the idea that incarceration can solve all social problems. Angela Davis, Rose Braz, Ruth Wilson Gilmore and other activists founded CR to challenge the issue of mass incarceration and policing. On September 25-27, 1998, Critical Resistance held its first conference at the University of California, Berkeley. This conference challenged the phenomenon now known as the prison industrial complex (PIC). Critical Resistance says that the government has commodified prisons as desirable and, in return, gained public support to expand prisons. As certain groups of people are criminalized, such as racial minorities, the working class, and immigrants, they are incarcerated and become disenfranchised. CR’s initial international conference put the term “prison-industrial complex” on the national agenda with the goal of re-informing and re-educating the American public to stop mass incarceration. CR’s mission statement supports abolishing the PIC and the idea that capitalism profits from incarceration, a reason for the dramatic increase in the incarceration of people of color, women, and the poor.
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