[Reader-list] NYC chapter of Critical Resistance

[Rob van Kranenburg]

From: rj at riseup.net

Thought people might be interested in seeing this--a letter from members
of the NYC chapter of Critical Resistance (www.criticalresistance.org) in
response to the new initiative coming out of the Zapatistas 6th
Declaration...

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Dear Zapatista Sisters and Brothers,

         Thank you for sharing with us your story of struggle and
resistance in
the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle. We send you greetings and
are writing to express our solidarity, and would like to share with you a
little bit of our story—some of which we are sure you already know.

     Critical Resistance, our organization, is currently a national network
with ten chapters throughout the country.   We are a young organization,
less than five years old,. We are all inspired by the dignified struggle
of the Zapatistas and many of us have worked to inform others in the
U.S.A. of your word.

         We live in a settler country where the "Indian Wars" are still being
fought--on the reservation, in the cities and in the prisons. We live in a
country built by enslaved African and indentured migrant labor. And it is
still this way, although sometimes with a different face. And this is not
disconnected from the pain and suffering that the bad government of the
U.S.A. gives throughout the world as part of a global Military Industrial
Complex almost half of which is fueled with the taxes from our labor.

         Many in the United States rose up in rebellion, mass movements, and
national liberation struggles of people of color in the 1960s and 1970s.
These were met with increased funding and power for police organizations
Our prison population has grown from 200,000 in the 1980’s to over 2.1
million today, which means that one quarter of the prisoners of the world
are held in the U.S.A. These prisons are a way to control "unwanted
populations": people of Indigenous, African, Latino, Asian cultures, queer
folks, and poor/working class people of all races. Black and Latina women
are the fastest growing population of prisoners in the U.S.A.

         This system is a system of profit and we call this the Prison
Industrial Complex – the relation of large multinational
businesses and government that profit off the construction,
maintenance, and labor of jails and prisons.  Prisons are places
where a form of slavery is still practiced,
and protected by the courts, the lawmakers, and the businesses.  To end
this system, we continue the proud tradition of struggle in the U.S.A., as
"new abolitionists" who continue to seek liberation, self-determination,
and the kinds of safety that do not rely on caging, controlling, and
killing.

         Knowing that our actions and labor within the U.S.A. have global
consequences, we continue to stand in solidarity with the EZLN as
you move into your new national and “intergalactic” initiatives.
We hope we will be able to participate and share struggle in this
new initiative. Many of us have visited you already thanks to the
hard work of Estacion Libre and other organizations. We hope that
in this new initiative, we will find a way together to create a
dialogue about how we all can resist policing and imprisonment.

         As only a few of us from the New York City chapter of Critical
Resistance are able to work on this letter, we have included our
mission statement here so you can see some words that we have all
written together:
         Critical Resistance seeks to build an international movement to
end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that
caging and controlling people makes us safe. We believe that basic
necessities such as food, shelter, and freedom are what really
make our communities secure. As such, our work is part of global
struggles against inequality and powerlessness. The success of the
movement requires that it reflect communities most affected by the PIC.

Con Cariño y Solidaridad,
Members of Critical Resistance - NYC
--
http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/listpublish.php?q_mm=rob