Critical Resistance NYC Critical Resistance NYC 718-398-2825 criticalresistance.org Around 2 ...

Around 2 a.m., Nov. 16, approximately 20 NYPD vehicles converged on a community space in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. Claiming an open-container violation, police entered the Atlantic Ave. building without presenting a warrant and shortly thereafter assaulted about 100 people with nightsticks and pepper spray, in some cases applying the chemical agent at close range into eyes and mouths. Two people blinded in the attack stumbled into the street and were hit by a police car. There were eight arrests and about a dozen serious injuries. None of the building's tenants or neighbors had phoned in a complaint.

The event, a benefit for anarchist people of color, took place in the office of an organization called Critical Resistance NYC.

CR NYC is one of 11 chapters of Critical Resistance, a four-year-old national grassroots organization that opposes the prison-industrial complex (PIC). CR sees the growing (and increasingly corporate) federal prison system as an unjust and institutionally racist solution to America's social, political and economic problems, fulfilling the same function previously served by slavery, convict leasing and the Black Codes.

From 1980 to 2002, the number of people in U.S. prisons and other types of detention centers quadrupled from about half a million to 2.1 million. All together, 8.8 million people are either under the control of this country's criminal justice system or employed by it.

"A big part of what Critical Resistance is about is self-determination from the individual to the community," says Ashanti Alston, a cofounder of CR NYC who is also an ex-Black Panther. "We seek genuine ways to make our communities safe, to be self-sustaining, to build the kind of world where we don't need prisons."

CR NYC has several core programs, most focusing on women. They hold monthly education workshops that teach literacy and leadership skills to former women prisoners in the La Casita residential treatment center in the Bronx; coordinate visits to women at the Taconic Correctional Facility; help former prisoners reintegrate into society; and produce a monthly newsletter for prisoners in New York State. The group is currently transforming their Atlantic Ave. space into a drop-in center equipped with computers, books and videos.

"We try to merge organizing and service to the community," says CR NYC cofounder Kai Lumumba Barrow. "You can't talk about activating and organizing if your basic needs aren't met. Our people have faced a multitude of problems for generations: low literacy rates, homelessness, poverty, AIDS. You can't just go and smash the state?my people have to know how to read, have to have food and shelter to do this work."

The disastrous effect of the PIC on families and communities is of key concern to Critical Resistance. As of 2000, New York's 3500 imprisoned women had 10,000 children in some kind of foster care. The Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 holds that authorities can terminate the parental rights of those who've not had contact with their children in 15 of the past 22 months, so many of these women face the prospect of permanently losing their children. Yet foster families or elderly family members often cannot or will not take children to visit their mothers in far-away prisons. Albion, near Canada, is about 400 miles from NYC.

In forming an arts-based mentoring project for children with mothers at Taconic Correctional Facility, CR NYC hopes to combat young people's acceptance of prison as an inevitable part of life. The group envisions it as a politicized big-brother/big-sister program, giving children guidance and support, while also offering them a political context to help them understand the imprisonment of their loved ones.

"You cannot talk to [low-income people of color] who do not think they're going to be dead or in prison," says Barrow. "Many folks of color, especially youth, think that's going to happen for them. Consequently, going to prison is a rite of passage. They have to fashion it into something positive, because they know that for all practical purposes, they're going to do some time. Prison then becomes glamorized and romanticized."

In organizing with people of color, former prisoners and their families, Critical Resistance works to ensure that those most affected by the PIC are at the forefront of the fight to create sustainable alternatives.

"This is for political prisoners and all prisoners, but part of it's for me and for the people coming after me," says Jonathan Wilson, a 25-year-old activist who works with CR.

"I don't like going through central booking or spending the night in jail. I just don't want this anymore."