[This talk was originally given at the Life After Capitalism conference in New York City on August 20, 2004.]
All organizers say where they work is rougher than anywhere else. The difference is I’m from the South, so I’m right.
According to the Department of Corrections, the state of Georgia has 600,000 on prison visitation lists. In addition there are a total of 400,000 who are under or have been under state supervision. That is one million people who are directly affected by the criminal justice system in this state. To add some perspective, the current population in Greater Atlanta area is four million. There are only 8.6 million people in the whole state.
Communities United for Action, Power & Justice is an effort to organize about one percent of these people, concentrating on family members of prisoners. The Grassroots Prison Campaign is a project of Bring the Ruckus aimed at bringing cadre members to Georgia to participate with Communities United in this organizing effort.
This project was proposed and accepted for the same reason anti-prison and anti-police work was proposed and accepted – we believe this is a point of revolutionary struggle. Sixty-five percent of those incarcerated in Georgia are Black men and I guarantee they aren’t rich. To organize that one percent I talked about earlier, means organizing a base of poor people of color. This is an environment in which women are on the outside trying to survive economic strangulation and men are on the inside trying to survive being brutalized. Race and class are front and center in a concrete way. But of course it’s not limited to this. Why are men such a large percentage of the prison population? Why are women the fastest growing prison group? Why are queer people never talked about? Gender and sexuality are also front and center. It is the intersection of oppression.
There is nothing abstract about this work. How does the state use the intersection of oppression to advance social control? Look to people’s lived experience with prisons, the police, etc. and we have a concrete answer. This is a point of revolutionary struggle because it’s a concrete fight that, taken to its logical conclusion, ends in revolution. Through a very intentional educational process, people are able to articulate the larger system of social control, analyze its weaknesses and effectively organize to take advantage of those weaknesses. And they stay involved because they have a concrete reason: the life of someone they love.
Recently there was a mass meeting in Georgia to talk about conditions at Lee Arendale prison, which holds some juveniles. There were three groups of parents present: those whose kids have been killed, those whose kids have been raped, and those whose kids just got there. You bet your ass these parents are staying involved.
Keeping this on the concrete, Communities United is participating in Operation Open Book, a campaign to remove the state secret status of parole files. Georgia has an exemption in the open records law that keeps all parole information a secret unless the parole board votes to release it. This means the Board doesn’t have to justify any of its decisions or even explain the process for reaching those decisions. This campaign is about busting through that wall of secrecy. We’re going to do that by building a coalition where those most affected are the focus. They get to tell the policy wonks and organizers what to do.
BtR’s participation is obviously a help to Communities United. Although we’re a small group, by placing folks on the ground at a strategic time we can have a significant impact. We’re borrowing from a labor tactic to make this happen. It’s called The Blitz. In labor organizing a mass of organizers visits every worker in a shop in one weekend. The workers can build an organizational base before the boss has a chance to react. We’re going to do the same thing but in the community instead of a workplace.
BtR cadre will come to Georgia for a period of time, maybe a week or two. They’ll visit prisons to talk to folks coming to visitation as well as parole offices. They go to beauty parlors and check cashing stores. At the end of the process there will be a community meeting where those who’ve been reached out to will be plugged into the campaign. Done at a strategic time, this will allow us to rapidly expand our base before the parole board has a chance to react.
This is also a chance for cadre members to learn practical organizing skills and improve the level of political discussion. This kind of face-to-face work creates a different dynamic when discussing the politics. It’s a practical place for us to test our theories and learn. That’s what praxis is all about.
Dan Horowitz de Garcia is a member of Bring the Ruckus.
For more information about the campaign go to http://www.agitatorindex.org/
[Note: There's still time to volunteer for the GPC, but people should move quickly. The spots are filling up. Anyone interested should contact Dan at daniel at agitatorindex.org or at the Communities United office (404.223.6773).]
To see the agenda for the Grassroots Prison Campaign January 29 - February 12, 2005 go to http://www.agitatorindex.org/articles/gpc_agenda.htm
__________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more. http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250