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Conference of the Research Working Group April 13-14, 2007, Mountain View Appalachian Building Speakers: Dylan Rodriguez, David Brotherton PROGRAM Friday April 13,6:30-8:30. Mountain View Appalachian Building 111 This session is targeted to bring into one discussion persons and groups working in different areas of prison abolition activity. This includes a community group (that includes ex-prisoners) which is moving towards creating a 501 (3c) center for ex-prisoners, especially around re-entry issues; faculty volunteer teaching in regional max security prisons; student groups working in local jails and juvenile detention centers; a student group doing prisoner support work; and faculty and graduate students engaged in prison scholarship. This is according a diverse group and attention needs to be paid to working across languages and locations—with however a clear prison abolition intent. Many of these groups are listed on a common web site: www.justiceprojects.org Prof. Brotherton will frame the conversation. We have asked him to address the following questions, briefly and informally: *What are the central ingredients of what Mike Davis has called the Prison Industrial Complex? *Why rethink grassroots projects having to do with incarceration in terms of prison abolition? *How is your own work with gangs/street organizations affected by thinking of it in terms of the prison industrial complex and prison abolition? Brief introduction by participants of projects they want to (re)think in terms of prison abolition and of the analysis of the prison industrial complex. Forming the agenda collectively: summary of issues and questions to be carried into the next day of the conference. Saturday April 14, 9:00-12:00 a.m. Mountain View 111 9:00-9:50 a.m. Prof. Rodriguez will frame the dialogue with his answer to the following questions: *In the face of a right wing consensus (at the local, state, and national level), how do we participate in a radical politics without becoming politically marginalized and hence neutralized? *Given your criticisms of non-profits, how does one engage in a radical politics that takes on the prison industrial complex? What projects or models do you find helpful? How would you describe their main features as both practical, effective, without becoming non-profits? *How do both state and interpersonal gender oppression of women of color and poor white women connect with prison abolition? Is the present joint use of social services (crisis lines, shelters,etc.) and the legal system (the police, courts, prisons, court mandate men’s groups) part of the prison industrial complex or part of the solution? * If the 'way we know' social change (our imagination of it) is limited, and maybe even part of the problem, then how does one cultivate a more radical imagination? What tools or techniques are useful? *You have suggested that the management of fear keeps us in the situation we are in. How do reposition ourselves to face this fear effectively? 9:50-10:20 a.m. Joshua Price, David Brotherton, and Bill Martin will briefly engage Prof. Dylan Rodriguez's answers. 10:20- 11:20 a.m. Small group discussion. 11:30-12:00 a.m. Each group will report to the whole. An agenda will be prepared for the afternoon discussion that includes the questions formulated Friday evening at closing . Saturday Afternoon: 2:00-4:00 p.m: Next steps 2:00-2:40 p.m. David Brotherton and Dylan Rodriguez hold a conversation on the agenda prepared by participants during the friday evening and saturday morning discussions. 2:40- 3:20 Group discussion with some focus on next steps. 3:20-4:00 Closing remarks pulling the threads together: Joshua Price 4:00-5:30 Framing the work theoretically. Street organizations: discussion with David Brotherton [room 111] Prison abolition: discussion with Dylan Rodriguez [room G17] Note on language: We, at the Broome County Justice Project, have adopted the practice of not referring to incarcerated people as 'inmates, prisoners, felons,' or formerly incarcerated people as 'ex-felons, ex-offenders, former inmates' etc. To be incarcerated is not a quality of a person, it is a circumstance. A person's criminal history does not need to be the primary descriptive characteristic. Referring to people as 'inmates,' 'prisoners,' etc. is another way to dehumanize them. Similarly, we prefer 'people on parole' to 'parolees' etc. SPEAKERS Dylan
E. Rodriguez Dr. Rodriguez is an interdisciplinary scholar-activist whose interests traverse the fields of critical race studies and cultural studies, with focal attention to the intersections of race, state violence, and community/identity formation. His work attempts to engage with the field of radical and revolutionary praxis that has emerged in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, across the different sites and moments of struggle against global racism, white supremacy, and other forms of institutionalized dehumanization. His political, philosophical, and theoretical interests are especially devoted to visualizing notions of “freedom,” “liberation,” “community,” and “justice” that productively, creatively critique and disarticulate dominant definitions. Among other political-intellectual collectives, he has worked with and/or alongside such organizations as Critical Resistance (a leading force in the contemporary prison abolitionist movement, see criticalresistance.org), INCITE! (a progressive antiviolence movement led by radical women of color, see incite-national.org), the Critical Filipino and Filipina Studies Collective (cffsc.focusnow.org), and the editorial board of the internationally recognized journal Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, and World Order. Prof. Rodriguez’ first book, Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime was published in 2006 by the Professor David Brotherton dcbjj@jjay.cuny.edu Dr.
Brotherton grew up in the East End of London, England where he worked in
various blue-collar jobs while organizing labor and youth. He came to the
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