In case you weren’t aware, the anti-prison organization, Critical Resistance is currently holding a huge anniversary conference out in Oakland. In reaction to that conference, the following email is making the social justice listserve rounds. It’s a really profound email that calls for all social justice organizations in general and Critical Resistance specifically to reconsider their dependence on 501c3 model of organizing (which basically boils down to, you can’t make social justice movement making a business). It’s a really important analysis, one that all of us (cough cough, NCLR!) should deeply consider.

I think that we are at an important crossroads in how to move forward as a Movement. The Nonprofit Industrial Complex is extremely strong, and organization after organization has experienced the conflict between creating social justice in the world and sustaining a business—i.e. not challenging systems of oppression.

Critical Resistance is no exception. In fact, as a former staff member (Organizer of the Oakland Chapter), I saw how Critical Resistance was part of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex more than any other organization that I have worked with.

In the day to day, Critical Resistance as an organization refused to act in ways that were abolitionist, created a culture that was elitist and forced out people who were most affected and formerly incarcerated, and replicated ideas of security and safety that were oppressive towards the working-class, people of color, and all other surveilled identities and intersections. Seeing the disconnection between daily practice and overall vision saddened me tremendously. As a supposed leader of the abolition movement, it is very important to hold CR accountable to its rhetoric, and CR10 offers us a moment in which we can all put a mirror back on both our practices as individuals/organizations and Critical Resistance.

One of the basic principles that Critical Resistance supposedly values is transparency and accountability. The ten year anniversary mark is an opportune time to take stack of how Critical Resistance does and does not meet its mission of abolition. I encourage people to go to CR10 and to push Critical Resistance to be accountable to you and to people who are inside and just getting out. We want to make sure that the amount of energy put into CR10 will be followed with work that goes towards material change in the world. Push Critical Resistance to be more than part of the Nonprofit Industrial Complex.

Ten Action Points:

1) Make sure that CR10 does not tokenize formerly incarcerated people at the conference

In Critical Resistance, as an organization, there are few formerly incarcerated people. Staff has even said publicly that there is a retention problem of formerly incarcerated people in the organization. Post-CR10, make sure that Critical Resistance gives top priority to changing the face of the organization and the culture that has created this dynamic.

2) Centralize people who are most affected and formerly/currently incarcerated

Currently, Critical Resistance runs through a supposed collective model. In actuality, the organization is a hierarchy of staff and middle/upper-class members. These people create an environment that is not comfortable to most impacted or formerly/currently incarcerated people. The behavior ranges from a staff person who called a public computer room “her domain” and refused to allow a member to organize it to a member who publicly discounted a currently incarcerated member as “mentally insane” (discounting our responsibility to him). In another instance, the same staff member wanted to start security systems to monitor/limit members from coming into the office and at the same time, stated that she believed in bulldozing all prison walls immediately. Members and staff who are working-class, most impacted, and/or formerly incarcerated have stated repeatedly how Critical Resistance is “not their space,” how they have been made to feel stupid for not knowing the same cultural/educational markers (usually based in cultural fades associated with anarchism, punk rock, or the environmental movement), and have not been developed but instead, forced into menial jobs like data entry and writing thank you letters. These dynamics should shift. True societal change comes from shifting dynamics of power; if the Prison Industrial Complex dehumanizes people, abolitionist organizations should be spaces that create voice for people who are facing policing in a direct way. Critical Resistance should strive to listen to the experiences of most impacted and formerly/currently incarcerated people as central to their strategy for ending the Prison Industrial Complex. Critical Resistance should not discount people who are “non-political prisoners,” neither in rhetoric or practice.

3) Build skills and develop the leadership of people who are most affected and formerly/currently incarcerated

Critical Resistance’s mission states that “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.” In reality, Critical Resistance should prioritize ways to meet these basic necessities. This means providing long-term support to communities and individuals. Critical Resistance should commit to long-term, skill building of membership that has been formerly incarcerated and needs job training (both political education and concrete skills). Most impacted and formerly incarcerated members should eventually transition into the staff positions. Fiscal priorities should be directed towards as many direct efforts in communities as possible, not simply filtered through other nonprofits.

4) Create structures that address the needs of most impacted and formerly/currently incarcerated people

Structurally, Critical Resistance does not take into account the needs of people who are most impacted and formerly/currently incarcerated. Most of these problems in structure are based on privilege. For instance, Critical Resistance has three and four hour meetings almost every night; how would someone working multiple jobs or with children be able to attend? Concretely, in one instance, two people on parole never even made a first meeting because of curfew laws and not having access to rides. For Oakland, other problems included having meetings in San Francisco when the cost of transportation, transportation time, danger for some people to walk through different turfs, and the culture of the Bay made it impossible for potential, new members or most impacted members to attend. These are concrete, logistical problems that Critical Resistance must address in order to centralize most impacted and formerly/currently incarcerated people.

5) Create practices that are effective in the empowerment of most impacted and formerly/currently incarcerated people

Critical Resistance grounds itself in broad theory. Partially, this means that individuals do not see how their politics are harmful. For instance, it is one thing to say that one is anti-capitalist, but in a capitalist world, it is another thing to judge people for needing to survive. This conflict, in actuality, is in contradiction with Critical Resistance’s mission—discusses the need for providing food, shelter, and other tools of survival to people. Therefore, when developing organizing strategies, one must account for stipends, transportation costs, and provide livable wage for employees. In addition, most impacted people have extreme and current trauma. Critical Resistance should know the difference between needing to miss meetings for personal survival and “a lack of commitment.” One must also build strategies that work. If the goal is to end the Prison Industrial Complex, organizing should be pointed and based on winning. Because the Prison Industrial Complex changes in different locations, it is extremely important to build a local grassroots movement. It also means that one must get to know the likes, patterns, and culture of a community and/or allow individuals from that community to shape the organizing strategies. In Critical Resistance Oakland, one of many issues was that people did not respect the importance of local work and the empowerment of people from Oakland as important. In fact, most people responded to this empowerment as a challenge to their own position within the organization. I think there is an inherent problem when people who are not most impacted, formerly incarcerated, and/or from a local site take the lead over and feel threatened by people who are experience the brunt of the things that we are fighting against.

6) Stop with elite, academic language

One of the large problems in Critical Resistance is that people use language that is not accessible and do not explain it. It assumes that people do not already have the language and abolitionist analysis and sets Critical Resistance up as the “savior” or “model.” True non-hierarchy sees that all organizing and thought came from most affected communities to begin with, and the movement has simply put labels on the peoples’ power. It is also classist, because the people who use this language have higher education; those in the organization who have not had access to higher education feel uncomfortable and marginalized.

7) Break the culture of guilt

What does it mean when people are frightened of being challenged? It indicates insecurity in themselves, their power, or the validity of their work. A healthy organizing structure relies on the ability to debate and to not internalize problems in the organization as personal “failures.” This is a fundamental principle of actual democracy; it is never static. Critical Resistance relies on a “white guilt” model of criticism. When the organization is challenged, individuals respond through either saying it is “their fault” or becoming defensive and attempting to claim the identities that make them “down.” Push people to not centralize themselves and to step up/step back.

Follow through and move forward

Critical Resistance has a problem with follow through. When making these changes, everyone must make a long-term commitment to prioritize this work. It is extremely detrimental to building trust in communities that are often let down to make promises and to not follow through. It is also bad to be paralyzed with fear and to not move forward. Often people in Critical Resistance discount ideas saying “we tried that, and it didn’t work.” It is very different to try something with a constituency of all white, non-local and/or impacted people and to do the same thing with people who have a base in the community.

9) Change punitive culture and do not replicate cycles of harm

Within Critical Resistance, no systems exist to address harm. As an organization that discusses the need for alternatives to policing, the organization should also internally create these models to address situations. The current culture is passive aggressive, and direct conflict is avoided at all cost. The vast majority of Critical Resistance membership and staff respond in very defensive ways or talk about people behind their backs. This kind of behavior is both childish and dangerous towards creating abolition. Many people also avoid responsibility by universalizing harm, i.e. “we are all harmed.” This mentality does not take into account realities of who is most affected within situations and does not allow for dialogue. The first step in making amends is to come at situations with an open heart and ability to admit one’s own mistakes. The second would be to ask directly the needs of the person harmed.

10) Build a movement not based on the idea that we are all the same

A) Critical Resistance like many other nonprofits universalizes people. It uses a colorblind or postmodern framework of organizing where “we are all affected by the Prison Industrial Complex” or “all oppressed.” While it is true that policing and militarism affect all of us, this rhetoric does not account for our differences. Instead, it allows for people who are upper-class, disconnected from communities and their own identities, and not most impacted/formerly incarcerated to place themselves in leadership of the Movement. People are frightened to admit that they have privilege and scared that they will not have a place in organizing if they do not pretend to be at the center of oppression. We reach a stand still when people cannot be honest with themselves. They spend so much time pretending to fit identity labels that the people who are actually, right now facing violence, hunger, and trauma are ignored. We all carry trauma, and it is one of the hardest lessons to look at one’s self with honesty and open with others through vulnerability. Part of creating abolition is working on the walls we create internally as well. Self-healing must happen along with doing social justice work, otherwise we all fail. Part of honesty means admitting how privileges change with place and time. Sometimes certain individuals are centered in organizing, and other times we must step back and push different groups into leadership. It is perfectly fine to not fit the labels of oppression as long as we create strategies that are empowering. Critical Resistance’s members need to begin to practice the personal as political; they must also begin to develop strategy that does not universalize experience.

B) Overall, in the current context, Native Americans have the highest rates of incarceration, poverty, and substance abuse within the United States, Black men and women have some of the highest rates and the fastest growing rates of incarceration respectively, and in the current war on terror, Muslim and Middle Eastern/Arab peoples face extreme danger of hate crimes and other targeting. Because these identities are targeted, we too must not universalize our organizing strategies and prioritize these people as groups. In order to achieve this organizing goal, we must look at specificities of the current time. For instance, if a multi-racial organization like Critical Resistance was to take on the issue of immigration, it should first specify which group was most affected in the current context. In Oakland, Asian American immigrants and especially Vietnamese Americans are being deported, but the majority of deportations overall are of Mexican immigrants. A good organizing strategy for a multi-racial organization would be to determine the most impacted target (i.e. Mexicans immigrants) and to create short-term strategies that temporarily address the needs of the group in danger and to create longer-term dynamics that are not detrimental/benefit Vietnamese Americans and others. Specificities depend on place and time, and we must all be humble and allow others to be highlighted in their oppression at various times. For this reason, it is extremely important to know the local context in which one is organizing. Urge Critical Resistance to create specificity in their organizing in order to be affective.

C) Lastly, we must pay attention to intersections. Intersections of class, color, race, disability, and other identities create bodies that cannot be easily categorized. Members of Critical Resistance tend to claim one identity category (race, immigration status, class, etc) as enough to make them “most impacted.” Rather, it is these identities connected with concrete experience that make one most impacted. For members and staff of Critical Resistance, individuals must be honest with where they came from, and the educational and class privileges that they now possess. Money and education do breed more access. We must acknowledge who we are in this current moment in order to not put ourselves in the spotlight over people who have not had access to privilege. Urge Critical Resistance staff and members to prioritize people who are experiencing outright violence currently and to not over focus on themselves.

As my mother always says, criticism is the highest form of compliment. It means someone actually cares and dreams for a better world or person. It means you see the chance to improve through certain steps. While I cannot be in the position to push Critical Resistance internally, I hope that this letter pushes CR and the overall Movement to hold Critical Resistance accountable to its rhetoric. With a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars for the conference alone, one should ask Critical Resistance how CR10 is going to benefit Oakland as its host city directly. I urge people to come to CR10, to ask Critical Resistance to address these questions, to make sure that CR10 gives back to the Oakland community and is a safe space for most impacted/formerly incarcerated people, and to follow through in the next ten years.

Thank you,

Ilanito Cerna-Turoff

Former Oakland Organizer, Critical Resistance