Attending Critical Resistance in Berkeley, California on the weekend of Sept. 25-27 was as much a political commencement as it was an emotional awakening. From the moment the conference kicked off on Friday at 1 PM, many of us felt the dawn of a movement that did not dissipate when CR ended on Sunday at about 6 PM after a demonstration at a recently built Berkeley jailhouse. Over 100 workshops, films, and performance pieces lured upwards of 3,500 people to UC Berkeley's campus, where the agenda was to contemplate prison reform, but also to consider the unconsiderable--abolishing prisons altogether. About 25 people, including Angela Davis, organized this international gathering. According to Davis, they had hoped 300 to 500 people would turn out.

The result was a donation-based-admission weekend that joined activists, workers, artists, lawyers, students, scholars, former prisoners (many political), family members of prisoners and tons of people who came only because they realized how important this conference would be. It's one of the few events I've been to that effectively involved and informed youth and aged, queer and stright, rich and poor (well, maybe not too rich) and oh, the colors of us! A spectrum of cultures, religions, and regions showered the campus. The fight against prison injustice branches out into the least represented aspects of humanity, and a conference of this sort inherently calls to people concerned about all civil rights: gays and lesbians, people of color, and political prisoners. People fighting for adequate health care and against private prisons, folks challenging the racial dynamics of arrests and convictions, fighting fo prison education and against prison labor, for rehabilitaion and against punishment, for prison broadcasts and against the death penalty, all came together in what proved to be convergent paths.

As activist and organizer Ruthie Gilmore explained, the phrase "Critical Resistance" was born out of our understanding of what a crisis is. Gilmore used the example of the Great Depression to illustrate how society responds to a crisis. When we realize we are in a crisis, we respond by accepting that we can no longer "do things the way we used to," and that we put together "a new arrangement" to run our lives.

Critical Resistance is the birth of a new arrangement. In the same way that our parents and grandparents learned to save yesterday's scraps for tomorrow's meal, we are coming together to figure out how to save and revitalize the morsels of hope we have for decriminalizing the young and poor, radical, and alienated members of our society. Gilmore further explained how the spark of a movement happens when people choose to take action at precise, "critical" moments in time. It was inspiring to hear Gilmore acknowledge that some of us may not have even realized why we were there--just that we knew it was the right thing to do.

Being surrounded by people who had families on death row, by women and men who had spent half their lives waiting for parole, around social service workers and social change workers who were fighting for prisoners' rights and for prisoners' futures, was overwhelming. In many ways, it was not my experience. But Critical Resistance illuminated the reality that our labeling and consequent treatment of criminals impacts every aspect of our lives. Author Mike Davis remembered a Frantz Fanon quote in his presentation at CR and that message resonates with me: "If you want to know about a society, look inside its prisons."

Davis was credited with the origin of the term Prison Industrial Complex. The phrase refers to the growing symbiotic relationship between corporate profit and the prison system. While the number of privately owned facilities is relatively small in America (less than 10% but growing), the nature of corporate contracts that benefit from prisoners and their labor is startling. Nationwide, the labor of more than 90,000 convicts generates sales of nearly $1 billion. The days of making license plates are becoming nostalgic to prisoners who are increasingly employed by Chevron, TWA, and Victoria's Secret to do data entry, book reservations, and stitch lingerie for as little as 23 cents an hour.

With statistics backing private prisons' lower costs and better quality of "care," corporate contracts look more appealing to states like Texas, where private prisons are part of the natural landscape. And we can expect that the Corrections Corporation of America and Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (who together operate nearly 120 prisons internationally) do not brag about rehabilitation like they boast about their number of beds--totalling near 85,000. Given that prison guards in maximum security prisons are being instructed by milltary trainers on how to control the population, the privatization of prisons will only move us further away from rehabilitation and closer to a police state that actually turns a profit from the number of incarcerated hands and bodies. It is no wonder why activist and former prisoner Darryl King told us he "only survived prison through [his] military training." And it is no wonder why this is the right moment. The critical moment in our history, when we decide to save our countries' erring souls or to bury them in the graves of our prisons.

It was not just a political weekend. It was Angela Davis, 10 feet away from you, beaaming at the realization that a longtime dream was being realized. It was the poet, asha bandele, raging the microphone with prayers to any god who could bring home her husband "in a minute" the way he'd promised. It was Ramona Africa from MOVE reminding us that the revolution has not ever ended. It was Lute "Gato" Talatnantez of the San Quentin Six ending a performance piece hooded in black. It was prisoner phone-ins. It was hip-hop and poetry. It was documenting and planning. It was full of tears and it was a very real commitment to turn a corrupt system on its head.

What most impressed me was all the practical, tangible information and planning that came out of the weekend. They ranged from ideas about finding inmates in your community to support emotionally and logistically (i.e. interpreting legalese, contacting family members, writing letters, getting resource materials and information to them) to networking with local prisoner rights organizations, organizing community visitations, and giving information anonymously to public defenders in critical cases.

The Seattle crew that went down to Berkeley is beginning to meet and organize and we welcome anyone who wants to carry on the work here in Washington. Send e-mail to neoblue@speakeasy.org with all the regular info. For more inrormation regarding the conference and upcoming events, you can contact Critical Resistrance at critresist@aol.com or write to P.O. Box 339, Berkeley CA 94701.