Please join CISPES at CriticalResistance's10th anniversary Friday September 26th @ 1:30pm

Cross-border Resistance to State Terrorism

Many of the criminalization and policing tactics the U.S. is exporting today grew out of programs that were used to destroy the popular base of the Black Panther Party and Chican@ movement in the U.S. in the 60 and 70s. The U.S. government's systematic assault on rebellious Black and Brown youth in the last century paved the way for new slavery plantations and the largest, fastest-growing prison economy in the world.

CISPES believes the U.S. would like to replicate that model to confront massive social uprisings occurring throughout Latin America from a base in El Salvador. Since the opening in 2005 of an FBI office and a DHS police training academy, death squads have re-emerged within El Salvador's National Civilian Policing structure, and illegal detentions and political youth assassinations are on the rise.

This panel will explore where the U.S. and Latin America's leftist revolutionary movements have overlapped, historically and today, identify tools of oppression state governments have used to weaken their power, and illustrate the critical importance of Black and Brown solidarity from anti-capitalist perspectives.

Featured panelists:
Prisoners of Conscience Committee

"We are not a prison activist organization. We are a revolutionary organization." - Fred Hampton, Jr.

The Prisoners of Conscience Committee was founded by Fred Hampton, Jr. during the nine years he spent in jail in the 1990's. In the words of Chairman Fred, Jr: "[The POCC] was literally birthed from behind enemy lines, its birth canal was the concentration camps, its umbilical cords are the prison chains." Now an international organization, the P.O.C.C engages in revolutionary work throughout the U.S., Latin America and the Caribbean, both through their own programs and through coalition building with other revolutionary peoples and organizations.

Listen to an interview with Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. on "UN Hearing on U.S. Human Rights Violations and Racism" by Minister of Information JR:
http://www.blockreportradio.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=27


Kiilu Nyasha
Freedom is a Constant Struggle

Freedom is a Constant Struggle airs every Friday at 7:30pm on the web @ SFLive Access Hosted by Kiilu Nyasha with engineer Nedzada Handukic.

Kiilu Nyasha is a former Black Panther and longtime revolutionary journalist who has been a major political force in international struggles against fascism for nearly 40 years. She is currently a member of the Committee to Free the SF8 (FreeTheSF8.org) and hosts her own weekly Public Access show. Freedom is a Constant Struggle brings news and history of liberation struggles here and around the world. Kiilu interviews activists on critical issues of health care, homelessness, prisons, and the incarceration of political prisoners.

Read Philip Babich's interview with Kiilu Nyasha from the National Radio Project Archives: http://www.radioproject.org/transcript/1998/9806.html

And her article "Who Are the Real Criminals?":
http://www.assatashakur.org/forum/prison-police-industrial-complex/26849-who-real-criminals-sis-kiilu.html

Yeni Solis
Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador

Founded in 1980, CISPES grew into a powerful national grassroots solidarity organization that helped prevent a full-scale US invasion of Central America. In the 1990's, CISPES rejoiced with the Salvadoran people as they celebrated the end of the shooting war and tentatively made the transition to new battlefields of struggle. Today CISPES is in solidarity with global struggles against rampant U.S. imperialism -- people fighting against U.S. government wars in Iraq and throughout the world, while also resisting free trade policies of CAFTA, the FTAA, and the WTO. CISPES is unique in U.S. radical history: a grassroots anti-war movement united in solidarity with a Third World revolution.

Read an article from the Bay Area CISPES Chapter: From US to El Salvador: 'Gangs' and the 'Global War on Terror':
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1141/74/

Wilson riles

Black Alliance for Just Immigration

The mission of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration is to engage African Americans and other communities in a dialogue that leads to actions that challenge U.S. immigration policy and the underlying issues of race, racism and economic inequity that frame it. BAJI's goal is to develop a core group of African Americans who are prepared to actively support immigrant rights and to build coalitions with immigrant communities and immigrant rights organizations to further the mutual cause of economic and social justice for all.

Read Wilson Riles' article from Black Commentator: Unpaid debt = anger
http://www.blackcommentator.com/277/277_unpaid_debt_anger_riles_guest.html

Critical Resistance: In September 1998, thousands gathered in Berkeley, California, for conference that founded Critical Resistance's movement to abolish the prison industrial complex (PIC). Each participant, with their own experiences of oppression and resistance, watched as diverse struggles were unified: by humanity, hope, and the shared vision of a different world. We witnessed a vision of a world with truly safe, healthy, and whole communities; a world with unconditional access to self-determination and dignity for all; and, critically, a world without imprisonment, policing, and other forms of punishment and control.

To celebrate 10 years of Critical Resistance, thousands will converge once more, September 26-28, 2008, in Oakland, California, for CR10, a 10th Anniversary Celebration and Strategy Session.