This Friday, April 14th and 15th, Princeton University Students for Prison Education and Reform (SPEAR) is hosting its 4th annual conference: Toward Abolition: Dismantling the Carceral State.

Every year, the conference brings together over 200 participants from various universities and advocacy groups for a weekend of lectures, panels, and activist workshops. You can register here!

The conference will feature:

An opening keynote by award-winning scholar and co-founder of Critical Resistance, Professor Ruth Wilson Gilmore on “Industrialized Punishment: Charting the Current Crisis in Racial Capitalism”
Lectures by Professor Judah Schept, on "Against Punishment: Seeing and Unseeing the Prison in Carceral America” and Alec Karakatsanis, founder and director of Civil Rights Corps, on “Fighting the Normalization of Human Caging”
A performance of “The Bullpen,” a play written and performed by Joe Assadourian, who plays 18 different characters encountered in his experience in the criminal system. More information & RSVP here
Panels on taking the CLOSERikers campaign as a case study for abolition, new conceptions of justice, and “Real Women Real Voices,” which will feature the stories of currently and formerly incarcerated women
Workshops facilitated by other activists, and formerly incarcerated/detained individuals on strategies for prison abolition, decarceration and decriminalization
For a full schedule of events and speakers’ bios, click here

Please register here -- we hope to see you there!