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!