Saturday, June 25, 2016

Decarcerate / Legalize Unity - Can the Battles be Joined?




Thursday June 30, 8pm

Weedman’s Joint, 322 E. State Street, Trenton, NJ (across street from Trenton City Hall)

Decarcerate the Garden State, Peoples Organization for Progress and many other organizations are uniting NJ in support of a nationwide prison labor shut down to protest against enslavement of the incarcerated and more generally against mass incarceration on September 9 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9mwsA_oACA&feature=youtu.be 

We are hoping to work together with the legalize movement for the Trenton component of this event which we plan to organize for the Statehouse.



This is an opportunity for the legalize advocates to join together with other justice oriented forces and to build greater unity - an opportunity to help organize Trenton into a broader fightback around both the legalization and the closely related decarceration efforts.

Bob Witanek and possibly others will propose a plan for a unified effort for total Trenton city mobilization for this event.

To be covered:


Details about proposed demonstration at Statehouse on September 9 and about the concept of September 9, the organizations involved and the potentials

Discussion on the similarities and differences between legalization and justice organizing including recommended precautions when doing justice work

Proposals and discussion for lead in events:
a.    Leafleting Trenton public housing
b.    Local meetings between now and Sept 9 to publicize
c.    Brainstorming about how to accomplish full city mobilization

Trenton proposed:

The proposal is to have an event at the Statehouse with two sections:  an hour or so with representation of justice related issues with hopefully Black Lives Matter and UMIO participating. and the other hour would be the issue of cannabis related concerns with the 25000 arrests - the machine guns in the street at the Joint - both groups would also be supporting the strike of prisoners and the other demands of the day - free political prisoners (the cannabis section might also call for release of all cannabis prisoners and immediate dismissal of all pending citations and pending fines), 50% reduction of NJ prisoners - we maybe will add something about the Sentencing Project NJ twice as bad as rest of country in racial disparity. And improved conditions in NJ facilities - we hope to have specific details about that. The issue of the Trenton curfew might also be addressed.

Addendum:

Original invitation letter to all organizations (including all NJ legalization efforts):
http://decarceratenj.blogspot.com/2016/05/pop-decarcerate-garden-state-letter.html


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