Critical Resistance 10 (CR10)

When the first historic Critical Resistance conference took place in 1998 on UC Berkeley campus I was in San Quentin State Prison serving a life sentence. How I had wished that I could attend the conference and represent the voices of prisoners. Since I had no idea when I was going to be a part of the free world, I participated the conference by listening to KPFA.

That was ten years ago. This weekend Critical Resistance celebrated its ten year anniversay in highlighting the theme of prison abolition. Another historical conference took place. This time I was there. I had the priviledge of participated in a workshop with the Asian Prisoners Support Committe, Rico Riemedio and German Yambao. We were able to discuss the alarming population rise of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) prisoner in the past 20 years, the impact of incarceration particular to API prisoners, their families and the community, language barriers, deportation, mental health, and the lack of cultural compentent resources that are necessaried to facilitate their rehabilitation. We also talked about the book "Other: an Asian & Pacific Islander Prisoners' Anthology."

I appreciate the presence of members of The Asian Prisoner Support Committee (APSC) Ben Wang, Sun Lee, and Serena Huang. For the past three years they have worked with API prisoners to educate the broader community about the growing number of APIs in the U.S. being imprisoned, detained, and deported. APSC seeks to expose the root causes of why more and more APIs are going to prison, such as the crisis of our educational system, the lack of access to resources for low-income immigrants, war and imperialism.

During the CR10 weekend, I was able to reconnect with old friends and made new friends and allies. The massive concentration of knowledge occupying the sacred space at Laney college of Oakland California examplified people's power and determination to the mission of abolishing the Prison Industrial Complex.

The struggle continues...

Super huge shout outs to all the volunteers and members of CR for their contribution in making CR10 a memory that will last throughout the space of time.