Index of Stories

A Community Response to Racist Violence (Phoebe)

Cultural Center Confronts Sexual Violence (Liz)

Friends Take a Car Out of Action

Kicking Ass (Liz)

Maria Posters the Subway and Confronts Her Family

Neighborhood Response (Rose)

Organizing in Radical Queer Communities (Rachael)

Relying on Community Organizations Instead of the Police (Isaac)

Critical Resistance Study Group

Critical Resistance Oakland recently started a study group on Community Accountability so we can continue to deepen our understanding of what approaches people are taking to collectively intervene in harm without using imprisonment or policing.   As a part of this project, we decided to listen to a story from the Story Telling and Organizing Project each time we meet, to look at the dynamic, creative, and organic ways that communities come together to address various types of violence.  The STOP project is a really important component of our study because the stories show how both formally organized communities such as political organizations, recreational groups, or spiritual community, and informal communities like neighbors can come together in transformative struggle to address harm.  As we work to dismantle the prison industrial complex, concrete, everyday examples of the world we want to build serve as important inspiration, and a reminder of the practicality of abolition as a strategy.  In studying these stories and other community accountability work, the members of the study group hope to increase our capacity to intervene in harm within our own communities, and within the community we share as an organization.