Mission Statement
Stop Mass Incarceration Network
Roosevelt University, Chicago

September 22, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

This statement appears online at the Stop Mass Incarceration Network website, stopmassincarceration.net:

We are students and faculty at Roosevelt University who have joined the national call for the October Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. We intend to encourage and mobilize fellow students and faculty to join forces to stop the injustice of mass incarceration.

Our group began spontaneously from a university course on social movements and social change.  When the professor mentioned involvement in the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, a number of students asked, “Where do we sign on?”  The result has been a vigorous organizing effort at the university and beyond.

We are organizing public forums on the New Jim Crow, Police Militarization, and the Lessons of Ferguson and on Mass Incarceration, Immigrant Detention, and the Militarized Border, study groups on the New Jim Crow and militarized policing, outreach to high schools and universities, a workshop on legal rights in police encounters, and a major cultural event on the evening following the October 22 Day of Protest. Please join us in the united effort for October! The U.S. now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other society in the world.

There are over 2.2 million incarcerated in the U.S. prison system. The U.S. has only 5% of the world’s population; yet has a full 25% of the world’s prison population. The prison system targets the most vulnerable and marginalized in our society. It funnels the poor into the system, and weeds out the wealthy.  We, in Chicago, are all too familiar with mass incarceration, police torture and abuse.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! HOW LONG CAN A CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM THAT IS ITSELF CRIMINAL ENDURE? REMEMBER ALL THOSE WHO HAVE DIED AS A RESULT OF VIGILANTE AND POLICE VIOLENCE! OPPOSE THE CRIMINALIZATION OF YOUTH!

http://www.stopmassincarceration.net/

Contact: 

Leon Bailey
Department of Sociology
Roosevelt University
lbailey@roosevelt.edu

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