ACLU of Santa Cruz County, CA

The Inside Out Writing Project has set up a weeklong event entitled Prison Industrial Complex Awareness Week. ACLU-Santa Cruz Chapter has signed on as a sponsor of this event. Throughout the week of May 19^th through May 24^th events will take place on the UCSC campus with the following goals in mind:

• · To bring awareness to numerous issues within our criminal justice system,
• · To explore the role said system plays in the lives of students and community members,
• · To offer event participants resources that will help them to get involved in combating injustices associated with the Prison Industrial Complex.

The Inside Out Writing Project is a project of the Women's Center at UCSC. The Project facilitates art and creative writing workshops with men and women in the Santa Cruz County Jails. The project was created with the intention of fostering empowerment and creative expression within the local jail system. The work is driven by a shared commitment to a critical analysis of the current criminal justice system and Prison Industrial Complex.

In addition to daily educational events in the quarry plaza that will utilize performance, literature, images and other mediums, the weeklong series will feature three main events on the evenings of Monday the 19^th, Tuesday the 20^th, and Wednesday the 21^st.

Monday the 19^th will open the week of events with a screening of two films on the Prison Industrial Complex. One of the films explores the dynamics of the Prison Industrial Complex and the criticisms thereof, with the aim of informing attendees who may not have been exposed to the system through a critical lens. The second film will document the story of the SF 8, a group of activists who have been targeted by law enforcement for their involvement in an incident more than forty years ago (please see attached document for more information regarding the SF 8). A speaker working with the primary advocacy group working on their behalf, Free the SF 8, will follow this second film.

The evening of Tuesday the 20^th promises to be exciting and will feature an address by Professor and activist Angela Y. Davis. The keynote will be preceded by performances on relevant topics by student groups, as well as an introduction of Professor Davis by fellow UCSC faculty and long-time friend Bettina Aptheker. Professor Davis will offer an engaging perspective on the role of the Prison Industrial Complex in our society, the relationship this system has with other institutions including a historical connection to slavery, higher education, and others. Similarly, Professor Davis will discuss the place of education within carceral institutions, a role that has diminished substantially over the course of the last thirty years.

Finally, to bring the evening events to a close Wednesday the 21^st will feature a panel of activists in the Bay Area. The objectives of this event are to inform students and community members of the work that is being done in their own communities to address problems associated with the Prison Industrial Complex. The organizations present will illustrate the diversity of communities that are affected and are challenging the criminal justice system. Representatives from four Bay Area organizations will be present for this event: Critical Resistance, Justice Now, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and Creative Interventions.

In the current climate of educational cuts and prison expansion the issues we confront with Prison Industrial Complex Awareness Week only grow more and more relevant with each passing moment. We hope you will join us in working to build an engaged, active and informed campus and larger Santa Cruz community that can work together to build a more just society.