{"id":870,"date":"2019-01-16T01:12:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-16T06:12:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nlg.org\/guild-notes\/?post_type=article&p=870"},"modified":"2019-01-24T13:22:11","modified_gmt":"2019-01-24T18:22:11","slug":"2019-nlg-week-against-mass-incarceration-to-tackle-war-on-drugs","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/www.nlg.org\/guild-notes\/article\/2019-nlg-week-against-mass-incarceration-to-tackle-war-on-drugs\/","title":{"rendered":"2019 NLG Week Against Mass Incarceration to Tackle \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Following the National Lawyers Guild Law for the People Convention in October 2015, NLG membership adopted a resolution<\/a> calling for “the dismantling and abolition of all prisons and of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, fill, or protect prisons.” In honor of this resolution, in 2016 the NLG expanded\u00a0our annual Student Week Against the Death Penalty to become the Week Against Mass Incarceration (WAMI).<\/p>\n

WAMI 2019 will be held March 4-10 and the theme is
\n<\/strong>“Mass Incarceration and the War on Drugs”<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In 2019, we ask NLG Law School and Local Chapters\u00a0to organize events and actions on mass incarceration, highlighting the connections between the exponential increase of incarcerated people and the 40-year War on Drugs. In past years, Guild chapters have organized\u00a0interactive workshops, community discussions, film screenings, tabling, letter writing campaigns, banner drops, visits to incarcerated youth, and panels on topics such as solitary confinement, school to prison pipeline, immigration detention, transformative justice, and alternatives to incarceration.<\/p>\n

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The NLG has long been\u00a0opposed to the War on Drugs<\/a>\u00a0and the dramatic increase in incarceration it has produced. Since 2004, the Guild has argued that “the War on Drugs has been applied in a highly disproportionate way with people of color experiencing the brunt of arrests and incarcerations.” Our members have called for an end to drug prohibition and the\u00a0NLG Drug Policy Committee<\/a>\u00a0has demanded that the federal government end its unnecessary, harmful, and imperialistic war against people who use drugs, mainly people of color and low income communities.<\/p>\n

In 2013, the Guild National Office released a report titled “High Crimes: Strategies to Further Marijuana Legalization Initiatives<\/a>.” The report explores the role of civil asset forfeiture by police and the prison prison industry in the continued War on Drugs, and calls for 1) re-framing drug use as social and public health issue rather than a criminal justice problem, 2) revising international drug treaties, 3) re-classifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 substance, 4) legalizing\u00a0adult use recreational marijuana, 5) ending the practice of civil asset forfeiture, and 6) abolishing the for-profit prison industry. We also call for the decriminalization of all drugs and the release of non-violent drug offenders currently incarcerated.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Other NLG decarceration initiatives include the NLG-NYC\u00a0Parole Preparation Project<\/a>, the NLG Bay Area\u00a0Prisoner Advocacy Network<\/a>, the NLG NJ-DE Prisoner Legal Advocacy Network, and the\u00a0Guild Notes<\/em>\u00a0column, \u201cBeyond Bars: Voices from NLG Jailhouse Lawyers<\/a>\u201d. \u00a0NLG\u00a0Mass Incarceration Committee<\/a> and Prison Law Project<\/a> volunteers respond to jailhouse lawyer members’ letters and send out our Jailhouse Lawyer Manual<\/em><\/a> on an ongoing basis. NLG members are involved in various initiatives opposing policing, criminalization, solitary confinement, capital punishment, and new prison construction. The Guild also supported the 2016 and 2018\u00a0National Prison Strikes<\/a> and has been working to\u00a0\u00a0investigate and challenge deplorable conditions<\/a> in numerous Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison facilities in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey.<\/p>\n

Please email NLG Director of Research and Education Traci Yoder at traci@nlg.org to share the events you are organizing!\u00a0Everyone should post flyers, pictures, and event invites on the Week Against Mass Incarceration Facebook event<\/a> page\u00a0and join the conversation on Twitter using #NLG and #Decarcerate. Tweet to us @NLGnews<\/a>!<\/p>\n

War on Drugs Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Sentencing Project<\/a><\/p>\n

Drug Policy Alliance<\/a><\/p>\n

Drug War Is The New Jim Crow<\/a> (ACLU)<\/p>\n

Other Mass Incarceration Resources<\/strong><\/p>\n

Punishment and Policing in the Trump Era<\/a><\/p>\n

Struggles of Using Legal Recourse as a Path Toward Better Prison Conditions<\/a><\/p>\n

Immigration Guide to How Arrests and Convictions Separate Families<\/a><\/p>\n

Immigration and Mass Incarceration<\/a><\/p>\n

Immigration Policy and Planning in the Era of Mass Incarceration<\/a><\/p>\n

Mass Incarceration and Immigrant Detention<\/a><\/p>\n

Fact-sheet: Immigrant Detention and Mass Incarceration\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Following the Money of Mass Incarceration<\/a><\/p>\n

Prison Abolition Syllabus<\/a><\/p>\n

Are Prisons Obsolete?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Corrections Project PIC Poster<\/a><\/p>\n

Transforming Carceral Logic<\/a><\/p>\n

Reasons for Penal Abolition<\/a><\/p>\n

Joint Statement of Incite! and Critical Resistance<\/a><\/p>\n

Incarcerated Workers Take The Lead<\/a><\/p>\n

Documentaries<\/strong><\/p>\n

Broken on All Sides<\/a><\/p>\n

Visions of Abolition<\/a><\/p>\n

The 13th<\/a><\/p>\n

The House I Live In<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cPrisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.\u201d -Angela Y. Davis<\/strong><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following the National Lawyers Guild Law for the People Convention in October 2015, NLG membership adopted a resolution calling for “the dismantling and abolition of all prisons and of all aspects of systems and institutions that support, condone, create, fill, or protect prisons.” In honor of this resolution, in 2016 the NLG expanded\u00a0our annual Student […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":118,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"issuem_issue":[187],"issuem_issue_categories":[],"issuem_issue_tags":[193,89,29,161],"class_list":["post-870","article","type-article","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","issuem_issue-guild-notes-vol-43-no-4-winter-2018","issuem_issue_tags-drug-policy","issuem_issue_tags-nlg-students","issuem_issue_tags-prisons","issuem_issue_tags-week-against-mass-incarceration","post"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t