Beyond the Bars: Transforming (In)Justice March 6th & 7th, 2015 Columbia University Featuring Michelle Alexander
Beyond the Bars: Transforming (In)Justice
March 6th & 7th, 2015
Columbia University
Featuring Michelle Alexander
This event is free and open to the public. Registration will not be up until mid February. Please check back here or sign up for the Center for Justice events email:
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The first weekend of March 2015, the Criminal Justice Caucus, the Center for Justice at Columbia University and the Beyond the Bars Fellows will host the fifth annual Beyond the Bars Conference. Over the past four years, the conference has grown immensely, bringing together more and more people from different spaces and places to come together to think critically about how to end the injustices of our criminal justice system, and reimagine what a more just response to harm, accountability and safety could look like. We continue to be humbled and amazed by the work of all our friends and colleagues and are grateful for your willingness to remain in community as we work towards practicing justice together.
This year’s Beyond the Bars conference will focus on the idea of transformation. Due to the work of so many of you, people across the country are increasingly aware of the racial, economic and social injustices that have come from what we now call mass incarceration, and what some are beginning to refer to as mass criminalization. Individuals, communities, organizations, institutions, political bodies and more, are working on changing criminal justice policies across the carceral continuum from policing, to the courts, to the jails and prisons, and to the barriers and conditions for people returning from incarceration.
The questions this conference will pose are: How do we work towards lasting transformative change? How do we develop a framework for changing the way our country seeks justice that does not perpetuate the roots of the problems that have led us here? How do we create change that addresses the systemic marginalization vis-a-vis racism, classism, patriarchy and the countless other isms, while also addressing the need for individual accountability and the safety of our communities and our society? What is a transformative agenda for changing the way we seek justice?
Powerful words. We cant wait for Michelle Alexander to join us for the 5th Annual Beyond the Bars Conference.
I
hope and pray that we do not confuse the indictments of a few police
officers with justice. Justice is when police are not working as
warriors in a "war on drugs" or a "war
on crime" but are serving as peace officers. Justice is when civilian
police review boards are welcomed by police departments, because they
exist to serve our communities not control them. Justice is when people
trust the police because the police routinely show respect, honesty,
and integrity in their dealings with everyone, no matter who they are,
where they came from, or what they may have done. To borrow Dr. Cornel
West's words: "Justice is what love looks like in public." When our
police departments regularly act as though they genuinely care about the
people they are paid to serve -- particularly in our poorest
communities -- rather than there simply to punish, monitor and control,
justice will be done. And not a moment before.
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