What’s the Current Situation?
Here in the United States, over 2 million people are incarcerated and subjected to abuse, neglect and hazardous health conditions in prisons. Black and Brown communities are continuously incarcerated at higher rates than White people despite making up far less of the population. This is known as mass incarceration, and it is responsible for the destruction of hundreds of communities and millions of families. The U.S government does not rehabilitate incarcerated people, displayed clearly by the rate of recidivism that reaches almost 50%. Clearly something is wrong here, and it has everything to do with exploitation of labor, systemic racism and capitalism.
To the average White middle class American, prisons are just something you drive by. Maybe you wince a little in your car at the sight of the barbed wire. But inside you know that you’ll never have to deal with those kinds of conditions, or be in that scary building because you’d never commit a crime. Why not? Because you have everything you need. You know where your next meal is coming from. You have heat and water. Your family is safe. The police protect you.
The run of the mill, upper-middle class, White American has no perception of how bad things are in our prison systems. The reality is that the grotesque nature of these facilities is intentionally minimized in the public eye and popular media. Prisoners are painted as wild, dangerous and dirty– they’re stripped of their humanity. There is maliciously intentional distance put between the White middle class and the real, human people that are terrorized by the carceral state. If the average holder of social and economic capital doesn’t understand the full story, they can’t develop empathy. If they don’t develop empathy, they won’t challenge the system, and order is upheld. Big businesses can continue to pay disgustingly low wages to prison workers to drive up profit, and the U.S government can continue to ignore the fact that the disproportionate incarceration of Black men is at its core, systemic racism that spans all branches of law and government.
The Focus of this Campaign:
In partnership with Critical Resistance, Less Than a Mile from You aimis to shatter the common, dismissive image of prisons as being full of “dirty” criminals. The campaign aims to return some humanity to the narrative of incarcerated people, and to remind those removed from the carceral system that these problems affect their neighbors and their community members. Mass Incarceration is destroying real lives Less than a Mile from You. It is the intention that by creating this image and awareness, viewers will be stirred to reflect on the roots of their privilege and circumstance and be open to spreading wealth to those on the ground fighting for change.
Inspiration and Method of Action
Less Than a Mile from You’s primary mode of action will be through wheatpasting posters at heavily trafficked locations anywhere from .1 miles to 10 miles from prisons around the country. Posters will contain short slogans that capture small snippets of the heartbreaks and hardships those in prison face. These slogans will be created in conjunction with prisoners and their families, ensuring that their voices and struggles are the ones being amplified. An example could be: “[insert distance] miles from you, 13,000 people are being exposed to toxic fumes every day. They don’t have a choice”. The posters will also include the name of the cited facility, as well as a QR code where viewers can go to donate and engage with abolition material. It is the hope of the campaign that as time goes on, images of the posters will be spread via social media, and momentum for the movement will pick up. Critical Resistance will be crucial in using their platform to begin spreading the word about this campaign, and digital amplification can be expedited.
The method of action of this campaign was inspired by artist Johanna Toruño, creator of the Unapologetic Street Series. Her work is wheatpasted on streets around the country, baring bold slogans related to liberation topics. She has a vast following on social media that allows her work to be amplified and spread to foster critical dialogue.
Target Audience
The target audience of this campaign is middle to upper middle class White Americans. The campaign seeks to reach those of all levels of education and a variety of ages. Particularly in focus here are people with already some sort of awareness of racism and inequality. Liberals, neoliberals and some lefter leaning moderates would be key targets. Additionally, educators are of importance to this campaign, as they have the potential to bring the ideas presented to their classrooms, spreading knowledge to future generations of changemakers.
Barriers
The potential barriers with this campaign have a lot to do with individual commitment to engagement. Many people walking down a street have little to no desire to get their thoughts stirred and would rather ignore anything that challenges them. Additionally, the chosen target audience may not see this information as relevant to them, as it is likely outside their normal sphere of influence. The questions being asked by this campaign are big ones, and asking people to change their behaviors based on a brief interaction with poster content is big. However, even the tiniest taste or exposure to big ideas can sometimes be enough to get certain minds working. Particularly when the questions being asked seem to target the morality or value set of viewers there is potential for traction and engagement moments, days or even weeks after interacting with the material.
Funding
Fortunately, creating posters is not crazily expensive. By hosting a few fundraisers with a bigger organization like Critical Resistance, I believe we could make enough money to create at least a first round of posters. Once the campaign picks up momentum, there is potential for partnerships with progressive leaders and community organizations that could build up funding for bigger and more intricate poster work.
Goals and Goal Evaluation
The goal of this campaign is to engage the average person in thoughts and actions surrounding prison abolition. At the very least, we hope to stir the pot with the everyday viewer, and call their attention to the injustice happening on a regular basis. Ideally, the campaign will increase funding and donations to Critical Resistance to provide them more resources to continue fighting the system and educating the public. The goal is a noticeable increase in digital traffic on the Critical Resistance website and social media.
Luckily, some of these goals are quite easy to track. We will be able to monitor the statistics of visitation on Critical Resistance’s website and use those statistics to evaluate whether or not our poster series is drawing more attention to their content. Additionally, we are able to track the income of donations each month to evaluate whether or not the campaign is stirring viewers to donate. Tracking social media proliferation is a bit harder, however via social media, administrators can see how many times a post has been shared from the original which will give us baseline statistics regarding how many people are seeing and sharing images of our posters online.