Initial Planning Meeting for a People's Justice Conference in Los Angeles, Sat. Feb 5 at noon

I believe this may be pertinent to other proposals under discussion.
The following announcement has been going out this week, and is open
for reshaping and input from all interested parties, either at the
initial planning, by email/phone or subsequently. There is a separate
coalition, also initiated by GrassrootsKPFK and including a number of
housing, homeless and food sovereignty groups, that is planning a
conference around themes of hunger, homelessness, foreclosures,
evictions, gentrification, privatization of public housing
tentatively set for the last weekend of March at LA Trade Tech (also
seeking to focus primarily on the people being impacted on by those
conditions, not the already organized left).--MN

GrassrootsKPFK, the coalition of human rights and liberation
activists that successfully ran candidates for the KPFK local station
board last year, is initiating an effort to build a People's Justice
Conference In Los Angeles in the spring.

Motivated by a spate of police killings in Los Angeles, by the
decision by new governor Jerry Brown to shield the bloated,
oppressive prison system from budget cuts even while slashing human
needs, and by recent repressive moves by the City Attorney and
District Attorney in Los Angeles, we are seeking to build a coalition
that brings together grassroots activists and communities in struggle
against racial profiling, police abuse and killings; against
political repression, COINTELPRO, torture and isolation of political
prisoners and the prison-industrial complex; against criminalization
of youth, migrants and poor and working people and people of color
generally. This is meant to be a focused gathering of people facing
and dealing with these problems, and interested in taking action, not
a left talk fest.

Some of the issues we want to address at the conference, in addition
to police abuse and killings, include three strikes and the situation
of old and new lifers in the CA prison system; the "ban the box"
campaign to prevent employment discrimination against ex-convicts,
supporting their reintegration into socially-useful work; the use of
racial divisiveness and special housing and isolation units within
prisons; the cases of political prisoners, grand jury resisters and
others being targeted currently for political repression or serving
long sentences for participating in the freedom struggles of the 60s and 70s.

We want to have a working conference that deals with the
interconnection between all the issues surrounding the police,
courts, prosecutors and prisons, as well as the probation, parole and
"juvenile justice" systems. We want to help figure out how to build a
successful political counter-offensive around these issues and
overcome the weaknesses that have led to the current situation where
the police stop, frisk and kill with impunity, where over 2,200,000
people are currently locked down and millions more are subject to
police state control post-conviction or incarceration, and where a
whole new generation of political prisoners are joining the
COINTELPRO era political prisoners of the BPP, AIM, Puerto Rican
independence movement and other struggles.

The first planning meeting will take place Saturday, February 5
(following a similar planning meeting looking at housing and hunger
issues, and just prior to a meeting of the MLK Coalition for Jobs,
Justice and Peace (whose Justice Committee last week endorsed the
call for such a conference).

For more information, contact antiracistaction_la@yahoo.com or call
310-890-7104.