action figures sold separately

Critical Resistance and Incite! have issued a joint statement on Gender Violence and the Prison Industrial Complex:

We call on social justice movements concerned with ending violence in all its forms to: 1) Develop community-based responses to violence that do not rely on the criminal justice system AND which have mechanisms that ensure safety and accountability for survivors of sexual and domestic violence. Transformative practices emerging from local communities should be documented and disseminated to promote collective responses to violence.

read the whole statement here. CR has other excellent materials, which i’ll be linking to soon.

and while we’re on the subjuect, Incite! — Women of Color Against Violence has this “Myths and Facts” sheet which does a good job challenging what they see as the unrealistic portrayal of domestic violence in the movie Enough with Jennifer Lopez. And while i didn’t see the film, the distortions like this one are present in countless other movies:

MYTH #1: J. Lo would walk away a free woman after killing her batterer because “self-defense is not murder”. FACT: J. Lo probably would’ve been convicted of 1st degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. In California, there are at least 70 women serving life for killing their batterers in self-defense. Thousands more are in prison for domestic violence-related crimes.