WHAT IS THE BOYCOTT CRIME CAMPAIGN?

The Boycott Crime Campaign was launched in October, 1998 by a group of concerned citizens and elected officials in Newark, NJ and other surrounding cities. The initial intent of the campaign is to serve as a "wake-up call" to urban communities in particular and to all people in general, to refrain from any and all activities or behavior that could be considered "criminal" and subject to inevitable short or long-term prison sentences.

The ultimate goal of the campaign is to empty jail cells and reduce the American prison population to zero. One might perceive such a goal as unrealistic, even foolish. Ask yourself however, how foolish is it for any group of people to continue to allow itself to serve as fuel for an "industry" which feeds on the bodies, lives, civil and human rights of that people? Today prisoners are owned by the state and denied all civil rights while incarcerated on probation or parole.

BOYCOTT CRIME is a campaign to obey all "just" laws and to keep our people out of the penal system. The word Boycotting means to combine with others, to abstain from buying, using or patronizing a business or product as a means of coercing those in power.

We are boycotting the prison industrial complex. Boycotting has been used as an effective tool historically by oppressed people throughout the world. Boycotts worked for African Americans during the Civil Rights era in the 50's and 60's, most notably the Montgomery Bus Boycott sparked by Mrs. Rosa Parks and led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.