CONFERENCE FOR PRISONER SUPPORT

Is slavery dead in America? Not if you're behind bars. "After slavery was abolished, they [Congress] made sure that slavery in prison was not," says Brenton Gicker, a core member of the Break the Chains prisoner support collective, and a critic of the 13th Amendment. Adding to the crisis in the American penal system are rising prison populations, declining services, prison privatization and racial injustice, organizers say.

More than 25 lecturers, writers, performers and artists will convene in Eugene Aug. 8-10 for the first conference organized by Break the Chains. The organization formed about two years ago in response to the Jeffrey "Free" Luers and Craig Marshall case, and works for the rights, education and well-being of political and social prisoners in the Pacific Northwest.

Among the speakers at the conference will be Laura Whitehorn, a former political prisoner, writer, and activist currently creating a correspondence course on HIV and hepatitis C for prisoners; Ward Churchill, a noted Native American activist and scholar who explores genocide, colonization, political repression, the penal system, and indigenous peoples' struggles in the Americas; Safiya Bukhari, a former Black Panther and political prisoner who helped found the Mothers Inside Loving Kids (MILK) group, which was created to help women in prison maintain contact with their children, and Jim Page, a songwriter who will be performing after presentations by lesbian prison activists Chrystos and Leslie Bull.

According to Gicker, the conference "should be really nonsectarian and international," dealing with "medical neglect in prison, black nationalism in prison ��� all different aspects of the prison situation and the different aspects of resistance to it. Pretty comprehensive."

Lydia Bartholow, another member of the collective, says, "We have workshops on transgender people in prison; we have workshops on women in prison; we have workshops that focus in on Chicanos in prison; we have workshops that focus in on mental illness ��� wherever you're coming at it from, there's going to be something for everyone involved in social change in prison."

The conference will open at 8:30 pm Friday, Aug. 8 at the United Lutheran Church on 22nd and Washington, and close at around midnight Sunday at WOW Hall. All events held at UO are free, while the collective will ask for donations at off-campus sites. More information on additional presenters, locations and times can be found at www.breakthechains.net

"There's one group of people who has absolutely no way of getting their desires out and their word: prisoners. They're a criminalized class, and they can be completely ignored for the most part by the state and by social services agencies." says Bartholow. %G�—%@ Celene Carillo