1. Lessons from the resistance to the war on drugs
Naomi Braine
Sociology Dept
Brooklyn College

2. Skills building opportunities 3 separate sign up sheets going around
Community self-defense: organizing strategies for immigrant communities facing potential threats from ICE
Marshall training: how to manage a demonstration while reducing vulnerability to police
Civil disobedience training: non-violent direct action, ‘throwing sand in the gears’
3 separate sign up sheets going around

3. Why is the war on drugs useful history?
Repressive strategies: fear, demonization, criminalization, cooptation/exploitation, deliberate deception
Institutional practices: mass incarceration, changes in legal processes
Resistance: grassroots, multi-faceted, sustained

4. Stigma and repression
Criminalization of communities through media and policing practices
Racialization of common social behaviors
Legitimization of profiling
Demonization of drug use and drug users
Systematic creation of fear
Deliberate misinformation (aka drug education)

5. Institutional changes
Drug laws core to expansion of prison system -> shift to immigration
Prosecution and the courts: from crack to Muslim “terrorists”
Mandatory minimums
Extreme and targeted sentences
Coercive plea bargains
Informants and entrapment

6. Resistance to the war on drugs
Emerged within most criminalized and affected communities:
Drug users, urban Black and Latino youth, families of incarcerated
Multi-faceted
Expose mass incarceration and targeted policing
Change drug laws and sentencing
Challenge criminalization of drug use, of youth, of poverty
Harm reduction approaches to drug use/users
Roots of current movements around policing practices, marginalization of formerly incarcerated

7. Lessons from the resistance/for the resistance
Power of and resistance to criminalization -> very important given Trump’s use of ‘criminal’ language in relation to undocumented, instigation of Islamophobic fear
Potential for cooptation, exploitation of fears/divisions within communities – e.g. crack penalties, devastation of crack epidemic in black communities used to justify and get support for disproportionate legal penalties. Possible parallels in Muslim communities?
Vital to address fear and destruction at a personal and community level as part of organizing the resistance: harm reduction key to sustainability, trust building, developing viable alternatives