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GUESTS: Austin Delgadillo, an organizer with Critical Resistance

James E. Tilton, Secretary of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recently toured the Lancaster State Prison facility to support Governor Schwarzenegger’s prison reform package. Tilton witnessed extreme overcrowding and is supporting the Governor’s plan which calls for a $10.9 billion expansion program to add 78,000 beds. California’s prison system, designed for 100,000 inmates, currently has a population of 174,000, with 17,000 inmates housed in temporary facilities. But the state of California spends $35,000 a year for every prisoner, compared to $7,000 for K-12 students and only $4,500 in support for college and university students. In 2004, the Governor appointed a commission to study and recommend an overhaul of California’s prison system. The commission did not include the main grassroots constituencies affected by the prison system, such as the formerly incarcerated and families of inmates. Today we’ll speak with members of a statewide coalition of dozens of organizations that have put together their own commission to make recommendations on the prison system. It’s called CURB, which stands for Californians United for a Responsible Budget, and since 2004, CURB has helped defeat proposals for over 140,000 new prison and jail beds.

For more information, visit www.curbprisonspending.org, and www.criticalresistance.org.

On March 28th, activists from Los Angeles will converge on Sacramento to lobby against the governor’s prison expansion plan. To learn more about the plan and how to stop it, there will be a Teach-in and Training this evening, March 5th from 6:30 – 8 pm at the Souther California Library, 6120 South Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90044. For more information, call 323-238-0596, or email austin@criticalresistance.org.