Southern California Library The Southern California Library is a 42-year-old social justice library open to the public that holds rich resources and archives on community change, particularly in L.A., and offers educational and cultural programs.

Address: 6120 S. Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90044
Phone: (323) 759-6063
Fax: (323) 759-2252
Website: www.socallib.org
E-mail: archives@socallib.org

Organizations Tabling at the Event

Critical Resistance/Los Angeles
Meeting location: 253 W. Martin Luther King at Broadway;
323-238-0596; crla@criticalresistance.org; www.criticalresistance.org

FACTS
3982 So. Figueroa St #207A, Los Angeles, CA 90037
213-746-4844; www.facts1.com

Youth Justice Coalition
253 W. Martin Luther King Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90037
P.O. Box 73688, Los Angeles, CA
323-235-4243; freelanow@yahoo.com

The Project

The Generations Locked Down event was part of the Library’s South L.A. community history project, “From Generation to Generation: Making Things Better in South L.A.,” which invites people to “listen for a change,” engaging residents and others in defining and responding to community conditions. Part of the California Council for the Humanities’ “Communities Speak,” program, the project is funded by the California Council for the Humanities and the California Community Foundation.

Resources at the Library

Highlights of the Library’s resources on the prison-industrial complex.

Archives:

• Liberty Hill Foundation Collection, contains information about the Los Angeles Women’s Prison Project.

• Alice Greenfield McGrath Papers (1942–1944), includes correspondence with the Sleepy Lagoon defendants, 17 young Mexican-Americans wrongfully convicted of murder in a racially biased case in Los Angeles.

• Mothers ROC (early 1990s), organizational files from a group formed to provide support for those caught in the criminal justice system.

• Prisons and Prisoners (1970s), correspondence, newsletters, and flyers.

Periodicals: First Day, Inside Out, Inside Prison Life, Intercom Quarterly, Poppy, Prison Focus, Prison Law Project, Prison Legal News, Prison Life, Prison News Service, Prisoners Rights Union, Prisoners Union Journal

Subject Files: Clippings and pamphlets over the last century. Headings of interest include Prison/Reform, Prison San Quentin, Prison Attica, Prisons, Crime and the Courts, Crime Legislation, Crime Policy, Death Penalty.

Videos: 20 Years...Y Que? National Chicano Moratorium Committee, L.A. Region (1990), Double Justice: Race and Capital Punishment (1993), Linda Evans [political prisoner], Nation of Law (“Eyes on the Prize”), CD: Capital Punishment, Capital Crime (2002)

Books: Attica: The Official Report of the New York State Special Commission on Attica, 1972; Criminal Injustice: Confronting the Prison Crisis, A Report of the Prison Activist Resource Center; Prison: Interviews by Leonard J. Berry, 1972; A Time to Die [on Attica], Tom Wicker, 1975; The Turkey Shoot: Tracking the Attica Cover-up, Malcolm Bell, 1985.

Other Selected Readings

American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons, Mark Dow • Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, ed. by Julia Sudbury • Malign Neglect: Race, Crime, and Punishment in America, Michael Tonry • Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment, ed. by Marc Mauer and Meda Chesney-Lind • It’s About Time: America’s Imprisonment Binge, James Austin and John Irwin • Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, Christian Parenti • The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice, Jeffrey Reiman • Social Justice: A Journal of Crime, Conflict, & World Order—Critical Resistance to the Prison-Industrial Complex, Vol. 27, No. 3 (2000) • States of Confinement: Policing, Detention, and Prisons, ed. by Joy James

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