Release of New Book on Participatory Defense: Protect Your People

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Announcing the release of:

Protect Your People

How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration

Pre-order available now through the release date August 6th, 2024

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We are excited to announce the release of  Protect Your People - How Ordinary Families Are Using Participatory Defense to Challenge Mass Incarceration!  The book tells the story of participatory defense, from our origins of families at De-Bug in San Jose strategizing with one another to free loved ones, to its growth into a national movement with communities uniting across the country applying and growing the practice in new ways fight back against the carceral system and reunite families. The book is organized into sections to bring readers into the movement - ways people have used participatory defense tactics such as social biography packets, videos, community expertise - and how communities have used the approach in different contexts - pretrial detention, post-conviction, crimmigration, youth cases. In many ways, it is part manual, part diary. 

The life blood of the book is stories shared by 22 participatory defense practitioners - individuals targeted by the system, family members fighting against the threat of incarceration, communities organizing to bring back loved ones taken by the system. Their stories travel across cities and time periods, and are reflections on participatory defense from a jail cell, a kitchen table the night before a trial begins, while taking the stand at court, from having just won a release from decades in prison - the most poignant and proximate moments in the struggle for freedom. Their participatory defense examples also give context to local generational struggles, and the vibrant, dynamic movements that are pushing back to dismantle mass incarceration. Collectively, these stories (which are just a sliver of the liberatory journeys that have happened and are happening right now) offer a window into the work of the National Participatory Defense Network - a collective of over 45 "participatory defense hubs" across the country. Each hub will be receiving books to use in which ever way feels right for them.

We welcome any and all ways to get this project out. We imagined it as an organizing tool - a way to inspire people to continue to fight for freedom, or perhaps ignite it. Particularly in places where participatory defense hubs don't exist yet - we were thinking this book may be the resource to assist a person, a family, a community to protect their people. The book may be a roadmap in how to navigate out from under the control of the system, or a shield made of paper in the back pocket when entering a courthouse, or held as a talisman, there as a reminder of what's possible when community supports one another.

And it can be a touchtone to have a larger public conversation in communities about the need for participatory defense and dismantling of the system. Please do let us know if there are any events or discussions we could join or initiate where the book could be of service.

The book can be found at the New Press site, as well as being sold on Barnes and Nobles, BookShop, and Amazon. Pre-orders can happen before the release date of August 6, 2024.

Please do share this announcement with whomever you feel should know about it! 

If interested in setting up book reading events or group purchases of the book, please contact info@siliconvalleydebug.org