Project for Empty Space, Performing Statistics, and Youth 4 Justice NJ (Y4JNJ) have mounted two, twenty-two-foot high banners that say “Put Youth in Power, Not Prison” and “Destroy Detainment, Fund the Futures” on Edison Place in Newark, New Jersey. In 2021 these collaborators worked with Y4JNJ youth organizers, and Newark-based designers and artists to create an anti-youth incarceration campaign encouraging community-led support systems and putting young people in power, not prison.
The collaboration included the development of abolitionist jumpsuits envisioned by Y4JNJ organizers from Newark and Camden, New Jersey. The jumpsuit acts as a placard for a series of gold messages illustrating power. Traditionally, jumpsuits are used in prison to make people feel powerless and rob them of individuality. Y4JNJ organizers chose to use this project as an opportunity to take back this garment, using it as a canvas, adorned with holographic chains breaking into butterflies symbolizing positive transformation, liberation, and success. The organizers wear these jumpsuits in the campaign banners, but also as a form of demonstration in organizing events, conferences, and more.
Organizers include Samiyah Webster and Semaj Roberts from Newark and Alicia Garcia-Rivas and Tamia Hudson from Camden. The campaign was designed by recent Rutgers University-Newark graduates, Interdesign Collective, Jan Kathleen Reyes, Luis Reyes, Maria Ismail, and Michael Oliphant.
These banners are the first of multiple activations that the collaborators hope to see in the Newark and greater New Jersey area.
Performing Statistics is a nationwide cultural organizing project that collaborates with youth-led campaigns to use art to model, imagine and advocate for a world without youth prisons. “We believe youth prisons shouldn’t exist and young people most impacted by the juvenile justice system have the power to use art and storytelling to lead the vision toward a world beyond youth incarceration.” Learn more about Performing Statistics here.
Youth 4 Justice NJ is a youth advocacy and organizing program working to close youth prisons in New Jersey and invest back into community alternatives. Learn more about Youth 4 Justice NJ.
At a time when the governor of New Jersey is recommending the construction of 3 new youth prisons, it is more important than ever to include youth leaders in conversations about what young people need to stay free. The state of New Jersey spends more than $600,000 per year to incarcerate a young person, and locks-up Black youth 18 times more often than their white peers. 40,000 students could go to Rutgers on in-state tuition with the budget NJ uses to incarcerate young people.