Our Online Petition Is Working! Please SIGN

Dear Friend,

Something exciting is happening. Last week, I asked you to sign Books Not Bars' new
online petition. The petition urges Governor Schwarzenegger to close the CYA Youth
Prisons.

http://www.booksnotbars.org/petition

In just a few days, we've gathered nearly 500 signatures! The passionate response so
far is inspiring. And we're just getting started.

Our goal is at least 10,000 signatures within 2 weeks from today. If everyone on
our e-mail list gets 5 friends to sign, we will succeed! This petition will work
ONLY if the word gets out, and very quickly.

If you haven't signed yet, please do it now.

AND EVEN MORE IMPORTANTLY, forward this e-mail to all your friends!
(or use our easy "tell-a-friend" tool: http://www.booksnotbars.org/tellafriend).

http://www.booksnotbars.org/petition

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=== WHAT'S THIS PETITION ABOUT? ===
===

Books Not Bars has launched its first-ever online petition, at a crucial moment in
the campaign to shut down the youth prisons of the California Youth Authority (CYA).

For the past 16 months, Books Not Bars has been campaigning statewide to replace the
youth prisons of the CYA with real alternatives, and proven ways to rehabilitate
youth in trouble.

On May 16, 2005, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger released a new proposal for
overhauling the failed CYA. The proposal has a laudable goal — to turn the failed
CYA into a model system of rehabilitation, positive youth programming, and intensive
services for youth in trouble. These are essential elements of a successful model.

The BIG problem is: the cornerstone is missing — it doesn’t call for closing the
youth prisons. Closing the CYA prisons must be part of any plan to solve the CYA
crisis. When rehabilitation is left to prison guards, youth cannot be safe or
helped. These decrepit and remote warehouses are designed to foster fear, isolation
and violence. Window dressing just won't work.

Now, the Governor needs to hear from you!

http://www.booksnotbars.org/petition

Governor Schwarzenegger needs to know that the people of California want genuine
change. Help us to win this campaign -- add your name to the public groundswell of
support for real transformation. Join the thousands of people in California taking a
stand for youth!

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=== WHAT ARE THE CYA PRISONS? (AND WHAT'S THE SOLUTION)? ===
===

The CYA's youth prisons are a state-run, budget-busting system of eight facilities
in California. They are warehouses run by prison guards, notorious as the most
violent and abusive in the nation. In the last 16 months, four young men died in
CYA. Over and over, CYA has made headlines in the news with violent beatings,
shocking neglect in medical and mental health care, failure to provide school
education, and horrifying practices of locking teenagers in 23-hour-a-day solitary
confinement.

* More about the Human Rights Crisis in CYA:
http://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=164

THE GOOD NEWS IS: There is a much better way, with a proven track record of success,
that will work for California. In many other places in the country, good people are
helping young people who are in trouble. California can do this, too. Decades ago,
most states had huge warehouse prisons not unlike the CYA's. Today, one in five
states around the nation has closed its youth prisons and replaced them with
rehabilitation centers that help youth to turn their lives around. States like
Missouri, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and others use smaller facilities that are more
like homes than warehouses, staffed by youth counselors and specialists not prison
guards, and located close to the young people's families. These systems cost less
and have dramatically higher success rates (lower recidivism rates)

* More about the Solution to the Crisis:
http://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=166

The fight for CYA reform is a fight for racial justice and civil rights. Due to
gross racial disparities in the system, it is primarily families and communities of
color that have to pay the cost of CYA's failures. Though African-Americans are just
7.2 percent of California's population, a whopping 28 percent of the kids in CYA are
black. Latinos make up 41 percent of the state but 52 percent of the CYA population.

CYA is fundamentally unfair towards young people of color. California is failing
youth of color from day one. And the state is dealing with the fallout by locking
these youth up in warehouse prisons rampant with violence, abuse, and neglect.

Books Not Bars is fundamentally committed to racial justice and equity. This is a
guiding principle in our fight to reform the California Youth Authority.

* More about Race & CYA: http://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=218


THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING ACTION. Together, we can transform juvenile justice in
California.

http://www.booksnotbars.org/petition

Sincerely,
Lenore Anderson
Books Not Bars Director

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