IT IS IMPERITIVE THAT EVERYONE BECOME ENGAGED IN THIS CAUSE. ONE OUT OF 32 ADULTS ARE INCARCERATED, ON PAROLE OR PROBATION IN THE UNITED STATES. WE INCARCERATE MORE PEOPLE THAN ANY OTHER COUNTRY! WAKE UP! IF AREN'T ONE OF THE ONE OUT OF THREE PEOPLE WHO'VE HAD CONTACT WITH THE CRIMINAL INJUSTICE SYSTEM IN CALIFORNIA, YOU COULD BE. About All Of Us Or NoneAll of Us Or None is a national organizing initiative of prisoners, former prisoners and felons, to combat the many forms of discrimination that we face as the result of felony convictions. After serving time in torturous conditions, we were met at the gate with prejudice and discrimination that made our re-entry into society difficult and in some cases impossible. Many of us recognize that our prison sentence never ends as longs as the discrimination against us continues.In the current climate where background checks are becoming more common place, we have been forced to watch more and more peoples’ spirits broken and jobs taken. The ugly hidden practice of prejudice is now being openly instituted through public policy. Many of us find ourselves unable to be certified regardless of training in our chosen vocational fields. We are being denied employment opportunities, student loans, access to public housing. We are subject to lifetime welfare bans, our children are stolen through fast track adoptions, and we are taxed but denied the right to vote. People do not hesitate to talk openly about the need for further discrimination against us. We must organize ourselves to fight against being reduced to the status of permanent members of an underclass. Over thirty millions people are walking around with felony convictions. Seventeen million of us have served time in jails and prisons, and it estimated that 3 million more of us will be released from prison over the next five years. Organized, we can shape public policy and our world . Failure to organize means that from the point of arrest, our punishment will be life-long.All of Us or None will also strengthen the voices of people currently incarcerated so they can speak about the horrendous conditions that we face while we are in custody of juveniles jails, INS detention centers, and prisons. So often our pain and suffering go unchecked. Too often people leave jail or prison and fail to help those we left behind speak about issues that were terribly important to us when we were prisoners. We must fight to establish a family bill of rights that will stop telephone companies from exploiting our loved ones. We must fight to that our family members have contact visiting, including domestic partners as well as husbands, wives, children, grandchildren, parents and grandparents. We must fight to insure that we have the support we need to reunify our families, and we must fight against the deportation of juveniles away from their families, and parents away from their children.All of Us or None means that we must organize across racial, gender, age, class, and geographic lines in order for us to regain our basic human and civil rights. We can no longer allow divisions between us when in the end we all face discrimination. Advocates have spoken for us, but now is the time for us to speak for ourselves. We clearly have the ability to be more than the helpless victims of the system. We must build a movement that clearly shows that our unity is greater than our differences, and our solutions are greater than our problems. We need to unite locally and nationally so we can expand our working relationships. We need to communicate through inter-state coalitions to defeat specific aspects of discrimination that occur in every state, like one-strike evictions, the welfare ban, and Three Strikes laws. We need to share successful strategies and lessons learned from work in our local communities. We need a platform of action so we can combine our efforts to strategize around the following questions:* How do we eliminate the lifelong punishment that is the result of felony convictions? * How do we effectively pressure local, state and federal government to develop policies and to make resources and services available to formerly incarcerated persons, in order to insure the greatest likelihood of success upon release? * How do we change the public perception of who we are? How do we show our successes instead of allowing the media and others to focus only on our failures? * How do we stop profiteers and governmental agencies from gouging innocent families and friends (surcharges on collect telephone calls and other service) while their loved ones are incarcerated? * How do we overcome the fear and heal the shame associated with being a convicted felon or formerly incarcerated? * How do we effectively advocate for alternatives to incarceration? * How do we change society’s over-reliance on incarceration and stop the expansion of the Prison Industrial Complex? * How do we stop politicians and others from using crime rates and parole to advance their careers? * How do we advocate against human rights abuses for our sisters and brothers left behind the walls? * How do we develop a national body of formerly incarcerated persons and felons so that our voices will continue to reverberate?Here are some of things you can immediately do to help:* Stop hiding your felony status if it is not life-threatening to do so. The successful among us must be seen as more than the exceptions. * Organize other former felons to discuss the impact of their felony convictions on their lives. Organize an All of Or None Meeting. * Contact us by telephone, E-mail or letter. * Share this brochure with other former prisoners or felons. * Visit our Web site, www.allofusornone.org. * Help build a base so we can impact the public policies and the private prejudices that destroy our futures. It’s OUR responsibility to stop the discrimination, and to change the public policies that discriminate against us, our families, and our communities.