Resources

This article explains how the inequities embedded within the legal system serve to undermine social movements, magnify harms, and exploit the work of Black, Indigenous, and other activists of color in the process. The authors contribute to the growing collection of scholarship that questions the illusion of impartiality of our legal systems, theory, or praxis, and builds on activists’ work toward a society with equitable distribution of resources and equal access to wellness and joy.

As the nation grapples with defining the proper roles and limits of police generally, and particularly in Black, Brown, and other communities that have borne disproportionate harms from police (as well as from many other institutions), we propose an approach that we believe would be both realistic and effective: adopting the goals, metrics, and lenses of public health. By replacing current performance metrics with public health metrics and flawed conceptions with ones that are based upon evidence, and by demanding agility and accountability in changing practices and policies when they are shown to cause harm, we can improve the health, safety, and well-being of communities across the United States. This article sketches out the way forward and provides some illustrative examples.

Sitting at the intersection of criminalization and capitalism, the use of emerging surveillance technology has become increasingly popular among police departments in the United States over the last few decades. While public knowledge is still catching up to the full extent of the tools that police use, we are quickly understanding more about this technology each day. Adopted for use as police “reforms,” sophisticated electronics and tech capabilities do not address the unchecked power and ballooning budgets of local police departments. Instead, they open the door for law enforcement to monitor communities while private companies profit from sales and contracts. As the movement to defund the police becomes impossible to ignore, replacing police officers with police cameras is called progress.

Living in a “surveillance state,” however, is not a foregone conclusion. Organizers across the country are pushing back against intrusive and problematic surveillance technologies by providing program models and model legislation to disrupt 21st Century Policing and ensure awareness and meaningful interventions. This report presents an overview of ongoing trends in police surveillance and the funding streams that have made and continue to make these trends possible. It also highlights ongoing advocacy efforts and provides recommendations for pushing back against the use of such technology by law enforcement.

A fact sheet about the recently enacted American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which provides $1.9 trillion in economic relief through direct payments, expanded child tax credits and unemployment benefits, small business loans, and aid to local and state governments. This fact sheet goes over details of the ARPA payments, gives recommendations for how this money should be used to support communities, and gives an example table of cities and amount of aid they are estimated to receive.

Internal NYPD documents shed new light on the Strategic Response Group, or SRG, the heavily militarized police unit behind the crackdown on George Floyd protesters. This detailed report explores the background and function of the SRG, shares the SRG guidebook, explains its role in the 2020 protests, and ends with a look at accountability efforts.

Explore snapshots of community-based safety strategies that expand our ideas about what keeps us safe. One Million Experiments is a place to browse community-based safety projects for inspiration, a newsletter featuring zines that highlight the nuts and bolts of particular projects, and an opportunity to share your projects. Tag projects using #1MExperiments.

A collection of common questions related to abolition, policing, and incarceration and links to find resources for further education and organizing.

In this episode, Angela Davis discusses her experience this summer during uprising, the remarkable popularization of abolition, the significance of addressing gender violence and inequality in the fight for liberation, and much much more.

In May, many of us were devastated and heartbroken when George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis. This marked yet another Black man’s life being taken too soon by the very people that are supposed to protect us. As Philadelphians took to the streets to express their First Amendment rights with justified anger at the institutions that enabled this to happen and to advocate for Black lives, the City of Philadelphia appeared unprepared to handle the resulting unrest. The investigation shows that the root cause of the lack of planning was a lack of leadership at the highest levels.

It is also important to spend time reflecting on the fact that teargas was deployed in our city during these events. Teargas is banned in warfare and has not been used in Philadelphia for civil unrest since the MOVE crisis in 1985. Despite this, teargas was deployed on our own people several times during the unrest. The negative and painful effects of teargas cannot be overstated, and it should not have been used the way it was. The report details how our own police department shot teargas canisters down residential streets in West Philadelphia, hurting children in their own homes and innocent bystanders.