Resources

Jails have been described as the criminal justice system’s “front door,” but jail incarceration typically begins with the police, with an arrest. Before any bail hearing, pretrial detention, prosecution, or sentencing, there is contact with the police. But despite their crucial role in the process, we know less about these police encounters than other stages of the criminal justice system. This report analyzes gender and racial disparities in traffic and street stops, including arrests, searches, and use of force that occurs during stops.

Many of the worst features of mass incarceration — such as racial disparities in prisons — can be traced back to policing. Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) research on the policies that impact justice-involved and incarcerated people therefore often intersects with policing issues. Now, at a time when police practices, budgets, and roles in society are at the center of the national conversation about criminal justice, PPI has compiled key work related to policing (and discussions of other researchers’ work) in one briefing.

This page is a hub for this year’s session materials, as well as additional resources related to the topic of PIC abolition, organizing, and healing justice. Click through for more information on the event.

The 2020 rebellions have sparked renewed discussions surrounding a host of racial issues, including police brutality toward black men. Advocates argue that black women are similarly exposed to excessive police violence yet routinely forgotten or ignored. Among their demands: Say Her Name.

The experiences of women of color and transgender people of color are frequently excluded from advocacy against police brutality, which focuses primarily on the experiences and needs of black men, and advocacy against gender-based violence, which focuses primarily on the experiences and needs of white women. In using a holistic definition of street harassment that incorporates factors like real or perceived racial, ethnic, and/or religious identity, Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS) aims to elevate the voices and needs of women of color and transgender people of color in its work to address street harassment. By centering the most marginalized identities in our community, we are making public spaces safe for everyone.

The National Security Police State always uses crisis like this to expand oppression, to expand surveillance, accumulate new weapons, push boundaries and justify its violence. The second video of this topic will feature Queer and Trans community members fighting on the frontlines against the criminalization of their lives.

Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) is a recent movement to bring recognition to the disappearance and murders of Native women and girls; many in the movement also include two spirit and trans persons under the term. While the movement is new, the issue of MMIW is not. This compilation of resources can be a starting point to understand the crisis of MMIW fully, provide families healing, and help others implement justice and take action so that there will be no more stolen sisters.

Lysistrata has been operating a fund for sex workers (SWs) since the shutdown of Backpage’s Adult Services Section (2016/2017), through SESTA/FOSTA (2018) and despite a major funding gap over the past 6 months. Now we are facing another crisis as the Covid-19 pandemic spreads. Lysistrata takes requests nationally but wants to support a new flurry of local SWs organizing emergency funds/resource distribution and be able to point folks who seek assistance to as many resources available to them as possible (a process hopefully aided by the creation of this doc).

This toolkit is a part of BYP100’s She Safe, We Safe campaign. This toolkit can be used for political education and for guiding informal learning. It includes sample agendas and facilitation guides, readings, podcasts, and guiding questions for those included resources. All of the content was created through a Black Queer Feminist lens and centers the fight to end gender and state violence against Black people at the margins of society.