Resources

This update to our June 2020 #DefundPolice toolkit reflects victories won across the country, key strategies deployed, some lessons learned – including, tricks, tensions, and roadblocks along the way – and key questions communities are contending with in campaigns to defund police as we look forward to 2021. It contains some excerpts from the original toolkit, but is not intended as a substitute. Our hope is that this report will be read in conjunction with the original #DefundPolice #FundthePeople #DefendBlack Lives toolkit, along with our What’s Next: Safer and More Just Communities Without Policing report and Domestic Violence Awareness Month & Defund Fact Sheet.

A multi-part report series that explains this crisis of death and disappearance on the US-Mexico border and the policies that have created it. This serves to set the scene for reports which open a window to violent Border Patrol practices.

Andrea Ritchie joins the show to talk about her research with the group Interrupting Criminalization, specifically their new report looking back on the “Defund the Police” demand in 2020. The discussion begins with a look at the work that Interrupting Criminalization does, and their findings on the various successes and failures activists have had with the “Defund” demand over the last year. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how the state has tried to undermine abolitionist efforts. Toward the end, we speak about the need to fund experimental approaches to harm, including those that might fail.

Families for Justice as Healing organizes to shift power and resources away from policing and incarceration and into Black and Brown communities to address systemic and racist abandonment, disinvestment, and criminalization. Residents are demanding healthcare, housing, treatment, education, arts, culture, community centers, community-led programming, and economic development through employment and cooperative business ownership. Families for Justice as Healing demands systemic change to policing in Boston, toward our long-term goal of removing police from our communities. Police are the first point of contact with the criminal legal system for our members, and the reason women and our families wind up on jail and prison bunks. While we are organizing against the most harmful policing practices and fighting to shift resources from policing into our communities – we are also doing the work to create ways of preventing, responding to, and healing from harm without police and prisons.

Chicago is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world. Cameras, automatic license plate readers, cell site simulators and many other surveillance devices are currently used in the city by the Chicago Police Department and its sister agencies. However, many Chicago residents are unaware of the scope of the surveillance systems, their huge cost, and the privacy implications of their use. Lucy Parsons Lab surveys the major parts of the surveillance system in Chicago with respect to costs, capabilities, efficacy, and legal and privacy concerns.

Police Abolition 101 is a collaborative zine based on material by MPD 150 and on a report titled “What’s Next?” edited by Interrupting Criminalization and Project NIA. It was illustrated and designed by Noah Jodice. Feel free to share this zine with members of your communities who have questions about police abolition.

Doctors for Defunding Police is a group of doctors in Toronto living and working with Black and Indigenous communities who have come together to demand the defunding of police and reallocation of resources to the community.

Cities and school boards across Canada are choosing to end police presence in schools as a concrete step toward equity and anti-racist education. In Winnipeg, school boards are starting to reevaluate these programs, as community organizers situate the call for police-free schools within a global movement for racial justice.

While school divisions claim to have received positive feedback on police in schools from staff and students, it’s important to understand how policing targets marginalized groups. The prejudicial practices of police unevenly impact the student body and community. For this reason, a vote of confidence from those least affected by policing is meaningless. This FAQ page outlines responses from a survey that intends to center the voices of those directly impacted by police profiling and violence.