Resources

A toolkit on the “Addressing Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue” policy statement made in 2018 by the American Public Health Association (APHA) that shares ideas about the action steps, organizing talking points, and a worksheet for implementing the APHA statement where you are.

These documents provide information using a public health lens for families, organizers, and advocates who are demanding a response to this pandemic that upholds human dignity and prioritizes healing, not policing and incarceration.

DC has another unique opportunity to be leaders in the effort to protect residents during COVID-19. The District can change lives and utilize federal funds to keep DC functional as we recover from the pandemic. The CARES ACT gives our city leadership wide latitude in how those federal funds can be used.

The question we should be asking is this: will DC prioritize taking progressive measures to advance public health and safety in our communities by investing in housing, health care, and income for all? Or will we allow police departments throughout the District to waste vital resources on trying to police our way out of a pandemic, harming and disappearing drug users, Sex Workers, LGBTQ folks, and Black and Brown community members in the process?

A letter on the criminalization of COVID-19 response and recommendations for Congress to address the issue.

A new toolkit from Community Justice Exchange and Defender Impact Initiative for folks working to end mass criminalization and incarceration, who have taken to social media to share the injustices they witness or experience in courtrooms, whether as public defenders, court watching groups, or individual advocates.

This is a recording of a conversation with Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Elliott Fukui on the intersections of disability justice and transformative justice. Participants talked about non-punitive responses to harm, restorative justice and ways to engage the public, and building accountable communities.

Decades of organizing to end the prison industrial complex has prepared Critical Resistance and movements for liberation to respond to the COVID-19 emergency with a focus on putting people’s immediate well-being first, tapping into communities’ knowledges about how to build structures for support and mutual aid, and moving forward with a vision for long-term building. This platform is an offering to our movements, and we hope that it will inspire communities to continue articulating and using abolition as a powerful strategy in a time of uncertainty, hope, and solidarity.

This article argues that, in the face of worsening conditions from climate change, enhanced border enforcement, a growing wealth gap, housing crises, and policing, social movements should focus on expanding mutual aid strategies. Mutual aid projects directly address survival needs, mobilize large numbers of people to participate in movements actively rather than solely participating online or through voting, and offer spaces to practice new social relations. The article looks at examples from efforts for migrant justice, police and prison abolition, disaster relief, and other contemporary struggles and discusses potential pitfalls of mutual aid strategies, such as supplementing and therefore stabilizing existing systems of maldistribution and adopting principles and practices from the charity frameworks that proliferate in capitalism.

A policy proposal letter co-signed by a variety of organizations that provides recommendations to Los Angeles county law enforcement on how to handle the COVID-19 crisis.