Resources

Situated at the present historical moment of resurgent white nationalism and xenophobia, Sanctuary Spaces: Reworlding Humanism undertakes comparative inquiry of imaginations and practices of sanctuary and refuge. Seeking to accompany movements that challenge detention and deportation, Sanctuary Spaces supports scholarship, art, and pedagogy that enact different humanisms and other worlds of political being. Organized around three themes, Abolition on Stolen Land, The End of Humanitarianism, and Freedom and Fugitivity, the year-long endeavor convenes public programs, virtual residencies, and conceptual conversations to generate frames and actions that unravel the logics of liberalism and its entanglements with imperialism.

This kit is designed to consolidate the information regarding Invest Divest strategy and resources for Louisville, Kentucky. This kit is intended to be used for the following: refer to this document for campaigning at the social media level, share this document with your base, and hold teach-ins and trainings on the uses of narrative and social media for this campaign, post directly from your own personal channels, and share to and from the partner organizations listed here.

“Racism is a public health crisis,” according to a May 2020 statement from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). This means that racism — whether unintentional, unconsciously, or concealed — has affected Black Americans’ access to equal and “culturally competent” health care. This page goes into the effects of police encounters and footage of police brutality on Black Americans, as well as giving an overall view of mental health among the community. This resource also includes further resources for mental health help.

The ongoing scourge of police terrorism has reinvigorated an important national conversation about policing and incarceration — their history, purpose, and practice. While some have called for reforms, like stricter use-of-force policies and enhanced body cam protocols for officers, others have demanded more sweeping change. “Abolition for the People,” a project produced by Kaepernick Publishing in partnership with LEVEL, seeks to end that debate once and for all. Over the next four weeks, the project will publish 30 stories from organizers, political prisoners, scholars, and advocates — all of which point to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons do not serve as catch-all solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems.

This is a video collaboration with Project Nia & Blue Seat Studios. This four-minute animated video is made with young people in mind but can be a useful introduction to basic #DefundPolice concepts for all ages. People have a lot of ideas about policing. And our ideas about policing are shaped by our race, our genders, our class, and our parents. Dominant culture, especially mass media sells us the image of “Officer Friendly.” But whose experience is that actually based on?

This toolkit has been designed with a few goals in mind, one being to offer a theoretical grounding and political education around policing broadly and within the context of schools. Now is the time for school communities to implement what has been a growing national vision of removing police from public school systems. GGE hopes that this toolkit provides context and language to actively participate in that discourse and shift the dialogue from one of ‘bad apples’ vs ‘caring cops’ to one that addresses the systemic racism our young people are subject to on a daily basis due to the presence of police in their schools.

In December 1968, 14-year old Dorothy Belle Young and her 11-year-old sister Yvonne were arrested for “using profane language at school to white boys.” While Yvonne received probation, Dorothy was detained at the Regional Youth Development Center (a juvenile jail) in Sanderville, GA. Black residents of Sylvester, GA, a town of 5,000 where the girls and their family lived, mobilized in support of Dorothy. They claimed that the sisters and their other siblings were being punished for integrating an all-white school. National Civil Rights figures also came to Dorothy’s defense including Coretta Scott King and Dr. Ralph Abernathy who traveled to Sylvester to lead protests. This publication offers a glimpse at a history of the criminalization of Black girls. It includes beautiful illustration and some activities. The publication was created with high school students in mind.

Breonna Taylor is the only Black woman killed by police whose case is familiar to most Americans. And a Newsy analysis shows even the highest-profile women’s cases receive only a small fraction of the coverage generated by police killings of men. The #SayHerName campaign aims to raise awareness of the connection between race and police violence and make sure the stories of Black women are being told.