Resources

This is a moment when people’s anxiety can be greatly increased—and that makes sense given all that is coming at us and happening around us. We know that our health, including our mental health, is inherently political. We offer these resources as part of the Center’s Politicized Healing framework that understands we get to transformative justice when we heal from and dismantle systems of harm while creating new systems of care. Please check out our short workbook, Trauma-Informed Practices During the Coronavirus Pandemic, for support in thinking about how to develop a routine for yourself that can help reduce anxiety and increase resilience. If you are experiencing anxiety, this short workbook provides some tools that you may find helpful.

In response to COVID-19, numerous public health and national security measures are being proposed and implemented across the nation. Historically, states of emergency, mandatory quarantines, and curfews have often been used to expand state control over political and civil freedom. Emergency powers often criminalize movement, freedom of expression, protest, and marginalized communities. Nevertheless, it is important that we know what rights exist to protect ourselves and resist increased policing.

This is a difficult time, and most of us are under enormous pressure. We might be experiencing isolation, illness, income loss, fear for loved ones, loss of loved ones, anxiety, and many other painful circumstances. A mad map is a guide we can make for ourselves, usually best worked on in moments were we are feeling more centered or having more capacity, that we can turn to in moments where things go sideways or we feel ourselves slipping into more difficult states.

The global spread of COVID-19 has highlighted a longstanding public health emergency. Due to the lack of a public health infrastructure or social safety net in the United States, vulnerable, structurally marginalized, and oppressed people are (and will continue to be) disproportionately harmed during this crisis. This is nowhere more evident than the country’s treatment of criminalized and imprisoned people, who come from communities already subjected to state disinvestment and poor health conditions, and who are put in further danger through their contact with the criminal legal system. These demands, developed by a coalition of organizers across New York, provide a clear and urgent path to free them all and bring our loved ones home from jail, prison, and immigration detention.

This is a living collection of mostly Canada-centric information and resources on the criminalization of COVID-19 responses, with other examples from the US and the rest of the world. It contains further resources around mutual aid, petitions, community action, alternatives to policing during the crisis, and more.

The purpose of this webinar is to share the importance of Mutual Aid as a strategic response to the COVID-19 crisis. This means orienting ourselves to new ways of engaging in organization and strategy. We’ll explain the difference between Mutual Aid and services. We’ll also be sharing some of the basics needed to start mutual aid networks for those that are interested in getting one started.

A report that describes and argues for a new approach to security culture within broad social movements.

Get in Formation is a collection of security and safety practices built by years of learning in the streets from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color movements within the U.S. Developed and edited by safety and security practitioners with a range of 10-40 years experience, this toolkit includes handouts, tips, and worksheets to support you in growing or building your community safety practices and/or teams.