Resources

Calls for reform suggesting the deployment of social workers instead of police in our communities overlook the past and present damage done by the child welfare system as co-conspiring with police. The primary goal of this brief is to discuss the ways the Department of Children and Family Services is interconnected with police through data sharing, predictive analytics, and direct partnership. We see this brief as just the beginning of a larger endeavor in understanding the harm of the child welfare system on children and families.

Toolkit for the Movement is a collection of resources from the Center for Constitutional Rights to support and protect our communities. We’ve long known the authoritarian playbook; these resources are chapters in the People’s Playbook. The resource contains: the newly-updated If An Agent Knocks, offering information and advice for individuals targeted by the FBI or other federal agents; FOIA Basics for Activists, updated with a case study and annotated FOIA requests, which breaks down how to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a tool that anyone can use to expose government and corporate actions and equip themselves with the information they need to organize; and, together with Immigrant Defense Project, an updated version of our Defend Against ICE Raids and Community Arrests Toolkit to resist the criminalization, deportation, family separation and much more.

A resource detailing a few key facts about police response to domestic violence and highlighting defunding police as a survivor led anti-violence strategy that stops police from looting resources survivors need to prevent, avoid, escape and heal from violence – and puts more money into violence prevention and interruption, and meeting survivors’ needs.

A database containing several thousand data points on over 3,000 city and local police departments and sheriffs’ offices nationwide, allows citizens, journalists, and academics to review details about the technologies police are deploying, and provides a resource to check what devices and systems have been purchased locally. Built using crowdsourcing and data journalism over the last 18 months, the Atlas of Surveillance documents the alarming increase in the use of unchecked high-tech tools that collect biometric records, photos, and videos of people in their communities, locate and track them via their cell phones, and purport to predict where crimes will be committed.

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.

In response to the expanding criminalization of reproductive autonomy through increasing restrictions on abortion and reproductive care, and the growing criminalization of pregnant people and parents, a group of reproductive justice and anti-criminalization organizers and advocates came together in May 2019 to develop a shared analysis and resistance strategies. This preliminary list of policies which can contribute to increased surveillance, policing, criminalization, and punishment of pregnant people, parents, and providers emerged from these conversations. This document is intended to inform policymakers and advocates concerned about reproductive justice, intimate partner and domestic violence, public health, and criminalization about the potential consequences of the policy approaches outlined below, and to offer alternative strategies that carry less risk of contributing to the criminalization of reproductive autonomy.

“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.