Resources

Thirty years after the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, lawmakers are still spreading anti-trans and anti-queer rhetoric, but, instead of taking responsibility for the resulting violence, they sold this story of the need for more police, more criminalization.

And once again, instead of answering our community’s clear demands for housing, direct financial assistance, and access to healthcare, President Biden signed yet another hate crimes bill into law. Same old story, same old false promise. And it’s time we say no to this false promise and demand more.

To interrogate the impact of hate crime legislations, TLC conducted interviews with community members and consulted an advisory board of experienced organizers addressing policing, sex work, ableism, anti-Blackness, and more. The following messages and materials were created through such research.

In this report, we find that the militarized portion of this budget is by far its largest single component. And yet the same legislators demanding billions in discretionary savings have vowed to exempt that militarized spending from any cuts. Instead, they’ve targeted the much smaller portion that funds human and community needs for even deeper cuts.

This report shows just how over-militarized our federal discretionary spending already is. We argue that this militarized spending has done far more harm than good, while our consistent under-investment in human needs has made us much less safe. Finally, we make recommendations for getting our national priorities right in the future.

The Abolition Working Group steering committee is pleased to share our Abolition Toolkit with you. Why make a toolkit when organizations like Critical Resistance and Interrupting Criminalization have already produced so many wonderful resources?

We wanted to lift up the abolitionist projects being done in DSA by chapters across the country and make clear the connection between abolition and socialism. We do not believe you can have one without the other.

For all of the working class to achieve collective liberation we must constrain, diminish, and abolish the carceral forces of the state — from prisons and police themselves, to their manifestations in all forms throughout society. -DSA’s Political Platform

Non-profit organizations like police foundations can be tricky to research due to limited public disclosure requirements. In this research training we’ll walk through a variety of tools and tips that can help you find key information.

A visual data map tracing the $60 million in ‘private’ capital the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) promised to build Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia.

Chicagoans deserve real community safety—a city in which every child has a fair opportunity to grow up and achieve their full potential and every resident has the resources they need to thrive. Communities that invest in their people are safe communities. Parents in towns with well-funded public schools, public parks and libraries with a lot of youth programs, and strong public health infrastructure don’t fear for their kids’ lives every time they let them out of the house. Cities with good jobs, free public transit, and free child care give residents the opportunity to provide for their families. Real community safety comes from addressing the underlying issues that lead to crime and violence. The proposals in this report would generate $12 billion in new revenue and savings that we could invest in our people and neighborhoods.

Never heard of police foundations? That’s the point. Behind closed doors, police foundations and their corporate sponsors privately fund the ongoing militarization and expansion of policing – targeting Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. Color Of Change and LittleSis have compiled the most extensive report to date of the links between police foundations and corporations, identifying over 1,200 corporate donations or executives serving as board members at 23 of the largest police foundations in the country.

This report from the frontlines chronicles ongoing victories in efforts to reduce police budgets, increase investment in meeting community needs and building community-based institutions, and grow movements to divest from the violence of policing. Summarizing lessons learned over the past two years, it calls on movements and philanthropic organizations to make deep and long-term investments in organizing toward the world our communities deserve.

Over the past few years, there has been growing attention to the violence of policing and obstacles to police accountability and community safety that does not rely on police. With this heightened attention, the role and influence of police unions/fraternal organizations/associations has entered the spotlight, sparking discussions and debate over how to challenge obstacles posed by police union power.1 As calls grow to address police union power, so too does apprehension around targeting what many assume functions as a typical labor union. Some caution that critiques of police unions is a slippery slope that can only lead to negative consequences for all public sector unions, not just those for police unions.