Resources

The Abolitionist Law Center has published a report on policing in Pittsburgh, highlighting glaring racial disparities in traffic stops, frisks, warrantless search and seizures, arrests, and use of force by the City’s police force. Despite these disparities, Mayor Bill Peduto has increased the Police Budget 60% since taking office in 2014, from $72 million to $115 million. It now enconpasses nearly one fifth of the City’s entire operating budget. Furthermore, the year-to-year rate of increase of the police budget went up from an average of 0.75% from 2000-2014 to 8.18% from 2015-2020 under Mayor Peduto, even though violent crime levels in Pittsburgh have been steadily decreasing since the early 1990s.

The Investing in Safety We Can Feel survey was released in October 2020 to help answer the question: “what do our communities need to be safe?” Over 1300 Philadelphia residents responded to the online survey, and their responses show that Philadelphians know that directly investing in communities is how we make them strong, healthy, and safe – not investing in policing.

This toolkit is an introduction to AJC’s vision and strategy for social change. From grassroots organizing to legislative policy work, here is a snapshot of how we take on the big problems.

This document is a community resource for anyone interested in learning about the growing movement to end policing in Canada. It has two roles: one is to explain some of main strategies toward defunding the police and building police-free futures. The other is to map out the growing cross-country movement and to link to ongoing local organizing.

A collection of common questions related to abolition, policing, and incarceration and links to find resources for further education and organizing.

This update to our June 2020 #DefundPolice toolkit reflects victories won across the country, key strategies deployed, some lessons learned – including, tricks, tensions, and roadblocks along the way – and key questions communities are contending with in campaigns to defund police as we look forward to 2021. It contains some excerpts from the original toolkit, but is not intended as a substitute. Our hope is that this report will be read in conjunction with the original #DefundPolice #FundthePeople #DefendBlack Lives toolkit, along with our What’s Next: Safer and More Just Communities Without Policing report and Domestic Violence Awareness Month & Defund Fact Sheet.

Andrea Ritchie joins the show to talk about her research with the group Interrupting Criminalization, specifically their new report looking back on the “Defund the Police” demand in 2020. The discussion begins with a look at the work that Interrupting Criminalization does, and their findings on the various successes and failures activists have had with the “Defund” demand over the last year. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how the state has tried to undermine abolitionist efforts. Toward the end, we speak about the need to fund experimental approaches to harm, including those that might fail.

Families for Justice as Healing organizes to shift power and resources away from policing and incarceration and into Black and Brown communities to address systemic and racist abandonment, disinvestment, and criminalization. Residents are demanding healthcare, housing, treatment, education, arts, culture, community centers, community-led programming, and economic development through employment and cooperative business ownership. Families for Justice as Healing demands systemic change to policing in Boston, toward our long-term goal of removing police from our communities. Police are the first point of contact with the criminal legal system for our members, and the reason women and our families wind up on jail and prison bunks. While we are organizing against the most harmful policing practices and fighting to shift resources from policing into our communities – we are also doing the work to create ways of preventing, responding to, and healing from harm without police and prisons.

Chicago is one of the most heavily surveilled cities in the world. Cameras, automatic license plate readers, cell site simulators and many other surveillance devices are currently used in the city by the Chicago Police Department and its sister agencies. However, many Chicago residents are unaware of the scope of the surveillance systems, their huge cost, and the privacy implications of their use. Lucy Parsons Lab surveys the major parts of the surveillance system in Chicago with respect to costs, capabilities, efficacy, and legal and privacy concerns.