Resources

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

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.

Police Abolition 101 is a collaborative zine based on material by MPD 150 and on a report titled “What’s Next?” edited by Interrupting Criminalization and Project NIA. It was illustrated and designed by Noah Jodice. Feel free to share this zine with members of your communities who have questions about police abolition.

A collection of the names, pictures, and circumstances around police killings of Black individuals in America in the past few years.

While school divisions claim to have received positive feedback on police in schools from staff and students, it’s important to understand how policing targets marginalized groups. The prejudicial practices of police unevenly impact the student body and community. For this reason, a vote of confidence from those least affected by policing is meaningless. This FAQ page outlines responses from a survey that intends to center the voices of those directly impacted by police profiling and violence.

This list is a work in progress and includes the names of Black people killed in the U.S. by police and by civilians. This website also includes a list of action items and further resources for understanding racism and police violence in America.

Project NIA believes strongly in the value and importance of creative resistance. We use art (in its various forms) to communicate with a broad array of individuals about the injustice of the prison industrial complex. To that end, we invited artists (youth & adults) to contribute prints and posters relating to policing, violence, and resistance. We are thrilled to be able to exhibit art created by Sarah Atlas, students from Bowen High School, Billy Dee, Eric Garcia, Leigh Klonsky, LuchArte, Eva Nagao, Mauricio Pineda, Ariel Springfield and Stephanie Weiner.

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.