Resources

Solutions to Violence profiles 18 groups forging new paths to safety and healing that do not rely on the police or incarceration. The report uplifts restorative justice practitioners, community advocates, and other local leaders who are doing the day-to-day work needed to build stronger and healthier communities, help people heal, and hold those who cause harm responsible for their actions.

Police are facing one of the greatest crises of legitimacy in a generation. In the wake of the largest uprisings in U.S. history, sparked by police violence, bloated police budgets, and the deadly impacts of a failure to invest in community health and safety laid bare by the pandemic, pro-police forces are on the defensive. So they are reaching for one of their most reliable weapons — fear.

This is nothing new — cops and policymakers have always used fearmongering to push “law and order” agendas and pour more and more money into police departments. Now, with police budgets under scrutiny by campaigns to defund the police and refund our communities all across the country, lawmakers and the media are once again recycling old talking points about increasing violence and crime, claiming that campaigns to defund police are responsible.

Read our new report to explore data, talking points, and narratives that highlight the fact that COPS DON’T STOP VIOLENCE.

As the national media is shifting its attention away from demands to restructure, defund, and abolish the police, Scalawag’s Abolition Week is an appeal to keep these conversations at the forefront. This week, we’re only publishing work by or about incarcerated writers, artists, and thinkers in an effort to center their experiences and their humanity.

Whether you’ve never heard of abolition, have questions about what it means, or are already deeply committed to the work—the journey toward abolition is an ongoing process, and it’s one that we are all on together. This journey involves both changing our systems and our personal mentalities.

The Collective Freedom Project is a website and digital space made to uplift the work of advocates across the country working to dismantle narratives that criminalize our communities for cross-sector solidarity.

Though the campaign ended in 2019, this organizing toolkit was developed over the past year plus by #NoCopAcademy youth and adult alumni who wanted to share out how we did what we did (because people kept asking us), to document our work, and to share it with the hundreds and thousands of young people taking action today to defund policing, get cops out of our schools, and build abolitionist futures. Campaigns are an important tool for building power, and we wanted to break down all the parts that went into ours.

A collection of resources about campus policing and ways to get cops off campus.

Mennonite Church USA (MC USA) received requests across the denomination to provide an Anabaptist grounded resource for clergy and congregations to engage in learning about the call for police abolition. When we confess “Jesus is lord” we are leaving behind systems that operate by coercion, violence and punishment. Mennonites have long recognized that following Jesus occurs in our bodies and with our lives. We remove ourselves from military service because we refuse to harm or kill people at the direction of the state. We affirm that all people are made in the image of God. We believe that it is incumbent upon the church to discuss and discern policing as another form of state-sanctioned violence.

This curriculum is an initial guide for congregations who are desiring to begin or continue their reflection on what it means to engage the forces of state, their commitments to non-violence and how to act to end policing and police brutality.

The intent of this toolkit is to further the movement to #DefundCPD, and the larger movement to abolish all forms of police. Our goals are to educate and to share resources for individuals, groups, and organizations to have conversations about abolition. This toolkit grounds the conversation in real-world examples in Chicago and elsewhere, and interrogates our society’s narratives about the police. We also intend to make resources we’ve used in Chicago accessible to those around the country. We believe in a vision of dismantling toxic carceral systems, and building real systems of community safety. With education, solidarity, and collective action, we are building a world without police.

This week on Intercepted: Organizer and educator Mariame Kaba talks to lead producer Jack D’Isidoro about the case, efforts born out of the uprisings of this past summer, and the role hope plays in building a long-term abolitionist movement. Whether she’s breaking down the historical foundations of the carceral state or laying out a framework for mutual aid, Kaba works tirelessly to reimagine and create a system not rooted in punishment and oppression. They also discuss her new book “We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice.”