Resources

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.

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.

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.

On November 20th, Triad Abolition Project, Hate Out Of Winston, and Drum Majors Alliance co-signed a letter to city council, which did not receive a response from any Council member nor the city’s Mayor. On November 29th, the Winston-Salem Journal published “Police-spending critics call on city to discuss their concerns.” The People’s Report is a community dialogue in response to the Journal’s story, and continued conversation on the topic of divesting from WSPD as our city approaches the FY2021-2022 budget cycle.

This report was written by Pascal Emmer, Woods Ervin, Derecka Purnell, Andrea J. Ritchie, and Tiffany Wang for the COVID19 Policing Project, hosted by the Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability. It gathers and expands on regular project updates, and is the first in a series on the impacts of policing and criminalization in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.

This new collaborative document edited by Mariame Kaba outlines ten major steps required to successfully launch a new paradigm for real safety, and includes helpful messages and responses for those with doubts, existing institutions that help create real safety, a deeper dive on police and prison abolition, and more models to explore.

This report is based on rich interviews and engagement with movement technologists, organizers, researchers, and policy advocates about what liberation from surveillance and criminalization can actually look like. Astraea and Research Action Design (RAD) created this report as a resource for funders to understand what is at stake and what opportunities exist to support critical organizing at the intersections of decriminalization and technology. Throughout this report, you will read about surveillance, carceral technologies, criminalization, and policing. In some instances, we speak about these practices in tandem, and, in others, we hone in on one to provide deeper insight, but please bear in mind that these processes and practices—and their consequences—are inextricably linked.

This memo assesses the current landscape of work surrounding police abolition and reviews alternatives to policing in the context of police abolitionist frameworks, offering insight and sharing successful strategies for advocates in the field. This memo also offers several recommendations for advocates, activists, and organizers working on alternatives to policing as well as a list of resources. As communities develop strategies for keeping themselves safe from various threats and for managing various crises and emergencies, they also focus on harm from policing, including police violence and police harassment. Communities have approached this in several ways. Some advocates and organizations, such as Critical Resistance, argue that police and policing needs to be abolished altogether in order to recreate a model of public safety that is not centered on punishment and control. Some advocates argue for implementing a divest/invest framework that includes defunding of police and reinvestment of those funds in developing community infrastructure, such as community-based violence intervention, hospitals, jobs, mental health programs, and schools. This approach targets the underlying causes of harm and builds out alternatives to existing models of public safety.