Resources

This resource is a living document as part of an ongoing series in response to COVID-19. This crisis is not an isolated moment in time. Policing, capitalism, and public health in the US have always been a crisis, and everything we’re fighting for right now is what we’ve long demanded.

This report examines in detail the experience of working-class immigrant, Black and Brown New Yorkers during this crisis. Based on a survey of 244 primarily Latinx immigrants across New York City, Long Island, and Westchester, one third of whom are undocumented, it provides striking findings related to the pandemic’s toll on community members’ health, income and work, housing insecurity, and education.

A toolkit on the “Addressing Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue” policy statement made in 2018 by the American Public Health Association (APHA) that shares ideas about the action steps, organizing talking points, and a worksheet for implementing the APHA statement where you are.

These documents provide information using a public health lens for families, organizers, and advocates who are demanding a response to this pandemic that upholds human dignity and prioritizes healing, not policing and incarceration.

DC has another unique opportunity to be leaders in the effort to protect residents during COVID-19. The District can change lives and utilize federal funds to keep DC functional as we recover from the pandemic. The CARES ACT gives our city leadership wide latitude in how those federal funds can be used.

The question we should be asking is this: will DC prioritize taking progressive measures to advance public health and safety in our communities by investing in housing, health care, and income for all? Or will we allow police departments throughout the District to waste vital resources on trying to police our way out of a pandemic, harming and disappearing drug users, Sex Workers, LGBTQ folks, and Black and Brown community members in the process?

A letter on the criminalization of COVID-19 response and recommendations for Congress to address the issue.

A new toolkit from Community Justice Exchange and Defender Impact Initiative for folks working to end mass criminalization and incarceration, who have taken to social media to share the injustices they witness or experience in courtrooms, whether as public defenders, court watching groups, or individual advocates.

Every day, new policies stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic are making it far easier for government and private companies to collect and share vast amounts of personal and private health information. While this data is critically important from a public health standpoint, there are many unknowns around its future use. We must be aware and informed to ensure that public health emergencies are not misused to increase deportation, criminalization, and further harm to the health of immigrant, Black, and Brown communities.

Decades of organizing to end the prison industrial complex has prepared Critical Resistance and movements for liberation to respond to the COVID-19 emergency with a focus on putting people’s immediate well-being first, tapping into communities’ knowledges about how to build structures for support and mutual aid, and moving forward with a vision for long-term building. This platform is an offering to our movements, and we hope that it will inspire communities to continue articulating and using abolition as a powerful strategy in a time of uncertainty, hope, and solidarity.