Resources

Created by the Interrupting Criminalization Initiative (a member of the Movement for Black Lives), this is a toolkit designed to advance a long term vision of abolition of police through divestment from policing as a practice, dismantling policing institutions, and building community-based responses to harm, need, and conflict that do not rely on surveillance, policing and punishment.

Understanding violence through a public health lens addresses the crime as well as the environment in which the crime took place. This is done by taking into account the risk and protective factors that surround a person, their community and the community in which they live. Reimagining public safety means identifying community-led and/or supported solutions and strategies that stop the bleeding today and investing in the dismantlement of the systems of inequity.

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.

This kit is designed to consolidate the information regarding Invest Divest strategy and resources for Louisville, Kentucky. This kit is intended to be used for the following: refer to this document for campaigning at the social media level, share this document with your base, and hold teach-ins and trainings on the uses of narrative and social media for this campaign, post directly from your own personal channels, and share to and from the partner organizations listed here.

The ongoing scourge of police terrorism has reinvigorated an important national conversation about policing and incarceration — their history, purpose, and practice. While some have called for reforms, like stricter use-of-force policies and enhanced body cam protocols for officers, others have demanded more sweeping change. “Abolition for the People,” a project produced by Kaepernick Publishing in partnership with LEVEL, seeks to end that debate once and for all. Over the next four weeks, the project will publish 30 stories from organizers, political prisoners, scholars, and advocates — all of which point to the crucial conclusion that policing and prisons do not serve as catch-all solutions for the issues and people the state deems social problems.

This is a video collaboration with Project Nia & Blue Seat Studios. This four-minute animated video is made with young people in mind but can be a useful introduction to basic #DefundPolice concepts for all ages. People have a lot of ideas about policing. And our ideas about policing are shaped by our race, our genders, our class, and our parents. Dominant culture, especially mass media sells us the image of “Officer Friendly.” But whose experience is that actually based on?

This toolkit has been designed with a few goals in mind, one being to offer a theoretical grounding and political education around policing broadly and within the context of schools. Now is the time for school communities to implement what has been a growing national vision of removing police from public school systems. GGE hopes that this toolkit provides context and language to actively participate in that discourse and shift the dialogue from one of ‘bad apples’ vs ‘caring cops’ to one that addresses the systemic racism our young people are subject to on a daily basis due to the presence of police in their schools.

National and local research consistently demonstrates that the presence of police in schools serves as an entry point to the school-to-prison pipeline and disproportionately harms Black, Indigenous and LatinX students; students with disabilities; and students in need who are furthest from opportunity. We can take an important step to dismantling the school to prison pipeline by investing in a students’ success and in student support instead of a culture of criminalization in our schools.

The call “we keep us safe” reminds us that solutions should empower all people, including Disabled and Neurodivergent people, to exercise our self-determination with care and understanding. We all deserve the resources, support, training and education we need to love and protect ourselves and one another. This resource divides into three sections: Cripping Abolition, Guiding Principles Based on Disability Justice, and Reforms to Oppose.