Resources

Funders for Justice created this website for funders because we believe that our collective investments in housing, education, health, transportation, food security, and jobs will fail if we do not also proactively work to divest this nation’s resources from criminalization. Our partners in the field are organizing for divestment from criminalization, and understand that as critical to the work of transforming communities to be truly safe and secure. This website is a toolkit for grantmakers, donors, and funder affinity groups, to help funders in confronting mass criminalization.

This is a moment when people’s anxiety can be greatly increased—and that makes sense given all that is coming at us and happening around us. We know that our health, including our mental health, is inherently political. We offer these resources as part of the Center’s Politicized Healing framework that understands we get to transformative justice when we heal from and dismantle systems of harm while creating new systems of care. Please check out our short workbook, Trauma-Informed Practices During the Coronavirus Pandemic, for support in thinking about how to develop a routine for yourself that can help reduce anxiety and increase resilience. If you are experiencing anxiety, this short workbook provides some tools that you may find helpful.

In response to COVID-19, numerous public health and national security measures are being proposed and implemented across the nation. Historically, states of emergency, mandatory quarantines, and curfews have often been used to expand state control over political and civil freedom. Emergency powers often criminalize movement, freedom of expression, protest, and marginalized communities. Nevertheless, it is important that we know what rights exist to protect ourselves and resist increased policing.

The Playbook is a resource for advocates working at the intersection of mass deportation and mass incarceration. It offers messaging recommendations for some of the most prominent issues that face our communities, including: decriminalizing migration/humane treatment at the border, “sanctuary” policies, gang issues, people in state prisons, and ending detention. The Playbook also offers a set of provocative guest essays that outline the history of policy and messaging on ‘enforcement issues.’

This is a difficult time, and most of us are under enormous pressure. We might be experiencing isolation, illness, income loss, fear for loved ones, loss of loved ones, anxiety, and many other painful circumstances. A mad map is a guide we can make for ourselves, usually best worked on in moments were we are feeling more centered or having more capacity, that we can turn to in moments where things go sideways or we feel ourselves slipping into more difficult states.

This is a living collection of mostly Canada-centric information and resources on the criminalization of COVID-19 responses, with other examples from the US and the rest of the world. It contains further resources around mutual aid, petitions, community action, alternatives to policing during the crisis, and more.

Asian Americans have been targeted by racism and xenophobia related to the coronavirus or COVID-19. Asian Americans Advancing Justice offers the resources in response to this hate.

A resource and guide that offers alternatives to policing.