End Police Violence, End Mass Incarceration, and Decarcerate

Categorized as: Education, Leadership, Poverty Alleviation, Stories, Storytelling, U.S. on June 13, 2020.

Editor’s Note: As Dr. Phillip Goff shared, we are ‘buckling in’ and need you to join us at all levels to end police violence and mass incarceration, but also to eradicate implicit bias and systems that uphold white supremacy and uplift and value Black lives. To that end, NEXUS is leading content every week to help educate and activate our members.

1. Do the work on you.
   • Check out our resources below around implicit bias and white supremacy below for your own study as well as your family, friends, companies, etc.
   • Join us every week where we will be hosting a webinar unpacking our own implicit bias and helping navigate difficult conversations with our circles as well. You can submit questions and needs anytime to be addressed on those calls or to request additional assistance.
2. Assess where you have power and influence and bring them along in your personal work and also collective actions below– e.g. is your company weighing in with the police departments and cities to adopt these standards? Does your foundation invest equitably into Black-led organizations or founders? Do you even track that? Is your family leveraging the investments they already have to ensure companies aren’t using prison labor, has equitable hiring practices, and isn’t invested in the problem? Search within:
   • Your Family and Friends
   • Your religious institution
   • Your School
   • Your Company
   • Your bank and financial institutions
   • Your City/County/State and Country
3. Join NEXUS in collective actions below and host conversations with your circles.

And throughout this process, reach out and let us know what additional resources and conversations we can bring to you and your friends and family to help us all step up.

By Dayo Okewale and Christina Hollenback, NEXUS Working Group Co-Chairs on Equal Justice

Educate Yourself on Unjust Policing: 

• Dr Goff’s Ted Talk

• Hasan Minhaj’s break down of unjust policing

• John Oliver explains calls for defunding the police

• How much we spend on policing
• Policing by the numbers
• The story of Camden disbanding the police

Political Action Regarding Cutting Police Budgets and Ending Police Brutality:

• Actions Specifically for George Floyd
• Actions Specifically for Breonna Taylor
• Congressional Action: Here are the 8 points the Center for Policing Equity and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights are pushing in Congress  
  • Sign your organization on
  • Weigh in with your elected official and ask them to become a champion even if they’re on the state level
  • Ask a candidate or elected official to become a champion at their fundraiser
• Local/Mayor Commitments: Here are the 8 points for Mayors and County Execs
• National Petitions: Here is the Color of Change Platform to organize around
• National Platform: Here is the Movement for Black Lives Platform which also links to many local platforms.  If you don’t see your city in this list, we are happy to connect you

Take Financial Action:

• Support re-allocating police and incarceration budgets to community alternatives for public safety and reinvestment in Black and Brown communities
  • Learn about the call to action
  • Check out how your city fares
• Toolkit for Aligning your Capital for Decarceration: For Investors
  • Screen your publicly traded investments from Private Prisons (GEO, Civicore) and demand your financial institutions stop as well (if they haven’t already)
  • Screen your Municipal Bond assets from Prison and Policing as well as police brutality bonds
    • Sign on the ACRE petition against police brutality bonds
  • Ensure your insurance agencies aren’t enabling police brutality
    • Ensure Police officers take out individual liability insurance policies to cover the costs of settlements and judgments caused by their misconduct, not our tax payer dollars, or police brutality bonds
  • Participate in shareholder activism and ask your friends and family to do so with you.  Activate your proxy in publicly traded companies to not reinforce police violence in their security and loss prevention measures, not use prison or forced labor, to hire formerly incarcerated people, to ensure people of color in the workplace are safe and have upward mobility able to access c suite and board positions. Check out these great resources:
    • Northstar Asset Management and Zevin Wealth Management
    • ICCR
    • Just Capital
  • Participate in shareholder activism with companies that do business with or outsource for police and prisons like Centene, Sodexo, Aramark, etc. to ensure they are providing equitable services.
• Support Organizations doing the work and regranting for local action:
  • Center for Policing Equity
  • Color of Change
  • The Movement for Black Lives
  • Directly to the families of the victims
  • Local BailFunds

End Implicit Bias:

• How to be more than an ally
• White allies stepping up
• How to address our biases? Boldly walk toward them! (Verna Myers)

Educate Yourself:

• Talking About Race
• Being Antiracist
  • Includes book suggestions and resources:
    • How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi
    • Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad
    • Biased Dr. Eberhardt’s work
    • Subtle Acts of Exclusion: How to Understand, Identify, and Stop Microaggressions by Tiffany Jana
    • Raising Our Hands: How White Women Can Stop Avoiding Hard Conversations, Start Accepting Responsibility, and Find our Place on the New Frontlines by Jenna Arnold
• Additional Anti Racist Reading List
• Anti-racist documentaries, Ted talks, books etc.

Raise Anti-Racist Children:

• 37 Children’s books to talk about race and discrimination

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