Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • Police banned from participating in NYC Pride events and march through 2025

    NYC Pride, which commemorates a LGBTQ+ uprising against police harassment and brutality, banned police participation in its events. About 200 NYPD members from the Gay Officers Action League typically participate in the pride march. However, since police presence for some LGBTQ+ people, including people of color and trans people, causes fears of violence rather than security, private companies will provide first response and security and volunteers will be trained in de-escalation tactics. The NYPD will be at least a block away and only intervene if necessary. The policy will be reviewed again in 2025.

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  • Bringing Midwifery Back to Black Mothers

    Black midwifery has deep cultural roots, especially in the South as a remnant of the medical profession's neglect of Black women. Though the tradition largely died out, and nurse-midwives have become more professionalized, the latter-day profession is largely white. Choices, the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, is training Black midwives and returning the practice to its communal roots to give Black mothers better care than they get from mainstream obstetrics and to combat the high maternal-mortality rate in the U.S.

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  • Philly should look to this Oakland program to protect its AAPI community

    In response to a string of hate crimes across the country that has left the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community on edge, a volunteer-led group is standing in solidarity through more than just words. Compassion in Oakland is providing chaperone services to Asian elders. The volunteer-led group is helping the Asian-American community feel safer by accompanying people on their errands and doing street patrols to show solidarity and support.

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  • 'We're dealing with victims': Ride-along offers glimpse at anguished work of crisis teams

    Rochester's Person In Crisis team, launched in response to the death of Daniel Prude in police custody during a mental health crisis, began a six-month pilot project in January. PIC uses a "co-response model" of crisis intervention, sending social workers alone or with police, as first responders or called in by police at a scene, to connect non-violent people with needed services. PIC teams work 24/7, replacing or supplementing police on calls where help, not arrest, will resolve the problem, and empathetic conversation can work better in places where distrust of the police runs high.

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  • Is new California police deadly force law making a difference?

    More than a year after taking effect, California's law restricting when police can use deadly force has had some effects on police accountability and training, but a number of flaws illustrate how long and difficult the process of change will be. The Act to Save Lives, which limits the use of deadly force to cases when it is needed to defend a life, has been cited by prosecutors in two homicide prosecutions. A number of police departments have followed the law's training dictates. But many others have been slow to roll out the training, and the state is not requiring officers to take it to stay certified.

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  • Huge success for Mother's Day bailout, as annual Philly effort blows past fundraising goal

    The Philadelphia Community Bail Fund freed more than 400 people from jail in 2020, thanks to $3 million donated amid the COVID-19 crisis and racial justice protests. Organizers of the Black Mama's Day Bailout, an annual targeted campaign that gave rise to the community bail fund five years ago, expected donor fatigue this year might limit their work. But they exceeded the 2020 Mother's Day campaign, freeing 25 women, in part from sales of art made by formerly incarcerated women in a partnership with an arts co-op. Cash bail penalizes people too poor to afford to remain free before trial.

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  • The Ferguson movement is on the cusp of revolutionizing political power in St. Louis

    Frustrated at the slow pace of criminal justice reform after the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, the grassroots group Action St. Louis formed to seize political power and make change happen from the inside of the system rather than pressuring for change from the outside. After years of organizing and politicking, it flipped key offices – St. Louis city and county prosecutors, the Board of Aldermen, and the mayor – outflanking the police union's candidates with officeholders committed to re-imagining public safety policy.

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  • ‘The fight has to change': Why Ferguson activists ditched police reform

    Decades of advocacy for more effective civilian oversight of police-misconduct investigations in St. Louis finally resulted in a new oversight board created in the wake of the death of Michael Brown in nearby Ferguson. But that board has been rendered a "total failure" because the police found ways to keep steering investigations to their secret, internal investigative office and preventing prosecutors from working independently on investigations. A new mayor and a sympathetic prosecuting attorney promise to fix the structural flaws that have let the police continue to investigate themselves.

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  • After a century of dispossession, Black farmers are fighting to get back to the land

    In the U.S., a movement of Black farmers is trying to reclaim their legacy as agrarians. Only 1.7 percent of farms were run by Black farmers according to the U.S. Census of Agriculture. Black farmers are forming collectives, creating land trusts, creating conferences.

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  • ‘What difference would that make?'

    A participatory budgeting pilot in ten Chicago Public Schools empowers students to influence change by deciding how small grants, typically $1,000 to $2,000, should be spent for school improvement. Students brainstorm ideas, construct persuasive proposals, and vote on which to implement, providing valuable lessons in civic participation. The proposals revealed student needs that staff hadn’t previously considered. Ultimately, grants supported gender-neutral bathrooms, locker room shower curtains, a peer mentoring program, and spaces for students to reflect and decompress when feeling overwhelmed.

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