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This Seattle protest zone is police-free. So volunteers are stepping up to provide security.

Gregory Scruggs

June 16, 2020 |

The Washington Post |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Seattle, Washington

In Seattle's police-free street encampment that sprang up during protests over policing abuses, a mostly unarmed group of volunteer "sentinels" has defused a number of potential problems while largely avoiding the use of force. Trained in de-escalation and mediation tactics, the sentinels have used listening techniques to understand people's anger or mental state. Among the incidents they have addressed: fights, attempted vandalism of storefronts, visits from armed people who wanted to confront a supposed leftist threat, and the attempted arson of a police precinct building.

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How Decades Of Bans On Police Chokeholds Have Fallen Short

Monika Evstatieva Tim Mak

June 16, 2020 |

NPR |

Radio |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States

One of the key police reforms sought after the death in Minneapolis of George Floyd, bans on chokeholds and other neck restraints, has failed to curb abuses in some of the nation’s largest police departments because of lax enforcement and easily found loopholes in such policies. Despite existing bans, some as old as 30-40 years, multiple people in those cities have died when neck restraints were used during their arrests with few repercussions. Lack of effective training and disagreements over such tactics’ efficacy are among other reasons experts say the practice persists.

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Organizing for Help in a Pandemic

Madeline St. Amour

June 16, 2020 |

Inside Higher Ed |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Graduate students at several major universities organized to secure benefits during the Covid-19 pandemic. For example, the University of Illinois Graduate Employees Organization fought for and won the expansion of mental health services and summer health care coverage, as well as free summer housing for international graduate students who cannot return home due to travel restrictions. After graduate students at the University of Texas Austin demonstrated and 1,400 signed a petition, the dean granted expanded funding opportunities and a commitment to finding a healthcare plan that ensures no coverage gap.

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Youth Are Flipping an Abandoned North Carolina Prison into a Sustainable Farm

Christina Cooke

June 15, 2020 |

Civil Eats |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Wagram, North Carolina

A former North Carolina prison has been reclaimed by the nonprofit Growing Change to teach sustainable farming to youth who otherwise might be doomed to their own prison terms without an effective intervention. The 9-year-old program, while small, is meant to serve as a model for reusing many other shuttered prisons as the nation’s incarceration numbers fall. Boasting positive effects on recidivism, the program’s focus is the racially diverse youth of the rural, impoverished eastern part of the state – the same people who disproportionately get imprisoned.

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Can implicit bias training help cops overcome racism?

Candice Wang

June 15, 2020 |

Popular Science |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Implicit racial bias has solid scientific grounding, and training programs to make police officers aware of it and overcome its effects in their work have been widely embraced. But it is hard to measure whether such training reduces police brutality and racially disparate law enforcement. And there are many ways in which such programs fail, in part by force-feeding entire police departments a message they resist. There are ways to cure these flaws, including by making it voluntary and letting its lessons ripple out more organically in a police department.

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The Doctor Healing Wounds of War in Basilan

Martin San Diego

June 14, 2020 |

Medium |

Multi-Media |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Philippines, Lamitan City, Basilan

By fostering dialog between the military and rebel soldiers in a region long afflicted with violence, a physician whose clinic exposed her to children’s severe PTSD has helped heal the effects of trauma and the scars of war. Save the Children of War in Basilan has gone beyond its focus on child health and welfare to broker reconciliation talks between rebel groups and the military, in large part by getting both sides to see their opponents’ motives through a new lens. Kidnappings, once rampant, have been nonexistent since 2016.

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How Massachusetts v. EPA Forced the U.S. Government to Take On Climate Change

Sam Evans-Brown

June 13, 2020 |

New Hampshire Public Radio |

Radio |

Over 15 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Massachusetts

In order to get the U.S. government to take action on climate change, 30 environmental groups and 12 state governments joined forces to sue the Environmental Protection Agency arguing that it was required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions according to the Clean Air Act. While the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in their favor in the landmark Massachusetts v. EPA case in 2007, the justices’ decision didn’t specify how to reduce that pollution and future lawsuits could challenge the government’s requirement to reign in those emissions.

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Two Countries Dismantled Their Police to Start Fresh. It Worked—Up to a Point.

Yaroslav Trofimov

June 13, 2020 |

Wall Street Journal |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: Ukraine

Georgia and Ukraine offer cautionary advice to Americans whose mass protests seek structural changes in policing, even abolishing entire police forces. The same was true in those two countries. But, in both cases, initial successes at replacing corrupt police forces ended up reversed or at least limited by backsliding, as other parts of government and society resisted the changes.

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The City that Really Did Abolish the Police

Katherine Landergan

June 12, 2020 |

Politico |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Camden, New Jersey

A decade after Camden crime and police relations hit bottom, and five years after President Obama lauded its new police department as a model for reform, the city's successful reboot of its police force offers both encouragement and cautionary notes for a radical makeover of a police department. Excessive force rates and homicides have both dropped. A toothless disciplinary system has been replaced. But, while residents agree conditions have improved, they point to a number of changes still needed after the entire department was replaced.

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The Camden Police Department Is Not A Model For Policing In The Post-George Floyd Era

Brendan McQuade

June 12, 2020 |

The Appeal |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, Camden, New Jersey

Hailed as an example of a successful, radical makeover of a police department, Camden's policing actually represents only a slight shift, from mass incarceration to its close cousin, mass supervision through surveillance and a continued reliance on broken-windows-style over-policing. Much of the city's reform consists of slick rebranding; for example, hot spots policing turns into "guardian zones," but the effect on residents is similar. Policing and conditions have improved, but not for the reasons that police reformers would like to think.

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