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

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  • These Black Students Have Fought Over-Policing In Schools for Years

    The Minneapolis school board’s vote to remove police from public schools arose not only from protests over the police killing of George Floyd, but also from a long-term advocacy project to end the so-called school-to-prison pipeline. Local youth activists for years have piggybacked on a national movement to stop the racially disparate practice of criminalizing student misbehavior. A coalition of groups, nationally and in Minneapolis, marshaled evidence of the racial inequity of such policing and the benefits of reinvesting the money saved on police in restorative justice programs and other services.

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  • Food drives around Chicago continue a tradition of revolutionaries feeding the community

    Many organizations are holding food drives, providing hot meals, and delivering essential items like groceries and diapers to children and their communities in underserved Chicago neighborhoods. Based on a tradition of providing free breakfast to kids started by the Black Panther Party, the initiatives began as a way to serve those participating in Black Lives Matters protests and shifted to reach communities, most of which are food deserts that rely on corner stores that have closed because of protests. The communities have many needs and some organizations plan on continuing to provide additional services.

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  • For Indigenous Zapotec Families, Spinning Becomes a Lifeline

    Mark Brown has brought Ghandian economic principles of economic justice and local autonomy to the Mexican countryside to form a farm-to-garment textile business that employs villagers who once made woolen textiles until the industrial clothing era started producing cheap synthetic clothing and rendered their craft unprofitable. Khadi Oaxaca aims to regenerate the village way of life in a sustainable way and employs several hundred villagers who grow the cotton, spin the thread, design the clothing and bring it to market for tourists - bringing a previously economically depressed village out of poverty.

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  • How nonprofits are getting people out of metro Detroit jails during COVID-19 pandemic

    Nonprofit bail funds, which use donated money to pay the bail of low-income people held in jail on pending charges, have won the release of about 55 people in Detroit during the COVID-19 crisis. Beyond the immediate need to free more people from an environment that makes social distancing difficult, the bail funds are part of a larger movement challenging a system that disproportionately affects people of color. The combination of bail payments, bond reductions, and administrative releases have reduced Wayne County's jail population by almost half.

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  • How Violence Interrupters Brokered An End To Anti-Black Attacks In A Latino Neighborhood Audio icon

    When protests against police violence turned into looting and anti-Black violence in some Latinx neighborhoods, violence interrupters from groups such as UCAN, EnLace, and Chicago CRED brokered a peace agreement that almost immediately ended that violence. The outreach workers’ years-long relationships and training in dispute mediation gave them credibility to address historic racial tensions among gangs in Lawndale and Little Village. The violence could have escalated, but three days of negotiation – and a sense of common cause against racism in policing – united the neighborhoods.

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  • How Decades Of Bans On Police Chokeholds Have Fallen Short

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

    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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  • Organizing for Help in a Pandemic

    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

    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?

    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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