Read on Twitter
We're catching up on @RVPHTC, @wcpublichealth, & @umichsph's webinar "Policing as a Public Health Issue" featuring @FlemingPaulJ, @mariatho1, & Jimena Loveluck. If you missed it, you can watch it with us here:
"It's important to note that if we want to transform our world in the future, we need to have imagination. We need to understand that change is possible & imagine different futures." @FlemingPaulJ
"Race and class have always been central to ideas of policing. And in the US context, that means that policing was formed for wealthy whites to police communities of color and other poor whites." @FlemingPaulJ
Quoting the 1967 Commission on Law Enforcement & Administration of Justice ("Money for schools is money against crime. Medical, psychiatric, and family counseling are services against crime.") @FlemingPaulJ notes: "Present day calls to defund the police echo these conclusions."
These graphs reveal exactly what the US government values and has valued over time: punishment & white supremacy, rather than health & community well-being.
"Police, often guided by policymakers, are choosing to patrol Black & Latinx neighborhoods. They are choosing to target public housing instead of college dorms. They are choosing to prioritize street drug sales instead of examples of corporate theft." @FlemingPaulJ
Jimena Loveluck from @wcpublichealth speaks on the ways policing & public health intersect w/ HIV criminalization. 32 states have laws criminalizing HIV. "HIV criminalization laws disproportionately affect persons of color & LGBTQ people, potentially exacerbating discrimination."
"Many of you are familiar with the @PublicHealth statement on law enforcement violence as a public health issue. I think the important aspect of this is promoting a public health strategy that centers community safety and prevents law enforcement violence." -Jimena Loveluck
Jimena Loveluck shares the guidance that @HumanImpact_HIP put out on how health departments can address police violence as a public health issue.
You can read that guidance here: https://humanimpact.org/hipprojects/how-health-departments-can-address-police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue
You can read that guidance here: https://humanimpact.org/hipprojects/how-health-departments-can-address-police-violence-as-a-public-health-issue
Centering the need to imagine a different way of thinking about public safety where people's needs are met, @mariatho1 shares these incredible posters created by luna nicole. Explore the rest of the posters here: https://atldsa.org/2018/07/07/alternatives-to-police-poster-series/
"Unfortunately, right now, with the carceral state and the prison industrial complex being what it is, policing & prisons, instead of addressing social problems, are locking up those who are contending under the weight of them." @mariatho1
"The American Public Health Association ( @PublicHealth), in their statement on Advancing Public Health Interventions to Address the Harms of the Carceral System, unequivocally recommends moving towards the abolition of carceral systems." @mariatho1
Yup, what @mariatho1 said: abolition is public health.
Violence cannot remedy violence. AND we need to include police violence and the violence of the carceral state in our understanding of the violence we need to interrupt and prevent. @mariatho1
"What does it look like to address structural issues? It looks like divesting from institutions that don't address the structural issues & reinvesting & reallocating resources in those social determinants, like affordable housing, education, mental health counseling." @mariatho1
"Anti-violence organizations are inviting all of us to invest in these community-based safety strategies and divest from criminalization, which only perpetuates cycles of harm, and move towards true accountability and transformation." @mariatho1
"Procedural reformist reforms do not work. Oftentimes, well-intentioned people in public health ask questions about body cameras, civilian review boards, implicit bias training. The research is very clear: these reforms don't get to the root of the issue." @mariatho1
These examples @mariatho1 pulled from @interruptcrim's work are "tried-and-true, tested programs that are community-based mobile crisis intervention teams... They offer responses that are decoupled from police departments."
Read more from @interruptcrim's report "What's Next? Safer and More Just Communities Without Policing": https://www.interruptingcriminalization.com/whats-next
"We should not be replacing current harmful systems with other harmful systems. From a public health approach, we want to be looking at non-coercive harm reduction type approaches." @mariatho1
"There's a difference between harm & crime. Crime is a socially constructed category that has a long racist history. As public health practitioners, we have to affirm that no one is disposable." @mariatho1
"No one enters violence for the first time through committing it. Everyone is capable of doing harm, everyone is capable of being at the receiving end of harm. We cannot use harm to remedy harm." @mariatho1
"What that movement toward the futures we yearn for will necessitate is assessing how in our own personal lives we manage harm & address conflict. What are the ways we are prefiguring & modeling in our own relationships non-punitive, non-carceral approaches?" @mariatho1
