Justice Teams Network is excited to launch our new webinar series, “We Take Care of Us: Community Crisis Response”! Each week we will showcase an innovative model from across the state of how communities are stepping up to address crises themselves without relying on the police.
Our multi-week series will lift up alternative responses to mental health crisis, inter-communal violence, substance abuse, and intimate partner violence. These approaches center healing and transformative justice and prove that we don’t need cops when we have community. #WeTakeCareOfUs
May is mental health month, and we know that alternatives to the police for mental health crisis are more important than ever. Up to 50% of the people killed by law enforcement are in the middle of a mental health crisis. Law enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle these calls, they don’t have adequate training and many of them don’t want the job. These result in unnecessary deaths, trauma and pain. And those who are killed disproportionately Black.
Come learn the tools you will need to bring these innovative models to your community!
In our first webinar, Asantewaa Boykin of Anti Police-Terror Project Sacramento, spoke to Cat about MH First. Many thanks to everyone who attended our first webinar last week on MH First, the groundbreaking alternative to police for mental health crises invented by APTP Sacramento. It was a powerful and uplifting discussion with the brilliant Asantewaa Boykin about how this life-saving new program operates, how you can bring it to your community, and how we must continue to build the world we want to see while dismantling the existing structures that oppress us.
In our second webinar, we were delighted to host our friends Elizeth Virrueta and Anthony Robles, Team Leader Youth Organizers from the Youth Justice Coalition, who spoke with Cat about their inspiring and innovative model, CAT-911: Community Alternatives to 911. Please watch and learn about how they are training teams in the community to respond to neighborhood emergencies without calling 911, including sexual assault, domestic violence, inter-neighborhood conflict, substance abuse and overdose, wounds and injuries requiring emergency medical care, mental health crises, and police violence.
Our third webinar, on May 22, 2020, focused on Healing Justice: a framework for responding to intergenerational trauma and violence in order to transform our communities and movements while building power and resilience. We spoke with Guadalupe Chavez from our very own Justice Teams Network, and her comrade, Melanie Griffin, who have led Healing Justice trainings throughout California. As Director and Deputy Director of Health and Wellness at Dignity and Power Now, together they have spent the past five years using Healing Justice as a strategy to organize, heal, and uplift families directly impacted by state violence. Moderated by JTN Network Coordinator, Annie Banks.
*About our panelists*
Melanie Griffin is an L.A.-based, Black, queer, chronically-ill artist and herbalist, who was born in Georgia. She is deeply invested in collective healing and creative paths that center Black and Brown people. She currently serves as the Deputy Director of Health and Wellness at Dignity and Power Now.
Guadalupe Chavez is a queer abolitionist healer and healing justice practitioner. Both in her role as director of health and wellness at Dignity and Power Now and in her private healing practice, she is dedicated to the liberation and wellness of communities impacted by state violence. She explores the many ways healing justice plays a key role in building sustainable communities and movements and is committed to training communities in healing justice practices that uplift community care, the earth, and the dignity of all people.
Our fifth webinar, on June 26, 2020, we spoke with Vanessa Green and Jerlyne Calixte, the founders and operators of Call BlackLine. BlackLine is 24-hour national hotline designed to protect Black, Black LGBTQI, Brown, Native and Muslim community. BlackLine provides people with an anonymous and confidential avenue to report negative, physical, and inappropriate contact with police and white supremacist vigilantes. BlackLine gathers needed information to share with local community organizers and officials to create the most effective response to police and/or vigilante contact. BlackLine also provides immediate crisis counseling to those who are upset, need to talk with someone immediately, or are in distress. For more info or to Call BlackLine: www.callblackline.com #BlackLine180060458841
Our sixth webinar, we spoke with two leaders in the field: Colsaria Henderson of CORA (Community Overcoming Relationship Abuse), and Jacquie Marroquin of the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence. They’ll be speaking with our Executive Director, Cat Brooks, about why survivors need alternatives to the police, what those alternatives could look like, and how we can address survivors’ urgent needs during Covid-19 as we move towards defunding the police and investing in real community safety and health. We also hosted Jordan Thierry of Healing Together, a project of the Alliance of Boys and Men of Color and PolicyLink, who will share more about the Healing Together program.
Our seventh webinar: This week we hosted Mimi Kim and Mia Mingus, who sat down with our executive director, Cat Brooks, to discuss strategies to intervene, disrupt and heal from interpersonal violence without relying on the state. We’ll talk about what transformative justice is, how it centers survivors’ needs, and how it provides us with a road map for building a world without police.
*About our panelists*
Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of Incite! She has been a long-time activist and advocate challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence. As a second generation Korean American, she locates her political work in global solidarity with feminist anti-imperialist struggles, seeking not only the end of oppression but of the creation of liberation here and now.
Mia Mingus is a writer and educator for disability justice and transformative justice. She is passionate about building the skills, relationships and structures that can transform violence, harm and generational cycles of abuse within our communities and that do not rely on or replicate the punitive system we currently live in. Her writings can be found on her blog, Leaving Evidence.Our eighth webinar: This week, we are honored to welcome Jerry Tello of the National Compadres Network, along with Reina Sandoval-Beverly and Lisa Osborne of STAND! For Families Free of Violence. These three healers and practitioners will sit down with our Executive Director, Cat Brooks, to discuss alternatives to the police for people who have caused harm, the principles and values that guide their work, how we can teach communities & families to recognize violence and intervene safely, and the critical role that culture plays in healing our communities.
About our panelists:
Maestro Jerry Tello is the co-founder and Director of Capacity Building at the National Compadres Network. He comes from a family of Mexican, Texan roots and was raised in south central Los Angeles. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of men and boys of color, fatherhood, family strengthening, racial justice, racial healing, community peace and mobilization and culturally-based violence prevention/intervention issues. Over the last 40 forty years Mr. Tello has dedicated his efforts to “La Cultura Cura” -- or “culture cures” -- to address community transformational healing from the effects of racial inequity and internalized oppression. His ideology is based on a belief that individuals and community have culturally based knowledge and wisdom that can prevent and heal the pain of relationship / community violence. He is the proud father of three children; Marcos, Renee, and Emilio; and grandfather of Amara and Naiya.
Reina Sandoval-Beverly is a longtime activist and advocate with more than 25 years of experience working in community and specifically in the movement to end violence against women. Her work over the years has included work with boys and men in community and within the criminal legal system. She has held various leadership roles in community-based organizations and served on several local and statewide boards and committees including the Cal Casa Board. She is the Director of Programs at STAND! For Families free of Violence. Her most important work is being the mother of two sons and is committed to their liberation and freedom.
Lisa Osborne is the Non-Violence Program Manager at STAND! For Families Free of Violence. She is a community organizer, a fierce advocate and activist that is committed to helping people, especially boys and men of color, restore connections to themselves, their intimate partners, their families and their communities. She graduated from the University of California Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in Social Welfare and Ethnic Studies. Over the years she has worked empowering homeless individuals, families, and at-risk youth to regain a life of self-reliance.
Our ninth and final (for this season!) webinar is on overdose prevention. Last year, more than 70,000 people died of drug overdoses in the US, making it the leading cause of accidental death in the country. Policing is a major driver of the overdose crisis, because people are often too scared of the cops to call 911. We were honored to welcome an expert harm reductionist on the frontline of this issue, Kristen Marshall of the DOPE Project. Kristen talked with our Executive Director, Cat Brooks, about the overdose crisis, her life-saving work to train and equip people who use drugs to respond to overdoses, and the long history of community-led efforts among people who use drugs to keep each other safe.
International Overdose Prevention Awareness Day is coming up on August 31. It’s a reminder that we don’t need to rely on police to save drug-using members of our community because #WETakeCareOfUs!!!!
This is our last webinar for the year...but we’ll be back in January for Season 2! Please let us know if you have suggestions for other topics or examples of community-led response models where you live!
About our panelist
Kristen Marshall is originally from Cary, North Carolina, but found home in San Francisco, where she has lived, loved, danced, and worked for the past 10 years, serving people who use drugs across communities and experiences. Currently, she works at the National Harm Reduction Coalition and manages the Drug Overdose Prevention & Education (DOPE) Project, San Francisco's overdose prevention program and the largest single-city community naloxone distribution program in the country.
