***Are you exploring ‘'community accountability', alternatives to 'punishment' & ‘policing’? LISTEN TO THIS ❤ Listen to Black leaders & survivors. Mariame Kaba has been working on 'transformative justice', sexual & gender based violence, & abolition for a long time.*** For folks who want to practice abolition, read the caption + first comment of this IG post by Ericka Hart

Short link for sharing this doc: bit.ly/aznsplzdobetter.
How to navigate this document’s 5 sections:

  1. Introduction 
  2. Ways we can take action (knowing that this needs to be ongoing & lifelong)
  3. Black-led organizing to $upport
  4. Resources for us to educate ourselves & our communities (yes, there is a section on prison abolition)
  1. OTHER RESOURCE GUIDES (highly recommend the following guides: this comprehensive conversation guide for Black Lives Matter, this incredible 56 page Southeast Asian Anti-Racism Toolkit & Asian American Racial Justice Toolkit & Addressing Anti-Blackness within the Vietnamese/Chinese & Asian Community)
  2. UPCOMING EVENTS
  3. FOUNDATIONS + OVERVIEWS (if you’re new to concepts of Asian anti-Blackness, reparations, transformative justice, prison abolition, disability justice -I encourage you to spend time here + the introductions section)
  4. BLACK ACTIVISTS TO FOLLOW (will keep adding)
  5. “ASIAN” SPECIFIC RESOURCES
  6. IN LANGUAGE / TRANSLATED RESOURCES (like this incredible list of translated resources)
  7. WHY ABOLISH POLICE & PRISONS?
  8. OTHER EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
  9. HOW TO UNDERSTAND PROTESTS, “LOOTING” & RIOTING 
  1. Important questions for people with Black co-workers / colleagues

SEEKING FEEDBACK + COLLABORATORS: I expect to make mistakes and welcome feedback.This guide has been viewed ~1500 times & the feedback has been generally positive, which is why I’m still continually updating it. HOWEVER I am becoming aware of other resource guides and have no interest in duplicating efforts. Let me know if you want to collaborate &/or if there are other efforts I can merge with, or if there are other comprehensive guides so I can stop. You can provide info + feedback by 1) commenting directly on this doc 2) emailing me 3) DMing me on IG

INTRODUCTION 

By now, we should know that at least 1 of the cops involved in the murder of George Floyd is Asian. For ~9 minutes in a chokehold, George urged the cops to stop, repeatedly gasping "I cant breathe". The cops knew they were being filmed & seemed confident they would get away with murder -it wouldn’t be the first time. Of the 7,666 times U.S. police killed people from 2013 - 2019, 0.3% resulted in a conviction. Cops are almost never convicted for killing (1, 2). Here is an article & a shorter IG post on how the supreme court gave cops immunity to kill. Here are some important facts about police killings in general. How police arrest people towards the end of their shift to get overtime. Overview about the school to prison pipeline 
Read this: George Floyd’s autopsy and the structural gaslighting of America. And this: Performing Whiteness. Read this: FAQs about Prison Abolition. Read this: Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police. Here is more context about policing Black people the weekend George was murdered. This isn't just happening in Minnesota, Kentucky, & Tallahassee. This is happening everywhere, around the world, all the time. It's just that every now and then it's caught on video. Want an overview of the difference between reforming, defunding, & abolishing police? Watch this informative ~6 min video. Learn more from Black + brown leaders who have been working on police + prison abolition for a long time.

Here is a resource that provides a great overview on police brutality, the Black Lives Matter movement, and police abolition. They answer frequently asked questions like: What is the history of policing? What is the evidence that policing is racist? I don’t live in the U.S., my country’s police are fine right? I don’t understand why people have to loot and riot? But wasn't the civil rights movement peaceful? Why isn’t police reform enough? Without police, how would we deter crime and keep people safe? Frequently asked questions about “All Cops Are Bastards” (IG POST -very informative overview)
IG post with informative overview of “systemic racism”   

To be clear. Asian cops aren’t the only Asians killing Black people. I bring this up because policing is not the only aspect & agent of our anti-Black racism. For example, in 1991, Soon Ja Du, a Korean woman storekeeper, shot & killed 15 year old Black girl Latasha Harlins over a $1.69 bottle of orange juice. George Floyd had the cops called on him by a store clerk who suspected him of using a fake $20 bill. If you don’t know about the history of Latasha Harlinsread: 1) How the Killing of Latsha Harlins changed South L.A. Long Before Black Lives Matter 2) New Doc Reminds Us That Latasha Harlins Life Mattered 3) Du was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation, 400 hours of community service, and a $500 fine.

Let’s also be clear that anti-Black racism is global. China blames Africans for spreading coronavirus, while continuing their imperial/colonial oppression in Africa. Joint solidarity statement on global anti-Blackness against African migrants in China during COVID-19 (there are Mandarin versions of this-simplified & traditional). We cannot be silent about our role & responsibility for violence against Black people. We need to commit to the lifelong work of getting rid of anti-Black racism in ourselves, communities, institutions, & systems. To start, here are 30 ways Asians perpetuate Anti-Blackness +  10 Habits That Are Anti-Black. Also, “Performative allyship is deadly, here’s what to do instead”.  
Do NOT share any images/videos of violence against Black people, it's threatening & traumatizing. Seriously, stop. Addressing our anti-Black racism will take ongoing learning, humility & accountability. Speaking about anti-Black racism & supporting Black liberation does NOT mean speaking for Black people. Instead of speaking about Black people, we should focus on WHY we think we get to debate the "worthiness" & "humanity" of Black lives -that itself is anti-Black racism. “Repeat after me, I will not tell Black people how to feel, protest, or mourn...I will challenge power structures that seek to deny the voices and experiences of Black people.”


If you aren't already, follow these 6 Black activists: Estelle Ellison & Bree Newsome & Ericka Hart & patrisse cullors & Sonya Renee Taylor & Imani Barbarin. Here are 8 Black women with disabilities to follow. Here are important questions to consistently ask ourselves while doing this work -for the rest of our lives. Organize locally, $upport local Black organizers + organizations. Angela Davis: this moment holds possibilities for change we've never seen before.

 

Why we don't say “peaceful” protest
What have protests helped accomplish so far? 

How to respond to people blaming the Black Lives Matter protests for spreading COVID-19 

Again, want a great overview of the difference between reforming, defunding, & abolishing police? Watch this informative ~6 min video

Read this: FAQs about Prison Abolition. IG post on the differences between “reformist reform” & “abolitionist reform” in policing. As we hear calls to divest from police and invest in social services we also need to understand how social work/social services are also designed to punish and criminalize Black people (I’m still working on this doc). Here is just 1 out of countless reasons why anyone should really reconsider advocating for “police reforms”:  In 1993, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) banned the use of chokeholds. 11 years later, in 2014 Eric Garner died from NYPD chokehold. Between 2014 and 2020, the New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board reported 996 allegations from people who say they had been subjected to a chokehold. Trust that there have been countless attempts to “reform” the police. And trust that those reforms aren't working because the police system -like all institutions & systems of whiteness in AmeriKKKa are designed to dehumanize, harm, kill, exclude Black people.

Slavery Was Never Fully Abolished (IG post with overview of connection between slavery - 13th amendment - police - crime - prisons)
Learn more by watching 13th by Ava Duverney (it’s on youtube for free) -just watch it. 
Learn more about the U.S. police systems connection to anti-Blackness -early version of police system was to catch “slaves” (1, 2).

#1 SOME WAYS WE CAN TAKE IMMEDIATE ACTION 

Updated June 22nd: I am thinking about the evolution + contradictions of this section. In the first week, much of the “immediate actions” on this guide were directing people to pressure government officials to fire &/or arrest cops. The second week, the guide directed people to support campaigns to defund the police & prison abolition. There are some tensions there. Here is an instagram post (read caption + first comment) that speaks to the tension + here is an article helping me think/feel through the tensions. :


From Ericka Hart: (please read):

“I have been thinking a lot about folks speaking more about abolition. And it appears to be brought up mostly when it comes to calling for the arrest of white police officers, like a coded way to again protect white people.

⠀

As a Black person, it’s honestly very hard for me to even consider abolition for a white person considering the vile and wicked things they have done and continue to do to Black people. Abolition is necessary and I feel that sometimes it’s slapped on as a tactic to protect an abuser rather than comforting and meeting the demands of the abused first. I was reading an article about how Breonna Taylor’s family has been denied over and over again by the state of Kentucky the record of what happened the night she was murdered. They have denied her family this information TEN times and they have every policing structure backing them to continue denying it without consequence.

⠀

Abolitionist are pointing to that the system is harmful and that it acts discriminately - it can not all of a sudden work indiscriminately because we are talking about punishment/consequences. This is real life. NOT theoretical. And something must be done until we abolish the police. Bringing the harmful through restoration processes/transformative justice/community care (what does community care look like in a white supremacist country?) has to be up to the harmed - and right now her family is demanding that we get answers so these folks can be held accountable in the only way this country has outlined.

⠀

Policing comes in many forms - I think it’s important to note that abolishing the police isn’t reserved just for the institutions of police and prisons, but it also includes not policing people’s anger and desire for punishment. Regardless of what is done, there is no bringing back the folks who were taken from this earth violently.

People are not dying at the hands of police so you can have a stepping stone for your abolition work. So the police can get their long awaited community care for murdering the community. Fuck outta here. People are spending time trying to pull peoples’s cards around being an abolitionist or not but y’all are not coming up against a system that causes this to happen all the time. Plainly, I am not advocating nothing good for the police. I’m just not. That’s my personal stance. As a Black person, its not my job to protect police. They have a whole carceral system behind them of judges, attorney generals, district attorneys, sergeant unions to support them even when they have done wrong.”

Tips for which hashtags to use for our online activism (slide #4 has the hashtag recommendations)

EXAMPLES OF SOLIDARITY & ACCOUNTABILITY:

#2 $UPPORT  BLACK PEOPLE, BLACK -LED ORGANIZING + BAIL FUNDS  

CONTEXT: Let’s $upport Black people, businesses, organizations ALL THE TIME -not just when we feel the urgency or guilt. Wealth redistribution + reparations should be ongoing -interpersonal, institutional, & systemic. Let’s also work towards abolishing systems that exploit people for profit. Black people been organizing for their survival & liberation for...forever.



Tips on how to support Black artists beyond IG likes. 10 ways orgs can show up for Black lives without exploiting “Black Lives Mater”

Read this statement from artist Nina Chanel about how “Black creatives are currently being approached like never before by companies scrambling to make a public statement on the recent uprisings surrounding police brutality and white supremacy...Care for Black life does not happen just because you rush to communicate in a mural or on a tote bag. It is not just the inclusion of people of color as a viable consumer market or in your advertising campaigns.” See how Microsoft fucked up in this realm. Read this IG post about how fucked up it is that so many of us only feel compelled to give in response to Black death & trauma. Are we donating out of guilt, out of needing to feel like we did something?


What is liberalism IG thread

Also, please also do some research on where you are donating to -for example, Minnesota Freedom Fund got a lot of attention + donations ($20 million) -they are white-run (not Black-led) and truly, have not spent much of their past years funding directly on bail (~$10K total in 2017 & 2018) -looking up nonprofits budgets/financials on this website is how we found out they spend way more on paying their white staff than bailing people. In almost every city, there are groups led by Black & Brown people who have been working on police accountability + abolition and other social justice issues for a long time now, $upport those efforts! Tips on how to donate more responsibly. Why you shouldn’t give your money to Change.org. You can also find more grassroots, radical Black/Brown-led organizing by following funders like Third Wave Fund & Borealis, & Social Justice Fund -these funders explicitly funded Black-led organizing. Most of philanthropy is still very white savior + white supremacist. Black & Brown-led organizing continues to be resourced less than white-led organizations. Philanthropy devalues women-of-color-led organizing.

OKAY Done ranting. HERES SOME BLACK-LED ORGANIZING TO SUPPORT:

Feel free to comment on this doc if I need to make corrections + email me about more Black-led campaigns to share & $upport.

#3 EDUCATE OURSELVES & OUR COMMUNITIES

OTHER RESOURCE GUIDES

UPCOMING EVENTS

FOUNDATIONS + OVERVIEWS  (if you’re new to concepts of Asian anti-Blackness, reparations, transformative justice, prison abolition, disability justice -I encourage you to spend time here first)

To me, there is still much for us to learn from how “Asians” -especially Chinese people- showed up in 2016 when Chinese cop Peter Liang was indicted for killing Akai Gurley:

  1. Calling Chinese & Asian Americans to the Side of #JusticeForAkaiGurley
  2. A system that doesn't value Black lives can never truly value ours 
  3. Letters for Black Lives is a set of crowdsourced, multilingual resources in languages for us to talk to our families & communities in language  i.e. Vietnamese, Hmong, Bengali, Urdu, Khmer, Tamil, Chinese.
    The     tagged section for “Letter for Black Lives” instagram has a lot of IG posts in different languages
  4. Common reactions, questions, & challenges to the “Letters for Black Lives” + comprehensive conversation guide for Black Lives Matter

BLACK ACTIVISTS TO FOLLOW

Estelle Ellison

Bree Newsome 

Ericka Hart 

patrisse cullors 

Gem 

Sonya Renee Taylor

Imani Barbarin

8 Black women with disabilities to follow

ASIAN SPECIFIC RESOURCES 

IN LANGUAGE + TRANSLATED RESOURCES  

WHY ABOLISH POLICE & PRISONS?[b]

WHAT ARE ALTERNATIVES TO POLICING

OTHER EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

HOW TO UNDERSTAND PROTESTS, “LOOTING” & RIOTING 

Speech from activist Tamika Mallory -take 3.5 min to watch this video: “America has looted Black people, America looted Native Americas. Looting is what you do. We learned looting from you...We learn violence from you..If you want us to do better, then damn it, you do better.”

     

#4 IMPORTANT QUESTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH BLACK CO-WORKERS
From Melody Martinez: “For the organizations and companies and leadership teams with Black staff who are still working: how are you taking care of your Black staff today? What are you offering in terms of acknowledgement, rest, restitution, and recovery (even if they work from home)?

What are you saying to non-Black staff? How are you discussing what has happened this week, this month and how are you going about not pretending like it's someone else's problem or like it's not impacting your staff who are people before they are laborers for you or with you? How are you not pretending like it's a separate issue from the work that you do?

To everyone who labors: hold your organizations, your operations teams and administrators, your HR, your bosses accountable to acknowledging the murder or attempted murder of Black people, to taking care of you if you're Black, or providing space for earnest conversation and action if you're white or non-Black POC whenever this happens.” -Melody Martinez

Your Black Co-workers May Look Okay -Chances They Are Not 

Maintaining Professionalism in the Age of Black Death is...a lot

Defund Diversity & Inclusion

     


     

Do you have feedback + more resources for the following? Contact me at emlaireed@gmail.com:

  • List of Black people, Black-led campaigns, & organizing we can publicize & support
  • How to address anti-Black racism in ourselves & our communities
  • Practices & policies on how to help support rest, restitution, recovery, and reparations for Black people


 

STILL EDITING SECTION



[a]https://www.opb.org/news/article/superintendent-says-discontinue-police-presence-portland-schools/

[b]How Portland is Currently Working to Disband & Defund the Police: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eox9VRw2aPRLlsKY4ZZ-8vEjL2maYp1nJOteAx64BBk/edit?usp=sharing