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

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  • Inside the community patrols in San Francisco's Chinatown

    March 30, 2021 |

    Mother Jones |

    Text |

    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, San Francisco, California

    Rising alarm over hate crimes targeting Asian-Americans, particularly the elderly, drew many volunteers to the community patrols that have organized over the past year in the Bay Area. Chinatown Safety Patrol, started just weeks before the Atlanta spa murders, suddenly attracted dozens of people willing to watch over and help elderly neighbors, giving them the confidence to go about their lives on the streets. The patrols serve as a deterrent to predatory violence. They also can deescalate conflict. Their main function is to protect residents in ways that the police can't or won't.

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  • Fighting America's Gun Plague

    March 29, 2021 |

    The New Yorker |

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    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    One of dozens of community-based anti-violence groups in New York City, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence teaches high schoolers classes on gun-violence prevention that carry an underlying message: how to fight their community's powerlessness in nonviolent ways. Former students of the program were inspired to start their own youth-focused offshoot, Youth Over Guns, and others have gone on to careers in activism or the work of directly intervening to prevent retaliatory shootings. As one of its counselors put it, he's teaching that "everybody should be an anti-gun activist now.”

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  • Newark-based violence prevention group seeks to bridge gap between police, social services

    March 28, 2021 |

    NJ Advance Media |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Newark, New Jersey

    Newark's Community Street Team hires and trains formerly incarcerated people and people who have been victims of violence to mediate disputes before they turn violent. Street outreach interventions have been associated with large declines in homicides and assaults, although the programs can overlap with others seeking the same goal. Newark's team will now serve as the hub for a national effort, the Community Based Public Safety Association, to professionalize such work nationwide. The group will seek more public funding and try to raise the visibility of such policing alternatives.

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  • Fighting the Mafia on Its Own Turf

    March 23, 2021 |

    The New York Times |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Italy, Alto Belice Corleonese

    La Placido Rizzotto is one of nine farm co-ops in a network of properties that were seized from Sicily's Mafia and reused to create a productive alternative to the area's crime-based economy. Part of the Libera Terra (Freed Land) network, La Placido Rizzotto employs 22 people and its farm, winery, and tourist inn generated nearly $900,000 in sales in 2019. The government has confiscated thousands of properties in its effort to hurt the Mafia economically, but managing the properties remains a challenge that the "social use" movement addresses. Libera Terra's model has been copied by an Argentinian co-op.

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  • How a Nigerian security guard used football to end tribal conflict

    March 18, 2021 |

    TRT World |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: Nigeria, Port Harcourt, River State

    A series of four football competitions in 2017-18 brought peace to two communities whose land dispute had led to violence. In the absence of a government response, the chief security officer of the Igbesikala-Ama, a minority group, put his peacemaking training to work to recruit teams from eight communities to participate. Included were people from the two communities in conflict and members of the youth "cults" who had done the fighting at their elders' instigation. The competition brought an end to the violence, though a lack of money put an end to the football competitions.

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  • Oakland's Chinatown finds solutions to hate crimes

    March 11, 2021 |

    Public Radio International (PRI) |

    Radio |

    5-15 Minutes

    Response Location: United States, Oakland, California

    With hate crimes against Asian Americans on the rise, Oakland's Community Ambassadors program serves the city's Chinatown by caring for the neighborhood and making people feel safe. Started as a way for formerly incarcerated people from San Quentin Prison to reconnect with the community, the program builds trust with residents who might be wary about asking the police for help and who may be so afraid of street crime that they don't leave home. Ambassadors walk the streets to help the elderly get groceries, check in with people experiencing homelessness, and hear the concerns of shopkeepers and residents.

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  • In a city where bullets too often hit kids, a program calls on young people to shoot cameras, not guns

    March 03, 2021 |

    The Washington Post |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

    A group of D.C. teens produced a short film depicting life in their neighborhood, the final product of a pilot project that teaches filmmaking skills in order to lift up community voices and inspire youth to pursue a career. The program, "Don't Shoot Guns, Shoot Cameras," was started by the uncle of a homicide victim in a neighborhood where violence can feel more prevalent than positive inspiration. The program, which partnered with an existing nonprofit, is now seeking to expand.

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  • Here's What Happens When Social Workers, Not Police, Respond To Mental Health Crises

    March 01, 2021 |

    Honolulu Civil Beat |

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    1500-3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    Honolulu could benefit from adopting the approach to mental-health crisis calls to 911 that Eugene, Oregon, uses. But it would need to make big changes first in its critical infrastructure. Eugene's CAHOOTS program sends counselors and medics on 17% of the calls coming to its city's 911 center, saving millions on police, ambulances, and emergency room visits. Non-police responders de-escalate potential conflicts and get people the help they need without arrest or violence. Honolulu is primed to examine this approach, as many cities have done, but it's not a simple matter to start it.

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  • Cops and Hippies

    February 26, 2021 |

    Reasons to be Cheerful |

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    800-1500 Words

    Response Location: United States, Eugene, Oregon

    The CAHOOTS program, which sends medics and counselors on certain 911 calls instead of the police, has become a national model in the wake of 2020's criminal-justice protests. But its roots reach back half a century, when a free medical clinic serving the hippie counterculture emerged as a public-health response to drug, mental health, and other non-violent emergencies. CAHOOTS has grown into a 24/7 service that saves Eugene millions in policing and medical spending, and saves many on the streets from unnecessarily punitive interactions with the police.

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  • One Relationship at a Time: Restorative Justice Initiatives in West Harlem are Rewriting Legacies of Violence and Mass Incarceration

    February 26, 2021 |

    Columbia Daily Spectator |

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    Over 3000 Words

    Response Location: United States, New York, New York

    The largest police raid in New York City history did little to resolve a decades-long conflict between residents of two Harlem housing projects, nor did it address the underlying problems causing violence in the community. So two community groups, supported by grants from the Manhattan district attorney, have deployed intervention teams to de-escalate and mediate disputes. They also provide an array of services to give young people alternatives to fighting and to assist people who were arrested in the raids as they emerge from prison.

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