Subject and Course Guides: Police Brutality & Racism: Advocacy, Activism &amp; Organizing

Local Organizaitons

Assata's Daughters
Assata’s Daughters (“AD”) is a Black woman-led, young person-directed organization rooted in the Black Radical Tradition. AD organizes young Black people in Chicago by providing them with political education, leadership development, mentorship, and revolutionary services. Through our programs we aim to Deepen, Escalate, and Sustain the Movement for Black Liberation.
BYP100 Chicago
Chicago chapter of BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100), a member-based organization of Black youth activists creating justice and freedom for all Black people.
Chicago Freedom School
Founded in 2007, CFS creates new generations of critical thinkers who use their unique experiences and power to create a just world. Inspired by the Mississippi Freedom Schools of the Civil Rights Era, CFS takes an innovative approach to youth activism, leadership development, and movement building.
Chicago Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression
Since 1973, when it was born from the movement to free Angela Davis and all political prisoners, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has defended the rights of oppressed people in Illinois and around the world. We defend the civil liberties of workers, activists, and prisoners. We struggle against white supremacy, the prison-industrial complex, and state violence. We demand community control of the police and full representation for Black people and other poor and oppressed people at all levels of government.
Chicago Urban League
Since 1916, the Chicago Urban League—through collaborative community, corporate and civic relationships—has helped people find jobs, secure affordable housing, enhance their educational experiences, and grow their businesses. We are passionate advocates for educational equality, economic development and social justice. We believe that a strong African American community makes a stronger, better Chicago.
NAACP Chicago Southside
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination.
NAACP Chicago Far-South Suburban Branch
For over one hundred years, the NAACP has been built on the premise that people of all races, nationalities, and faiths, men, and women, are created equal. The Chicago Far-South Suburban Branch received its charter from the NAACP on May 17, 1979. Since its inception, this branch has focused on the betterment of its people in numerous areas, including economics, housing, education, and government.
NAACP Chicago Westside Branch
The NAACP is a chapter-driven, membership-driven organization made up of over 400,000 members who operate through local and regional chapters in every state.
Brave Space Alliance
BSA is a vehicle to empower and elevate queer and trans voices, particularly those belonging to people of color, to allow our communities a seat at the table on key decision making processes that impact the community of Chicago.
Love & Protect
L&P supports those who identify as women and gender non-conforming persons of color who are criminalized or harmed by state and interpersonal violence.
Grassroots Illinois Action
We set out to unite Chicagoans in an effort to build real independent political power in and for our communities. Together we can pursue a vision that values all of our city’s residents, all of our children, all of our neighborhoods.
Incite!
INCITE! organizes from the framework that locates women of color as living in the dangerous intersections of sexism and racism, as well as other oppressions. Women of color who survive sexual or domestic violence are often told that they must pit themselves against their communities to address their experience of violence. Furthermore, women of color also experience institutionalized violence such as law enforcement violence, incarceration, and sterilization abuse.
Project NIA
Project Nia works to end the incarceration of children and young adults by promoting restorative and transformative justice practices.
Mujeres Latinas en Acción
Since 1973, Mujeres Latinas en Acción is the longest standing Latina-led organization in the nation. Over the years we have honed our offerings including community services that empower Latinas and their families, and supports them as they heal, and thrive within our programs.
Hispanic Lawyers' Association of Illinois
The Hispanic Lawyers Association of Illinois (HLAI) is a not-for-profit corporation that was established in 1995. HLAI was formed through the joining of its predecessor organizations, the Latin American Bar Association and the Mexican American Lawyers Association, which had previously served the Hispanic legal community in Illinois since 1970.
Latino Policy Forum
The mission of the Latino Policy Forum is to build the power, influence, and leadership of the Latino community through collective action to transform public policies that ensure the well being of our community and society as a whole.
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund
Founded in 1968, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund) is the nation’s leading Latino legal civil rights organization. Our commitment is to protect and defend the rights of all Latinos living in the United States and the constitutional rights of all Americans.
Asian American Coalition of Chicago
The mission of the Asian American Coalition of Chicago (AACC) is to unite all Asian Americans into a significant force for strengthening the Asian American Community in the United States; enriching Asian cultural values, and recognizing the importance of Asian American contributions to the American democracy and economy.
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago
Asian Americans Advancing Justice | Chicago builds power through collective advocacy and organizing to achieve racial equity.
Blood at the Root
Blood at the Root focuses our attention on the fact that all #BlackWomensLivesMatter and all #BlackGirlsLivesMatter. Relying on various artifacts, the curators narrate the experiences and resistance of Black women and girls (trans and non-trans) who have been brutalized, imprisoned and killed by the state and its agents.
Ujimaa Medics
Ujimaa Medics are Black community organizers, activists, pastors, healthcare professionals, mothers, brothers, sisters, fathers, cousins, and friends of African Descent in Chicago. They offer training in Urban Emergency First Response primarily to people who live in, or love people who live in communities where shootings often occur.
Circles and Ciphers
Circles & Ciphers is a hip-hop infused restorative justice organization led by and for young people impacted by violence. Through art-based peace circles, education, and direct action we collectively heal and work to bring about the abolition of the prison-industrial complex.
Creative Interventions
Creative Interventions provides vision, tools and resources to help anyone and everyone create community-based, collective responses to domestic, family, and sexual violence. The community-based approach centers those closest to and most impacted by harm, honors their expertise, and builds collective knowledge and power as the solution to violence. Our vision is based upon liberation — the positive, life-affirming, transformative potential within our most oppressed communities. It builds upon compassion, care, and connection as the pathways to change — not policing, punishment, and isolation. Aligned with transformative justice, community accountability, and, more simply, community-based responses to violence — Creative Interventions addresses responses to harm at all stages — prevention, early intervention, rapid response to crisis, and longer-term processes towards transformation.
Black and Pink: Chicago
Black and Pink: Chicago is an open family of GLBTQ prisoners and "free world" allies who support each other. Our work toward the abolition of the prison industrial complex is rooted in the experience of currently and formerly incarcerated people. We are outraged by the specific violence of the prison industrial complex against GLBTQ people, and respond through advocacy, education, direct service, and organizing.
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In Chicago, our current projects include:
1. A pen-pal project with queer and trans prisoners in Illinois.
The heart of Black and Pink's work is connecting LGBTQ prisoners with pen-pals on the outside. Here in Chicago, we are actively recruiting pen-pals on the outside, to ensure that every member of our Black and Pink family that is currently behind bars in Illinois has a pen-pal. We also send birthday and holiday cards to our LGBTQ family behind bars, so stay on the lookout for our next mail party. For folks on the outside new to being a pen-pal, we offer a 3 hour orientation to LGBTQ issues with the prison industrial complex and the nuts and bolts of long-term letter-writing.
2. A study group on the prison industrial complex.
We see ongoing political education as an important part of building a movement of queer and trans resistance to the prison industrial complex. In our study group, we read a wide range of texts (including books, articles and movies) to understand the PIC as it has operated historically, how it currently affects many groups of people, including LGBTQ people, and how communities resist. We meet twice a month to discuss our readings, and develop our reading list collaboratively. You are welcome to join. If you are interested in starting a study group of your own with friends or community members, we can provide a suggested reading list and study guides to supplement.

National Organizations

BYP100
Founded in 2013, BYP100 (Black Youth Project 100) is a member-based organization of Black youth activists creating justice and freedom for all Black people.
NAACP
The mission of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is to secure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights in order to eliminate race-based discrimination and ensure the health and well-being of all persons.
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The NAACP's principle objectives are:

-To ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of all citizens.
-To achieve equality of rights and eliminate race prejudice among the citizens of the United States.
-To remove all barriers of racial discrimination through democratic processes.
-To seek enactment and enforcement of federal, state, and local laws securing civil rights.
To inform the public of the adverse effects of racial discrimination and to seek its elimination.
To educate persons as to their constitutional rights and to take all lawful action to secure the exercise thereof, and to take any other lawful action in furtherance of these objectives.
National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression
The Refounding Conference of the National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression will take place in Chicago, Illinois on November 22-24. Activists and organizers from across the country will gather to refound NAARPR and coordinate nation-wide actions against state sponsored racial violence.
National Urban League
The National Urban League is a historic civil rights and urban advocacy organization with 90 affiliates serving 300 communities, providing direct services that impact and improve the lives of more than two million people nationwide.
Mijente
"We are a political home for Latinx and Chicanx people who seek racial, economic, gender and climate justice. Often we are told as Latinxs that in order to get ahead we need to just work hard and not ask questions. We believe the opposite - we need to hold our heads high and speak out. Mijente helps people do this through campaigns, connects people across a wide network and serves as a hub for culture, learning and advocacy."
American Civil Liberties Union
Organization dedicated to protecting civil liberties and freedom of speech in the United States since 1920.
Southern Poverty Law Center
The SPLC is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.
Asians 4 Black Lives
We are a diverse group of Asian voices, based in the Bay Area, immigrant and U.S. born, queer and straight, who have come together in response to a call from Black Lives Matter Bay Area and the larger Black Lives Matter movement, to put forward these principles and protocols as a model for why and how we, as diverse Asian communities around the country and the world, can show up in solidarity with Black people in this struggle.

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