A World Without Police: Abolition and Community Safety
When we abolish the police, what comes next?
The ongoing uprising against racist militarized policing has led to an urgent demand to reimagine community support and public safety. What does accountability look like without police or prisons? How do we address and heal interpersonal violence in a just and sustainable way? What does “safety” really mean? How should we be spending public money to support our communities?
Join us in a conversation with activists, writers and leaders as we discuss these questions and imagine a world without police.
The event will be streamed live from BPL's YouTube channel and on this page. Please register and sign up to receive news about other BPL virtual programming.Confirmed Panelists:
Lori Ro is an activist, organizer, writer, and occasional art critic and artist based in Brooklyn. Her professional work is grounded in the reproductive rights and justice, communications, and media landscape, and she has done media relations for Planned Parenthood, helped establish an online publication that was recognized by NBC through their Erase The Hate PSA campaign, and now works with Abortion Care Network, the national network that organizes and supports independent clinics, which provide most of the abortion care in the United States. Her local organizing work is centered through Mil Mundos, a bi-lingual activist bookstore in Bushwick that has pivoted to being a mutual aid distribution center in the wake of COVID. Her approach to activism is highly intersectional, and she operates out of a trauma-informed, anti-colonial, abolitionist lens. Her art work has been shown in La Horchata, an art magazine focused on Central American artists, and in an exhibition UCLA’s Fowler Museum Terrace. She is a featured activist in the writer and historian Blair Imani’s book highlighting women and non binary activists, Modern Herstory.
Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of INCITE! She has been a long-time activist, advocate and researcher challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence and creating community accountability, transformative justice and community-based responses. 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. Mimi is also an Associate Professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach.
Dr. Kirk “Jae” James is a social worker and a clinical professor at NYU Silver. He is formerly incarcerated and has dedicated his life to creating liberatory spaces to heal and dismantle systems of oppression for all people. Follow him on Twitter: @DocJae75.
When we abolish the police, what comes next?
The ongoing uprising against racist militarized policing has led to an urgent demand to reimagine community support and public safety. What does accountability look like without police or prisons? How do we address and heal interpersonal violence in a just and sustainable way? What does “safety” really mean? How should we be spending public money to support our communities?
Join us in a conversation with activists, writers and leaders as we discuss these questions and imagine a world without police.
The event will be streamed live from BPL's YouTube channel and on this page. Please register and sign up to receive news about other BPL virtual programming.Confirmed Panelists:
Lori Ro is an activist, organizer, writer, and occasional art critic and artist based in Brooklyn. Her professional work is grounded in the reproductive rights and justice, communications, and media landscape, and she has done media relations for Planned Parenthood, helped establish an online publication that was recognized by NBC through their Erase The Hate PSA campaign, and now works with Abortion Care Network, the national network that organizes and supports independent clinics, which provide most of the abortion care in the United States. Her local organizing work is centered through Mil Mundos, a bi-lingual activist bookstore in Bushwick that has pivoted to being a mutual aid distribution center in the wake of COVID. Her approach to activism is highly intersectional, and she operates out of a trauma-informed, anti-colonial, abolitionist lens. Her art work has been shown in La Horchata, an art magazine focused on Central American artists, and in an exhibition UCLA’s Fowler Museum Terrace. She is a featured activist in the writer and historian Blair Imani’s book highlighting women and non binary activists, Modern Herstory.
Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of INCITE! She has been a long-time activist, advocate and researcher challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence and creating community accountability, transformative justice and community-based responses. 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. Mimi is also an Associate Professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach.
Dr. Kirk “Jae” James is a social worker and a clinical professor at NYU Silver. He is formerly incarcerated and has dedicated his life to creating liberatory spaces to heal and dismantle systems of oppression for all people. Follow him on Twitter: @DocJae75.
Brooklyn Public Library - Virtual MM/DD/YYYY 60