Over the past 9 years, our small team at the Center for Advancing Innovative Policy has been fortunate enough to collaborate with some of the most creative, intersectional, and dedicated grassroots organizations in the country. At a political moment in which policy change rarely feels transformative – or, at federal levels, even possible – we know that our movements must use every tool at our disposal to resist, and to build the world we want.
We know that policy work can be frustrating and difficult, particularly for communities whose needs have been routinely and historically ignored. But we believe that’s more reason to demystify the process, and ensure that grassroots perspectives are centered.
Through our participatory policy agenda development process we asked a broad range of stakeholders: what do you need? Among many varied demands one idea winds itself as a thread throughout: safety.
Whether it’s girls in New York City, trans, and gender non-conforming youth in the midwest, or advocates for environmental justice in the bayous of the gulf coast, our people are clear: we are all seeking safety. There are many systems, structures, institutions, and policies that purport to provide safety. Some of these have been in place for decades. So, why does no one feel safe?
We went back to our policy work with orgs around the country, and pulled from years of data from developing movement demands to see what other ways our government might provide safety to our communities. This white paper series is our answer to the question: what keeps our communities safe?
Why develop a white paper series?
People know what they need to feel safe, and it isn’t incarceration or policing; it isn’t increased surveillance, or militarization, or immigration enforcement. We know that these avenues not only do not provide or increase safety -- they are purveyors of deep harm.
In this white paper series, we explore policies that offer achievable, alternative means to provide safety. When the trans youth who were part of URGE’s agenda-building process told us what they needed, they said they needed safety. Unable to ask policymakers for “safety,” we asked ourselves: what are the conditions that create a lack of safety for trans young people, and what are the conditions that would foster safety?
This question we asked years ago now has led us to take a holistic view of safety that accounts for the root causes of unsafe conditions in all our agendas, and to the creation of this series of papers.
We have divided the series into larger subject areas, beginning with health care and how it can be implemented and provided in ways that actually create conditions of safety for all people.
