ABOLISHING SURVEILLANCE, POLICING, AND INCARCERATION
Our families, communities and neighbors face separation and incredible violence through criminalization caused by policing and imprisonment. Since 2015, AARW has been working to fight surveillance and anti-Muslim violence and since 2016, we’ve been fighting policing and incarceration through an anti-displacement framework. We see the work to end surveillance, policing and incarceration as a crucial goal to realizing freedom, dignity and access to equitable resources for everyone.
AARW believes in a community defense approach to our work. We currently build community defense in Dorchester through tenant organizing where we build the power of tenants to defend themselves against exploitation and in our statewide immigration work through deportation defense where we build support for those facing detention and deportation.
Defund Boscops, Invest in Communities
Since 2017, AARW has been involved in formations that have been challenging the power of the Boston police. Initially, it was through the Boscops collective which evolved in 2020 into the Defund Boscops formation. Our priorities in this formation include:
Supporting our youth in getting cops out of schools
Defunding the Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC) which warehouses federally and locally shared information specifically targeting Black, Muslim, POC folks and community organizers. The BRIC categorizes people into gangs, extremist groups and other racist policing categories that fuels surveillance, policing and incarceration of these groups of people.
Defunding the Boston police by cutting and capping overtime pay and significantly reducing the overall budget of the police in order to shrink the size of the police force.
We are seeking, with other community organizations, a commitment from the city to defund the police every year in order to radically reinvest in community owned resources such as safe injection sites, affordable housing, accessible healthcare, child & elder care, food access sites, and others.
If you are a Boston resident, get involved in the Defund Boscops fight by emailing us at info@aarw.org and by visiting the Defund Boscops website.
Building Up People Not Prisons Coalition
Anchored by Families for Justice as Healing, the Building Up People Not Prisons coalition (called PNP) has been building power around issues that affect incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in the Commonwealth. AARW has been learning and partnering with Families for Justice as Healing in this coalition space to uplift their demands and policy initiatives. Please visit tinyurl.com/MAWeekOfAction to learn more about what the coalition is currently working on.
Building Muslim Power Collective
AARW is in a collaboration with the Muslim Justice League (MJL) to build progressive Muslim power and fight anti-Muslim violence that occurs through policing and state surveillance.
We are specifically working on the anti-Countering Violent Extremism Campaign with MJL and are focused on creative responses to anti-Muslim violence, such as our street theater action targeting Fidelity Charitable in 2019.
If you are interested in any of our anti-criminalization work, please contact info@aarw.org.