Infusing Love into Public Policy, Infrastructure and Practice to Advance Peace

In recent weeks, the prospect of defunding police departments has gained massive support. On Sunday, a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council committed to dismantling  and reimagining its public safety infrastructure, declaring that “efforts at incremental reform have failed.”  This is momentous, considering the fact that the Minneapolis Police Department was one of few police departments lifted up as a model of progressive policing.

Advance Peace has recently been contacted by multiple agencies and news outlets inquiring about our position on this issue, and the role that programs such as Advance Peace could potentially play in the effort to reimagine public safety.

Advance Peace remains committed to the development and healing of our primary constituents – young men and women at the center of cyclical and retaliatory gun violence in black and brown communities.  Nowhere are the viruses of oppression, racial disparity and structural violence more prominently on display incubating atmospheric trauma and persistent harm. Our constituents and their families face a relentless and ever-present pandemic associated with the trauma of living in neighborhoods with long histories of structural racism, including racial segregation, chronic withdrawal of social services, disinvestment of economic opportunity, dehumanization through state sanctioned violence, and alienation from other government institutions.

Below is our official statement which we hope contributes to the national conversation.

Advance Peace reduces gun violence in U.S. urban neighborhoods by providing transformative opportunities to individuals at the center of gun violence through the Peacemaker Fellowship®. We believe that community health and safety is most likely to be improved when the focus of change starts with a willingness to directly engage and invest in individuals who are most at-risk for either committing or suffering the harm we want to prevent.  As an organization, we do not use the agency or instruments of law enforcement to achieve our developmental and healing-centered objectives with our Fellows. Law enforcement doesn’t support healing. Advance Peace supports those who have been victimized by structural violence to be at the center of and active in their own healing process, moving beyond state-sanctioned models of reform and rehabilitation. To not acknowledge the history, context and experience of racialized police violence often imposed upon our Fellows and their communities would be counterproductive and detrimental to their healing process.

Advance Peace employs a strategy of focused-engagement and street level restorative justice implemented by Neighborhood Change Agents – street outreach workers who serve as viable assets to their community and provide a healing-centered, individualized human development  program to those most impacted by gun violence. Advance Peace is cost-effective and is credited with lowering rates of gun violence in various cities including Richmond, Sacramento, and Stockton, California.

Advance Peace stands as an ally with community-builders, social justice advocates, victims of police brutality, and street outreach workers facilitating violence interruption work throughout the world.

We stand in solidarity with Michelle Alexander’s analysis and request to reimagine justice.

We stand in solidarity with community activists throughout the country that have proposed an alternative institutional infrastructure for public safety.

We stand in solidarity with school districts that are committed to dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline.

We stand in solidarity with all people, organizations, and movements that are committed to change without using the same methods, arguments, and failed political strategies that have brought us to this moment.

Let us lean into this historical hour to imagine what increased funding for viable alternative public safety infrastructures could look like. Such an infrastructure must meet the needs and reach the people of our community that struggle most to achieve safety and security in their neighborhoods.

What could a program like Advance Peace accomplish with even 10% of a police department budget? Here are few real-time insights to help with the creative process:

  • Advance Peace builds upon long-standing relationships of individuals who grew up in disenfranchised neighborhoods. Allowing them a certain level of trust, respect, and access that police departments are not structured to provide. We respect and acknowledge that those closest to the problem are also closest to the solution and furthest from resources and power.
  • Police clearance rates for violent crime in communities most impacted by gun violence are typically under 30%. Advance Peace is able to connect with and successfully support many who remain on the streets and vulnerable to the vicious cycle of retaliatory gun violence.
    Police respond to violence after the fact, with the objective of making an arrest. Advance Peace mediates imminent hostile conflicts, which often translates to decreased violence.
  • On average, public safety consumes over 50% of a city budget. Most cities allocate less than 2% of their budget for youth development and violence prevention programs.
  • Advance Peace fills a critical services, support and opportunity gap.  Ninety-five percent (95%) of our current Fellows were not being engaged by any other public or community-based system of care prior to their enrollment into the Peacemaker Fellowship® posing a great impediment to their healthy development, and any likelihood that their involvement in/proximity to community violence would end or be reduced.

The main weapon for Advance Peace is love. It is an absolute necessity for any service provider that hopes to effectively engage in the arduous process of community healing and transformation. Let us put the public back into public safety. Let us heed the call coming from all sectors of our diverse nation. Advance Peace will continue our efforts to partner with and transform the lives of those at the center of gun violence.  Together with our Fellows, we are building healthier, safer and more just communities.

Advance Peace is a black and brown led organization benefiting black and brown communities.

#AdvancePeace #EndGunViolence #Enough #RadicalImagination #ReimagineJustice #PeacemakerFellowship