I wrote a book, WE KEEP US SAFE: Building Secure, Just, and Inclusive Communities, that talks about how we can cultivate public safety and wellness in our neighborhoods.
For 200 years, fear has been used to distract and divide our communities through discrimination and punishment. After more than 20 years working in the field as a criminal justice advocate, attorney and now Executive Director, I envision a way forward for all of us — an antidote to what I call our current framework of fear and toward a culture of care.
It is high time we stop caging Black, brown and low income children, and instead create real healing and opportunity in neglected communities. It is time for us to come together to reject division and scapegoating and instead affirm our interdependency and humanity.
In the book, I break down this framework of fear to help understand and transform the policies and practices that perpetuate intergenerational trauma and community suffering. It points to how we can upend our costly, ineffective and unjust criminal legal system.
The book will be released on February 4 with a launch event at Restore Oakland and all book sale proceeds will go to the Ella Baker Center. So, buying a book directly supports shifting the national conversation around safety and investing in communities over policing and prisons in multiple ways.
In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King, “we must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.” Can we count on your support in buying a book (or more) and sharing a radical framework for uprooting systemic violence and creating the systems we deserve to thrive?
Let’s build together.
In Community,
Zach Norris