The current law enforcement-driven approach to public safety is not working, particularly not for Black communities. Any approach that centers punishment as a tool of public safety jeopardizes the health of whole communities and places the people in those communities at extreme risk.

For years, activists have called on all of us to rethink the nation’s approach to public safety. Now, United States Representative Cori Bush is introducing the People’s Response Act that redefines public safety as a public health issue and funds community-based, community centered approaches to safety. 

The safety of Black communities is dependent on our collective ability to create holistic, community-based centers of care and harm reduction. We cannot afford to protect the status quo: Tell your Representative to cosponsor the People’s Response Act.

Here is the Petition:

Dear Member of Congress,

The nation is in the midst of a national reckoning on community safety.

The current approach to public safety is not working — for children, for families, and particularly for Black and brown communities that have been devastated by mental health crises, substance use health crises, and criminalization. We must dismantle our public safety system’s instinct to criminalize and replace it with an instinct to provide care.

I write to you today to implore you to co-sponsor the People’s Response Act, which emphasizes an inclusive, holistic, and health-centered approach to public safety. Communities and experts agree that public safety is a matter of public health. It adopts a new approach to public safety that will save lives, and build systems of care that are rooted in improving the well-being of all communities. 

Stand with communities across the country in demanding a people’s response to public safety. Co-sponsor the People’s Response Act!