Blackroots Alliance Looks At What Public Safety Could Look Like For Communties

Katelyn Johnson is the Executive Director of Black Roots Alliance. PHOTO CREDIT: MERRILL ROBINSON, JR.
Katelyn Johnson is the Executive Director of Black Roots Alliance. PHOTO CREDIT: MERRILL ROBINSON, JR.

 Blackroots Alliance Looks At What Public Safety Could Look Like For Communties

By Tia Carol Jones

Blackroots Alliance recently released a report on public safety, with the goal of improving the Black community in Chicago and surrounding communities.

“Reimaging Public Safety: Community Listening Sessions with Black Communities and Black Defenders” is the culmination of a year-long project from the Blackroots Alliance, in collaboration with the National Black Public Defender Association, the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender and a consultant team from Northwestern University.

Blackroots Alliance was founded in 2015, with a commitment to the liberation and safety of all Black people, while promoting Black leadership and Black-centered community transformation. It works to build the power to heal the community and transform society.

Blackroots Alliance works with a network of Black-led organizations and community members to organize people into community conversations to imagine futures without harm, and understand how public policies impact the lives of Black people.

Before the public safety project, Blackroots Alliance was already connected to the community. Members of the organization kept hearing that people felt a change was needed around public safety before they could get to a future where everyone was thriving. Blackroots Alliance was connected to the Black Public Defenders Association, which was doing their own work around public safety and how community members relate to Public Defenders.

“We found that we have a lot of shared commitments to keeping Black people safe and wanting to reframe conversations around public safety. We built this project as a strategy to really center community experiences in defining the future of public safety,” said Katelyn Johnson, Executive Director of Blackroots Alliance.

In doing the research for the report, Blackroots Alliance shifted its perspective to what the community does want, to expand good experiences within the community, instead of focusing on what the community didn’t want. More than 100 Black Chicagoans participated in the report, which showed that attending to Black people’s wellbeing was linked to improving safety. It gave the organization a glimpse of what safety could look like.

People talked about wanting to feel safe walking around their neighborhood and having their safety linked to the safety of their families, comfort in their homes, as well as trusting that they would have what they need to live a full life. Johnson said that investing in the things that could actually keep the community safe, a  new world could emerge.

“Safety is not a switch that we could turn on or off. There’s a recognition that these communities that we spoke with, the people have a lot of deep wounds from decades of growing and trying to survive in communities that were economically unstable and had violence and all the well-documented challenges,” Johnson said, adding that a healing has to take place first, as well as a deepening of investment in parts of life that can bolster safety.

People also made a connection to the root causes of the crime and recognized that basic needs had to be met – investing in housing, fixing broken streetlights, investing in community relationships. Johnson said those things can happen now and it can help move toward community members feeling safe.

Blackroots Alliance is working with communities to shape clear policies and demands around the things that feel safe. They also want to lift up community-centered solutions to decision makers. They are continuing to facilitate Town Hall meetings to move forward. City engagements is core to what Blackroots Alliance does, the goal is to uplift the demands to the decision makers and to be able to expand the dialogue and conversations to ensure the decisions that are made are done so with community at the center.

For more information about Blackroots Alliance, visit www.blackrootsalliance.org.

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