Our Mission 

The Black Response is an abolitionist research and advocacy organization that envisions and works toward building a world free of carceral and harmful responses. We seek to uplift the Black, brown, and otherwise marginalized communities in Cambridge and everywhere by working to unbundle and abolish policing, defund the police to invest in communities, and support the building of alternatives to public safety and the development of community care initiatives.

Our Vision

We call for the construction of community-based mechanisms with transformative and restorative justice agendas that address and prevent the root causes of harm. We also call for investing in the social fabric of communities, such as mental health support, housing services, job training, quality education, and healthy food, to foster lasting physical safety and generate community well-being. 

People in the projects do not need to be over-policed; they need more jobs, childcare, free internet, business start-up funds, their student loans forgiven, their kids’ college tuition paid, and other educational services. Use CPD funding to pay for public services that will keep everyone safe and thriving, including poor Black Cantabrigians. 

Cambridge has a discretionary fund of over $250 million. Let us use these funds and redirect resources away from CPD to build a Cambridge where everyone thrives, including low-income Black people. Prove that our reputation as a progressive city is, in fact, the truth of Cambridge, not just rhetoric. Let us be on the cutting edge of the national movement to defund the police by creating a community where people are genuinely safe and where all Cambridge residents are treated as deserving of the same standard of living.

Here we are, Black Cambridge residents. We are actively calling on the Cambridge City Council to #DefundThePolice!

Our Values

1. Prison Industrial Complex Abolition

   We identify as prison industrial complex (PIC) abolitionists. Meaning, we identify with thinkers including Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Angela Davis, and Prentis Hemphill who put forward visions of restructuring the methods used by society to address harm, violence, and injustice. We believe that the criminal legal system’s method of addressing harm (cages, punitive measures, militarism) do not keep us safe. We therefore seek the abolition of carceral institutions and the punitive practices rooted in these institutions – from the structural to the interpersonal level.
   

   We organize towards the horizon of abolition by advocating for  decarceration, decriminalization, and the creation of alternatives. We work toward the realignment of power away from domination, privilege, and exploitation. We align with organizations that are actively working to decrease the number of people incarcerated by advocating for the release of individuals. We do not work or align with organizations who seek the expansion of policing, prisons, the prison industrial complex or state domination in any form.
   

   While there are many approaches to abolition, we see our role as focusing on researching, promoting, and advocating for community-based alternatives that focus on addressing the root causes. We believe in addressing root causes of harm and crime, such as poverty, poor education, and crisis, through proactive community support. We advocate for addressing crisis and violence with transformative justice methods rather than punishment. We believe that individualizing harm and throwing people away prevents the opportunity for accountability and repairing harm. We therefore seek to uphold transformative justice principles which aim at a complete transformation of social relations to ensure the safety of the most vulnerable in our community. 
   

2. Abolition Feminism 

   We believe in an organizing approach rooted in Radical Black Feminism and Abolition Feminism. This is a tradition which seeks to focus its aim on the most marginalized in an effort to ensure that those furthest away from power and closest to harm are at the center of our work. 

   We believe that the criminal legal system’s method of addressing harm does not keep us safe and, in fact, locks us into a violent system of retribution. We therefore seek the abolition of carceral institutions and punitive practices at the micro and macro levels.

3. Anti-Capitalism

   We recognize the interlocking and mutually reinforcing character of racism, patriarchy, and class oppression, as well as the deep and toxic interconnections between the prison industrial complex, capitalism and racism. 

   We believe capitalism and class war are fundamental contradictions at the heart of the global order we live in today. We therefore seek to build equity, cooperation, and self-determination by replacing capitalist practices with racial and economic justice; and centering those most deeply affected by racism.

4. Abolition Internationalism 

   We believethat the pervasive violence of capitalism, policing and prisons do not stop at our borders. These systems are crucial tools for maintaining imperialism and the subjugation of African-descended people around the world from Atlanta to Haiti to Sudan. We therefore organize in a way which “thinks global and acts local”. In other words, we seek, wherever possible, to align our efforts with decolonial and revolutionary movements in the Global South and around the world.