Inclusionary Zoning - Equitable Development Toolkit
Overview
Land use regulation mandating a percentage (usually 15-20%) of the housing units in all larger projects be affordable to people of low and moderate incomes. (2003)
Why Place & Race Matter (Full Report)
Overview
Delves into issues of race and place and what they mean in the context of building healthy communities--dynamic groups and initiatives are featured to illuminate action at the intersection of health, place, and race.
Homes for All: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy
Overview
This issue brief describes the economic and community benefits of ensuring every family can live in an affordable home.
Find other equity briefs here.
Youth Engagement: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy
Overview
This issue brief describes how engaging youth benefits families, communities, and the economy.
Find other equity briefs here.
Healthy Environments for All: Good for Families, Communities, and the Economy
Overview
This issue brief describes the economic benefits of creating healthy environments for all—both through targeted strategies that improve the quality of neighborhood environments where low-income people of color live and work, and through larger-scale shifts toward a clean energy economy that does not rely on fossil fuels.
Find other equity briefs here.
Breaking the Cycle: From Poverty to Financial Security for All
Overview
This report explores and provides examples of how key changes to components of the financial, education, justice, health, and tax systems can strengthen—rather than undermine—households’ financial security, and increase economic inclusion.
It describes innovative approaches that integrate a focus on building financial security across programs, while reforming the systems that most affect the balance sheets of lower-income families and families of color. The featured approaches run the gamut from small local programs to state and federal policy reforms and initiatives. These innovations and the changes that they represent to key systems may be adapted and expanded to strengthen the financial security of vulnerable people and communities nationwide.
Equitable Growth Profile of Fairfax County (Summary)
Overview
With a median household income of $110,292, Fairfax County, Virginia is one of the wealthiest counties in the nation—but not all residents share in this economic prosperity. As its population has grown and diversified over the past 25 years, inequities in income and opportunity by race and geography have also increased. Given that communities of color are expected to increase from 45 to 72 percent of the population by 2040, taking concrete steps to create pathways for the communities being left behind to connect to education and good jobs is critical for the county’s economic future. This study was produced in partnership with the County and other local leaders to support their efforts to build a stronger and more equitable county. Download the profile.
Find other equity profiles here.
Values, Leadership, and Sustainability: Institutionalizing Community-Centered Policing - Equitable Development Toolkit
Overview
This brief, the fourth and final in the Beyond Confrontation Series, examines how leadership can build the values and institutional culture necessary to implement and sustain community-centered policing. The brief also highlights workforce management, information sharing, and accountability practices that integrate community policing into law enforcement agency operations over the long term. (2015)
Leveraging Anchor Institutions for Economic Inclusion
Overview
Anchor institutions, such as colleges and universities, hospitals and health-care facilities, utilities, faith-based organizations and museums have a role to play in driving economic growth. This brief is an introduction to developing and implementing an anchor strategy that can advance equity and economic inclusion in order to promote regional prosperity. It provides actionable recommendations for federal Economic Resilience and Sustainable Communities grantees and their broad range of regional partners.
Interrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline through Cultural Organizing
Pop-up gallery of art created in collaboration with artist Kate DeCiccio by youth in Richmond, VA.
(Photo Credit: Performing Statistics)
To truly achieve equitable public safety, we must reduce the harm of policing while building up the infrastructure we need to keep all communities — including communities of color — safe and thriving. Informed by our past efforts to advance community-centered policing, PolicyLink works to dismantle institutional barriers to police accountability by advocating for structures, policies, and assessments that increase police accountability and decrease criminalization and mass incarceration. We also advocate to rightsize the role of law enforcement by challenging untested assumptions about the value-add of law enforcement, working with community advocates to shift funding away from policing and jails to address the root causes of poverty and violence, and supporting community-led alternatives that can fulfill police functions in a safer, more effective way.
Our close partnership with Performing Statistics was one example of our work toward advancing these priorities. Performing Statistics is a cultural organizing project promoting the perspectives of young people involved with the juvenile system to help reduce and improve interactions with police and to work towards police-free schools.
Performing Statistics was created in Richmond, VA in 2014 by artist Mark Strandquist in collaboration with ART 180 — a creative youth development nonprofit — and Legal Aid Justice Center. In July 2019, the project became independent and is now fiscally sponsored by Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs. Over the course of five years, the program has connected incarcerated youth with artists, advocates, and legal experts and the broader youth justice movement in Virginia.
(see images of the youth-created art from the Performance Statistics pop-up gallery)
Performing Statistics uses cultural organizing as a key strategy to destroy stereotypes, create counter-narratives, and disrupt the racism embedded in the juvenile justice system. The project targets three main systems: education, law enforcement, and juvenile justice, and it centers the perspectives of youth and families who are most impacted as experts on transforming those systems; dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline; and making communities just, safe, and whole.
With support from the Kresge Foundation, PolicyLink worked with Performing Statistics from 2016-2018, providing resource support and acting as a thought partner to move the needle on translating its youth-centered training of the Richmond Police Department into long-term, structural policy change, including proposing better data collection and reporting on interactions between police and youth by the Richmond Police Department. The ongoing training — provided to every officer in the department — combines empathy building, trauma-informed approaches, family perspectives, and avenues for police officers to identify ways to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline.
"Our work with the Richmond Police Department is a bit like triage versus surgery,” says Performing Statistics Project Director Trey Hartt. “We ultimately want a world without cops in schools, where young people are no longer criminalized the moment they step outside their door, but we also recognize that in the short-term cops aren't receiving any training on youth development, youth engagement, trauma-informed approaches, and the long-term impact on their decision to arrest. PolicyLink is helping us marry those two needs, so we don't lose sight of the long-term policy change goals."
PolicyLink also brought Performing Statistics into a cohort of arts and culture organizations focused on achieving policy change. The cohort met several times, including at a Design Dash focused on supporting Philadelphia’s Village of Arts and Humanities and at the PolicyLink Equity Summit in April 2018.
But the learning went both ways, with Performing Statistics modeling strategies that leveraged the relationship between arts, culture, and policy. For example, Performing Statistics unveiled a pop-up gallery of youth-created art and storytelling near the state capitol building for an audience of legislators. According to Performing Statistics Creative Director Mark Strandquist, “Story has the power to transform individuals and communities. Our work with teens in the system is about bringing decision-makers along the school-to-prison pipeline more proximate to the stories and ideas of young people who are most impacted by their decisions.”
Our work with Performing Statistics also reinforced the value of stories’ power to move hearts and minds. Dramatically shifting the narrative about policing will be necessary to dismantle institutional barriers to police accountability and to right-size the role of law enforcement. Inspired by Performing Statistics, PolicyLink is partnering with artists and people from communities most impacted by over-policing, surveillance, and police violence to shift public dollars from policing toward things that truly keep people safe: investment in basic resources, like food, education, housing, green jobs, and healthcare.
Given its creative, community-centered, and ambitious approach, Performing Statistics will undoubtedly be successful going forward as it continues to expand its national presence and works to translate its police training into bold, structural impact aligned with PolicyLink goals: removing police from schools, dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline, and closing youth prisons.
For more information, please contact Anand Subramanian or Trey Hartt.