NEW YORK, New York – On Friday, July 30, 2021,  The National Innovation Service (NIS) Officers, in partnership with its Board of Directors announced the approval of a resolution to discontinue client services beginning in Fall 2021.

This timeline allows for current client work to be completed with fidelity by NIS staff and to be transferred to values-aligned partners should additional services be required or requested. NIS will continue to work with its partners to complete current scopes of work with the needs of the communities we serve, at the center.

Current NIS staff will continue to work on individual ventures within the social impact space, with a focus on transforming public systems with a racial equity lens.

About NIS

Founded in 2019, The National Innovation Service (NIS) is a public benefit corporation that partners with governments across the country to engage in systems-level transformations. Their approach is to redesign systems with those most impacted at the center of decision-making processes. This enables public systems to make decisions in partnership with the communities most affected by those systems and produce more equitable outcomes.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Please see below Frequently Asked Questions for more information. Clients can also contact Marshall Buxton at Marshall@nis.us for more information.

How will the close of client services impact current client contracts?

A: Few NIS clients may experience minimal service interruptions a result of the resolution to close client services beginning in Fall 2021. Those clients who may experience interruptions have already been notified and plans are actively in place to ensure a seamless transition of those services to partners or continue independent work with current NIS staff. 

What is the best way to contact individual NIS Staff Members?

A: We recommend that you contact NIS staff members through LinkedIn for ease. All current and former NIS staff have LinkedIn Profiles.

Will NIS relaunch client services?

A: At this time, there are no active plans to relaunch client services at NIS. Should this change, NIS will provide updates to its stakeholders through its listserv and on its website at www.nis.us.

In coordination with King County and the City of Seattle, the National Innovation Service (NIS) is proud to announce that Marc Dones will be departing NIS to join the King County Regional Homelessness Authority as its inaugural Chief Executive Officer.

NIS was engaged to redesign and consolidate King County and Seattle’s homeless service systems in 2018, facilitating a process that centered people who have experienced homelessness in defining and architecting the King County Regional Homelessness Authority. We’ve continued to build on that work in other cities across the country and national policy advocacy. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the strain on homeless service systems across the country. Marc will bring their racial equity-centered systems and design thinking approaches to leading the community through this crisis and on to pursuing housing stability for all. 

Government is only what we agree to do together.

Marc Dones

“Government is only what we agree to do together,” Dones said in an interview with the Seattle Times. “I feel like we have a chance to really get some stuff right, and really build and run a system that is really focused on the right things, and is listening to everybody, rather than, in the traditional bureaucrat mode, ‘we know what’s best for all of you.’ That’s not my approach.”

The National Innovation Service will continue to support and facilitate communities through efforts to transform public service systems through the lenses of racial equity and justice. The team currently has ambitious work underway in Detroit, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, and San Francisco.

Please reach out to contact@nis.us.

“What are the words you do not yet have? What do you need to say? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?”

-Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

We can no longer play in the margins of trying to fix racist systems, and instead demand a new way of doing business that is rooted in justice. Today A Way Home America, in partnership with NIS, released the Housing Justice Pillar, the first of 5 pillars that will make up the New Deal to End Youth Homelessness. The Center for Housing Justice at NIS stands steadfastly behind the truths young people have breathed into this roadmap, and into transforming our current systems into ones that actually work for them.

The New Deal to End Youth Homelessness is a federal policy proposal that offers a roadmap to transform the systems that serve youth and young adults, reorienting them towards justice. 

This release comes at a critical time for our country, where as a collective movement we are:

• battling a pandemic that is disproportionately affecting Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, 

• trying to support Black, Brown, Indigenous and LGBTQ youth at the frontlines of the social justice uprising and Black Lives Matters movement,

• fighting to ensure that historically marginalized communities do not fall deeper into the economic recession, and

• preparing for new federal leadership that will have to unwind the past 4 years of racist and anti-LGBTQ policies that have caused serious harm to youth and young adults.

The roadmap to transformation calls for bold new actions rooted in racial and LGBTQ justice across five major systems serving youth and young adults: (1) housing, (2) legal systems, (3) child welfare, (4) economic systems, and (5) immigration.

Join A Way Home America and the Center for Housing Justice at NIS for a Town Hall discussion on Thursday, December 18, 2020 from 3-4:30pm EST.

The New Deal to End Youth Homelessness calls on us to transform the current systems into just systems. If we are feeling uncomfortable in a shift toward transformation, good. It is in this discomfort that we find the courage to speak aloud our words against the tyranny of racist systems. 

You might find you do not yet have the words; but young people, and the New Deal to End Youth Homelessness is calling on us all to find them.

In response to more propaganda from Sinclair, the worldwide right-wing media group dedicated to sowing division and promoting fringe arguments, we wanted to set the record straight. There's no "battle" for the soul of anything, save perhaps for a nation that has allowed its housing market to careen out of control and a lack of leadership willing to address it.

“Housing is too expensive for all of us.”

The causes of homelessness are clear; there is no mystery here. The core drivers of homelessness are economic, not personal. There is a national shortage of 7 million affordable units that has been increasing every year since 2011. The number of rental homes affordable to low- and moderate-income families in King County has decreased by 36,000 in the last ten years. Meanwhile, the region saw the average rent increase by 47% between 2012 and 2017, and the average home price increase by 53%. The loss of private market rental housing has left 41,000 individuals on fixed incomes and families making the minimum wage without an affordable apartment to rent anywhere in King County. Over 150,000 households in the region pay more than a third of their household income - sometimes far more - on housing expenses. So, we should be clear: this is not just about people experiencing homelessness. This crisis is about all of us. Housing is too expensive for all of us.

The racial wealth gap, inclusive of earned wages, plays a significant role in who becomes homeless, as does our history of exclusionary zoning and land theft.

We should also remember that homelessness disproportionately impacts people of color, particularly Black and Native/Indigenous communities. This is no accident. Racism, too, is an economic position. The racial wealth gap, inclusive of earned wages, plays a significant role in who becomes homeless, as does our history of exclusionary zoning and land theft.

We must double down on (not terminate) programs that provide safe, dignity-centered, and trauma-informed temporary solutions.

We should also not deny the reality that there is a crisis of unsheltered homelessness across the country and in King County. For this reason, we must continue to support programs that assist people in returning to permanent housing, including the expansion of voucher programs and increased development of permanent supportive housing. In the immediate, we must double down on (not terminate) programs that provide safe, dignity-centered, and trauma-informed temporary solutions. These solutions include non-congregate shelter, hotel/motel programs, and safe parking options.

We must avoid the criminalization of homelessness.

We must avoid, at all costs, the criminalization of homelessness. Arrests, tickets, and involuntary commitments of homeless people have been proven to fail in every jurisdiction where they've been attempted. Additionally, many of these proposed actions violate people's civil and human rights. It is not acceptable to have one code of law for people with money and another for people without.

We must continue to listen to people with lived experience.

Finally, we must continue to listen to people experiencing homelessness. We know that those who are closest to the problem are those who have the solutions. The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is a decisive step in that direction, incorporating those with lived expertise at every decision-making level. We must continue to move in that direction if we hope to make rapid progress on this crisis.

We invite everyone to get involved in creating the solution rather than letting a fringe minority, backed by a powerful media group, set the tone of the conversation. Here's how you can help:

Here's how you can help:

• Support inclusive zoning efforts: https://www.housingconsortium.org/policy/inclusionaryhousing/ 

• Demand increased funding for rental voucher programs, for building more affordable homes, and for solutions to unsheltered homelessness: www.wliha.org 

• Educate yourself about permanent supportive housing, the solution to chronic homelessness for people with disabilities:  www.thirddoorcoalition.org/

• Support housing justice initiatives and tenant protections. Your rent is too high too! Resources and more information about housing issues are available at https://regionalhomelesssystem.org/ 

• Support the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

• Oppose measures that criminalize homelessness or try to hide people experiencing homelessness rather than solving the problem. Learn more about how criminalization makes homelessness worse here: https://law.seattleu.edu/centers-and-institutes/korematsu-center/initiatives/homeless-rights-advocacy-project 

• Call on state lawmakers, who convene in January, to invest in proven solutions to homelessness. Stay current with updates from the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance: www.wliha.org 

• Demand Congress include homelessness resources, rent assistance, and a nationwide moratorium on evictions in any future coronavirus relief package.

Please join us to focus on solutions to homelessness.

• CSH (Corporation for Supportive Housing)

• Homeless Rights Advocacy Project

• Lived Experience Coalition

• National Low Income Housing Coalition

• National Innovation Service

• National Homelessness Law Center

• Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness

• Washington Low Income Housing Coalition

• We Are In

Over the fall and winter, NIS conducted foundational research for a multi-phase initiative focused on how Black and Brown communities understand and construct safety and thriving in New York City. We reviewed existing community-based participatory research and interviewed people currently doing formal and informal work around safety and thriving in NYC Black and Brown communities.  

Although these conversations happened before COVID-19 and the national #BlackLivesMatter-led resistance to anti-black violence, we see this research as an important foundation for addressing the facts that Black and Brown people in NYC are dying disproportionately of COVID-19 and at the hands of the police, as well as the disproportionately negative impact that NYC’s austerity budget will have on the same communities.

We’ve begun building on the findings outlined in the below report in collaboration with community and government partners, with a focus on resources and ownership essential to safety and thriving in Black and Brown communities. We'd like to share this work with you and hear your thoughts. Please click on the link below to access the report.

People vectors created by rawpixel.com

This week, the Trump Administration moved forward with undoing protections for trans* people seeking shelter and announced that it will be terminating the entirety of the Affirmatively Further Fair Housing (AFFH) Rule. 

This is simply the latest in bigoted and racist policymaking in action and we have to name it as such. These cynical and desperate actions are part of the Administration’s latest election cycle attempt to appeal to the darkest aspects of our nation while explicitly arguing for a return to segregation and stoking transphobia in communities.

Some of you have heard me say this before but I want to be clear once again: justice is everyone’s responsibility. We cannot rely on the federal government to shine the light ahead for us. In fact, the federal government has never played that role. It was always the people of this nation, in community, working tirelessly to advance the causes of justice that the federal government eventually responded to. Abolitionists laid the groundwork for freeing the slaves, suffragettes for expanding the right to vote. Again and again the true ideals of this nation, the hopes that it represents, have been upheld not by the government but by the people. 

So I’m asking you to do the work anyway. If the federal government won’t enforce anti-discrimination regulations for people of color and trans* people then we will. The NIS Center for Housing Justice and the rest of our team stand ready to assist you in creating your own local regulatory and legislative frameworks to drive fair housing and protect the rights of marginalized communities. We’re ready to help you design and implement plans to counter bigotry and to prove that the people of this nation are ready to step towards justice and anti-racism.

Please reach out to us directly if you need help with this vital work in community. 

But we also need you to speak up federally. We must clearly put into the record that we, as a nation, do not support this administration. Our partners at True Colors United, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities are leading the charge in D.C. and need your support.  Please engage with their advocacy initiatives underway and visit https://housingsaveslives.org/ to submit a public comment in support of the Equal Access Rule and circulate widely to your partners over the next 60 days.

Marc Dones

Listen to Marc introduce the Equity-Based Decision-Making Framework above.

Over the course of the pandemic we’ve seen communities around the country struggle with how to continue to operate in an equitable way. In order to assist we’ve released the equity-based decision making framework:

The Equity-Based Decision-Making Framework is designed to support communities in implementing the Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Response. The purpose of the Framework is to ensure that as homelessness service systems respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, system processes and policies proactively eliminate racial inequalities and advance equity.

This framework takes the concept of equity out of the vague and generic language we often see and makes it concrete. The framework covers practical aspects of government business operations.

As always we at NIS remain dedicated to making sure that leaders have the tools to make better choices and to make sure that there’s accountability when they ignore those tools in favor of white supremacy and oppression.

As organizations dedicated to ending America’s homelessness and housing crisis, we stand in support of Black people and the Black organizers who are working on housing justice including the Movement for Black Lives, Moms 4 Housing, and others during this time of reckoning and transformation. We echo their demands to divest from criminal legal systems and invest in Black communities.

The injustice of homelessness cannot be decoupled from the legacy of centuries of systemic racism. The white supremacy and racism that devalue Black lives in the context of policing are the same that make Black people more likely to experience homelessness. Black Americans make up 13% of the population, but represent 40% of people experiencing homelessness. Any meaningful response to homelessness moving forward must address racism as a fundamental root cause.

Re-envisioning public safety also creates an opportunity to reshape how communities support their neighbors struggling with housing. Criminalizing homelessness and investing in police as a front-line response to homelessness only opens the door to more brutality and discrimination and worsens the devastating effects that police have in Black and brown communities. Instead, these funds could be used to create thriving communities with affordable, accessible housing. We applaud communities already taking steps to end this, and we look forward to supporting any that are committed to centering equity and racial justice in their work to end homelessness.

We commit to using our platform and resources as national organizations to dismantle racist institutions, advance just policies, and amplify Black voices and solutions. Because #BlackLivesMatter and because it’s the only way to truly solve America’s homelessness and housing crisis.

The National Innovation Service (NIS) is announcing the establishment of the Center for Housing Justice, an arm of the agency that will focus on dismantling structural racism inside our nation’s housing and homeless service systems and redesigning toward an equitable future.

Ending homelessness will not be possible without focusing our efforts on housing justice.

The Center for Housing Justice is coming to life in a moment where national attention is critically focused on the systemic failures of our public systems for Black people and other communities of color. Just as our law enforcement and criminal legal systems are built on a foundation of structural racism that leads to harmful outcomes for Black people and other people of color, our housing and homeless systems are fruit of the same poisonous tree. 

Ending homelessness will not be possible without focusing our efforts on housing justice. We have a responsibility to create a nation where everyone has access to the supports they need and where housing is a human right.

We have a responsibility to create a nation where everyone has access to the supports they need and where housing is a human right.

The Center for Housing Justice will be a hub to expand the connections of the housing and homelessness sector to organizers and activists across the country who are actively working to reimagine their communities. The Center will work to develop and support housing justice agendas across the country by centering racial justice, using community-based participatory research and design, and engaging directly in community organizing. “Following the track record of NIS, you can expect the Center for Housing Justice to be uncompromising in our vision," said Marc Dones, Executive Director. "You can expect the team we build to transform our housing systems by relentlessly pursuing racial justice, fighting for transgender equity, and centering people whom housing and other systems have failed over and over in our country's history.”

We are proud to announce that Sarah Hunter will be joining NIS and will be the first dedicated member of the Center for Housing Justice team. Hunter is a former Policy Advisor to Secretary Julián Castro of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an architect of the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, and most recently, a Senior Program Manager at CSH, leading youth homelessness policy and planning. She can be reached at sarah.hunter@nis.us beginning July 1st.

Ann Oliva, Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explains the Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response. Video produced by the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Dear Community,

Right now we do not have time or latitude to be anything less than visionary as we work against a pandemic exacerbated by racism, as we work to address unprecedented homelessness and economic instability exacerbated by inequality. At NIS, we know that in order to address these crises effectively, we must dismantle structural racism and build toward racial equity. We cannot continue business as usual; we must accelerate change. And we must work together to accomplish these goals. 

It is in this spirit that NIS has teamed up with other leading national organizations in the fight to end homelessness, forming a partnership to offer support to states and communities across the country in centering racial equity and responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Partners in this effort include:

• Nan Roman and the team at the National Alliance to End Homelessness

• Ann Oliva and Peggy Bailey from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

• Matthew Doherty and Barbara Poppe, both former Executive Directors of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness currently working in communities across the country

• Barbara DiPietro and the team from the National Health Care for the Homeless Council,

• Diane Yentel and the team from the National Low Income Housing Coalition

• Mary Cunningham and Samantha Batko from the Urban Institute

This work—funded by the Melville Charitable Trust, Funders for Housing and Opportunity, and through in-kind work by the partners—is rooted in The Framework for an Equitable COVID-19 Homelessness Response. 

As we move forward, NIS will continue to work with these partners to release further updates to the framework itself and specific tools for implementation of an equity-based plan to address both the public health and economic crises our field is facing. These tools include:

• How and why every community should focus CARES Act funds on people already experiencing homelessness, marginalized communities and extremely low-income households

• A guide on how to implement equity-based decision-making processes at the community and organizational levels to ensure that people with lived expertise are at the table and participate in decisions

• Briefs and videos that identify strategies to serve populations who have been marginalized historically and by COVID-19

• A geographic targeting tool that will help identify specific neighborhoods where households are heavily impacted by COVID-19 and by its economic effects so that funds can be targeted to families and organizations working in those communities

• Identification and implementation tips for impactful strategies like landlord engagement, working with small landlords and diversion approaches

NIS is working with our partners to release additional updates to the framework, including materials that address the intersection between police and people experiencing homelessness. Please email framework@naeh.org to request a presentation for your community or group by one of our partners. Please stay tuned for updates to the framework and supporting materials, including videos and live presentations. 

This partnership builds on the commitment NIS made with our founding to wrestle complex issues to the ground, to directly confront our nation’s legacy of racism and the deadly treatment of Black and Brown lives in our public systems, to envision a different future and to build toward it. 

In the past few weeks, NIS has offered our insights on the necessity of Black futures, how to defund the police, and an equitable systems transformation framework for COVID-19. To accomplish these visions for the future, we must radically partner and collaborate and encourage you to find ways to do the same. As always, thank you for your support and partnership in this work.

With gratitude and in solidarity,

Marc Dones

“The impossible is the least that one can demand.”

― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

After the publication of our open letter on Tuesday of this week a colleague sent me a simple text message that read, “How do we start to dismantle. That is the million dollar question. I don’t want to be on no mo’ commissions. I want to lay waste to the undergirdings.” 

And so I started to think about dismantling, and what that would look like. How might we go about the serious and methodical business of dismantling the police? 

This should not be misunderstood to be six easy steps. Every one of these is complicated, complex, and a body of work unto itself.

The purpose of this six-point plan is to begin to answer that question on an operational front. This should not be misunderstood to be six easy steps. Every one of these is complicated, complex, and a body of work unto itself. But each one is essential if we are actually going to end the police state that has killed so many Black and brown people in this country. 

it is not a reasonable assertion to state that “no one has thought about violent crime” when arguing for the dismantling of the police.

However, this is not a comprehensive assessment on what to replace the police with. There have been countless plans that seriously consider and discuss the development of interventions for crimes ranging from theft to murder. I won’t attempt to recreate that scholarship here. But simply put it is not a reasonable assertion to state that “no one has thought about violent crime” when arguing for the dismantling of the police. What is true is that the voices who have done the most serious and rigorous thinking about how to create those options have been Black and brown voices and so they have not been treated as worthy of legitimate consideration by policymakers. 

And look where that got us.

As I write this the president of the Minneapolis City Council has tweeted out an intention to defund the police. Let this be the beginning of something good. Let it be the beginning of something great.

Marc Dones

Enact local legislation to cut police department budgets in half every year moving forward with corresponding matched investments in communities of color.

Look, defund means defund. It doesn’t mean cut this year but then increase next year or introduce new technological safeguards like Smart Guns™. It means defund. We must be honest that there is no reform that will work because there is no reform that has worked. We’ve seen what happens time and again: use of force continuums are ignored, “non-lethal” options leave people maimed for life or are used to the point where they become lethal, police turn off their bodycams or ‘forget’ to turn them on, police who have been through anti-bias trainings, been through sensitivity trainings and still create violence around them. These reforms often resulted in more money being funneled out of communities and into policing than before—creating a paradigm where police budgets were often rewarded with additional funding for each increasingly spectacular failure. 

The legacy of policing has an unbroken line that begins with slave catching patrols which later on became the state and city police patrols—often down to the design of the badge. This is a system that cannot be salvaged—the roots run to the racist bedrock of the nation and the fruit is too rotten. The very nature of this institution is corrosive—it is an unreasonable power to ask a human psyche to bear without becoming warped. As the Stanford prison experiment and the Milgram shock experiment both famously demonstrated when normal people are given immunity from consequence and coached towards cruelty there is something in them that breaks. If nothing else, we must defund the police to save them from a system that will hollow them out until they are unable to recognize the dignity and inherent divinity of everyone around them. To see this we only have to look at the recent examples of police leaders recounting the number of shootings they’ve been involved in and asserting that they weren’t bothered by any of the lives they’ve taken. I’m reminded of James Baldwin, who wrote in 1966, 

“the police are simply the hired enemies of this population. They are present to keep the Negro in his place and to protect white business interests, and they have no other function. …and, since they know that they are hated, they are always afraid. One cannot possibly arrive at a more surefire formula for cruelty.”

I’m thinking now of a video released of an officer in Buffalo, New York striking an elderly man and he falls back and immediately blood begins pouring from his head. The officers, lined up and marching forward, do not break. They step over his body. If I stop to think about how hardened your heart would have to be to not stop immediately, to not attend to this man, I am saddened by what has become of these people and I cannot help but think of the years of work it will take to undo the harm that has been done to them by a system that demanded they lose their basic connections to other humans for the sake of a murderous “order”. 

So little has changed in the 54 years since Baldwin’s writing. Black communities are still hyper-policed and the fundamental tension between those officers and the community they’ve been deployed into is the tension that exists between a population and an occupying army. This tension is not resolvable with community dialogue or foot patrols or “community policing.”

Let me be clear on the ultimate goal: we are here to end the harm that police cause in Black communities and there is no reform that ends more of that harm than police simply not being there. 

It’s on local legislators who control the power of the purse to take the necessary step to begin reducing police department budgets in a methodical, automatic, and non-negotiable way. Phasing out policing should be done thoughtfully and must provide communities the opportunities necessary to ramp up the necessary community-based supports and alternative services that will be needed. We cannot repeat the mistakes that were made when we deinstitutionalized our mental health system and made grand promises of moving money into community supports that never materialized. Therefore, we’re calling on 1:1 matches in investments in affordable housing, schools, healthcare, and basic needs support for communities of color for every dollar drawn out of police budgets. 

Move money into highly flexible supports focused on communities of color. 

One of my favorite quotes, that I read many years ago, reads: “no man steals a watch simply to tell time.”

¹At the time of writing I cannot for the life of me find the citation for this sentence. But please know that I am not claiming to have coined it and if you know where it came from please send me a note so I can add the appropriate reference.

I have carried this quote with me for my entire career in public policy. The things we consider to be crime, the behaviors which are detrimental to our social fabric, come from someplace. They are not born from some innate flaw in a person—they are that person’s response to a flaw in our society. And if we want to move forward into a safe and thriving society without police then it will be on us to fix those flaws. 

Spoiler: the flaw we need to fix is centuries of structural racism. 

The services and supports we need to create in communities are those around affordable housing, economic opportunity, healthcare (inclusive of mental health supports), and basic needs support. In 2013 I was working in Massachusetts with one of the smartest teams I’ve ever had the pleasure to be part of when we were asked to redesign violence prevention in the commonwealth—with a focus on young people. The program we built prioritized identifying young people who are involved in violent activity and providing them unlimited support for their basic needs.  We called that program the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative or SSYI for short. As described by researchers, “the distinguishing feature of SSYI is its lack of police suppression or police contact of any kind with young men who receive services, focusing instead on improving individual economic, physical, social, and emotional well-being through an intensive and ongoing case management and outreach process that is not time-bound and continues until the young men are self-sufficient and leading healthy, independent lives (Investing in Intervention, Giffords Law Center et. al.).” 

It turns out that supporting people’s needs works “Evaluations of SSYI grantees, however, paint a clear picture. Between 2013 and 2016, Lowell, Massachusetts, saw overall firearm-related activity drop by 22%, gang-related criminal activity decline by 31%, and nonfatal shootings plummet by 61%. (Investing in Intervention, Giffords Law Center et al.).”

We live in a society that has produced only two options for citizen on need of intervention: state sponsored murder or nothing at all. 

The other day a friend said to me, "I saw a man stealing a bike the other day and I felt like I wanted to stop him but I didn't feel safe. Then I thought about calling the police—but I didn't want to kill him either." We live in a society that has produced only two options for citizens in need of intervention: state sponsored murder or nothing at all. 

Imagine if we had the $100 billion this country spends a year to spend on creating the supports that people actually need? 

Create accountability and liability. 

At its core policing is an institution that lacks accountability. A friend texted me to critique yet another recently released reform plan that suggested that officer violations be required to be reported. Reported to who? she asked. The problem with accountability framed through reporting of this fashion is that it isn’t real. How many of us have had a boss we didn’t respect, didn’t think was really our boss and so we simply ignored them? The network of accountabilities that frame us—that makes us who we are—are formed out of relationships to the people and places that we call our community. And a fundamental problem with the structure of the system of policing is that it does not require community—they do not have to wield the power they’ve been entrusted with on their friends, families, or neighbors. They don’t have to look those people in the eye when they clock off or answer for their actions in the grocery store. 

The fetishized notion of the small-town sheriff who you run into at the diner simply does not exist.

The fetishized notion of the small-town sheriff who you run into at the diner simply does not exist. To see this, we can look at the recently revealed reality that Minneapolis was operating with only 8% of a police force that actually called Minneapolis home. As I was drafting this plan I sent it to a friend of mine whose father was a state trooper in a relatively rural area of upstate New York for many years and she responded, “It’s funny that my dad was as close to this as people get, I think, and for most of my life he was stationed over an hour away or more. It wasn’t until he was almost retired that he worked closer to home—but still two towns over.”

Therefore, in order to create accountable policing structures for the remainder of the time jurisdictions are operating police forces they should require that officers not be allowed to exercise their responsibilities as officers outside of the zip code in which they live. To be clear this should not be understood as permanent measure or a replacement for defunding police but rather a tool to decrease harm for the limited period of time that the current policing structure is still active in any form. 

“But! Whole areas of the city would suddenly be without police then!”

This is not enough. We have to ensure that police who cross the line are liable for the actions they’ve committed. Communities should strip police departments of the qualified immunity they’ve held until now. The simple fact of the matter is that qualified immunity, the legal shield that protects individuals who create harm while still allowing the governments they work for to be sued, was created out of whole cloth by the court system itself. While legislative action has been taken at some levels in order to create a stronger legal basis for liability exemptions while government officials (most noticeably police) are discharging their on-duty responsibilities it still remains, largely, an issue of judicial precedent and not legislative action. 

Federal, state, and local legislative bodies could, and should, eliminate qualified immunity for police officers. What an incredibly asymmetrical structure where an entire group of people are armed, deployed into cities across the country, and told that there is almost no way they can be held responsible for any lethal action they take. How could you possibly take the situation seriously when you’ll never be implicated in it—regardless of the outcome? 

Terminate police union contracts. 

As mentioned above, police are a literal outgrowth of local militias. In keeping with this, they have been treated as, covered by the same broad liability waivers as, and armed as soldiers. 

Despite this they negotiate as collective bargaining units that drive the policies that make it incredibly difficult to discipline, let alone fire or hold accountable individual police offers. 

This simply doesn’t make sense.  

The Department of Defense does not have unions for active duty personnel who are responsible for these kinds of life and death decisions.

Only civilian, non-combatant, personnel have union representation. 

In comparison, the Department of Defense does not have unions for active duty personnel who are responsible for these kinds of life and death decisions. Only civilian, non-combatant, personnel have union representation. 

Why should local law enforcement, given the same tools and tasks, be any different? 

Change your leadership.

Current police leadership is not equipped to dismantle the departments they have successfully shepherded to radical expansion. 

In order to ensure that departments are actually being accelerated towards dissolution leadership will have to be replaced with wind down administrators who answer to citizen oversight panels comprised of community members from neighborhoods who have historically been the most oppressed by police.

I don’t know why you have a tank. Really. I don’t get it. 

This weaponry must immediately be liquidated. 

The rapid hyper militarization of the police that took place post 9/11 has placed sophisticated war machines in local police departments across the country. These tools serve no purpose other than to needlessly escalate situations and create unbelievable harm in communities. This weaponry must immediately be liquidated. 

Any revenue generated by this should be redistributed to CBO's working in community.

Graphics created by NIS

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There are no curses—only mirrors

held up to the souls of gods and mortals. 

—Rita Dove, Mother Love

I’m tired.

If I could, that would be the entirety of this statement. I’m tired. Been tired. Don’t see a future where I’m not tired—and that just makes me even more tired. I’m tired of having the same conversations, of asking the same questions.

Black people are tired.

If I could, that would be the entirety of this statement. Black people are tired of having a new name to grieve every week. Of sending our children out into the world worrying they will become the next name. Of wondering when it will be our name.

I want to be clear that the problem is not an absence of solutions—the problem is that those solutions, the ones that create a future where my death isn’t wreathed in violence, are the solutions that require the remaking of America. There is no more reforming to be done. We will not tinker our way to justice. We will not save this country from itself with non-profits or philanthropy. We will not get bailed out by tech. We will save this country by finally reckoning with the incredible sins of its birth, and the dark heart that fuels it. 

We will only be able to remake America when we can say, clearly and with no hesitation: America is racist. The institutions of America are racist. And they must be dismantled.

So, I want to say it clearly: an orientation towards equity is antithetical to continuing to support state violence in any way. This includes the police. As such, I am calling on our city and county partners to begin looking at immediate budget reductions for police departments.

To my government colleagues: I know you. I know that you went into government because you believe in the fundamental possibility of democracy. You believe that there’s something magical about what can be done when we agree to do it together. I also know you’re all doing COVID related budget reductions exercises right now. And now I’m asking you to do something brave: don’t cut services. Cut your police budget. In half.

Collectively, communities across the U.S. spends over $100 billion on policing. And communities spend typically between 20 – 35% of their general fund budget on police; although some communities exceed 40%.  Take that money and turn it into what communities need: housing, healthcare, and basic needs support.

Create community lead development projects, community lead safety initiatives. Prioritize investment in Black communities. Prioritize investments in Black leadership. Prioritize Black futures.

To that end, we must also create city and state level Truth & Reconciliation Commissions. Our federal government is not going to lead, and, in that vacuum, local government must step up. We cannot move forward without accounting for the past—and the time has long since come to do so. 

This will be hard. You will face backlash. You may risk re-election. If you need help, ask. I, and many others, can assist. Because the real risk is another name. Another Black person who never goes home again. 

What I’m going to ask you now is to be brave. Brave enough to do the necessary act of transforming America so that we, the Black and brown folks, the trans folks, the disabled, can finally stop being so damn tired. So we can finally catch our breath.

I hope you'll join us in this ask.

Marc Dones

June 2, 2020

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to unfold we are unfortunately starting to see old patterns play themselves out again. Historically marginalized communities are once again being left behind in our responses and in our decision making. 

As we prepare for billions of dollars to flow into the homelessness response system, NIS is offering a preliminary framework for our partners on how to navigate the COVID-19 response while centering lived experience and racial equity. 

We hope you find this helpful and we are available to walk you through any of these in more detail.

1. Equity-based decisions can be fast if the right people are in the room. 

*The room is in this instance metaphorical, and rather a digitally-based decision-making group.

Good emergency management decision making is typified by its speed. In an emergency we are better served by moving quickly than by moving perfectly. This often creates a tension between acting quickly and acting equitably. This is particularly true because of the guidance we have repeatedly given that equity-based decisions require slower processes. This is still true. 

However, what’s not true is that when we have less time we stop trying to act equitably. 

What’s critical for us to remember is that equity-based decisions can still be made quickly if the right people are already in the room. Now is the time to look around our decision-making tables. Is everyone at the table white? Is everyone cis-gendered? Are there any Native people at the table? Then now is the time to make changes quickly to diversify groups of decision makers. If we bring people into our decision making then there is the opportunity for them to be considered. 

Key populations to include in our emergency management structures: 

• Black people 

• Latinx people

• Asian people (particularly people who are being targeted with racist attacks right now)

• Pacific Islanders 

• People who identify as LGBQ

• Native people 

• Trans and gender-expansive people 

• Incarcerated people 

• Undocumented people

• People living with disabilities

All of these groups are facing elevated risks that we still don’t fully understand and have community needs that must be accounted for. And, to be clear, these voices should not be relegated to specialized “equity” tables. They must be incorporated into the regular command structure of our emergency management centers so that they have the ability to accelerate solutions and, when necessary, prevent or stop harm to their communities. 

Now is the time to reach out to the organizers and activists who work with these communities daily and pull them into decision making so that as we continue to make rapid-fire decisions, we know that critical voices are present in key roles.

2. Remember that a lot of populations have excellent reasons to be distrustful of the government and the medical system. 

Many communities have every reason to distrust the government and its solutions. There have been too many Tuskegee Trials for that not to be true. These populations will likely not be rapidly engaging with some of the pop-up testing sites that have been stood up or other healthcare connection opportunities. 

As a result we will have to figure out how to engage these communities and ensure that they have the proper access to testing and care. As with other pandemics, this will require the activation of specialized outreach teams. We must look to activate the community health workers and mobile medical units that have developed relationships in those communities and begin asking for guidance on how best to engage. 

As we ramp up our available supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) these kinds of specialized outreach and engagement teams will be crucial to identifying communities that may be experiencing coronavirus transmission but avoiding connections to care. It’s important to understand that because of historical interactions that many people may be reluctant or unwilling to engage with systems that have traumatized their friends and family in the past, even when they have severe symptoms.

3. Focus. On. Housing.  

Shelter systems are likely to be overwhelmed in waves over the coming months. System flow through is critical right now. As we see unprecedented amounts of money enter the homelessness system we have to remember that our goal can’t just be to pivot our crisis response system and shelter in response to the pandemic. Our goal must be to house people. 

The only way to enable proper social distancing is to ensure that people are in homes of their own. As the economy continues to struggle over the course of the pandemic, we have to assume that there may in fact be a spike in need for our crisis response system. As a result new dollars should be used not only to redesign the current shelter system to accommodate non-congregate shelter and get desperately needed supplies and staffing but also to prioritize the creation of new permanent solutions. 

Additionally, the best way to keep people from needing the crisis response system is to keep them housed to begin with. Communities should seize this opportunity to create or expand large-scale diversion programs that are easily accessible through 2-1-1 or web-based systems that do not require in-person visits to providers or government agencies.

4. Hold your standards. The Trump administration has already begun to waive standards meant to protect marginalized communities. But you don’t have to.

The Trump administration has already used the pandemic to eliminate regulatory standards at the Department of Labor and the Environmental Protection Agency. As the pandemic continues to unfold we must expect to see more and more abdication of the federal responsibility to hold standards around non-discrimination and other regulations like preventing and addressing toxic living environments for marginalized communities.

But that doesn’t mean you need to roll back your standards. Cities, counties, and states have the power to set their own standards around non-discrimination, around ensuring dollars get to businesses and providers owned and operated by folks from marginalized communities. Now is the time to ensure that those standards are strong, that they do not require federal support, and that you are prepared to enforce them.

5. Racial equity is still our priority. If equity is only your priority in times of ease and surplus then it was never really your priority.

Over the last several years we’ve seen a proliferation of funders and agencies talking about equity as a core part of their responses. The word equity appears in the mission statements and strategic plans of nonprofits, government agencies, and public policy firms across the country. The idea that we need to prioritize the needs of historically marginalized communities—to understand that those who are the most impacted should drive the responses to our societies social problems—has been slow to catch on but has been the vital missing ingredient in key advances we’ve made over the last several years in public health, housing, homelessness, and criminal justice. 

But as COVID-19 hits the United States and we begin to marshal our responses We’re seeing something disturbing: equity initiatives are being shelved. Equity-based strategic planning, outreach to marginalized communities, and strong community engagement have all been downgraded in importance as we shift our attention towards crisis responses. The message is that equity, for the people who run our systems, is a luxury. It’s not something to be prioritized in times of crisis, in the lean times, it’s a time for the surplus for the good economy. As our country looks at a year or more of COVID-19 response, of a worsening economic climate, are we telling people that equity can wait? That justice is only an acceptable aim when the powerful have no skin in the game? 

The idea that equity is a luxury good, something only a surplus economy can produce, is a dangerous and misguided concept. It would seem to me that the roots of this idea are that the racism, misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia we see are bugs or glitches rather than features of the American system. A bug is something that you could reasonably hope that maybe, this time, wouldn’t act up. That maybe this time we wouldn’t get the same incredibly racist results that we always do. The problem is that racism in America is a feature not a bug. 

This is precisely why, in these moments of crisis, when the stakes are high, we must double down on equity and justice as the core elements of our approach. When we don’t respond to disasters with equity we get failed responses like those in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina; we get Puerto Rico.

But Katrina was the result of racist policy and choices. And we can choose differently.

6. Rest.

Remember, you can’t help anyone if you’re burned out. Now is the time for leaders from marginalized communities to remember that, even in times of crisis, there has to be a time when we turn off the work phone. 

Your communities need you—so please take care of yourself.

Graphics created by NIS

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