Beyond Policing: Creating Safe and Just Communities - The Aspen Institute aspeninstitute.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from aspeninstitute.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty This story is available exclusively to Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.
The House is expected this week to pass a major police reform bill. Senate action remains TBD.
Democrats want to impose a federal ban on chokeholds and require law enforcement offices to use dashboard cameras.
Police unions may resist these new changes and could see the bill as an attack against law enforcement.
Members of Congress have walked alongside protesters and given fiery speeches on the need for police reform since the Memorial Day 2020 death of George Floyd. So far, their efforts have fallen short.
Thursday, February 25, 2021
Share
This year’s Community Engaged Scholarship Forum, titled “Progress through Partnerships: Advancing Community Resilience,” will bring Pitt students, faculty, staff and community members together with leaders in higher education and community development to discuss topics including basic needs, civic participation, digital access and inclusion, education, health equity, criminal justice reform, and relationships and the social fabric.
Registration for the March 2 virtual event is open through Friday, Feb. 26. While programming runs from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. ET, participants have the flexibility to choose to attend as many or as few sessions as they’d like and can come and go throughout the day and evening. Sessions are grouped around themes including relationships and our social fabric, critical and liberatory practices in community engagement, health equity and criminal justice reform.
Guest Profile: Reverend Vivian Nixon
Reverend Vivian D. Nixon is Executive Director of College & Community Fellowship (CCF) a New York City organization that helps women and families most harmed by mass criminalization gain equitable access to opportunity and human rights. Reverend Nixon identifies herself as a joyfully Black woman whose release from correctional oversight gave rise to a search for true liberation and guided her academic and career choices. Her work at CCF, and beyond, advances justice through economic and social equity, anti-racism, civic engagement, and artistic expression.
Instructed and ordained in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, Reverend Nixon has an MFA from Columbia School of the Arts, and currently teaches at Bennington College’s Center for the Advancement of Public Action. Recognized with multiple honors, she is a recipient of the John Jay Medal for Justice and Fellowships with programs at the Aspen Institute, Open Society Foundations, and Pen A
Beyond Policing: Creating Safe and Just Communities, with Art Acevedo, Roy L. Austin, and Karol Mason in conversation with Bill Whitaker
As the nation witnesses increasing public support for a reimagining and transformation of the criminal justice system, calls for defunding the police and reinvestment of those funds have dominated recent discourse. This moment also presents an opportunity to simultaneously achieve safety and justice through a more community-driven approach. How do we and our leaders make change happen in a way that takes into consideration historic injustices, as well as the underlying social, economic, education and health disparities in the United States?