Members of the COVID19 Policing Project in conversation with Marc Lamont Hill on pandemic policing and new ways forward to safeguard the health and well-being of Black communities most devastated by coronavirus, policing, and economic crisis.

"The way forward through the raging pandemic and devastating economic crisis doesn’t lie in more surveillance, policing and punishment of marginalized communities – it lies in the demands to stop pouring money and resources into policing and start pouring resources into people and communities." This conclusion to a Guardian op-ed penned by the Community Resource Hub COVID-19 Policing Project is drawn from their recently released report, Unmasked: Impacts of Pandemic Policing, documenting police violence and racial disparities in enforcement of public health orders. It should serve as a guiding principle to the incoming Biden administration as it takes leadership of a nation devastated by the impacts of a pandemic raging out of control, instead of doubling down on the policing practices that are the subject of Haymarket's recent book by Marc Lamont Hill: We Still Here: Pandemic, Policing, Protest & Possibility.

Read Unmasked: Impacts of Pandemic Policing report here: http://communityresourcehub.org/unmasked

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Speakers:

Marc Lamont Hill is currently the host of BET News. An award-winning journalist, Dr. Hill has received numerous prestigious awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences. Dr. Hill is the Steve Charles Professor of Media, Cities, and Solutions at Temple University. He is the author of the New York Times Bestselling book Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond. He is the owner of Uncle Bobbie's Bookstore in Philadelphia, PA.

Derecka Purnell is is a human rights lawyer, writer, and organizer. Since graduating from Harvard Law School, she has worked to end police and prison violence nationwide by providing legal assistance, research, and trainings to community based organizations through an abolitionist framework. Derecka is currently a columnist at The Guardian and Deputy Director of Spirit of Justice Center.

Andrea J. Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant whose writing, litigation, and advocacy has focused on policing of women and LGBT people of color for the past two decades. She is a Researcher at the Interrupting Criminalization initiative she co-founded with Mariame Kaba, a co-founder with Derecka Purnell of the COVID19 Policing Project, and works with groups across the country on campaigns to defund and reduce the harms of police. Ritchie is the author of Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, and co-author of Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.

Hiram Rivera is the Executive Director of the Community Resource Hub for Safety & Accountability, a national organization dedicated exclusively to the issue of policing and providing capacity support to organizations on the ground. He is an organizer by trade, having spent 14 years working on issues of Juvenile & Education Justice, housing, and police reform throughout the state of Connecticut, New York City, and Philadelphia.

Pascal Emmer is a researcher, writer, and visual artist. His work with the COVID-19 Policing Project builds on over a decade of involvement with the radical AIDS movement and abolitionist organizing with imprisoned trans communities.