Celebrating One Year of the Breathe Act!

Family,

One year ago, on July 7, we laid out our vision for safety. Unveiled in the wake of the Floyd uprisings, The BREATHE Act offered a new vision for public safety, meeting the demand for investments in community safety and providing bold leaders with a legislative framework to make it a reality.

Years of organizing and working alongside our communities with discipline and rigor have given us a clear and strategic vision for keeping Black people safe, and we have translated that into legislation. With the bold leadership of Congresswoman Bush, this is the first piece of federal legislation that is fully inspired by the BREATHE Act framework. The bill will advance the non-carceral paradigm for community safety that we are all seeking to build.

Representative Cori Bush (D-Mo), along with Congresswomen Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Jan Schakowsky (IL-06), and Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) have just introduced The People’s Response Act.

The People’s Response bill text can be found here.

Inspired by section 2 of the BREATHE Act, The People’s Response Act:

• Creates a federal first responders unit that will support states and local governments with emergency health crises, as well as a First Responders Hiring Grant to fund non-carceral first responders;
• Creates a grant program that funds community-based organizations to implement non-carceral, non-punitive investments in community safety—investments in the programs and services that Black people actually need to be safe. Things like mental health, violence interruption, youth programs, treatment, and so much more; and
• Creates a grant program that funds and incentivizes state and local governments to shrink their criminal-legal systems and invest in community-led, non-carceral, non-punitive approaches to public safety; and
• Establishes a federal body (“Division of Community Safety” at the Department of Health and Human Services) to oversee grantmaking, research coordination, and other support for non-carceral, non-punitive approaches to public safety.

Today, the BREATHE Act serves as the basis for legislation that brings us closer to that vision of safety for everyone. We organized, we wrote policy that crystalized our demand, and we elected a new Congress. Now, alongside our allies in Congress, we’ve introduced legislation that works to create systems that truly keep us safe.

“When we were protesting in the streets of Ferguson to get justice for Mike Brown Jr., our demands were clear. When we were protesting all across the country to get justice for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, our demands were clear. We demanded a new system of public safety that prioritized care over criminalization, healing over incarceration, and prevention over policing. With the People’s Response Act, we’re building a future where Black, brown, Indigenous, and marginalized communities can live full and joyous lives.”

– Congresswoman Cori Bush

Black people demanded that we create real safety for our communities, and we intend to make that demand a reality. The PRA is one piece of the puzzle, and it is a pivotal piece that puts us on the path of achieving our full vision of safety for all Black people.

We demand legislators co-sponsor The People’s Response Act and move the bill towards passage. CLICK HERE TO MESSAGE YOUR REPRESENTATIVES TO CO-SPONSOR THE PEOPLE’S RESPONSE ACT.

In solidarity and power,

Movement for Black Lives

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