OUR PLAN FOR ANTI-RACISM

ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Economic Opportunities

  • Enact a livable wage, adjusted to inflation annually, and eliminate the tipped wage

  • Increase investment in Black-owned small businesses, and expand programs to assist Black residents in starting their own businesses

  • Implement a universal child care program that offers free or low-cost quality childcare, capped at a percentage of household income

  • Protect tenants’ rights and increase enforcement of exploitation by landlords

  • Increase investment in affordable housing to bring down rental costs, as well as in housing and mortgage programs specifically designed to close the racial homeownership gap

Education

  • Further expand investment into public schools in underserved areas, including providing the necessary resources so that every student has the support they need to thrive

  • Provide free or affordable post-secondary education to all Massachusetts residents

  • Expand opportunities for student loan repayment programs

Health Care

  • Support a single-payer healthcare system that ensures access to quality and affordable healthcare to all residents, regardless of employment status

  • Establish accountability standards based on outcomes, so that hospitals and medical facilities provide necessary care regardless of reimbursement rates

  • Providing incentives for healthcare facilities that take concrete steps to lower maternal mortality rates, and that implement policies and practices to narrow racial inequities

POLICE VIOLENCE

End Broken Windows Policing

  • Decriminalize low-level offenses and de-prioritize their enforcement

  • Ban police racial profiling, including consent searches, pretext stops and stop-and-frisk

  • Establish a first responder program comprised of trained mental health professionals and community intervention workers to be deployed first to the scene of mental health crises

  • Reallocate funds available due to decreased policing to scale up community-based alternatives

End For-Profit Policing

  • Prohibit police from seizing cash and property without a criminal conviction

  • Require police departments to use their own budgets to pay misconduct settlements 

Limit Use of Force

  • Restrict the use of deadly force only when strictly necessary and after all other reasonable alternatives are exhausted, including the use of de-escalation and non-lethal techniques

  • Require data on race to be collected and published online for all arrests and police use of force

  • Require officers to use de-escalation whenever possible

  • Adopt clear guidelines on the use of force, and ban the use of chokeholds, strangleholds or any other neck restraints

  • Ban the use of tear gas and rubber bullets

  • Ban officers from shooting at vehicles

  • Establish an Early Intervention System to identify officers with high rates of use of force, racial disparities and misconduct complaints, and protocols to intervene to address these issues

  • Create a police misconduct database and prohibit the rehiring of officers who are fired or resign under investigation

Body Cameras / Filming the Police

  • Establish policies regarding body cameras to ensure:

    • footage is publicly available

    • non-essential footage is not stored

    • officers are required to record while on duty

    • There are specific disciplinary consequences for violations

    • The use of cameras with biometric scanning and other surveillance technologies is prohibited

  • Improve protections for people who film the police

    • Strengthening laws protecting the right to do so

    • Providing legal assistance for individuals to sue law enforcement agencies if they take or destroy recording devices

Independent Investigations

  • Require independent investigation and prosecution of officer-related deaths or serious injuries

  • Establish a permanent Special Prosecutor’s Office to prosecute all cases where a police officer kills or seriously injures a civilian, a person dies in police custody or where a person alleges criminal misconduct against a police officer

Training & Certification

  • Expand and fund training on police de-escalation, limiting use of force, anti-bias and crisis intervention

  • Establish and fund community-led trainings on how the police can treat communities with dignity and respect 

  • Establish a state-wide Peace Officer Standards and Training system to certify police officers and enable de-certification for misconduct and abuse (H.2146)

  • Establish an Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity to establish guidelines and review for diversity plans for all state agencies (H.2292)

  • Establish a peace officer exam advisory board to review examinations for appointment and promotion of peace officers (H.2292)

Hiring

  • Require police departments to establish clear plans to prioritize hiring among underrepresented communities

Disciplinary Powers

  • Establish an all-civilian commission with discipline power that includes a Police Commission and Civilian Complaints Office. The Police Commission's role will be to set department policies, while the Civilian Complaints Office will be to receive, investigate and resolve all civilian complaints. 

Community-Developed Policy

  • Establish a commission to study how the systemic presence of institutional racism has created a culture of structural racial inequality which has exacerbated disproportionate minority contact with the criminal justice system (H.1440)

  • Establish a commission consisting of members from disproportionately-affected communities to work towards progressive “policing” and the necessary redesigning of “policing” including redistributing funding, introducing non-police first responders/social workers.

Fair Police Union Contracts

  • Revise state police bill of rights laws and local police union contracts so that:

  • Misconduct complaints can not be disqualified if investigations take more than a year

  • The interrogation of officers can not be restricted or delayed

  • Officers are not given the evidence against them, including the names of their accusers, prior to the interrogation

  • Public access to police misconduct records is not restricted 

CRIMINAL JUSTICE REFORM

Prevention

  • Invest in early intervention programs to deter young people from criminal activity

  • Provide the necessary resources for schools to deal with the social, emotional and mental needs of students and eliminate zero tolerance policies

  • Invest more financial resources into community services and create cross-community collaborations to focus on deterrence 

  • Increase data collection and reporting

Treatment

  • Decriminalize mental health crises; prioritize treatment over incarceration

  • Establish a first responder program comprised of trained mental health professionals and community intervention workers 

  • Access to evidence-based safe injection sites and needle exchanges, 

  • Access to quality and affordable mental health services, addiction treatment programs and support services

Criminal Justice System

  • Eliminate cash bail

  • Reduce or eliminate pre-trial fees; cap the overall assessment of fines and fees

  • Eliminate fees for essential services, such as phone calls and health care

  • Expand access to affordable counsel