I am really intrigued about what laws are enacted to criminalize Black existence. I would think there must be organizations dedicated to examining these laws and working to get them repealed. I imagine in most times it's hard to get people interested in this level of nitty gritty policy work. But I would think if you could get some momentum behind it, this might be an effective way to dismantle some of the structure that is currently in place to oppress Black populations.
After writing the paragraph above, my first instinct was to ask for guidance if anyone knew of organizations working on this reform. But then I remembered that I need to do my own work (or at least get started on it!) and not ask BIPOCs to provide constant guidance. I'm sharing my method below so others can learn and/or offer suggestions:
1. I googled, "What laws oppress black people?"
2. I clicked on the top results with a .org suffix in their URL
3. I identified three organizations that might be a good starting point, and narrowed it down to the 1 I found in my own city: The Vera Institute of Justice in Brooklyn (with work in 47 states): https://www.vera.org/
(There's also the Constitutional Rights Foundation, which looks more educational and is based in CA, https://www.crf-usa.org/, and the Center for American Progress in Washington DC, which looks like it deals with other issues besides criminal justice reform, https://www.americanprogress.org/.)
I'm going to look into ways to support the Vera Institute of Justice. If anyone has more info to share about these or other organizations, please feel free!
