Dear comrades and supporters🌟(glowing star emoji)

This is our first post shared at Open Collective to briefly introduce the project and updates. 

Alternatives To Calling the Police During Mental Health Crises (ACP) is a grass root project to address the state violence against mad, psychiatrically disabled, and neurodivergent community members and imagine a world where widespread over-policing, surveillance, and mass incarceration are replaced with equitable investment, community care, and restorative justice. The project was started as a peer crisis support workshop led by self-advocates, organizers, and mental health workers who were directly or indirectly affected by state violence at La Catrina cafe in Pilsen neighborhood in 2017. 

[Image description: a text reading inside a round, wheat-colored rectangular frame with branch decorations, "mutual aid plus ACP." The text, branches, and background are dark red in color.]

2022 has been a very turbulent year from transphobic legislation, the launch of 988, to the emergence of bills against unhoused people with mental illness in California and New York City. We have been carefully monitoring the ongoing policy updates and examining how this may affect Chicago in the long run. Meanwhile, in 2021, we initiated Mutual Aid X ACP, a participatory project to invite mutual aid and care workers in Chicago to interactive activities from resource sharing to peer crisis support toolkit publication. The expected release date is by December 2022-January 2023. The zines will be available in large format (18pt), screen reader friendly plain text, and more. This process was made possible with generous support from Illinois Humanities, Third Wave Fund, and more. 

Please stay tuned for further updates regarding toolkit publication (coming soon) and more! We greatly appreciate being part of the Open Collective community and look forward to how this new chapter of our journey may unfold. Happy winter solstice & new year 🌌(galaxy emoji)

Project ACP