What does the FAAM’s work look like? What does your money support?
EXTRICATE
Intake
Our volunteers and organizers work diligently to figure out which Black folx are being held in City of Atlanta and Fulton County cages. From recording who gets arrested to courtwatch, we work year round to figure out who’s being held and how to get them out.
Bail Support
We are a Black revolving bail foundation and network dedicated to freeing Black people. Our revolving process prioritizes providing bail (over bond) to community members.
When applicable our collective is empowered to shift to bond payments to minimize the amount of people who are held at any point. For cases that fall outside of our criteria, we assist families to secure the funds they need to free their loved ones.
We work to support but do not center folx pulled into custody during protests.
Working from a Radical Queer Black Feminist lens, we prioritize a number of intersecting identities that make us vulnerable to being targeted and criminalized. We unabashedly center and uplift those most often and most directly impacted by different forms of state violence, including but not limited to police violence.
ACTIVATE
Participatory Defense
As part of our post-bail support, anyone who consents to it is provided case support through our Participatory Defense program, anchored by Women on the Rise and Southerners on New Ground.
Developed at the First National Participatory Defense Gathering in October 2016, Participatory Defense is guided by three principles:
- FAMILY and COMMUNITY STRENGTH can play a pivotal role in stopping and reducing incarceration for a loved one and a community.
- Families and communities can be even more powerful when taking the role of ORGANIZER AND AGENT OF CHANGE, rather than service recipient.
- By working on individual cases, communities can BUILD THE MOVEMENT of directly impacted peoples to hold the actors of the court accountable, make systemic change, and ultimately end mass incarceration.
Learn more @ https://www.participatorydefense.org/about
Legal Support
Check back later for information.
TRANSFORM
Building Alternative Futures
Inaugural alternative projects that FAAM will support include:
Formerly Incarcerated Small Business Rescue Fund – The Formerly Incarcerated Small Business Rescue Fund is a mutual aid project to raise money for formerly incarcerated business owners excluded from coronavirus relief funding because of their criminal record.
In the midst of coronavirus, small business owners have struggled to stay afloat. Many have been forced to lay employees off. Luckily, however, the federal government’s disaster relief plan included funding for small business owners.
Or so we thought.
As formerly incarcerated business owners, many of us were hoping the government’s coronavirus rescue package would help to replace the income we all lost now that our businesses were plummeting. We attended classes to ensure we would properly submit the applications. Finally, relief was here. Until questions five and six on the form.
There “it” was again. The box asking about a criminal record. The box enabling discrimination. Systemic Racism. The “it” that makes us second guess everything we do. The “it” that makes us hold our breath when we apply for housing or employment. The “it” that forced us into entrepreneurship in the first place. The “it” that forever makes us second-class citizens, no matter what we do.
OHRD – The Organization for Human Rights and Democracy is an Atlanta-based social justice organization committed to modeling alternative futures for Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color and building movements regionally, nationally, and internationally for our collective liberation. Our programmatic areas of work include developing cooperatives and other mutual aid infrastructures to meet communities’ basic human needs and building long-term community infrastructure, and thus self-determining, democratic communities. We currently anchor, or facilitate, incubate, and coordinate, the following projects: The Metro-Atlanta Mutual Aid (MAMA) Fund, The Anna Julia Cooper Learning and Liberation Center, The West Atlanta Food Cooperative, the Regenerate Atlanta Cooperative Loan Fund, and the Free Atlanta Abolition Movement (a bail fund and network).
Black Inmate Commissary Fund –The Black Inmate Commissary Fund (BICF) is built upon the foundation of abolition of the current carceral state, which disproportionately affects Black communities. BICF’s mission is to divest from the current carceral state by reinvesting in the Black incarcerated community through building agency, equity, opportunity, rehabilitation, and restorative justice.
BICF functions as a mutual aid organization out of Atlanta, Georgia, providing aid and programming to Black individuals and families affected by mass incarceration and homelessness in the South. BICF redistributes resources and empowers currently and formerly incarcerated through commissary deposits and book donations, family assistance stipends, and re-entry and rehabilitation support and empowerment programs.
Therefore, in order to create solutions, we want to create a place, a center and a home for the people, by the people. So we’re fundraising to R.E.S.I.S.T.