This Month in Criminalization
July 29, 2025
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Welcome to the July edition of Interrupting Criminalization's "This Month in Criminalization" newsletter, in which IC co-founder Andrea J. Ritchie shares hot topics and current legislative and policy developments in criminalization, and points people to calls to action and relevant resources.
Our goal in these monthly roundups is not to contribute to the overwhelm, but to help you sift through the firehose of information and focus in a few things we can and must do from wherever we are — as organizers, community members, health care providers, educators, legislators, and funders — to interrupt the criminalization that is the core mechanism and methodology of implementing and rationalizing Right-wing, authoritarian, and fascist agendas and regimes. Deep thanks to our partners at the Building Movement Project, Muslims for Just Futures, and FWD.us for their contributions.
Let us know if you find these roundups helpful, how you are using them, and what you’d like to see more or less of in these monthly updates by completing this very short survey.
If you are organizing to resist criminalization and could use a thought partner, connections, resources, or training:
Reach out to the Resisting Criminalization Help Desk!
Check out our Block & Build: But Make it Abolitionist tool.
Listen to the recording of the Criminalization at the Core of Authoritarianism, Fascism, and Resistance!
Apply for the fall cohort of the George Jackson Organizing School, run by our partner the Community Resource Hub for Safety and Accountability. Applications are due August 3rd.
ACT NOW to Stop the Forced Starvation and Genocide of Palestinians in Gaza
➡️ With each minute that passes, the Israeli government’s concentration of over 2 million Palestinian people in camps across Gaza and the cruel, inhuman, and unconscionable deliberate starvation and deprivation of clean water, basic medical supplies, and care to infants, children, pregnant and nursing people, parents, disabled people, elders, and all living beings dramatically escalates beyond emergency.
Over the past month, Israel’s intentional, vicious, and deliberate genocide of Gazans by starvation, dehydration, deprivation, shootings, bombing, maiming, and completely cutting off access to communication, land, sea, water, and medical supplies with the expressed intention of exterminating Palestinian people and stealing what remains of their land and resources has only intensified as global outrage grows.
In addition to over 85 children and over 40 adults who have died from deliberate starvation in recent months (including 14 in the last 24 hours), over a thousand people desperately seeking food (including over 30 in the last 24 hours) have been deliberately beaten, pepper sprayed, and indiscriminately shot by Israeli soldiers and U.S. contractors in what has been described as a “killing field” around the US/Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” distribution points. The head of the UN has called the situation in Gaza a “horror show” after World Health Organization warehouses and facilities were bombed by the Israeli military, while the the head of the UNRWA relief agency said it is “hell on earth.” While Israel allowed air drops during a brief “pause” in bombing, the aid delivered was far from enough — and, adding insult to injury, 11 people were injured when pallets of food were dropped on a displacement camp.
Meanwhile, as the IOF denies that starvation is spreading across Gaza, The World Food Programme (WFP) confirms that “one in three Gaza residents has gone days without eating,” and nearly half a million people are facing famine, while the World Health Organization reports that more than 20 percent of pregnant and breastfeeding women are malnourished.
Efforts to break Israel’s deadly siege on Gaza continue: Over the weekend, Israel seized the #FreedomFlotilla ship Handala as it was attempting to deliver food aid to starving Gazans, and continues to detain, brutalize, and deport crew members. Meanwhile, desperate to send food to their neighbors and kin, people in neighboring countries have begun to launch plastic bottles filled with formula, flour, and lentils into the sea in the hopes that they will reach the shores of Gaza, although Palestinians continued to be barred from approaching or fishing in the water by the IOF.
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✅ The immediate opening of borders to allow the entry of food aid under UN control into the strip and protection of aid sites from military and state violence.
Over 6000 trucks are waiting at the border with life-saving food aid but are being denied entry, while the people of Gaza, including health care and aid workers, faint in the streets, homes, and hospitals from hunger, dehydration, and exhaustion.
Write and call your representatives every single day and organize or join a protest outside U.S. government offices and Israeli embassies and consulates until food, water, and medical supplies are allowed into Gaza without restrictions or violence against people seeking access.
✅ The immediate dismantling of the U.S./Israeli “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation”which is using starvation as a death trap and food as a tool of genocide while profiting off the suffering of Palestinian people.
✅ The immediate releaseof all Handala crew members and the ship from Israeli custody and control.
✅ Immediate divestment from Israeli bonds funding genocide.Learn more about the Break the Bonds campaign.
Find out if your state, municipality or institution holds Israeli bonds.
Follow the example of AFT and UAW workers and Ohio and Illinois organizers in demanding divestment.
✅ An immediate end to U.S. arms and aid to Israel, and to the war and occupation.
Hundreds of thousands took to the streets in the U.S. and around the world for a national day of action on July 25, and continuing actions are planned across the country in the coming days:
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✅ Find and join an action near you.
✅ Follow the Palestinian Youth Movement for details on the Week of Action happening now through August 1.
✅ Health Care Workers for Palestine are calling for prescribers and consumers to Boycott Teva pharmaceuticals. Join and support the boycott, and join the Week of Action — flyer/table outside your local pharmacy now through August 2nd. Check out this toolkit for more information.
✅ Donate to the Sameer Project and join and support any of the upcoming workshops that Workshops for Gaza is running to benefit the Sameer Project's active, crucial work inside Gaza. Writers, artists, and educators can also submit a proposal to teach one.✅ Show your support (or vice versa) for journalists demanding access to Gaza and humanitarian aid, and keep up the pressure.
✅ Join the largest Palestinian community in the U.S. for the People’s Conference for Palestine in Detroit, Michigan August 29-31, 2025.
Block Criminalization of Homelessness, Harm Reduction, and Unmet Mental Health Needs
➡️ The administration issued an Executive Order on Thursday, which — although it does not carry the force of law — calls on federal and local governments to step up efforts to criminalize and institutionalize unhoused people, people with unmet mental health needs, drug users, and people deemed to be “vagrants” (a status used in the wake of the legal abolition of slavery to force formerly enslaved people into indentured servitude).
The order specifically calls for increased sweeps of unhoused people and encampments; (indefinite) civil commitment of people with unmet mental health needs, who are unhoused, or otherwise deemed or “unable to care for themselves”; and federal funding cuts and potential civil or criminal action against overdose prevention centers, as well as harm reduction programs, and “housing first” initiatives.
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✅ Read the National Homelessness Law Center's statement and join their #HousingNotHandcuffs campaign.
✅ Read the Drug Policy Alliance’s fact sheet on overdose prevention centers (OPCs) and sign on to DPA’s letter in opposition to attempted federal interference and criminalization of OPCs.
✅ Share these DPA reports with policymakers and legislators in your community:✅ Learn more about liberatory harm reduction, disability justice, and civil commitment.
✅ Build coordinated community crisis response teams — it is now more critical than ever that we come together to care for all members of our community, including people with unmet mental health needs and unhoused and precariously housed people.
Although the Building Coordinated Crisis Response learning space has now sunsetted, you can dive into lessons learned and shared by organizers across the country in this report.
You can also check out graphic notes from previous BCCR sessions, as well as our 2021 guide to alternative mental health crisis response.
Stay tuned for more opportunities to gather and strategize around non-carceral community crisis response. In the meantime, you can reach out to our Transformative Justice Help Desk to strategize!
Defend Trans People and Trans Health Care
➡️ Pursuant to a Department of Justice memorandum outlining its intention to target providers and manufacturers of medication for gender-affirming care, over the past month the DOJ Civil Division has issued over 20 subpoenas and counting to hospitals and practices offering gender-affirming care. The subpoenas demand access to employee and patient information, informed consent forms, and policies regarding use of diagnostic codes in an effort to make a case that providers of gender-affirming care are fraudulently billing the U.S. government and insurance services.
➡️ This month the Federal Trade Commission also hosted a “workshop” featuring a series of transphobic speakers and debunked “evidence,” setting the stage for expected investigations into “fraudulent” communications by health care providers and drug manufacturers concerning trans health care.
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✅ If you or someone you know has received a subpoena or has questions about DOJ or FTC enforcement efforts, please contact our Health Care Strategy Consult Desk at BDNHconsult@pm.me.
✅ Defend access to trans health care in your community, and support targeted providers!
Cutting Care to Build and Fill Migrant Detention Camps
➡️ Learn more about the federal budget bill (aka #MAGAMurderBill), which guts Medicare, Medicaid, food benefits, and community living programs for disabled people to fund massive increases in funding for ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, the construction of detention and concentration camps for migrants across the country, and tax cuts for the wealthy.
➡️ In addition, $608 million in FEMA funds are being transferred to build migrant detention facilities while survivors of recent floods are denied aid.
➡️ News of deplorable, degrading, and deadly conditions inside migrant detention facilities continues to surface.
➡️ Government and private data are being collected, created, and used in enforcement efforts. ICE was recently given access to millions of Medicaid records, local law enforcement agents are tagging community members as gang members, and ICE is demanding private information from landlords.
➡️ Facilities caring for seniors and people with disabilities are reporting a reduction in workforce due to their employees’ immigration status being revoked by the Trump administration.
➡️ The Supreme Court cleared the way for ICE abductions to “third party” countries.
➡️ U.S. Customs and Border Patrol is seeking artificial intelligence and advanced surveillance technology.
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Take action today to block the administration’s ability to build and fill the biggest national migrant abduction, detention and deportation system in U.S. history!
✅ Join Detention Watch’s recently relaunched Communities Not Cages campaign and sign their petition to stop ICE detention expansion.
✅ Organize to #BoycottAvelo and any other airline or transportation company participating in ICE’s deadly detention and deportation campaign — protesting, targeting their tax subsidies, letters and more.
✅ Form ICE watch teams.
✅ Create Sanctuary Campuses.
✅ Activate local officials!
Pressure local and state officials to do everything in their power to stop ICE operations and resist deployment of ICE, National Guard, military troops, and federal agencies and task forces in your jurisdiction, and block local law enforcement from supporting federal operations.
Demand your local officials stay strong on sanctuary protections, and ensure that local law enforcement do not provide cover for ICE operations or repress people protecting their communities!
Continue to fight 287(g) agreements and deputization of local law enforcement agencies.
Demand your local Congresspeople exercise their oversight duties and inspect local ICE facilities and any locations where migrants are being held.
Targeting Non-profits and Repressing Dissent
➡️ On July 15th, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the purported use of federal funds to advance “a radical agenda” by foundations and non-profits. Speakers from the Capital Research Center (the organization behind InfluenceWatch) and the Heritage Foundation named migrant rights, climate justice, human rights, labor, and Palestine Solidarity groups; progressive foundations and fiscal sponsors; as well as organizations litigating against the regime, as threats which should be surveilled, criminalized, and denied federal funding, suggesting audits of current and past federal grants.
The Capital Research Center also announced the launch of a new website, The DOGE Files, listing agencies that made federal grants it believes are wasteful and contrary to the regime’s ideological priorities, as well as grant recipients. Learn more about the hearings and the groups behind it in this primer by Muslims For a Just Futures.
Feeling scared? Overwhelmed? The Liberation Line is there to support you! The Liberation Line provides free mental health support calls to organizers and activists, offering support, listening, resources, processing, debriefing or strategizing. These are confidential, non-crisis, non-therapy phone calls facilitated by a trusted volunteer with experience in offering mental health support and who aligns with Palestinian and collective liberation. The Liberation Line is open to any organizer or activist involved in social or political change, who may be impacted by police or state brutality, counter-protestor violence, racism, oppression, or is experiencing conflict, stress, burnout or trauma related to their community organizing or activism.
A reminder that IC also offers various free help desks that provide support for people organizing to resist criminalization; people working on projects to respond to or interrupt harm and violence without the state; journalists and media makers concerned about criminalization; and health care workers committed to resisting criminalization in health care settings.
