This Month in Criminalization

Written By Tiffany Wang

September 25, 2025

You can also read the original newsletter in Mailchimp here.


Welcome to the September 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.

You can find the full newsletter below, with action items and resources listed in drop-down sections, indicated by a "+” sign on the left. If you prefer to go directly to checking out all of the “action items,” you can find them in this white box section below:

Action Items:

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.

Where We Are Right Now

➡️  Over the past month, we have witnessed further consolidation of authoritarianism in the U.S. through:

 

Step Up Actions to Stop Genocide!

➡️  Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to arm, fund, and profit from Israel’s escalating genocidal forced starvation, bombardment, and land theft in Gaza and the West Bank, and to enable Israel to engage in indiscriminate violence and destruction across the region. The regime is preparing to send an additional $6.4 billion in weapons over and above the $12 billion approved earlier this year as the occupation pummels Gaza City, killing, displacing, maiming, and starving dozens daily, and decimating medical care to millions of Palestinian children, parents, pregnant people, and families exhausted and devastated by two years of genocidal violence and destruction. 

 

Fight Back Against Expanding State Violence & Repression

“History shows us that repression always breeds resistance.” 

— Chicago organizer Miguel Alvelo Rivera on Movement Memos

➡️  As state violence and repression has deepened and expanded across the U.S. and beyond, so too has resistance, from D.C. to Chicago to Los Angeles to Gaza. There are many ways you can join the fight!

  • ✅  Thousands of people took to the streets of D.C. and Chicago in protest of federal occupation. The administration withdrew its attempts to continue to control the Metropolitan Police Department in D.C. and deploy the National Guard to Chicago. In both places, Black abolitionist organizers are among the leaders of the resistance.

    ✅  Thousands of D.C. and Chicago residents are protecting their families, friends, and neighbors through daily and nightly cop watches, ICE watches, and mutual aid efforts, including adopting a corner, a school, or a transit stop, and “walking schoolbuses” to protect children and parents traveling to and from school, and by creating sanctuary schools and campuses. 

    ✅  At least six grand juries have refused to indict people charged with resisting occupation in D.C.

    ✅  Candidates for office and elected officials are demanding inspections of ICE facilities in California, New York City, and the Chicago area, putting their bodies on the line when denied.

    • Pressure your local elected officials and candidates to do the same, and to do everything in their power to stop ICE operations, to resist deployment of ICE and federal agencies and task forces in your area, and to block local law enforcement from supporting federal operations.

    ✅  A Fulton County Judge announced his intention to dismiss RICO charges against 61 people in the Stop Cop City cases on procedural grounds. Five people are still charged with arson. 

 

Resist Criminalization!

“Find your people, find your place, find your community, and get to work protecting each other." 

— Shannon Clark, Remora House, Washington, D.C. on Movement Memos

 

Building Black Feminist Visions to End the Drug War — Upcoming Strategy Sessions

➡️  Earlier this year, Interrupting Criminalization convened dozens of reproductive justice and drug policy groups in New Orleans to learn more about and develop joint strategies to combat the criminalization of abortion medication as controlled substances as part of our Building Black Feminist Visions to End the Drug War.

➡️  We’ll also be hosting a Building Black Feminist Visions to End the Drug War post-conference convening on November 16th in conjunction with the Drug Police Alliance's Reform 2025 conference in Detroit to reflect and strategize around Black feminist responses to the central role of the drug war in the administration’s authoritarian occupation of cities across the U.S., intensifying criminalization and coercion of drug users and harm reduction and overdose prevention programs, and international vigilante violence.

Federal and State Action Increasing Threats to Abortion and Gender-Affirming Care

➡️  Federal legislation banning gender-affirming care for minors was introduced in Congress;

➡️  More states are joining efforts to roll back FDA approval for medication abortion;

➡️  Texas passed legislation allowing individuals to sue health care providers, manufacturers, and organizations who mail or distribute medication abortion in or out of the state. Pregnant people who take abortion pills cannot be sued under the legislation.

 

Free Support

  • 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 Interrupting Criminalization also offers a number of free help desks:

    • Resisting Criminalization Help Desk — for organizers and groups looking for thought partnership and one-on-one consultation and support around organizing, advocacy, budget, policy, legislative or litigation strategies to interrupt criminalization, policing, and state violence.

    • Transformative Justice Help Desk — for groups and individuals who are working on projects and community-wide interventions to respond to, transform, and interrupt harm and violence without using the police and other carceral systems, and are looking for support or thought partnership.

    • Abolition Media Office Hours — for journalists, communicators, and media makers who want to challenge "copaganda,” shift the narrative about Palestine, crime, community safety, and other subjects, or directly support incarcerated people in telling their own stories; for organizers looking for help on how to build relationships with journalists or hone in on messaging their campaigns.

    • Beyond Do No Harm Health Care Strategy Consult — health care workers committed to preventing and resisting harm in health care, or looking for a thought partner on practical strategies for organizing to interrupt criminalization in health care environments.

 
Tiffany Wang
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