Don’t Be A Copagandist: Health Care Workers Edition
A guide for challenging copaganda when we talk about ICE/CBP, police, and prison officials, and criminalization in hospitals and health care spaces
Across the U.S. we are seeing an unprecedented surge in ICE and Border Patrol presence in and around schools, hospitals, and other public and private spaces. This opens the door for the expansion of policing and surveillance into places that should be spaces of care and protection — and deputization of care workers to serve as agents of criminalization.
Criminalization is inherently harmful — and therefore antithetical to care. Our communities are being made less safe by the persistent presence of policing by local, state, and federal agencies in health care settings and mental health crisis response.
It is important that when grassroots media, journalists, health care workers, and advocates talk about policing and ICE in health care, we avoid reinforcing “copaganda”: pro-police, pro-ICE, and anti-migrant propaganda that ultimately supports further criminalization of our communities. Now is the time for clarity and a united front against all increased criminalization and surveillance.
Are you a health care worker or provider committed to your oath to do no harm? Do you want to connect with others to learn, strategize, skill-share around preventing and interrupting criminalization in health care settings?
Our Beyond Do No Harm Network organizes health care workers and advocates around thirteen principles to interrupt criminalization in the context of access to care, criminalization of care, and ensuring care to criminalized populations as well as the agency, self-determination, dignity of risk, and general well-being of people seeking care in health care settings.
Explore the principles, connect with the network, and sign on here.
Check out our other “Don’t Be A Copagandist” guides:
