Resources Archive - Page 2 of 2 - ACRE Institute

We know that not everyone can read our full-length reports so we have put together more accessible resources for organizers and activists. Take a look through our trainings, videos, and blog for bite-sized information about our work!

Poison Profits – A Roundtable on Race, Public Health, and Big Pharma

Aug 2020
In this conversation with guest experts on issues of race, public health and Wall Street accountability, our panelists discuss the roots of systemic racism hidden in the pharmaceutical industry, the likely barriers to access to COVID-19 vaccines and medicines and the empty promises of pharmaceutical companies to mitigate the harm of their own practices, and the devastating costs to Black and Brown people. After watching the video, read ACRE's latest report - “Poi$on: How Big Pharma Price Gouging Kills Black and Brown Folks.” Racism makes simply being Black and Brown in the U.S. a pre-existing condition and price-gouging by pharmaceutical companies is one of the root causes of the health inequities our communities face.The research and analysis is a tool for advocates to hold Big Pharma accountable for the plunder of wealth and health from Black, Brown, Indigenous and other people of color, enriching wealthy white individuals and institutions. This report is dedicated to leader, mother and grandmother Gina Owens and her late daughter Tiffany Owens, who should still be here today, and who we are honored to fight alongside.

How to Talk About Defunding the Police

Aug 2020
Cops and Capitalism Summer Webinar Series How to Talk About Defunding the Police Defund the Police! What was once a third rail has become a rallying cry as the grassroots movement demands that we publicly contend with the fact that police do not keep us safe. This webinar grounds participants on the history of policing, digs into the demand to defund the police and how to organize within community and advocate with leaders. Panelists also shared real-time organizing examples happening on the ground. Panelists: Tracey Corder, Deputy Campaign Director, ACRE Jasson Perez, Senior Research Analyst, ACRE Alyx Goodwin, Senior Organizer, ACRE Rick Banks, Political Director, Black Leaders Organizing Communities (BLOC)

Power Behind the Police, How Corporations use Police Foundations to Fund and Prop up the Police

Jul 2020
On this webinar, we will explore how billionaires and corporations like Wells Fargo, Amazon, and Target use police foundations to fund and prop up the police. Police foundations--nonprofits that fundraise money from wealthy donors and corporations for local police departments--help maintain the racist policing status quo. We’ll discuss how directly pressuring corporations to cut ties with police foundations can strengthen fights to defund the police and invest in Black and Brown communities, as well as ensure that police departments’ public funding is not replaced by similarly enormous private funding. Participants will learn how to research which corporations support their local police foundations and hear examples of demands activists are making around corporations and police foundations in local campaigns. The Cops & Capitalism Summer Webinar Series is a collaboration between ACRE and Little Sis to provide tools to organizers and community members that will help them interrogate and expose the connections between policing, the finance industry, and corporations in their cities. Original date: 7/29/2020

Coronavirus, Racism, and the Failures of Medicine for Profit

Jul 2020
An Instagram Live conversation between Maurice BP-Weeks, Co-Executive Director of ACRE and Dr. Lachelle Dawn MD. They discuss Covid, race, and Big Pharma and dive into why profit/capitalism has no place in medicine-- especially during a pandemic, and tease a new ACRE report that will be released soon. Original date: 7/22/2020

Check out the complimentary How To Guide here.

Strengthening the Demand: “Defund the Wealthy”

Jul 2020
People around the U.S. are demanding that cities defund their local police departments. This webinar encourages us to take that demand one step further, and highlights the relationships between corporations and policing. We know that cutting the police budget is a first step towards the world we want to see but in order to fully fund our communities and invest in the things we need we must also redirect funding from the institutions that support policing. The 2nd webinar in the series.

Research Briefing: Police Brutality Bonds

Jul 2020
Police Brutality Bonds: How Wall Street Profits From Police Misconduct. This webinar explores ACRE’s groundbreaking research on cities’ use of Police Brutality Bonds, the bonds issued to pay for police brutality settlements. Police brutality bonds generate fees for Wall Street firms like Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, and interest payments for investors, allowing them to literally profit from police violence. Borrowing can also drastically increase the costs of police violence, but these costs are not reflected in the official police budget. The webinar covers how ACRE did the research for the report, how bonds work, some of ACRE's data sources and what other policing costs might be hiding in city budgets.

As part of the Take on Wall Street coalition, this curriculum is a dive into the history of economic inequality, the expansion of the finance industry and corporate influence over various points of our lives, and activities to help us think deeper and practice centering race in our campaigns for economic justice.

This engaging training was specifically for the National Black Workers Center Expo in Baltimore in 2019, but can be replicated for other cities. In this training, we went through a power analysis that incorporates the finance industry and questions that organizers can ask to follow the money and find the power players in their city.

Neoliberalism, Privatization, & Finance: Bringing Systems into Focus A training that breaks down the intentionally complicated worlds of neoliberalism, privatization, and finance. Using local examples, we dig into the tools that the finance industry uses to target communities of color for the privatization of public services, extract wealth and make a massive profit for themselves. We also talk about how to incorporate the finance industry and corporate players into our campaign targets.

We are busy developing some exciting one pagers and other engaging materials about our analysis on a variety of issue areas. Pop-ed materials are designed for easy dissemination of bite-sized information as opposed to our full-length reports. Stay tuned for