Tagged With "Police Brutality"

By Michael Friedrich, CityLab, October 27, 2019 Standing before the congregation of the Progressive Community Church of Stockton, California, Eric Jones, the city’s police chief, apologized. It was July 2016, in the furious days after the police shootings of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Those were followed closely by the deadly ambush of police officers in Dallas, Texas, and in Baton Rouge after protests over the Sterling...

Keeping your organization afloat in challenging conditions... Following up on "Adaptive Change in Behavioral Health Organizations Serving Survivors of Trauma" (posted 2/20/19), here is the first of 3 webinars Villa of Hope presented through the Alliance for Strong Families & Communities. It's called "REBUILD: Adaptive Change to Rebuild the Perspective, Courage, & Leadership of Your Organization." Enjoy!

The next installment of Villa of Hope's webinar series for the Alliance for Stronger Families & Communities is "Adaptive Change to RECOVER Efficiency & Strength to Build a Culture of Change & Empowerment." It takes a humble and courageous leader to do this work!

By Lizzie Dearden, The Independent, April 11, 2020 Police officers are being “repeatedly exposed to trauma ” as they are increasingly called to homes where people have died during the coronavirus outbreak, with one officer responding to 15 deaths in the space of 24 hours. While official statistics show that most deaths linked to the pandemic happen inside hospitals, an estimated 7 per cent have happened in private homes and care facilities . Police officers are called to every sudden death...

According to Alice Miller author of The Drama of the Gifted Child, an Enlightened Witness is “an understanding person who helps a victim of abuse recognize the injustice they suffered and gives vent to their feelings about what happened to them”. Brene Brown author of Daring Greatly states, "empathy is feeling with or alongside someone, while sympathy is feeling sorry for." https://youtu.be/1Evwgu369Jw In Topeka we unpacked and explored the message of the Enlightened Witnesses in our lives.

When Officer John Hampton of the San Bruno Police Department in San Bruno, CA, first heard that mindfulness training was being offered to him and his fellow cops, he had two reactions. John Hampton “I think my major reaction was: ‘Oh, there’s some hippy thing that they’re trying to get cops to do,’” he said. “When I say that, it’s funny because that’s not my voice. It’s the caricature of a police officer-like voice. In the back of my mind, I was interested and open to it, but that police...

How can we heal from the implicit bias of “ Mental Illness ” and “ mentally ill ”? I hear these words and it sounds like fingernails scraping down the chalkboard. “ The stain of dehumanization colors the mind, body and spirit and it is not so easily washed away.” - Michael Skinner Recently I read a blog post at the ACEsConnection website, “Erasing My ACES” by Sirena Wheeler. It was posted on April, 19, 2020. It struck a chord with me, many in fact and it put me on a spiral down memory lane.

I am not even sure where to start. But, I know I need to write about this. I need to give this to the world. Perhaps to another mother who is facing the darkness and can’t see her way out. Perhaps she is watching her children caught in the cyclone that is her life. I think she is who I am writing this for. And maybe for me too. I am doing some amazing work with a community that is fast becoming dear to my heart. I look at the people who keep showing up that are trying to wrap their heads...

By Showing Up For Racial Justice (SURJ), May 27, 2020 On Monday evening, George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police. Video surfaced of a white police officer holding his knee to Floyd’s neck for eight minutes while Floyd pleaded with police saying “I can’t breathe.” Floyd became unresponsive and died shortly after at Hennepin County Medical Center. This brutal killing follows the death of Breonna Taylor in her bed at the hands of police in Louisville, Kentucky, the murder of Ahmaud...

Please join us for the ongoing community discussion of A Better Normal, our ongoing series in which we envision the future as trauma-informed. Protests and riots across the country--and even worldwide--are making it impossible to ignore the racial trauma of police brutality and historical trauma embedded within our society. Many of us are grappling with complex feelings of helplessness and righteous anger. In response to this pandemic of racism in America, "A Better Normal" will hold space...

By Sarah Holder, Bloomberg Businessweek, June 4, 2020 Across the U.S., protesters have taken to the streets to express rage after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin. The demonstrations themselves have led to more police shows of force. In Brooklyn, two cops rammed their New York City Police Department SUVs into a crowd of protesters. In Philadelphia, officers sprayed tear gas at demonstrators who were penned in between a highway and a fence. But across...

By Michael Burke, EdSource, June 11, 2020 A movement to reform California public school policing and drastically rethink school safety is quickly gaining momentum amid nationwide protests against police brutality following the killing of George Floyd. In Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and San Francisco, administrators and school boards are under pressure from community groups who are renewing demands for police-free schools and calling on districts to instead hire more counselors and other...

By Rachel R. Hardeman, Eduardo M. Medina, and Rhea W. Boyd, New England Journal of Medicine, June 10, 2020 In Minnesota, where black Americans account for 6% of the population but 14% of Covid-19 cases and 33% of Covid-19 deaths, George Floyd died at the hands of police. “Please — I can’t breathe.” He was a black man detained on suspicion of forgery, an alleged offense that was never litigated or even charged, but for which he received an extrajudicial death sentence. “Please — I can’t...

Going out to buy groceries, going out for a walk, driving your kid back home from school. For most people these activities are normal, everyday things with little to no excitement, as they should be. Unfortunately, getting food, exercising, and supporting my son’s education have been a little more out of the ordinary for me. You see, I am a Mexican Indigenous man, brown skin, shaved head. My ethnicity and physical appearance are by no means unusual, especially in the part of the country...

A trauma-informed culture understands the potential impacts of past trauma and is equipped to navigate these workplace impacts. This article explores a few more potential factors at play in working with those with past trauma. We will also introduce a few tools to help navigate the impacts of past trauma and build a trauma-informed culture in the workplace.

While the process of forgiving painful offenses from childhood can be very difficult, efforts to forgive bring great rewards. The process begins with acknowledging the pain, applying self-compassion, and taking even small and faltering steps to get the forgiveness ball rolling.

Adverse childhood experiences understandably can numb feelings, including feelings of joy, happiness, and pleasure. Making time to be joyful rewires the wounded brain. Once healing has progressed, the capacity for joy can usually be expanded through the repeated application of proven joy strategies.

For moving past hidden wounds from childhood, mindset matters. These important attitudes undergird the process of healing from adverse childhood experiences.