COMMUNITY DEFENSE PROJECT (CDP) empowers Southeast Asian youth and youth of color to know: their rights when interacting with law enforcement, what actions to take when their rights are violated, and how to educate their communities on their rights. CDP supports all community members with no to low cost legal resources, such legal representation in cases of police misconduct, post-conviction relief for SEAs with deportation orders, and referrals to immigration attorneys.
Know your rights.
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Case Support:
For years, PrYSM has had an outstanding number of youth coming to us to talk about their issues around school resource officers and how youth have been racially profiled on the streets. A way we support youth that get arrested or charged is by practicing Participatory Defense which is a method of working with directly impacted family members, putting them in the control of their own case, to get the results they need. We hope to provide support and resources for members as much as we can.
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Healing Justice:
We know that the fight doesn’t only start with combatting the system at hand but with the healing that is needed for the family to not feel burnt out and to not be traumatized by institutions. We have youth led support groups that are mainly just youth to talk about their experiences around state violence, that in order to heal, we need to identify the hurt that has been done. With vunerability and intentional healing practices we hope to develop a way for youth to all heal from state violence.
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Community Education:
CDP develop ways to build leadership for community members that are directly impacted by providing trainings such as get your rights trainings and copwatching. Building knowledge for our community to strive is one way we see as a way to dismantle system by providing political education on abolition and teaching community members on their rights. By using a block by block structure we hope to educate and neighborhoods that are mostly impacted by state violence.
CDP has held community meetings, court support, youth share-out on police violence, and Copwatch as our community members continue to be attacked by policing and the criminal justice system. Even though there was a period in which courts were closed due to the pandemic, we were still providing legal support to community members with ongoing criminal, civil, and deportation cases.
