Learn
Alternatives to Calling SFPD
A flowchart created by SURJ SF to help you decide how to handle conflict resolution without calling the police; quick links to websites and phone numbers of professional resources to help with various types of conflict resolution are listed below.
If you'd like more resources and information, visit bit.ly/sf-police-alternatives.
Click here or on the image for a larger version.
Mediation:
Community Boards
(415) 920–3820 | Monday–Thursday, 10:00am–6:00pm
Messages after hours: (415) 920-3820 x100
Crisis Response:
Mobile Crisis Team
(415) 970–4000 M–F | 8:30am–11pm, Sat 12pm–8pm
In select circumstances, this team would call 911.
Youth services:
Edgewood Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) program
(415) 682–3278 | 24/7
This program requires parent authorization (the caller needs to be a parent, or the program needs to be able to get a hold of the parent). In select circumstances, such as if the youth is considered to be a danger to themselves or others, this program may call 911.
Sexual Assualt:
San Francisco Women Against Rape
(415) 647–7273 | 24-hour
In rare circumstances, this program may call 911 (such as in select cases of the caller disclosing suicide risk).
San Francisco & Bay Area Local Resources
Bay Area black-owned businesses, upcoming non-SURJ-led protests, and more.
Black-Owned Listings
Bay Area Black Owned Business Directory: BAOBOB is a membership organization committed to connecting, promoting, informing and representing black-owned/lead businesses and non-profits throughout the United States.
Bay Area Black Market: A directory designed to encourage Consumers within the San Francisco Bay Area to spend larger portions of their incomes with local Black Owned Businesses.
Open Letters by SURJ SF
Chapter-backed responses to ongoing local issues.
Indigenous People of the Bay Area
Learn more about the indigenous Ohlone people whose land we occupy.
Native-Land.ca—Location-based land acknowledgement platform; you can use it look up whose land you currently occupy.
The Indigenous Bay Area, 1769. From "Infinite City: A San Francisco Atlas" by Rebecca Solnit. Cartography by Ben Pease. Source: Business Insider.
Bystander Intervention Resources
Resources from Hollaback! to help you find a way to intervene when you witness street harassment.
Bystander Intervention Training
Training from Hollaback! on how to do your part to protect your neighbors and co-workers when bias and harassment collide in front of you. Learn more >
LGBTQ+ Street Harassment: A Guide for Survivors and Bystanders Intervention Training
Training from Hollaback! on how to respond if you’re targeted with anti-LGBTQ+ harassment—and how to respond if you witness it. Learn more >
How to Respond to Street Harassment—When You're Harassed
Training from Hollaback! ... there is no right or wrong way to respond to street harassment, because it isn’t your fault. How you respond is your decision. Learn more >
2020 Voter Guide
Looking back at SURJ's stance on 2020 CA Propositions.
Read (Short Form)
Readings that are 5 minutes or less.
"The First White President" by Ta-Nehisi Coates
The foundation of Donald Trump’s presidency is the negation of Barack Obama’s legacy. Read here >
"No, I Won’t Stop Saying 'White Supremacy'" by Robin DiAngelo
Article on the ways white supremacy captures the all-encompassing centrality and assumed superiority of people defined and perceived as white. Read here >
"White Supremacy and Trump Cannot Have Our People" by Chris Crass
Article on the differences between middle-class and working-class orientations to the work of ending racism. Read here >
Read (Long Form)
Readings that are 5 minutes or longer.
"An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States" by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Learn more >
"The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness" by Michelle Alexander
Civil rights lawyer Michelle Alexander examines how Jim Crow laws morphed into a racist system of mass incarceration. Learn more >
"Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America’s Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing" by Dr. Joy DeGruy
An exploration of the ongoing impact of slavery on African Americans in the United States and throughout the diaspora. Based on twelve years of qualitative and quantitative research, Dr. DeGruy shows how intergenerational trauma, continuing oppression, internalized racism, and other factors combine to create Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome. Learn more >
"We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice" by Mariame Kaba
A reflection on prison industrial complex abolition and a vision for collective liberation from organizer and educator Mariame Kaba. Learn more >
Listen (Podcasts)
A selection of foundational podcasts on racism and white supremacy.
Slate Academy Podcast: "The History of American Slavery"
America's defining institution, as told through the lives of nine enslaved people. Enroll in the college course you wish you'd taken, learning from acclaimed historians and writers, alongside Slate's Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion. Learn more >
Slate Academy Podcast: "Reconstruction"
The era of Reconstruction that followed the Civil War was our best chance to build an American democracy grounded in racial equality. Its failure helps explain why race, “states’ rights,” and the legacy of the Confederacy remain central themes in our politics today. Learn more >
"Seeing White" Podcast series
Just what is going on with white people? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for? Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions. Learn more >
Watch (Films)
A selection of movies available online through various streaming apps (culled from NPR).
13th (Watch for free on YouTube)
The U.S. imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a third of U.S. prisoners are black. In this infuriating documentary, director Ava DuVernay argues that mass incarceration, Jim Crow and slavery are "the three major racialized systems of control adopted in the United States to date."
I Am Not Your Negro (Requires Netflix subscription)
Narrated by the words of James Baldwin with the voice of Samuel L. Jackson, I Am Not Your Negro connects the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter. Although Baldwin died nearly 30 years before the film's release, his observations about racial conflict are as incisive today as they were when he made them.
Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise (Watch for free via PBS)
In this two-part series, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. chronicles the last 50 years of black history through a personal lens. Released days after the 2016 election, some themes of the documentary took on a deeper meaning amid Donald Trump's win. "Think of the civil rights movement to the present as a second Reconstruction — a 50-year Reconstruction — that ended last night," Gates said in an interview with Salon.
Resources for Children
How to talk to children about race and social justice.