Moving at the speed of trust

Care-Based Safety is dedicated to acting with principle and intention.

We are currently fundraising, building a strong foundation, and growing our relationships with organizations in Washtenaw County. We anticipate that hiring and training will begin in Fall of 2023 and pilot programs will begin in early 2024. We share the community’s eagerness for the program to begin. We also recognize the immediate need for care-based alternatives. We will begin when we can reliably, safely, and sustainably meet those needs.

Thank you for your patience, courage, and dedication to this transformative project.

Together, we’re creating the first unarmed, non-police response program in Michigan. For us, by us. We’re trying to raise $25,000 from supporters like you, to launch our response program in Ypsilanti.

Ann Arbor RFP

After over two years of community investment in unarmed, non-police response in the City of Ann Arbor, Care-Based Safety was proud to be the only organization to submit a proposal to be the Unarmed Response Implementation provider for the City through their Request for Proposals (RFP). Our response is aligned with and guided by community co-creation, founded on robust research in best practices across the country, and meets the criteria of what the City of Ann Arbor asked for.

In a closed session meeting on December 18, 2023, the City of Ann Arbor cancelled the RFP and said that they will open a new RFP with an “updated scope” in 2024.

All of the information is linked here, with our full proposal linked for the public’s review (yellow).

The City of Ann Arbor Resolutions R21-129 and R23-235 resolve to create an unarmed response program in Ann Arbor and direct the City Administrator to create a Request for Proposals process to contract out the implementation of that project.

The Request for Proposals 23-42 is the “application” documenting what the City is asking for, how to apply, how proposals will be assessed/scored, and what the process will be.

Our full proposal (top) was submitted on September 19, 2023. Our response to the City’s statement justifying cancelling the RFP.

Our Purpose

“

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We urgently need to bring to our communities the limitless capacity to love, serve, and create for and with each other.

― Grace Lee Boggs

Values

We value interconnectedness, the collective, and ancestral knowledge
We value accountability, centering those most impacted, and shared responsibility
We believe in our ability to collectively create the futures we yearn for through practice, imagination, and creativity
We believe in radical consent, bodily autonomy, care, and self-determination
We believe in a future where public health programs and infrastructure are resourced, including the creation of new, care-based programs, making policing and state-sponsored punishment obsolete

Who We Are

Culture & Operations Circle

Liz Kennedy (she/they)

Culture and Operations, Director

Liz is an artist and community organizer. Liz combines years of nonprofit leadership experience, from the NAACP to United Way, with their lived experiences as a survivor, healer, and Detroit-rooted organizer to advance community-based networks of care, safety, and justice where all can thrive. Embracing the belief that “care is the antidote to violence” (Saidiya Hartman), they organize with the Detroit-based Healing By Choice! collective and are deeply committed to strengthening networks of community care and safety throughout Southeast Michigan and beyond.

Robert Ramaswamy (he/they)

Culture & Operations Lead

Robert grew up in northern Michigan and has been living, working, and studying in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti since 2016. Robert is a student of labor history and social movements, and has a deep curiosity about radical, grassroots visions for care. As a former editor and researcher, Robert finds joy in facilitating communication and finding creative ways to keep things organized on the back end. They are a parent, a caregiver, and a dreamer who believes in a world without police.

Community Care Circle

Amal Omer (she/her)

Care-Based Response Co-Lead

Amal was born and raised in New Jersey. She is first-generation American, with strong roots to Tigray. Amal is an abolitionist, with her inspiration for resistance coming from Leila Khaled and Malcolm X, both revolutionaries who led with the goal of true intersectionality—Amal sees no separation between racial justice, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism. Community is important to Amal, and she understands strong relationships with neighbors as the only way to true liberation. Care-Based Safety’s goal of a strong non-police response group, built by impacted people, is directly in line with Amal’s vision for a more enjoyable, more healthy, police free Ypsi, where everyone is looking out for one other, and policing is obsolete!

Corn Williams (he/him)

Care-Based Response Co-Lead

Corn is a person in recovery from substance use disorder (SUD) and who has a history of substance and mental health related police involvement. Corn is also a BIPOC community member, who supports and understands the benefits of unarmed response relative to individuals with law enforcement related trauma. Corn works with several different community based harm reduction organizations with various focal points, including: Drug Policy Reform, Racial Equity and Accessibility, and Drug Checking.

Sheri Wander (she/they)

Community Building Lead

Sheri is a learner, wanna-be radical, struggling-to-be pacifist, mama to chosen family, occasional writer, dog caregiver, Catholic worker, non-violence trainer, and organizer. Sheri lives at Peace House, Ypsi — a house of hospitality in the tradition of the Catholic Worker Movement, which aims to help people to gain the tools, skills, and confidence to bandage their own and other’s wounds — and to confront and dismantle the systems that cause the bleeding. Sheri founded and coordinates the daytime warming shelter for Washtenaw County, a democratically-governed space run by the homeless community for the homeless community.

Contact Sheri about workshops available in Ypsi. Sheri prefers to communicate via text and can be reached at (734) 754-0648.

Goochie (he/him)

Outreach

Terril “Goochie” Cotton is a lifetime resident of Ypsilanti, who dreams of traveling to warmer places. Goochie is known as the unofficial Mayor of Ypsilanti—everybody will recognize him and have a kind word to say. Goochie is also an organizer with Circling Back, a peer support community for people who are unhoused and housing insecure. Goochie can be found rolling around downtown Ypsilanti or at the Daytime Warming Center every afternoon. Goochie was born with spina bifida and is in a wheelchair for life.

To talk with Goochie about Care-Based Safety, find him at the Ypsilanti Freighthouse during the week (8am – 7pm) or hanging out at the Transit Center when it isn’t too cold.

Luna N.H. (she/they)

Programs and Partnerships, Director

Luna is a conflict practitioner and community organizer. She brings and is motivated by personal experiences of policing of loved ones, interpersonal violence, familial incarceration, trauma, and mental health crises. Luna comes from a career working in LGBTQIA+ affirming healthcare and public health for ten years, while using their Master’s in Conflict Resolution to train and counsel folks about anti-oppressive and transformative approaches to conflict. Luna is a mediator, a street medic, a restorative and transformative justice practitioner, and a dog-dad to the best rescued pitbull. Luna believes that our combined, everyday actions will lead to liberation.

Mission Circle

Yodit Mesfin Johnson (she/her)

Mission Circle, Co-Chair

Yodit is a Black momma, abolitionist and visionary strategist who centers racial justice in her organizing, activism and work towards social change, liberation and freedom for all living things. As co-chair of our Mission Circle, she centers love and care as guiding principles for how she stewards the organization’s mission and vision. Yodit thrives in building community around the questions that matter most; how can we unlock the potential and possibility needed to radically transform our communities, see the ecosystem and the whole, and design and act in ways that bend the long arc of history towards balance and harmony?

Natalie Holbrook Combs (she/they)

Mission Circle, Co-Chair

Nat is a queer mama, wife and liberation and racial justice activist. She has dedicated her life to disrupting prisons and punishment practices. She believes in the power of revolutionary thought & action, rooted in the spiritual principles of love, compassion, care for all beings & the earth, restoration and reciprocity, as the foundation for a more generative & peaceful tomorrow. She co-directs the American Friends Service Committee’s Michigan Criminal Justice Program, an abolitionist organization working to get people free and close prisons & expose state violence in carceral spaces, while building community & care-based responses to harm in place of police and punishment.

Lisa Jackson, Ph.D. (she/her)

Mission Circle, Secretary

Lisa is an advocate for recognizing the strengths that have long existed in our communities and the right for everyone to experience peace, joy, self-determination, love, care and safety in ways that they define for themselves.

Anna Wood (she/her)

Mission Circle, Treasurer

Anna is a researcher, student, teacher, community member, and parent living in Washtenaw County. She has been a participant and learner in care-based community organizing in the county since 2016. As a doctoral candidate in Social Work and Sociology at the University of Michigan, Anna studies the social construction of masculinity as it relates to both possibilities and risks within friendship and care-based intervention. As a former financial coach and activist for radical economic justice movements, she hopes to provide support to CBS in her position on the mission circle.

Bob Gillett (he/him)

Mission Circle

Bob is a lifelong civil and human rights advocate. As an attorney, he has worked with many organizations created to protect and expand these rights and to provide services and support to communities historically discriminated against and marginalized by public and private institutions. He believes that solutions need to come from these communities – and that the lawyer’s role is to support and defend these community solutions.

Nancy A. Parker (she/her)

Mission Circle

Nancy is a Black mother of two precocious little kiddos, a passionate advocate for racial justice, and a dedicated movement lawyer. Nancy is fighting for a future world in which we lead with care and compassion, and not racism and capitalism; a world in which all peoples are free. As a movement lawyer, Nancy provides legal support and guidance to advance the mission and goals of organizers and organizations. Nancy is a Co-Executive Director at the Detroit Justice Center, an abolitionist organization working alongside communities to end mass incarceration and create just cities.

Advisory Circle

Alex Thomas (he/him)

Advisory Circle

Alex grew up in West Willow, Ypsilanti Township. His neighborhood sits just “West” of the Willow Run Bomber Site, home of Rosie the Riveter fame and two subsequent automobile factories. Those factories have closed but the fight for working people continues. Today their families are suffering from years of economic decline and disenfranchisement. A result has been Ypsilanti Township’s disproportionate representation in our county’s carceral system. As a Community Advocate, with the Washtenaw County Public Health Department Alex supports residents struggling with root drivers of “crime” such as housing insecurity, mental health, and substance use disorder.

Bri Carpenter (she/her)

Advisory Circle

Bri is a former daycare owner who transitioned into the social work field in 2017. She holds an LLMSW, and will be clinically licensed in 2024. Her work experience includes: intimate partner violence and sexual assault case management, crisis line/on-call support for Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and sexual assault, mental health case management, emergency housing and permanent supportive housing (PSH) case management, and emergency housing and PSH program development. As of July 2023, Bri is working as Employee Experience Director (HR) for a local housing justice/permanent supportive housing agency.

Kimberli Montgomery (she/her)

Advisory Circle

Kimberli is the Programs and Services Director at Safe House Center, a domestic violence and sexual assault services organization located in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kimberli has worked in the field of domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault (SA) for 22 years, and coordinated the Shelter and 24-hour Helpline (crisis line) program at Safe House for 17 years.

Kat Layton (she/her)

Advisory Circle

Kat’s journey in disrupting parts of the criminal legal system began with personal experiences, including having a formerly incarcerated father. This foundational root has fueled her dedication to investing in communities and divesting from systems that exacerbate harm. With a Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan, her dedication to create positive social change led her to work with various public defender organizations, including the Neighborhood Defender Service of Detroit and the Ingham County Office of the Public Defender, where she served as a Criminal Defense Social Worker. In addition to her professional work, Kat is deeply engaged in community-based leadership roles, dedicated to amplifying the voices of historically marginalized communities and making a lasting impact on justice-impacted individuals and their communities.

Ashley Shukait (she/her)

Advisory Circle

Ashley Shukait, MPH, CHES, is a Liberatory Harm Reductionist and Public Health Consultant in Southeast Michigan. She has coordinated an underground local harm reduction and overdose prevention mutual aid group for over a decade, worked in healthcare, and managed a legacy syringe access program. Her work is dedicated to building power through collective action, centered on health equity, racial justice, and human rights. Ashley has done this through the development and implementation of program design, evaluation, training and research, that practices a strengths-based, trauma-healing foundation to dismantle structural and systemic oppression. Her advocacy developed out of survival, and has transformed into empowering individuals who use drugs to lead and co-design programs and policies that disproportionately impact them.

Matt Strang (he/him)

Advisory Circle

Matt is a student at Washtenaw Community College, currently working on a math/science degree and will be transferring into the UofM’s neuroscience program next year. Matt works for WCC’s Collegiate Recovery Program as a peer educator in the harm reduction and substance use space.

Support

Anna Lemler (she/her)

Facilitator

Anna is a racial justice community organizer and professional who organizes and builds towards a different world of interconnectedness, regeneration, and liberation for all beings and the earth. Her work focuses on dismantling the harms of the criminal punishment system while centering the strengths and power of community and collectives, including solidarity with Water Protectors. Anna is a politicized somatic coach supporting social movement leaders in their healing and transformation for the sake of collective liberation.

What We (Will) Do

Our Program

Once fully funded, Care-Based Safety will run one program with two core components: Community Building, to resource communities to prevent harm and Care-Based Response, to respond to incidents before, during, or after conflict, crisis, and other community concerns (detailed below).

Our program will use a public health approach and be fully staffed by highly trained, well paid, peer workers. The program will be supplemented and supported by unpaid volunteers (see below to plug in).

Based on the research of the Coalition to Re-Envision Our Safety (CROS) and 18 community listening sessions we held in 2023, the program will be: independent from City, County, or State government; separate from 911 and law enforcement; fully-funded to ensure reliability and sustainability; and peer-led. In addition to responding to conflict between individuals, the program will address structural violence (institutional neglect and discrimination), which creates and exacerbates the harm in our communities.

Safety, self-determination, dignity, and community consent guide all decisions for our program.

Community Building

Building Connections

Care-Based Safety believes that our connections to caring, supportive people are our primary source of safety. We all have an inherent need for belonging and attachment. Relationships that securely provide these needs are a source of safety when we experience crisis and conflict. To enhance our connections to one another, Care-Based Safety will host free, public spaces to meet others, build relationships, and develop peer support networks. The opportunities will center on meeting each other’s needs, advocating for change, and mutual aid.

A core component of community building will be growing, training, and inviting members into our Peer Pods—these groups of volunteers with experience being unhoused, experience with mental health challenges, or who have been incarcerated will be connected to people who are currently in crisis, as an additional layer of support.

Preventing Harm & Crisis

Care-Based Safety is also invested in enhancing the strengths and connections that already exist in our communities and relationships, so that our friends and neighbors don’t need to call for support. We will host free, public trainings and workshops in de-escalation, nonviolence, conflict mediation, and safety planning.

We will also work with our partners to advocate for systemic changes, to address structural forms of violence that create and exacerbate crisis.

Starting January 2024:

Futuring & Technical Assistance to transform organizations toward care-based policies and practices and reduce contact with police.
Conflict Transformation (for youth and adults) a workshop for understanding our own histories with conflict and how to change the way we show up to conflict.
Alternatives to Calling the Police (for youth and adults) a workshop for building a a bigger toolkit for responding to crisis.
Pod-mapping & Safety Planning (for youth and adults) a workshop for creating a network and plan for care in crisis.
Trauma stewardship (for all ages) for support in grieving, healing, and recovering from violence.

Care-Based Response

Our Care-Based Response program will run a public phone number (not connected to 911 or 988) that people can call for support in a crisis or conflict without involving law enforcement. People who call may receive support in the following types of situations:

Conflict (disagreements, arguments, disputes) with family, friends, and neighbors;
Noise and other neighborhood complaints and disturbances;
Wellness checks for loved ones and neighbors;
After violence care (such as support following an incident of gun violence or assault).

The program will begin with a pilot in and surrounding the downtown area of the City of Ypsilanti, running 4 days of the week for 7 hour periods at a time. The pilot will inform growth over a five year period, to eventually become a 24/7 program in multiple areas of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor.

During the pilot, our program will not respond to the following:

Incidents involving guns
Incidents involving knives being used as weapons
Active assault involving more than three people
Break-ins to homes, stores, or public spaces

Before responding to a call, all Care Responders will have received two months of training in de-escalation, conflict mediation, anti-oppression, domestic violence support, first aid, and mental health crisis care.

Care Responders will never co-respond with police.

We are an evolving program. Contact Luna at lunanh@carebasedsafety.org with specific questions.

Ways to be Involved

Volunteer

There are many ways that community members can contribute their skills and experiences to Care-Based Safety. To learn more about volunteering, complete the form below and you will receive an email or text invite to the next volunteer meeting relevant to the interests you chose.

If the form is not accessible for you, please come talk to us at the Ypsilanti Daytime Warming Center at the Freighthouse (100 Market Place, 48198) on Tuesdays 1pm – 3pm or Thursdays 1:30 – 4:30pm. Or, email Luna at lunanh@carebasedsafety.org

Newsletter & Urgent Updates

Join our email list for our quarterly newsletter and (infrequent) urgent updates about our programs and other opportunities to connect to our work.

Partners & Friends

Coalition for Reenvisioning Our Safety (CROS)

The Coalition for Reenvisioning Our Safety worked tirelessly for over a year to research, receive community input, and develop core elements necessary for the success of unarmed, non-police response in the City of Ann Arbor. They then spent years more, advocating for an unarmed, non-police response pilot in the City that aligned with those elements. Without their expertise in public health, community co-creation, systems change, research, and current systems of crisis response, we would be stuck in a paradigm of crisis response that is outdated and does not address the needs of our most marginalized community members. Care-Based Safety would not exist without CROS. We continue to advocate together for unarmed, non-police response with a public health approach.

Daytime Warming Center of Washtenaw County

Care-Based Safety works closely with the Warming Center throughout the winter by hosting activities like game day, art making, and support groups to build relationships and connections between guests and across communities.

Peace House Ypsi

Sheri Wander, the host of Peace House, was an essential member of Care-Based Safety’s design process and current lead of our Community Building program. We continue to work with Peace House, a house of hospitality, in our shared mission to help people to gain the tools, skills, and confidence to bandage their own and other’s wounds — and to confront and dismantle the systems that cause the bleeding.

Interfaith Council for Peace & Justice (ICPJ)

The Co-Directors of Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice were essential participants in developing the design of Care-Based Safety’s program, facilitating community co-creation sessions. We continue to work closely together in holding workshops and events that skill up our neighbors to respond to conflict and crisis toward our shared goals of co-liberation and dignity for all life. ICPJ is committed to healing as a diverse community by dismantling systems of violence and building our collective capacity to live our shared values of peace, justice, and ecological sustainability.

American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Michigan Criminal Justice Team

AFSC’s director, Natalie Holbrook-Combs, coordinated the co-creation sessions of Care-Based Safety’s design with people who are currently and formerly incarcerated. Nat remains the Co-Chair of Care-Based Safety’s Mission Circle. We work closely with AFSC’s team in our shared mission to addresses the state violence of the criminal, legal, and imprisonment systems in our communities and build healing, wellness and full liberation for all. They also generously share their office as a space for our team to meet.

Detroit Justice Center

Nancy Parker, the Executive Director of Detroit Justice Center, currently sits on our Mission Circle. Nancy and the Detroit Justice Center have extended essential support in understanding the legal landscape surrounding unarmed, non-police response. We continue to work with DJC to understand how to ensure the legal rights of our neighbors and program participants are upheld and to reduce interactions with law enforcement and the criminal-legal system.

Graduate Employees Organization 3550

The Graduate Employees Organization participated in the co-creation process for Care-Based Safety, informing how our program could meet the needs of students and workers at the University of Michigan. We continue to mutually support each other in developing policy and infrastructure for unarmed, non-police crisis response to thrive and to build a culture of care-based safety that addresses the needs of workers.

Avalon Housing

Avalon Housing’s director, Aubrey Patiño, was essential to supporting the design of Care-Based Safety in alignment with the needs of people transitioning into permanent supportive housing. Their staff are members of our Advisory Circle, helping us to imagine what care-based, non-police crisis responses look like. We continue to work closely with Avalon Housing in developing programs that are supportive to their residents, and toward our shared mission of addressing the root causes of violence and crisis in our communities, through solutions like free, affordable, permanent, and supportive housing and housing as a human right.

Fed Up Ministries

We work closely with Fed Up Ministries through our daily programs, in alignment with our shared mission of meeting basic needs with dignity, alongside communities that are food insecure and economically exploited by unjust racial and economic systems in the United States. Fed Up and CBS are co-developing programs that will address the crises faced by people who are economically exploited, through mutual aid and building networks of support.

Growing Hope

Care-Based Safety and Growing Hope share the mission of meeting the basic needs of our communities as a means of care, connection, and dignity. We have and will continue to work together in creative interventions that address issues of unmet needs, harm, and absence of free, communal spaces in downtown Ypsilanti.

Washtenaw Camp Outreach

As Care-Based Safety develops its response program, we will work closely with Washtenaw Camp Outreach to respond to the survival and crisis needs of people who are currently unhoused and living in tents, through mutual aid and solidarity. We are equally committed to building networks of care and support, and upholding the self-determination and dignity of all of our neighbors regardless of housing status.

Circling Back Peer Support Network

Care-Based Safety and Circling Back have a shared commitment to mutual aid and peer support, and have worked together consistently to address the social and material needs of people who are unhoused and precariously housed. Circling Back and CBS have plans to work together, when funding is available, on our shared dream of a mobile van with basic needs supplies that can be delivered directly to people in crisis as well as transport people to maintain connections throughout the community.

Southeast Michigan Pull Over Prevention (POP)

Care-Based Safety is proud to participate in Pull Over Prevention, a monthly program that assists people in repairing their cars and bikes in order to reduce interactions with law enforcement through pretext stops related to taillights, headlights, and other issues. POP includes a mutual aid fair, where local organizations provide free resources like pet food, nutritious meals, harm reduction supplies, wound care supplies, hygiene items, clothing, and more. We share POP’s aim to build a community of mutual aid and solidarity, so we can avoid confrontations with law enforcement.

Wolverine Street Medicine

As Care-Based Safety develops its response program, we will work with Wolverine Street Medicine to respond to the first aid and health needs of people who are currently unhoused and living in tents. Care-Based Safety, Washtenaw Camp Outreach, and Wolverine Street Medicine are currently co-developing a public health, equity-based camp outreach program for Summer 2024.

The Neutral Zone

The Neutral Zone participated in our co-creation process to design an unarmed, non-police crisis response program that aligns with the needs of teens and young adults in Ann Arbor. We share a commitment to supporting the self-determination and leadership of young people, and look forward to working together when we are able to implement our programs in the City of Ann Arbor.

Homelessness Solidarity Network

Care-Based Safety is a proud member of the Homelessness Solidarity Network, a group of connected organizations and people who are unhoused or who are addressing the needs of people who are currently unhoused or precariously housed across Washtenaw County. As a network, we share information about our programs, strategize about advocacy, and show up for each other to better meet the needs of our neighbors.

A Brighter Way

Care-Based Safety and A Brighter Way share a commitment to supporting formerly incarcerated people build a stable, successful and fulfilling life through strong relationships. We hope to continuously build collaborative opportunities that reduce recidivism and increase public safety, through connection.

Ypsi NICE

Ypsi Neighbors Improving Community Engagement (Ypsi NICE)

Care-Based Safety and Ypsi NICE share a commitment to unarmed, non-police response options in the City of Ypsilanti and Ypsilanti Township. We work together to explore opportunities to advocate for and develop non-police programs serving these communities.

Ypsi Civic Education and Action

Care-Based Safety and Ypsi Civic are committed to advancing political education that empowers people to understand where their tax dollars are going and how local politics impact Ypsi residents’ every day lives.