Anti-Carceral Mental Health Response Program
Building Mad Hubs

The goal of the Anti-Carceral Mental Health Response Program is to seed and develop a decentralized, well-resourced network of anti-carceral organizing and care hubs across the so-called “United States”. 

By focusing on targeted geographic areas, we aim to unite isolated and un(der)-resourced Mad & disabled care workers and organizers to join forces in local communities. Through participation in our paid 6 month training program, fellows will receive guidance in abolitionist political education, practical skill-building, and will meet, collaborate, and organize with other fellows in their geographic hub. 

After completion of the training program, organizing hubs will work together to create autonomous abolitionist alternatives like make-shift respite and crisis care collectives in their own communities. Hubs will have ongoing access to sustainable mutual aid support to enable their continued work - including stipends for caregivers, temporary housing support, legal advocacy, and emergency medication access.

Our Vision of Anti-Carceral Care

Often, the response to what is called a “mental health crisis” is to remove someone from the community and to push, prescribe, or even force people into narrow definitions of “care” and “healing”. Mad, disabled, and multiply-marginalized folks are pathologized, coerced, told what is “best for them”, and locked up in institutions against their will. We believe that “care” without consent is not care, and that self-determined healing can and should happen in community, beyond the carceral arms of the state.

When we dream of (and actively practice) anti-carceral care in our communities, we are describing:

• Make-shift respites in our homes when community needs a supportive place to land for a few days

• Mutual aid networks to meet basic and emotional needs

• Rapid response, defense and advocacy when someone has been incarcerated (in a hospital or otherwise)

• People that call on community, not cops and state agents

• Skilled and resourced responders that center autonomy, self-determination, and politicized care

• Access to healing practices outside of Western pathology-based frameworks

• Emergency medicine and medication access

Geographic Hubs & Local Organizing

Responding to emergent mental health crises is often easier when diverse skillsets are combined, and labor is divided across individual capacities. Much of the current organizing within movements for psychiatric abolition exists in geographically isolated or socially siloed spaces, limiting our collective capacity and power to create and practice sustainable care. By focusing on seeding, training, and resourcing geographically local “hubs”, the Anti-Carceral Mental Health Response Program hopes to create sustainable collectives that can live on in communities.

In this first cohort, we’re seeding and supporting hubs in the following geographic areas:

1. Colorado

2. Rhode Island

3. Illinois

4. Remote/online (for house/bed-bound, distanced careworkers)

Uniting Isolated, Un(der)-Resourced Mad & Disabled Folks

There are so many people who already practice care in communities that go unrecognized, unsupported, and have little-to-no access to material, financial, or training resources. When we speak of care workers, we’re not necessarily talking about people who have a certification, work in a peer support job, or in a healthcare profession. We’re talking about people who show up within and for communities: barbers, educators, artists, and more. Care work doesn’t need to show up in your “profession”, and you don’t need to have a resume. Some of the best care workers are those that practice in their own homes, with their own families and friendships. These same care workers are often the ones that go without support or access to resources. The Abolitionist Mental Health Response Program aims to connect these isolated, unrecognized, under-resourced, highly skilled practitioners to (1) others in the local community for collaboration and (2) mutual aid infrastructure, material resources, and training support.

Details and Logistics