Get in Formation Toolkit
Get in Formation is a collection of security and safety practices built by years of learning in the streets from Black, Indigenous, and People of Color movements within the U.S.
Developed and edited by safety and security practitioners with a range of 10-40 years experience, this toolkit includes handouts, tips, and worksheets to support you in growing or building your community safety practices and/or teams.
Community Safety & Security Insights From the Field in 2022 & 2023
New report assesses how our movements are building safety & security
“Our groups and our movements need to be prepared. And not the kind of preparedness that happens after the threat. We need the kind of long-term preparedness it takes to really build robust movements.” –Ejeris Dixon, VCW Founder & Executive Director
Download our new report to learn what Vision Change Win is seeing across our Leftist movements, and what is needed to make our safety & security infrastructure even more effective.
The Vision Change Win Community Safety Program
In this current political climate, Vision Change Win operates as both a strategic partner – offering support to social justice movements and leaders – as well as a movement laboratory – creating innovative programming to fill the gaps that we see based on our lens into the needs of movement organizations. In late 2016, VCW began to receive an increase of requests around:
(1) Abolitionist approaches to addressing interpersonal harm within movement organizations
(2) Safety protocols for police and federal law enforcement surveillance of movement groups and leaders, and
(3) Security plans for events, demonstrations, and gatherings.
To address this gap, VCW created our Community Safety Program which provides training, coaching, technical assistance, and rapid response support to movement organizations. VCW’s Community Safety Program supports organizations in strengthening their policies, protocols, and practices in preventing and addressing violence or harm that may impact their organization. Over the past four years Vision Change Win has trained over 100 organizations and 900 individuals in sixteen states. Our trainers have between 10 – 40 years’ experience working directly on safety and security protocols and all have experience coordinating community safety programs for Black, Indigenous, and People of color communities, LGBTQ communities, women, immigrant communities, low-income communities, disabled communities, survivors of violence, and many more marginalized communities.
What is Community Safety?
We define Community Safety as action and event security, office and organizational safety, verbal de-escalation, physical de-escalation, personal safety, transformative justice processes, community safety neighborhood strategies, bystander intervention, and cop watch.
Vision Change Win’s Community Safety Approach
At VCW, we believe that BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) communities have created safety outside of the police and prisons for generations. We draw on a rich generational legacy of community safety initiatives. VCW’s approach utilizes an intersectional, trauma-informed, anti oppression framework. Our trainers and consultants are adept at assessing, addressing, and transforming organizational cultures recognizing that power and privilege are often operating around a myriad of identities simultaneously. Our consultants take the time to ensure that our content is relevant, accessible, and transformative for diverse communities, organizations, and groups.