John,
I’m proud to share that Cori has introduced the Helping Families Heal Act, a groundbreaking piece of legislation that seeks to provide mental health resources and support for people impacted by police violence.
Cori drafted this piece of legislation with Lezley McSpadden. Lezley’s son, Michael Brown Jr., was murdered by a since-terminated Ferguson police officer in 2014 and whose death sparked a movement for racial justice. Cori spent over 400 days protesting for justice on the Ferguson Frontline in the wake of Michael’s death.
Now, Cori is using her position in Congress to ensure that the families left behind by acts of violence have the resources they need to begin healing while we work towards ending police brutality full-stop.
Still, American police fatally shoot over 1,100 people annually — and their violence disportionately takes Black victims. In 2021, police killings accounted for 1,055 deaths in this country, breaking the record for a statistic that is already underreported.2
We cannot go on like this, John.
The Helping Families Heal Act is first-of-its-kind and a critical first step to support communities devastated by violence. This legislation will fund mental health resources to support those impacted by police violence by:
establishing the Helping Families Heal Program under Health and Human Services to implement community-based mental health programs and services to victims and families who have experienced law enforcement violence;
creating the Healing for Students Program under the Department of Education to increase mental health resources for students and school personnel impacted by law enforcement violence; and
allocating $100 million to support mental health resources and improve access to mental health services for those harmed by police violence.
We know that the hyper-vigilance necessary to exist in these conditions, increases depressive symptoms and furthers the mental health disparity between Black and white people. Studies have shown that police killings of unarmed Black people are responsible for more than 50 million additional days of poor mental health.1
In solidarity,
Adrastos Da Silva
Campaign Manager, Team Cori
1 Amanda Geller, Jeffrey Fagan, Tom Tyler, & Bruce Link, Aggressive Policing and the Mental Health of Young Urban Men, 104 Am J. Pub. Health 2321 (2014).
2 Fatal police shootings in 2021 set record since The Post began tracking, despite public outcry, Washington Post, February 9, 2022.
