The Milan Letter Project

2020-06-08: Project's default branch is now main instead of master please update your local branches using git branch -m master main. See Scott Hanselman's post for more information.

Writer Courtney Milan shared a draft of a letter she is sending to her state's governor (CO-US) demanding:

• Reduced funding of police
• Prison abolition
• And the end of cash bail

Erring on the the side of asking forgiveness rather than permission, I'm making it a template, and asking for the community to provide versions for other US States, territories, and jurisdictions, as well as translations.

If this format of a letter works for your non-US state, province, prefecture, or other polity, please contribute versions of the letter.

Sending a letter is not enough

• Contribute to local bail funds. There's a list of bail funds by state and region.
• Educate yourself about the history of Policing in the US and its relationship to slavery

Contributing

What we need now

• An accountability partner to make sure we are centering Black lives in our efforts
• Versions of Milan's letter adapted for US states, territories, and jurisdictions
  • Documentation on how to adapt the letter for your state, territory, or district
• Documentation for state budgets
• Translations of the letter into Spanish and other commonly used languages in the US
• A micro-site with directions on finding a letter for one's jurisdiction and how to use it
  • A Jekyll template

How to contribute

Contributions should be in the form of a pull request from your fork of this project.

• Take a state or jurisdiction that needs a letter
  • Create a new file in letters/COUNTRY-CODE
    • Use ltr-STATE-COUNTRY.txt as the template for naming files
  • Update the governor's name
  • Make sure all the state name references are correct
  • Locate the state's recent budget for prisons (a.k.a. corrections) and update sources/prison-and-corrections-budgets.md with that information
  • Update the letter with that information
  • If your state does not have cash bail, remove that and optionally suggest another anti-carcerial measure that saves money.
  • Make a pull request
• Proofread existing letters for spelling, grammar, and facts
  • Make proposed corrections in a pull request
• Comment on pull requests for facts, spelling, and grammar

License and code of conduct

This project is provided under the Hippocratic Licence, and adopts the Contributor Covenant as its Code of Conduct.