Andrea Ritchie
Andrea J. Ritchie (she/her) is a Black lesbian immigrant survivor who has been documenting, organizing, advocating, litigating, and agitating around policing and criminalization of Black women, girls, trans, and gender nonconforming people for the past three decades. She has been actively engaged in anti-violence, labor, and LGBTQ+ organizing, and in movements against state violence and for racial, reproductive, economic, environmental, and gender justice in the U.S., Canada, and internationally since the 1980s.
Andrea is the author of Practicing New Worlds: Abolition and Emergent Strategies and Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color, and co-author of No More Police: A Case for Abolition, Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women, and Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.
She co-founded Interrupting Criminalization and the In Our Names Network, a network of over 20 organizations working to end police violence against Black women, girls, trans and gender nonconforming people, and led INCITE!'s work on law enforcement violence. In these capacities and through the Community Resource Hub and National Black Women's Justice Institute, she has worked with dozens of groups across the country organizing to divest from policing and secure deep investments in community-based strategies that will produce greater public safety.
For more information, visit Andrea’s personal site and Invisible No More, and follow Andrea on Bluesky at @dreanyc123.bsky.social.
In-Person | Plenary Facilitated Institute
9:00 AM - Noon
Ritchie will facilitate a plenary experience for all in-person attendees exploring abolitionist and emergent strategies rooted in long traditions of resistance and resilience, helping us embody new possibilities in the midst of the ongoing catastrophes of racial capitalism. In-person Summit attendees will have the opportunity to practice with Ritchie to set our collective compass toward liberatory ways of being that create the conditions for safety, accountability, and justice.
In-Person | PM Session 1
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
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Facilitated By: Nick Berkley, Kiyanna Baylock, & Andrea Ritchie
Audience: Open to Everyone
What does it take to build new worlds while transforming the conditions we live in now?
Our 90 minute experimental facilitation and container invites comrades and communities to explore Milwaukee Beyond Policing through a multi-issue, Black, radical community centered approach to community safety/deference, collective healing, and liberation. Grounded in the work of Black, Trans Organizers within Sun-Seeker MKE, we will explore how communities can build infrastructures of care and safety without the cops and address the interconnected conditions impacting our neighborhoods: from food access and crisis response to violence prevention, grief, and collective healing.
Using our hyperlocal, block by block framework, that activates and reinvest in radical political education and practical skills, participants will move through an interactive “Science Fair” featuring practical tools and approaches for community based safety and care. Fair stations include pod mapping and neighborhood relationship-building, Stop the Bleed, deescalation, harm reduction, and transformative/non-carceral justice practices. Participants will then enter a facilitated community grief space, learning the foundations of circle keeping and exploring how grief & care circles can support collective healing, accountability, and connection in their own communities.
We'll draw inspiration from Audre Lorde’s multi issue approach, recognizing that racial justice and liberation require us to build across interconnected struggles rather than addressing issues in isolation.Participants will leave with practical frameworks, skills, and questions they can bring back to their neighborhoods, pods, and communities as we reimagine and practice formations of safety and care beyond policing.