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Violence, Safety and Community Peace

As the Institute for Community Peace points out, violent communities threaten not only our physical safety, they also "diminish our sense of community and suppress civic engagement by fostering civic distrust," making organizing around any issue much more difficult. In other words, there can be no successful reduction of any kind of racial inequity while communities of color continue to suffer from higher rates of crime (both violent and property) than white communities. The resources in this section document several strategies for addressing the violence that, despite recent drops in many parts of the country, persists in many communities of color.