The BREATHE Act is an omnibus bill presented by the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives. The bill proposes to divest taxpayer dollars from policing and invest in alternate, community-based approaches to public safety.

“This visionary bill divests our taxpayer dollars from brutal and discriminatory policing and invests in a new vision of public safety—a vision that answers the call to defund the police and allows all communities to finally BREATHE free.

We are rising up against all the ways that the criminal-legal system has harmed and failed to protect Black communities. The current moment requires a solution that fundamentally shifts how we envision community-care and invest in our society. History is clear that we cannot achieve genuine safety and liberation until we abandon police, prisons, and all punishment paradigms.

IMAGINE : Schools free of police and full of trained counselors and restorative-justice programs, where all our children are kept safe and their needs are met.

IMAGINE : Easy access to trained, trauma-informed interventionists who can be called on in domestic-violence situations and who are equipped to facilitate long-term safety, healing, and prevention.

IMAGINE : 911 operators dispatching unarmed mental-health experts instead of police in situations involving behavioral health crises, and callers being allowed to request responders that connect to the gender identity of the person in crisis.

The BREATHE Act offers a radical reimagining of public safety, community care, and how we spend money as a society. We bring 4 simple ideas to the table:

• Divest federal resources from incarceration and policing.
• Invest in new, non-punitive, non-carceral approaches to community safety that lead states to shrink their criminal-legal systems and center the protection of Black lives—including Black mothers, Black trans people, and Black women.
• Allocate new money to build healthy, sustainable, and equitable communities.
• Hold political leaders to their promises and enhance the self-determination of all Black communities.

Uprisings around the country changed what was possible. What felt impossible two months ago is being accomplished now; what seems impossible today is doable tomorrow, and we will be the ones to make it happen. We are our ancestors’ wildest dreams.

To learn more, visit

TheBreatheAct.org