Coalition as Method: Producing Knowledge About Safety from a Community Survey

The Community Safety Project, rooted in the commitments and processes of critical participatory action research, studied safety in the most heavily policed neighborhoods of New York City. Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition of more than two hundred organizations, together with the Public Science Project, spent four years co-constructing and co-analyzing a community survey as part of a project that engaged 3303 New Yorkers most directly affected by policing. Rather than treat safety as a function of policing, the survey asked residents what they believe produces safe, healthy, and thriving communities. Given the space to define it themselves, residents named meeting people’s basic needs as the primary driver of safety, with housing, healthcare, jobs, schools, and food among their highest priorities. When they turned to the police, many did so because no other option was available to them. We came to that account through collective theorizing across the building, sampling, analysis, and public communication of the survey, held accountable by the coalition’s structures, and we describe the methodological decisions that made it possible.