@article{TEXTUAL,
      recid = {14611},
      author = {Suslovic, Brianna J.},
      title = {The Survival Line: A Case Study in Anti-Carceral  Community-Based Hotline Work},
      journal = {Social Sciences},
      address = {2025-02-20},
      number = {TEXTUAL},
      abstract = {Community members seeking alternatives to policing have  played a substantive role in promoting safety and  responding to harm for decades. The Survival Line was  formed as a volunteer-run hotline to respond to community  members’ concerns about neighborhood crime or police  misconduct. It was established in the summer of 1970 as a  mechanism for gathering data while also referring callers  to community resources like pro bono attorneys and low-cost  social services. It ran as a 24/7 hotline staffed entirely  by volunteers from the Action for Survival coalition, a  group of community-based organizations, which included the  Chicago Urban League. Using historical analytic methods,  this study asks the following: what function did this  citizen-run hotline serve in 1970s Chicago? This study  mobilizes archival research methods to analyze call  records, meeting minutes, publicity materials, and internal  memos from the Chicago Urban League and its Survival Line  archives. This archival analysis found that the Survival  Line served multiple functions; it was a non-state response  to urban crises, a vehicle for Black solidarity, and a  mechanism for gathering data on crime and police misconduct  in the city. By functioning as an alternative to policing  and state responses to crime, a vehicle for Black  neighborhood solidarity, and a data collection mechanism,  the Survival Line was at the core of an impactful  micropolitical intervention upon urban crises in 1970s  Chicago. As a historical example of community-driven  violence and crisis response, this hotline has implications  for contemporary social work—specifically for direct  practice, community organizing, program design and  evaluation, and community-based participatory research.},
      url = {http://knowledge.uchicago.edu/record/14611},
}