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More highlights

From our 2021 Ideas We Should Steal Festival

We heard from several incredible problem-solvers at our annual Ideas We Should Steal Festival:

We learned about how one city is staving off climate change with an innovative electric car share program.

One speaker who actually brokered peace between L.A.’s Bloods and Crips shared how he’s having success in his town fighting gun violence through peaceful intervention.

We got insight into how empathy and the courage to face often uncomfortable truths can help us repair democracy and stamp out racial discrimination.

And we were inspired to borrow all this knowledge to help bring meaningful change to Philadelphia.

Here, some of the highlights from the two-day Festival.

If you missed it, be sure to join our upcoming events all year long, and to stay tuned for details about next year’s Festival, which, believe it or not, we’re already hard at work planning.

Listen

Victim's ideas for reform

Our latest episode of Philly Under Fire, our podcast on the gun violence epidemic—its roots, its victims, its toll on our communities—and the solutions that could be effective in curbing it, spotlights victims. Listen to their experience—and ideas for change—here. (And subscribe to hear the whole season.)

Watch: Fixing the Prison Industrial Complex

Author Piper Kerman and Reform Alliance CEO Robert Rooks on achieving what is achievable: safety and reform

Watch: Fixing the Prison Industrial Complex

Author Piper Kerman and Reform Alliance CEO Robert Rooks on achieving what is achievable: safety and reform

“If you want to know where to go for square one” to prevent violence, according to Reform Alliance CEO Robert Rooks, then “talk to the people who have been impacted. They’ll show you the way.”

Rooks offered this pathway to solutions in conversation with Orange is the New Black author Piper Kerman and journalist/author Emily Bazelon at last month’s Ideas We Should Steal Festival presented by Comcast NBC Universal.

The trio of criminal justice experts took on the prison industrial complex, in a panel sponsored by Fanatics/Reform Alliance, by offering new ways to envision safety, solutions to violence and ideas for prevention—all in the name of achieving what they contend is achievable: Keeping people out of prison and keeping people safe.

“It’s very important to remember—particularly in the face of things like the homicide rate in Philadelphia—that punishment is not the same thing as prevention,” Kerman said.

“It’s very important to remember—particularly in the face of things like the homicide rate in Philadelphia—that punishment is not the same thing as prevention,” Kerman said.

“I say if crime’s gone up, let’s put more peace interventionists on the street,” Rooks added. “If crime’s gone up, let’s open up more Boys & Girls Clubs and parks. If crime’s gone up, let’s give more people jobs.”

Check out their full panel discussion below.

The Ideas We Should Steal Festival was made possible by our sponsors. See who they are here.

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The Real Story Behind Philly’s Violence Epidemic

Header photo by Sabina Louise Pierce

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