About

Internationally, the term 'community support project' is often given to localized responses to acute crises or disasters. The homelessness crisis in Atlanta, characterized by a sharp increase in the number of people brought into the cycle of extreme poverty and criminalization in recent years, is certainly one that demands localized solutions. And while tangible resources - access to food, clothing, affordable housing, healthcare, recovery services, jobs, and education - are critical to breaking free of this cycle, it's often incarceration, or the lingering barriers caused by any form of criminalization, that keep people stuck.

Atlanta Community Support Project (ACSP) was started by Luci Harrell in 2022 with the goal of decriminalizing poverty and dismantling practices that perpetuate the local crisis. Due to rapid gentrification and a continued culture of negligence that makes it okay for lawmakers and police to criminalize our neighbors for just BEING, Atlanta has one of the highest poverty rates of any major U.S. city and the largest income gap. This crisis is exacerbated by the fact that slavery is constitutionally protected in Georgia (meaning folks are forced to work, sometimes for decades, for no pay while incarcerated), our state has more people under correctional control than any other, and discrimination against those who have a criminal conviction is legal. While these overt forms of racist oppression continue to disproportionately disrupt the lives of people of color, LGBTQ people, women, survivors of intimate partner violence, and veterans, the fact is that we are all affected.

As ACSP grows, we stand in solidarity with each other, our families, and communities - given and chosen - working to decriminalize poverty and end mass incarceration in Georgia, the Deep South, and beyond.

Currently, the work of the ACSP involves: