I'm Ashley C. Ford, and this is Into the Mix, a Ben and Jerry's podcast about joy and

justice produced with Vox Creative. Let's get into it. In 2018, the Lancet published a study that investigated what it called spillover effects of police violence against unarmed black people.

They wanted to know if and how high-profile deaths of black people at the hands of police affected the mental

health of other black Americans, not just the families and communities of the people killed,

but black Americans generally. And what they found was that police killings were the reported

cause of a cumulative 55 million poor mental health days. In other words, the people surveyed said that,

yeah, news of these deaths cause feelings of anxiety or depression, sometimes for days, weeks,

or even months. It's not exactly surprising, since researchers for decades have noted that

if you're black in America, you're statistically

much more likely to have encounters with police and almost three times more likely to be killed

by police than if you were white.

This isn't new information to black Americans.

The knowledge that you could be stopped, arrested, or possibly killed by police is a fact

of our existence.

It weighs you down, inhibits your movement and expression.

What's changed is that now, more than ever, the majority of Americans want police reform.

A recent poll found that in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the months of protests that

followed, 50% of Americans support major police reform and another 39% won at least minor

changes to curb police brutality.

And in 2021, Representative Cory Bush of Missouri introduced the People's Response

Act to the House of Representatives. If passed, the People's Response Act would study alternatives

to policing and fund things like non-carceral first responders and trauma-informed infrastructure,

...