When Alham Carter, Tevin McDaniel and Aurelius Francisco launched the Foundation for Liberating Minds in 2017, it was, at first, a dream that had just manifested out of their heads and into the real world.
They were 19-year-olds, 20-year-olds, still early in their studies at different colleges in Oklahoma, fiery and passionate after learning a lot of things for the first time. Young Black people with a keen interest in the intersections of politics, race and gender, the three were envisioning a school that was “radically different,” they said, from the ones they attended growing up in Oklahoma City.
“(Thinking about education) led us to focus quite a lot around the criminal legal system and policing and incarceration, because of the realities,” Francisco told The Oklahoman recently, adding that “the lack of investment in our education system, in our kids, in preventing violence and childhood trauma, and things like that, leads to traumatized adults and people being funneled into a cycle of incarceration.”
Interest in the organization surged after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, which Francisco remembered as being “a wake-up call for so many people, (because) people wanted to feel like they were being a part of that change.”
In 2022, grant funding from the Public Welfare Foundation helped the founders begin to pay organizers full-time.
Fast forward to 2025, and the Foundation for Liberating Young Minds has grown into a full-time, grant-supported organization centered on community-based programming, social justice, and grassroots training and workshops.
The organization’s leadership are an outspoken bunch.
Francisco, the organization’s co-executive director, often can be found at different community events across Oklahoma City, calling attention to issues of racial injustice, urging officials to prioritize funding for social services, and advocating for building safer, flourishing communities.
Aurelius Francisco, co-executive director of the Foundation for Liberating Minds, often can be found at different community events across Oklahoma City, calling attention to issues of racial injustice, urging officials to prioritize funding for social services, and advocating for building safer, flourishing communities.
That often leads to criticism of the police, Francisco admits.
Growth in interest and investments into the Foundation for Liberating Minds have coincided alongside efforts in recent years from Oklahoma City officials to address calls for reforms of policing and criminal justice. But to Francisco, some of that has been promising action, while the rest of it has amounted to nothing more than lip service.
“I would say it’s a mixed bag, honestly,” he said. “In some areas, I think the city has done a good job, specifically around mental health crisis response. We saw the launch this year of the Mobile Integrated Healthcare units, and that is an exciting win for community safety, for non-police crisis response, and is a win directly out of the protests that the community was engaging in throughout the summer of 2020 and into 2021.”
“But at the same pace, or even more so, there’s been ‘more of the same’ from the city ― especially around policing,” Francisco continued. “There has been a Community Public Safety Advisory Board that exists within the city to review complaints that come for the Oklahoma City Police Department. I’m not exactly sure how much actual oversight and teeth that board has for the day-to-day operations of the police. I can’t really say that it is a community oversight board of the police, which is one measure of accountability. That day-to-day sort of accountability of the police still happens only within the police department, and there isn’t actually that community oversight, which I know was a really big call and has been consistently for the last decade-plus. There’s still a lot of work to be done as far as deconstructing what public safety is.”
Get To Know: Here are 44 of the incredible Oklahomans we’ve met over the last year
Q: Can you explain more about what community safety means and what that looks like to you and the other members of your foundation?
A: For us, and for me specifically, community safety is about resources, having properly resourced communities, and those resources that I’m talking about mean a well-rounded holistic education system, affordable housing, access to nourishing and culturally relevant food, reliable transportation, child care, health care, mental health care and ensuring that people have all of their basic needs met.
Because right now, what we have is a whole lot of people who are struggling, who are vulnerable, who are marginalized, and are really only able to focus on paying the bills, working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. And because of that, a lot of people are desperate and put in desperate situations, and that’s what leads to “crime,” right? And so, it’s our belief and understanding that if people were better resourced and had the support from their government that they need, that there would be far less harm and violence in our communities.
That’s one piece of safety. The other piece is also the work that we do around transformative justice, which is a community-based response to harm without involving the carceral system, the police, the courts or jails or prisons or anything like that.
It is about trained community members actually facilitating healing processes that work to hold people accountable when they’ve caused harm, when they’ve messed up, when they’ve made mistakes, or even when they’ve been violent. It’s also to support survivors in that healing process to provide them with services, because experiencing harm can be really isolating, so we try to create space for them. But just succinctly, community safety is about being in community, being around people who care about you, and having the necessary resources to provide for yourselves and your family.
Q: I know a frequent criticism I hear, not just from you but from many people, is that the police budget every year continues to take up so much of the general fund for the city. But I know that the city is trying to make progress in other areas. Are you happy with how things are going?
A: You do have other progress that’s happening within the city. You have recommendations about how to reform law enforcement policy that are getting actually accomplished now. There’s an implementation manager at the city, Andrea Grayson, and you are also seeing more intentional listening happening from the city on the east side, specifically in other areas that are often overlooked or marginalized. And I’ve seen that specifically with the G.O. bond that was just approved to go to a vote of the people in October. And so my hope is that there will continue to be investments into the parks and recreational facilities and infrastructure of the east side and other parts of the community, from the south side to other areas.
And yet, as you said, the reality is that, as far as the city’s overall budget, its general fund budget, the majority of those dollars continue to go to the police department. That is, in my eyes, an inhibitor to community safety.
The city describes police and fire as “public safety,” but again, community safety isn’t policing. For my community, when we see the police, we don’t see safety — we are often scared, and traumatized feelings come up. What communities actually feel and what actually produces safety, like really getting down to the root of it, is not just what we have been told and programmed to believe is public safety for our entire lives.
Aurelius Francisco is a community organizer, writer and educator from Oklahoma City and is co-executive director of the Foundation for Liberating Minds.
Q: Did you not feel cause for optimism from Police Chief (Ron) Bacy ascending into that role last year? He’s been a part of the department for a long time and has been very involved with the community. How do you feel Bacy is handling things when it comes to providing change for the police department?
A: The reality is, with policing and understanding policing as an institution, the police will always do what the police do. And that is to say that, yes, you can have a more community-minded police chief, but the police will continue to serve in the role that they are meant to serve in, which is one of surveillance, responding to crime, and, honestly, having the ability to enact legalized violence on community members. And we saw that and continue to see that with instances of police violence and brutality that happen in the community.
Now, all of that doesn’t fall on Bacy, but the reality is that, now having a Black man in the highest position in the police department doesn’t change the fact that the Oklahoma City Police Department is a racist institution. (And by that I mean) it is an institution that works to hyper-police communities of color, and Black and Brown communities specifically. That is what the police do, and that’s what they’re going to continue to do, regardless of what lip service is paid to diversity in the police force or social media presence or community engagement or police athleticism or anything like that.
The base of what the police do will continue, which is surveil communities and disproportionately they will continue surveil communities of color. Outcomes year over year like that will not change. As long as the police budget continues to increase and that public safety is only defined as policing within Oklahoma City, there will still be instances of police brutality and police violence in our communities.
The police have a monopoly on legitimate violence. They have a monopoly on the ability to enact violence on communities, and they won’t change because of a new police chief or anything like that, because, again, he’s been in the department for years.
But you talk to older community members on the east side, and they will say, when we were kids we knew the police officers who drove to be in our community. But the reality is, it isn’t about any community engagement, it’s about, bare bones, what do the police do in our communities? What is their purpose? It’s to respond to crime, and if the police precincts are primarily communities of color, there’s going to be more police presence in those communities; and if there’s more police presence in those communities, there’s going to be higher cases of police violence within those communities — and that is the problem that is inherent to policing; that they are able to enact violence on the residents. And to me, nothing about protecting and serving is the ability to brutalize or to kill legally, and to be shielded from consequences.
These things continue to happen, and they will continue to happen, unfortunately, and it isn’t a matter of training — it is just a matter of what policing as an institution is and what it has always been, and that is to enact violence on communities.
Francisco’s opinion: New Oklahoma County jail won’t repair systemic failures
Q: And apart from a reduction of that ever-large police budget, what do you think are some short-term goals that might be able to chip away at some of those problems?
A: More community response. I’m on an advisory committee that is working to develop a (request for proposal) for community violence intervention, which is a community-based response to gun violence and other forms of violence that young people engage in in the community.
And that has the opportunity to look at other models across the country, from Baltimore to Newark, New Jersey, to actually respond to community violence with community members who are credible, to actually prevent and disrupt violence and retaliatory violence, especially from happening in the community. And that’s separate from how the police do things, and that would mean investment in things like community violence interruption and restorative justice, youth centers, which we’re seeing with MAPS as far as another positive thing that the city has engaged in. These are the kinds of things that actually will show that community-based responses are better than a police response.
And those are the things with Home Base that we’ve been calling for with the People’s Budget Coalition. We’ve been calling for a participatory budget process. And I think oftentimes city officials, the city manager and the mayor don’t want to believe me, which is fine — but you take a representative mass of the city of Oklahoma City and you ask them what they want to see within their communities, and you ask them what promotes safety, what promotes dignity, what promotes a positive, beautiful city to them. Most of those folks are going to tell you that they want homelessness to be addressed; that they want better sidewalks and bike lanes; that they want parks and recreation centers for their kids or nieces and nephews to play in. They’re going to tell you that they want to see art and more opportunities for festivals and events that promote a sort of cultural element to our city. Very few people are actually going to tell you, unless prompted, to say, hey, we want more police. But if you ask them, “what do you want in your city?”, only a few of them are going to tell you that they want more policing.
And the reality is that if we had a participatory budget model, we would see far more investment into our transportation system and to our parks and recreation system and into focuses on community safety and violence intervention. That looks different than this current budget, and so I think that is a real opportunity for some portion of the general fund budget that everyday people in the community are able to dedicate to what we see as priorities for the city.
Aurelius Francisco with the Foundation for Liberating Minds is interviewed in Oklahoma City, Tuesday, July 15, 2025.
Q: I’ve noticed that, between the budget draft being proposed and it being approved every year, the time for feedback is only weeks. Could giving more time for feedback be another fix?
A: Budgets are opaque and boring. And we’re talking about a $2 billion budget ― the massive amounts of dollars that your everyday person doesn’t really have the time to understand. And I think the city staff especially have done a fair job of trying to demystify the budget process, but there’s just not enough time for people to actually give their responses. And I think one thing that would really help the city out is allowing organizations like FLM and (others) who are embedded in the community each and every day out knocking doors, talking with community members, having events to actually get that feedback.
Home Base had a worksheet this year that we gave to folks, with which we’d present the general fund and where the numbers currently stand proposed for the next fiscal year, and then we allowed small groups of people to reimagine the budget. So if they think that we should invest more in the park, some public transportation for our municipal courts, they had the opportunity to say that. And then they could save that and give that to the councilors to say that “this what I want to see within the budget.” And this a really accessible way for people to engage with the budget that feels a little more like, ‘I have a say over this thing,’ instead of a very few amount of departments saying where dollars are going and what the priorities are for the overall city.
We’ve seen with the Thunder that we all rally behind the Thunder, getting them a new arena, making sure that they have the nice parking garage and all of the things that they need under the G.O. bond.
We’ve seen the city be adaptive and move very quickly to address what they see as the biggest, flashiest things for our city — the thing that puts our city on the national airwaves.
And so, in the same way, we know that the city is able to adapt and to implement innovative resources that support the most vulnerable in our community: the homeless, folks who are living in low-income housing. These are the folks who we need to make sure have the services and the resources and the opportunity for economic mobility, which will really make our city great for all of us, and not just for the owners of our basketball team.
Q: Last question, but what’s the goals for next year and the future of FLM?
A: We are really focusing on working to build a sustainable coalition within Oklahoma City of organizations and volunteers who are looking to make a change, but maybe don’t have the time to do it, and trying to create avenues for them to do that organizing. We’re building out a model for young people, to have a space, to have fun, to be in community and also to engage in organizing and to learn skills in advocacy and policy change and making a difference within your community. And in building out that coalition, we really believe we can unite people across issues, from policing and incarceration, to economic development, to environmental justice, to sovereignty, to immigration — all of these different issues, not just nationally, but also here locally.
The focus is really trying to solidify that coalition and to ensure that we’re working together across issues and across tactics to really fight against the rise of fascism that we’re seeing in our country, and to fight against this approach of pulling out of all of the things that government should be providing ― social welfare and health care and things of that nature ― and actually supporting its residents. To be able to bring the community together to say that we won’t stand for this and that we’re going to be engaged on the local level and at the state level will make sure that our voices are heard.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Liberating Minds OKC leader talks public safety, justice in policing