The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is a community organization founded in 2011. We work to build community power toward abolishing police surveillance. We are rooted in the Skid Row neighborhood of downtown Los Angeles, based out of the Los Angeles Community Action Network.
Our work is largely volunteer-based and is accountable first and foremost to an organizing base made up of those who are most vulnerable to police violence, particularly in the Skid Row community where we are located. We work to build power among that base and across the city. We believe that creating a world without police surveillance requires uplifting the expertise and political power of the communities most harmed by policing. Collective study, community-based research, direct action are crucial to our work, decolonizing “expertise” about surveillance and policing and building a robust and responsive culture of resistance to police.
A broader aim of our organizing is to expand narratives concerning surveillance beyond a narrow and privileged focus on privacy, legal rights, and national security policymaking, toward a more community-centered focus on policing’s deliberate harm toward Black and brown communities, where the state has always used spying and infiltration to contain, control, criminalize, and harm our people. We believe that organizing against police surveillance must address policing’s origins in enslavement, colonization, apartheid, and imperialism. We also believe that abolishing surveillance requires organizing against the entire ecosystem that helps sustain and evolve policing, beyond police agencies alone. To read more about our guiding values, read our Statement of Principles zine.
Join the fight!
The best way to join our work is to send an email to stoplapdspying@gmail.com introducing yourself or attend one of our Tuesday evening meetings.
Donate to support our work
The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s work is largely funded through community donations. Your support is what makes our work sustainable. Please consider setting up a recurring donation.
To make an online donation, you can use a card or Venmo:
To make a tax-exempt online donation, visit LA CAN’s donate page and choose “Stop LAPD Spying Coalition” from the “special purpose for your donation” drop-down menu.
To make a tax-exempt donation by mail, make the check out to LA CAN (our fiscal sponsor) and write “for Stop LAPD Spying Coalition,” and mail to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, 838 E. 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021.
