Dear friends, check out some of the work we have been doing!
On Monday (2/14) the Coalition held our Data Driven Policing Work Group meeting. The group discussed updates on each of the fights including the work being done to develop pop-ed materials from Shadow Teams documents and what we’ve been discovering in the SARA operations documents.
Tuesday’s (2/15) webinar was an incredible conversation around the ecosystem of criminalization and surveillance of immigrants hosted by Coalition members Hamid Khan and Maraky Alemseged. We were so lucky to have the brilliant Abraham Paulos of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration on the discussion to help elucidate the ties between the Immigrant Rights movement and the struggle for Black Liberation, and role of cooptation and complicity of nonprofits and the broader immigrant rights movement. Kim also highlighted how femmes, especially trans community members, are compoundly criminalized as undocumented individuals.
The War on Youth also held a twitter storm on Tuesday to amplify Wednesday’s Public Safety Committee meeting during which the Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention grant was discussed. After hundreds of emails, a letter signed by 40 organizations including UTLA, and dozens of public comments including by youth the Committee shamelessly passed the motion. We’ll continue to fight the TVTP grant as it progresses to the City Council. Stay tuned in to find out how you can join the fight.
On Thursday (2/17) our Shadow Teams work group continued to build out popular education materials from our findings in the Shadow Team documents.
The Mapping work group welcomed new members and continued to think about how we can use mapping to illustrate all the manifestations of banishment in our communities. We also thought about ways that mapping can be used to support narratives that we discover from our work in the SARA work group.
On Friday we had the absolute pleasure of presenting our report Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land at the Noname Book Club, Radical Hood Library. We were engaged in conversation with an incredible group of attendees who participated in our discussion about the material. After the discussion, the Coalition and attendees filled envelopes with an abridged version of our report to be mailed to incarcerated people. We want to send lots of love and gratitude to Sage and Natalie for creating a safe and welcoming space that nurtured this critical analysis, and for facilitating the mailing of our report to incarcerated people.
To plug in with any of the work groups listed above, or for more information about the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, email us at stoplapdspying@gmail.com.
If you or your organization are interested in hosting a teach-in or discussion regarding our report please fill out this google form.