Dear friends, check out some of the work we’ve been doing!
On Tuesday 1/25 we met with Natalie and Sage of the NoName Book Club to plan an exciting in-person community teach-in around our report Automating Banishment: The Surveillance and Policing of Looted Land. The event will be held on Friday 2/18 at 5pm in the NoName Book Club. Due to Covid precautions space will be very limited so sign up soon at this link.
Later that evening, we continued our virtual collective learning series on Automating Banishment. Tiff and Sabrina led us in a guided discussion around part 2, providing questions that facilitated a deeper analysis of the report. You can find the study guide for part 2 of the report here. Stay plugged in to learn more about our next virtual collective learning session on Tuesday 2/8/22 at 6 PM.
On Wednesday 1/26, our SARA workgroup met to finalize the PRA’s we crafted after analyzing the documents the Coalition received. SARA, which stands for Scanning, Analysis, Response, Assessment, is an operational model employed in the LAPD’s most recent data driven policing program, Data-Informed Community Focused Policing. The Coalition alongside members of StreetWatch has been going over these documents to assess what next steps we can take in combating the expansion of the police surveillance state.
On Thursday 1/27, our Community Policing workgroup met to continue the development of our popular education materials stemming from the brilliant and thorough research conducted by our comrade Amira. The workgroup analyzes community policing as counter-insurgency and highlights the history of reform that has led to the current model of community policing we see today.
Shortly after that our Mapping workgroup met to continue our work thinking about how to best visualize various aspects of community criminalization. A large portion of our current efforts involve the criminalization of sex workers, particularly with the escalation of these criminalization efforts as the super bowl and Olympics approach. Present at the conversation were members of NOlympics who have been championing the fight against the Olympics here in Los Angeles.
Later that day, the Coalition alongside many other Los Angeles based organizers joined a presentation by Million Dollar Hoods on recently uncovered archived documents by the LAPD. Million Dollar Hoods is a UCLA-based research project led by Dr. Kelly Lytle Hernandez and Dr. Danielle Dupuy. MDH received 166 boxes of LAPD documents spanning the late 80’s to early 2000’s. MDH’s presentation shared the LAPD’s nefarious history of targeting Black and Brown Angelenos. You can learn more about Million Dollar Hoods by clicking here.
On Friday 1/28, our Defund Surveillance workgroup met to continue looking through the decade-plus worth of LAPD Base Budget documents. This is part of our continued effort to combat the ballooning LAPD budget. Earlier this week the Coalition alongside LA CAN, BLM-LA, and People’s Budget LA is currently seeking other organizational signatures on a letter to the city council demanding they reject the proposed LAPD budget increase of $213M. You can view the letter here.
To plugin with any of the workgroups listed above, 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.