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About Stop LAPD Spying Coalition
The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition is a grassroots community group working to expose and abolish surveillance and other forms of racial and social control. Formed in 2011, our coalition is made up of individuals from across the communities we organize with, including youth, immigrants, formerly incarcerated people, academics, unhoused people, artists, lawyers, journalists, researchers, students, faith-based organizations, and community groups. To learn more about our values, read our Grassroots Community Self-Defense Principles zine.
Stop LAPD Spying’s work is accountable to our organizing base and is community-driven, not staff-driven. Our primary work is community research, collective study, popular education, grassroots organizing, direct action, political litigation, coalition-building, and community advocacy. We are rooted in the Los Angeles Community Action Network.
About the Job
We are excited to hire a community organizer who will work on our campaigns including to end Data-Driven Policing and the War on Youth, as well as help advance our other work, including organizing against the policing of land; academic complicity in policing; police “reform” and “community policing”; the public health harms of policing and surveillance; family surveillance through the child welfare system; and LAPD’s budget growth.
The community organizer’s role will support building and expanding our community organizing base connections. Our organizing goals are to decolonize knowledge of police surveillance, to uplift community expertise on policing, to popularize our critiques of the police state, and to advance abolitionist movement-building. To this end, the community organizer will help facilitate community-based research, build collaborations with other groups, develop popular education resources, help plan direct actions, and help coordinate our organizing campaigns.
This is a full-time position working at the direction of Stop LAPD Spying Coalition’s Lead Coordinator and Coordinating Team. The yearly salary is $40,000 along with health insurance benefits, sick and vacation time. The expected hours of work a week will be 40 hours, with some evening and weekends required.
Work Responsibilities
Coalition Building and Outreach
- Implement existing organizing campaign plans and help build new organizing campaigns at direction of Lead Coordinator
- Working closely with community members who are directly impacted by and targeted for policing and surveillance
- Coalition-building and community outreach to expand our base and help mobilize community members
- Represent our coalition in community spaces and networks to connect our work on police abolition and help organizing on related issues, including housing, immigration, community health, youth, gender justice, and LGBTQIA liberation
Education and Research
- Facilitating community-based research, collective study, and community analysis, including focus groups on the impact of policing and surveillance programs
- Develop community education and self-advocacy materials and programs
There will also be opportunities to propose, implement, and pursue self-directed projects as the role is solidified. We want to work collaboratively to build the role with the candidate and our community.
Skills and Experience
- Applicants must be able to work with diverse communities and other grassroots organizers.
- Applicants should also have strong interpersonal and communication skills.
- Applicants must be committed to dismantling and abolishing oppressive systems, committed to collective study, and committed to the broader fight for Black, indigenous, migrant, queer, Trans, and feminist liberation.
- Applicants should be experienced with community organizing, creative political efforts, and popular education work.
- Applicants should have personal knowledge of and commitment to empowering communities in Los Angeles that have been historically looted by policing, white supremacy, settler colonialism, capitalism, and cis-hetero patriarchy.
- Both English and Spanish language skills are preferred but not required.
How to Apply
Please send a resume, cover letter, and names of two references as a single pdf to stoplapdspying@gmail.com with subject line “Community Organizer Application.” Applications can also be mailed to Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, 838 East 6th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90021, or dropped off at that address. Please submit applications by May 10, 2021.
If you have questions, please email stoplapdspying@gmail.com.