Dear friends,
As the Coalition enters its fourteenth year of power-building in uncompromising opposition to the police state, we recognize the fear and anxiety around recent election results and local criminalization efforts, often characterized as harbingers of an unprecedented fascist era. Our work has long recognized that events like this are not a moment in time but a continuation of history. We approach these developments with a clear understanding: elected “leaders” shift from fascist to more fascist in order to continue the state’s global agenda of settler colonial violence and racial capitalism.
For marginalized people, fascism is already a lived reality—deeply entrenched and largely ignored. It manifests today in disappeared communities, banished through houselessness, incarceration, and death. And even policing has been expanding in Los Angeles and across the country long before a second Trump presidency or the passage of Prop 36. The expansion of machinery to disappear “expendable” communities has been constant for a long time. Our communities are undeniably under threat—but they always have been. We uplift these realities to build power, not paranoia.
Throughout this ongoing expansion of policing the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition has continued to fight back this past year, defeating repeated attempts by city officials to censor our community tool watchthewatchers.net, suing LAUSD for records on its youth surveillance program LASAR, and unveiling our community-built tool mapping the LAPD’s Architecture of Surveillance. We also successfully thwarted Zionist efforts to fund former Israeli soldiers to monitor protests and to outright criminalize protest through the city council.
From our early days, we have chosen not to become yet another advocacy nonprofit, rejecting the role these institutions often play in sanitizing and perpetuating institutional harms. Even now, nonprofits serve as consorts of the state, exploiting people’s heightened fear to push reformist legislation, negotiate concessions, and falsely claim victories to boost fundraising. We say: fuck that. Now more than ever, we must invoke the words of George Jackson: “with each reform, revolution became more remote.”
If our dedication to abolition resonates with you, we invite you to join the fight and donate to help sustain our critical work. Support the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition via Venmo (@stoplapdspying) or you can make a tax-deductible donation at stoplapdspying.org/donate. Please also consider setting up a recurring weekly or monthly donation. We are community funded and every dollar helps!
– The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition