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Weekly Update – March 24, 2023

Greetings, friends! Here’s what we’ve been up to.

On Tuesday (3/21), we were back at the Board of Police Commissioners. This week the Board and LAPD Chief Moore took turns demonizing our community resource watchthewatchers.net, before “honoring women’s history month” without acknowledging the myriad of harms enacted by the LAPD against women. You can watch public comments from the meeting here: https://twitter.com/stoplapdspying/status/1638304678793596928

That evening we held our monthly general meeting. This month we held a conversation on Cop City, tying the fight in Atlanta to the expansion of policing we witness here in LA. Attendees discussed areas of intersection with the development of Cop City to our various fights against policing and gentrification here at home. For the second half of the meeting our Community Policing fight co-leads Amira and Tiff presented on Community policing as counterinsurgency.

On Wednesday (3/22) Akhil and Matyos shared the Coalition’s work with students from Oakwood High School. The students, who had spent the day learning about the criminal justice system, were introduced to the concept of abolition. We explained the many reasons why the Coalition fights against reforming policing.

Later that day we continued our residency with Stem to the Future. Maraky led a lesson on the criminalization of migrant communities, the students then participated in a mock immigration hearing.

On Thursday (3/23) LA CAN’s Urban Grower’s Committee was on Radio Insurrection to discuss the importance of food autonomy and land sovereignty. For the second half of the show we were joined by Di Barbadillo, executive director of the National Lawyer’s Guild Los Angeles, to talk about the need for the Coalition’s new community resource watchthewatchers.net.

That evening, we held a workshop at Occidental with Oxy’s Students for Justice in Palestine. Hamid, Akhil, and Matyos discussed the Coalition’s history and mapped modern surveillance efforts to the long history of tactics employed to surveil enslaved people and facilitate settler colonial conquest in the US. Akhil tied these tactics to the occupation of Palestinian land.

To plug in with any of the work groups listed above, or for more information about the Stop
LAPD Spying Coalition, email us at [email protected].

If you or your organization are interested in hosting a teach-in or discussion regarding our report, Automating Banishment, please fill out this google form.