ANNOUNCING: Our #DefundSurveillance campaign w/ @stoplapdspying has been working to dissect & defund LAPD’s $3.1 billion budget. Today, we’re launching our demands focused on the extreme harm of LAPD’s spending on surveillance, tech, & community policing: defundsurveillance.org
DEMAND 1: Defund and disarm LAPD of all weapons and surveillance!
LAPD is the country's most murderous police force. Technology and data-mining are crucial to how LAPD targets our people. Every dollar LAPD spends on harming us could instead pay for life-affirming resources.
DEMAND 2: End all LAPD siphoning of funds and data from other city departments!
In addition to the $3.1 billion LAPD directly gets in the city budget, police also take money and data from other departments, consuming vital resources and growing the Stalker State.
DEMAND 3: End all federal spending on LAPD!
LAPD gets tens of millions of dollars of federal grant money each year. This money funds LAPD’s killing and stalking of our people. City Council can reject this money and needs to do so immediately.
DEMAND 4: Abolish the Community Safety Partnerships program!
CSP embeds police in our communities to surveil us and run social programs. CSP means vital resources and services are only offered through the LAPD budget, and then most of that money just pays for cops.
DEMAND 5: Abolish LAPD’s propaganda units!
LAPD’s Public Communications Group includes over 40 staff responsible for constantly deceiving the public and attacking victims and critics of LAPD violence. LAPD should not be given even one dollar for propaganda and deceit.
@lapdcommission is a rubber-stamp body whose role is to legitimize whatever harm LAPD wants to pursue. Ending this body is an important first step in ending LAPD’s violence.
DEMAND 7: End tech industry and academic complicity with LAPD!
Police violence is enabled by a range of everyday technologies. We demand that tech companies end business with LAPD and that universities stop funding research that arms LAPD with new surveillance weapons.
LAPD knows that demands to defund them are extremely popular: a recent study commissioned by city officials showed that 62.4% of L.A. adults support proposals to “redirect some money currently going to the police budget to local programs."
Defunding is not an end goal but a long-term strategy toward abolition. Policing will harm our communities no matter how cheap it is! We need to divert money from policing toward life-affirming investments in communities.
To learn more about LAPD’s budget and for more information about our demands visit defundsurveillance.org!
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As part of our #ScientistSolidarity drive, we've been posting threads on the intersections of science with anti-Blackness, abolition, racial justice, and solidarity over the past few weeks. Here's a handy compilation of all those threads… as another THREAD! 🎉😂
We hope this compilation can be a helpful primer for anyone hoping to learn about/ get involved in efforts to create a more just, equitable, and accountable science that works toward Black liberation & the dismantling of oppressive systems. #BlackLivesMatter#ScienceIsPolitical
To launch the drive, we stated our goals & named some who’ve lost their lives to police violence. We also named our commitment to fighting systemic anti-Blackness as it intersects with transphobia & gender-based violence. #SayTheirNames#RestInPower
We’re sharing these threads as part of our #ScientistSolidarity Drive which ends TOMORROW, calling on non-Black scientists to support orgs/funds doing grassroots racial justice and abolition work. We're only $300 away from our (updated) $6110 match goal!
First up, Black Radical Ecology teaches us that environmental destruction stems from white pursuits of power/the Eurocolonial capitalist idea that humans rank above all in nature. @RantzFanon says: "To save ourselves & the planet, we must oppose all forms of (white) authority…
Knowledge is power, and scientific research shapes and changes the world just as much as it describes the world. This thread is meant to help scientists reflect more critically on our own research and to mobilize science for justice.
To review, Western science, which is built upon the exploitation and oppression of Black people and communities, is one part of institutionalized racism.
But we can build a more just science. B/c #ScienceIsPolitical, scientists must reflect on the values embedded in their research, and choose the systems that their research works to uphold or dismantle. How does your science perpetuate white supremacy? How does it combat racism?
This is the first in a series of threads focusing on Black knowledge creators, scholars, scientists, and more who have influenced our work and shaped our thinking on science and technology. Today, we start with: Data & Technology.
Quick note, this thread is part of our #ScientistSolidarity Drive, calling on non-Black scientists to support orgs/funds doing grassroots racial justice and abolition work. We are $800 away from hitting our (*updated*) $6110 match goal!
This list is, of course, non-exhaustive - pls @ us w/folks who have influenced you & your work. Include some info about them and what they have taught you! Knowledge sharing and community learning is how many of us learned about the work of folks included here. On to the sharing!
Last wk, we discussed how Western science is founded on anti-Blackness. Today, we share how Black ppl across the globe have always been at the forefront of knowledge creation, within/outside of/in resistance to anti-Black dominant institutions of science.
We intentionally couple these threads b/c while it’s important to name and work to dismantle the ways institutional science has exacted violence against Black communities, we need to also know about & celebrate how Black communities have BEEN doing science, BEEN making knowledge.
As a note, this thread is part of our #ScientistSolidarity Drive, calling non-Black scientists to support orgs/funds doing grassroots racial justice & abolition work. We're $800 away from hitting our $6110 match goal! #ScienceIsPolitical#BlackLivesMatter
First, let’s preface this thread with a few things. These are just a few of the anti-Black skeletons in institutional science’s closet
There’s a rich literature that goes much deeper and broader than what we’ll mention here, much of which is created by Black scholars
Additionally, we’ll be sharing a longer resource list later, but in this thread we’ll be naming Black scholars whose research is referenced in brackets in each tweet