Come get your fresh and affordable vegetables and delicious fruits this weekend at Phat Beets!
57th and Market, behind the Medical Clinic. READ ABOUT THE MARKET HERE.
While you’re there, stop by the Stop the Injunctions table to connect with ally organizations and neighbors who want to push the City to end the ineffective and costly injunctions once and for all. We are also taking police complaints.
STIC is tabling this Sat Jan 28 11am-2pm
and then…
Sat Feb 11 12pm-2pm
Sat Feb 25 10-2pm
How are recent Oakland financial news and city spending trade-offs connected to policing and injunctions? When the City talks about solutions, it repeatedly puts the money behind policing, gang injunctions and other ineffective policies, while only paying lip service to real social spending and community-based services.
This month our City is making some major financial decisions that hard-hit Oakland residents, employees and communities. Last week the mayor’s office announced that anywhere from 160 to 400 workers would be laid-off January 31st and that more than 2,500 have received pink slips. The extraordinary financial burden that OPD demands from the city, however, remained untouched: the City is still funding gang injunctions in North and East Oakland and is launching the 100-block public safety plan, ostensibly designed to target areas in the city with the highest rates of violent crime.
According to Police Chief Howard Jordan, the 100-block plan does not rely soley on increased patrols or added officers, but also shifts some of the burden to other city agencies. The City says it also prioritizes the blocks for street repair projects, nuisance abatements and social programs. However, the city hasn’t named what those social programs are or how they are being received by the communities living in the 100-block area. It appears that the City is only willing to put money behind policing when it talks about “solutions.”
Oaklandofficials have said that the 100-block plan, which was introduced on October 15, combines police suppression and increased collaboration with other law enforcement agencies such as the Alameda County Sheriff’s office. STIC is deeply troubled by this: suppression tactics, which include gang injunctions and curfews, are part of a long history of racialized and violent policing that have claimed the lives of poor people and people of color living inOakland. Further, suppression policing tactics have proved incredibly expensive for the city financially; Oakland has spent well over one million dollars (as of last October) litigating the temporary North Oakland and Fruitvale gang injunctions and, over the last ten years, has paid out more than $57 million dollars for claims, settlements and lawsuits related to Oakland Police Department actions and abuse. Most recently in October 2011, Oakland made a $1.7million settlement payment to the family of Jerry Amaro after he was fatally beaten by the OPD.
Stop the Injunctions Coalition continues to voice loud and clear that the City must prioritize resources for things that actually bring safety to our communities, like jobs and community services, not policing.
These cuts are another example of politicians saying that the City will address public safety with a more diversified approach than policing, yet cutting funding to the diverse structure that it takes to create a healthy city. Parks and Recreation and Public Works amongst other Community and Economic Development departments will be the most heavily effected by the loss of Redevelopment money. The Mayor and the City Council are ignoring the obvious connections between increased social services, including better access to job training and employment for those who are on probation and parole, and public safety. Everytime there’s another shooting, members of the Council invariably bring up more parole beats, injunctions and curfews when its clear that this is notOaklandresidents want nor what will help stem the violence in our communities.
The Council and the Mayor have been repeatedly called upon by the Stop the Injunctions Coalition and other community-based organizations to take a pro-active step to a healthier city budget by de-funding gang injunctions inOaklandand to shift those resources instead to both social services and violence prevention programs. Despite the lack of political will to push injunctions forward on the part of the City Council, the City Attorney’s Office continues to use city money in the ongoing litigation of the Fruitvale injunction, which could stretch on for months. The movement continues to build however, as we talk with each other about what real solutions look like, enact them everyday and become more connected to continue the struggle.
Visit us at the North Oakland Phat Beets market on Saturdays to talk about building the movement, connecting with ally organizations and neighbors who want to push the City to end the ineffective and costly injunctions once and for all.
Sat Jan 28 11am-2pm
Sat Feb 11 12pm-2pm
Sat Feb 25 10-2pm.
This mural will soon be going up in North Oakland! Artwork collaboratively done by Oakland youth and East Oakland Xicana artist and educator, Leslie “DYME” Lopez!
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
In the first weeks of the New Year, Oaklanders have been met with a flurry of news reports highlighting the costs and consequences of Oakland Police Department conduct and policy in the past year. With two temporary injunctions in North Oakland and Fruitvale neighborhoods limping forward and still racking up costs, Stop the Injunctions Coalition is continuing its call for the City to abandon the controversial and failed policy.
One commitment in the Stop the Injunctions campaign right now is to highlight the creative ways that communities are capable of addressing violence and creating real, inclusive safety every day.
Here is one analysis of the European-based legal system and why it does not serve our communities in creating inclusive or lasting safety. This chart provides some ways to think about who gets to be engaged in a community-based solutions model and what the values are behind different justice models.
VIEW CHART HERE: Cultural Justice Model Chart-1
This chart comes from “Gullah Restorative Justice“ by Morris Jenkins.
Abstract: ”Restorative justice has been suggested as a means to deal with disproportionate minority confinement and other social problems within communities of color, specifically the Black community. However, scholars and practitioners have pointed out cultural concerns that must be addressed in the restorative justice process. Afrocentric theory and its principles have been suggested as a way to deal with the cultural concerns within the restorative justice process. This article examines the contemporary and historical means of informal dispute resolution in the Gullah Islands of South Carolina. These strategies of dispute or conflict resolution were used to deal with crime, delinquency, civil matters, community grievances, and other social wrongs outside the traditional common and civil legal systems. Through on-site in-depth interviews, focus groups, and an analysis of archival documents, the research determined that the strategies used on the Gullah Islands fell within the Afrocentric restorative justice model.”
Over the next few weeks, the Stop the Injunctions blog will be featuring materials, actions, visions and voices that illustrate what we mean by “Our Oakland, Our Solutions.” In this way, we want to share, appreciate, and highlight all the incredibly creative ways that our communities are capable of addressing violence and of creating real safety every day, without the use of police and without reliance on prisons (two misnomered “solutions” that fail to deliver safety and don’t meet people’s economic or cultural needs). Every time we spoke out at City Council, our allies talked about the incredible examples of how we are creating solutions every day with things like housing access, after school programming and job training. We are going to create an online resource of all these solutions, so when people say “well, if not gang injunctions, then what?” Then we all can say….“THIS!” (That page will be re-vamped this month!)
Above, is a chart from the Youth Justice Coalition, an incredible group working out of Los Angeles. You can find this chart and other excellent resources on their website. YJC fought gang injunctions down in LA and continues to dream of/create alternatives to relying on the state’s punitive systems (prisons). Why wait for the state when the state isn’t working for us? Recently, YJC and Rise Up LA did an exciting action and took over a closed library with plans to serve the community with a wide array of services and rad activities for four days. They got kicked out, but are still keeping up the good fight. Read on below, and also email us any ideas of what you would like to see us feature as a Community Solution!! Have any videos, images, restorative justice or community mediation toolkits? Send ‘em on to stoptheinjunction@gmail.com
And thanks for a rad year of so much organizing and replenishing energy!
FROM YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION:
At 9am Day 1 of the Freedom Factory, December 13, 2011g, youth who have grown up in the communities of South Central Los Angeles, Watts, Inglewood and Compton liberated the L.A. City Library’s Hyde Park branch on Crenshaw Blvd. and 66th Street. The action was sponsored by the Youth Justice Coalition and Rise Up L.A.
Located in the middle of one of L.A. County’s poorest and least resourced areas, the library has been padlocked since 2004. The goal for the action was to open the building for 4 days of community programming, and to demonstrate the benefit of youth and community centers. (L.A. County invests less in youth development than any other large city in the nation.) A planned schedule of activities included 3 meals a day, political education workshops, art and mural making, sports and theater classes, films and information on jobs and other community resources – all free for anyone in the community. .
Youth were setting up food for the neighborhood in the library parking lot. But, within the first hour, LAPD officers approached the site. Without warning, police closed the gates of the library trapping half the youth and others (including media and legal observers) inside the library parking lot, while the rest of the crowd remained just outside the chain link fence. Before long, approximately 30 LAPD officers, 20 squad cars, a police bus and a police helicopter had blocked the streets several blocks in a each direction from the library, and were not allowing either car or pedestrian traffic anywhere near the building.
Organizers asked to speak to LAPD command, and Captain Dennis Kato, one of two Captains at the 77th Street Station and Bob Green, LAPD South Bureau Commander had already been called to the site. Raising that members of participants in the action were breaking the law by trespassing on city-owned property without a permit, the LAPD commanders threatened the youth with arrest if they didn’t leave, including full processing through the system and a minimum of $5,000 bail. YJC members raised the fact that city buildings – such as the abandoned library – belong to the community. Legal observers from Public Counsel contacted the Community Redevelopment Agency who manage most abandoned properties, and they indicated that CRA had given control of the library back to the city. City officials were unwilling to issue immediate permission for use of the library, but did agree to contact the Mayor’s Office to discuss access to the space.
For three years, the Youth Justice Coalition has been exposing the fact that just 1% of the County’s law enforcement budget equals $100 million dollars a year and could fund 25,000 youth jobs, 50 youth centers open 3pm – midnight, 365 days a year each with an annual budget of $500,000, and 500 full-time peacebuilders/intervention workers in schools and communities, Several police officers on site said that they agreed with the demands, but stated that there were political processes in place to change public policy and the budget. In response, YJC members stated that the organization has mobilized mass actions, rallies, testimony at City Council and County Supervisors’ meetings, and numerous presentations and meetings with elected officials and law enforcement, with very little movement forward. The City’s and County’s inaction caused youth to increase their pressure through the liberation of the library space.
For more than an hour, there was a stand-off between young people and the LAPD. A community meeting was held to discuss the options – including arrest. At the same time, participants kept pressuring the LAPD, City and County officials to make commitments toward meeting the demands.
In the end, the action participants decided to leave from inside the library before arrests were made and organized a rally in front of the site. Having gotten several commitments from City, County and Law Enforcement officials:
(1) Commander Green and Captain Kato agreed to tour Chuco’s Justice Center and meet with the youth to strategize how to get a $100 million investment in youth development, as well as a commitment to work on getting permits for the transfer of abandoned space over to community use. Captain Kato, through the leadership of Officer Pessis came for a tour of Chuco’s immediately following the action.
(2) Deputy L.A. City Mayor Larry Frank, and Deputy Chief of Staff, Matt Szabo, agreed to meet this week on the demands.
(3) Richard Fajardo, Justice Deputy and Alex Johnson will work on getting a meeting with Mark Ridley Thomas.
By 5pm, the City had hired independent contractors to contract an additional 9’-high fence around the entire library site!
***
Youth Justice Coalition
@ Chuco’s Justice Center
On the border between South Central L.A. and Inglewood
one light west of Florence and Crenshaw
1137 E. Redondo Blvd., Inglewood, CA 90302
323-235-4243 * Fax: 323-846-9472
freelanow@yahoo.com
www.youth4justice.org
We’ve got a great Saturday lined up at the Phat Beets Farmers Market again this week.
Dec 10th: 10am-2pm
5715 Market Street
10am-2pm: Mural making with artists from Eastside Arts Alliance! Come check out how the Stop the Injunctions mural is going! We hope to display it in the Dover Park garden and other locations in North Oakland when it is finished.
11am: What is a gang injunction? What is happening in Oakland? Come participate in a workshop and learn more about the injunctions, the impact on our communities and the fight to stop them.
Police Complaint and Community Testimony Table (10am-2pm): Stop the Injunctions Coalition (STIC) is collecting testimony against policing in North Oakland in order to continue pushing against policing policies like injunctions. City Council is listening closely to what we have to say, and we want North Oakland’s voices heard. We will not be putting the complaints through the Community Police Review Board (CPRB) process; rather we will be collecting testimony to share with City Council allies so we can defeat the injunctions. It can remain anonymous. Please come by to give testimony, discuss more about the injunctions, how to get involved, or share strategies for real community-based solutions to violence.
10 am-2pm: “Our Oakland, Our Solutions” video making: Come stop by and share with us what you see as real community justice! Who would be involved? How do we care for each other? What do you see being real solutions for safety for us all?
AND: We’ll be joined by The Ephemory Project, an Oakland photo/story archive of loved ones lost to social, economic and related violence. The EP seeks to provide a space for contributors to memorialize their losses and a means to connect with other people facing similar issues; and to build awareness about the epidemic of loss some communities are facing due to violence, deportation, lack of health care, and other social and political problems. Read more and view, here.
Dec 3rd: 10am-noon
5715 Market Street
STIC will hold a Police Complaint & Community Testimony table this Saturday at the market to talk with people about police complaints in North Oakland. We’re collecting testimony against policing in North Oakland in order to continue pushing against policing policies like injunctions. City Council is listening closely to what we have to say and we want North Oakland’s voices heard. We will not be putting the complaints through the Community Police Review Board (CPRB) process; rather we will be collecting testimony to share with City Council allies so we can defeat the injunctions. It can remain anonymous. Please come by to give testimony, discuss more about the injunctions, how to get involved, or share strategies for real community-based solutions to violence.
The Oakland City Council declared the third week of November ever year Oakland Restorative Justice Resolution and November 15 to be “Restorative Justice Day,” by a unanimous vote. The resolution calls for Oakland residents to envision how to apply a restorative justice approach to existing systems including education, policing, prisons, and health care and calls on government to be “creative and innovative in looking at ‘justice’ through a restorative justice lens.” It further resolves that the City of Oakland diligently pursue funding to implement restorative justice practices that might improve police/community relations.
For the last 18 months, STIC and our allies have been offering restorative justice approaches as a means of addressing violence and harm in Oakland. We’ve offered research and case studies to city leaders (see our “Resources” page). “While we are encouraged to see the City Council unanimously stand behind restorative justice principles, we’d be much more encouraged to see them actually apply those principles to violence in our communities rather than continue to pursue ineffective, costly approaches such as injunctions.
The OPD has recently cost the city millions and millions of dollars in repressing the Occupy Oakland movement and in police brutality lawsuits. According to one recent report, OPD tops all Bay Area police forces in payouts (police brutality cases)–$57 million in the past 10 years, which alone almost matches our City’s $58 million deficit.
How are these policing expenditures connected to other ineffective police-measures like injunctions? Injunctions, while not delivering real safety, are costing the city over a million dollars in legal fees! STIC questions the fiscal responsibility of continuing to incur mounting costs related to litigating injunction cases in court, especially when there is a marked lack of support for the practice both among City Council members and Oakland residents.
In the OPD report on the North Oakland injunction zone submitted to the Public Safety Committee last week, Interim Police Chief Howard Jordan is cited saying, “The fact that the community feels the quality of life has risen in the safety zone leads staff to believe that this is a strategy worth continuing to pursue.” The report concludes that “people in the North Oakland gang injunction zone feel safer and that the injunction should continue,” when in fact the numbers tell a different story.
Listen to Oakland resident Kamau ask the City Council about facts versus perception and REAL safety strategies:
Together we continue to fight gang injunctions in City Hall, in court, and doing the daily work for stronger, safer communities. You are to this struggle. What message do you want to share with the City as we push them to de-authorize injunctions? Make a video, speak out, join us in our next action: let’s push on to the victory together!
As we move forward, the political will to press for injunctions in Oakland is slim. Together with you and all of our allies, STIC is poised to win a two-fold victory:
Save the Date: Stop the Injunctions Coalition and allies at Phat Beets Farmers Market! Saturday, Dec 3, North Oakland. Watch the video on the homepage! That was the last great day that STIC joined up with Phat Beets and other rad organizations like POOR magazine to celebrate Indigenous People’s Day!
