LARENCORE: U.S : Five actions to take right now to FIGHT RACISM.

mardi 16 juin 2020

U.S : Five actions to take right now to FIGHT RACISM.

Dear friend,

Last week, Louisville Metro Council voted UNANIMOUSLY to pass Breonna's Law, completely banning no-knock search warrants. The law was named in honor of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old emergency medical technician who was shot eight times and killed in her own home by police.¹

City governments around the country, from San Francisco to Minneapolis, are taking steps to defund and reduce the size of their police forces, replacing armed police officers with trained community workers.² All of these major policy victories are thanks to organizers on the ground across the country, as well as the hundreds of thousands of protesters worldwide who took to the streets in defense of Black lives.³

Our fight for justice is far from over. We must keep going !

Combatting racism--on both the individual level in our homes and communities and in larger systems of power and in institutions--requires a long-term commitment and ongoing work beyond this moment. Whether or not we can personally protest in the streets right now, there are some actions we can take immediately.

Please consider taking one or all of the following five actions :

Sign up for our #DefundThePolice webinar with MomsRising. On Tuesday, June 16, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, we will co-host a webinar with MomsRising on what it means to #DefundThePolice. Monifa Bandele, Senior Vice President of MomsRising, who also serves on the Leadership Table of the Movement for Black Lives, is the host of this evening's conversation. She will be joined by researchers and activists to discuss the long history behind the strategy to divest budget resources away from policing and reallocating those resources to areas like health care, housing and education.
Make a call for Breonna Taylor. The three police officers involved in Breonna's murder have yet to be charged and still have their jobs. Please join us and our partners at Black Lives Matter Louisville to make a phone call to the Louisville Metro Police Department. We have included the names and phone numbers of the appropriate personnel, as well as a suggested script of what you can say.
Sign the petition to defund the police. Initially formed as slave patrols, police have always existed to maintain control rather than safety or justice. This gets harder to deny as militarized police instigate violence at protests about racist police violence. Please sign on to the Movement for Black Lives' demands to divest from policing and instead invest in Black communities.
Continue to learn about reasons to #DefundThePolice. Our friends at Women's March have been hosting a series of educational webinars, including one about defunding the police. The link to Women's March's "Defund the Police 101" webinar is now available to watch and share.
Share this infographic about how defunding the police is essential for survivors. Some people are trying to use survivors of sexual violence to derail the conversation about why we need to defund the police. But the truth is that our existing police system does not work for survivors by design. Healthcare professionals, not the police, are most qualified to help survivors.