 And we're open. So let's give it a moment. Welcome. We're gonna get started in just a moment. Let some friends fill up the space. Hello. Welcome. All right, welcome. Welcome, friends. All right, we're going to jump in with some library news first. I'm Vanessa, by the way, I'm your librarian host. And if you've never been to an event with me, welcome. I provided document that is alive and living document and has links to library news as well as links to our presenters and their organizations. And then anything that comes up resources that come up along the way, I will try and keep up and add these to that document. So grab that link. It has everything you need, as well as the YouTube link to watch this later or share it later with folks. So we are here as part of our one city one book and I'm excited to have cat Brooks and James Burke of the anti police tear project. And this is one of the first organizations I reached out to to be part of this campaign and I'm so happy that they agreed. So first, let me tell you a few upcoming and news. This is part of our one city one book where we encourage all of the Bay Area San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. And we're celebrating the amazing work of ear hustle and the book on flinching stories of everyday prison life with Nigel poor and Erlon Woods who have been the most generous hosts and have done a lot of things for us over this campaign, including visit two of our local high schools as part of the campaign, we're able to give free books to many young scholars so I love that part. And they did two big events with us so they have been work and they also visited every 28 library locations and our book mobile they went on the library love to her. So they have been very busy with us, and I appreciate all their work, but the best thing about this campaign is we get to bring in a many people that are in the same topic of the book, and that have devoted their work and time and efforts to folks and reentry and community and keeping people safe and and keeping the lifelines to our folks who are incarcerated open. Our library would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unseeded ancestral homeland of the raw mutish aloney peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland, and as uninvited guest we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples. We wish to pair respects to the ancestors elders and relatives of the raw mutish community. Just through in the chat box a link to one of my favorite all women led organizations coming out of the East Bay Sigourte Land Trust, check them out they do amazing work. And you know, it's the giving giving season. So give it up. A couple more events we are rounding our, I can see the tunnel at the end of the light of one city one book events and it was big November through December events. Let that go by. Coming up this weekend we have two big in person events the legacy of the new college law school before filming a documentary about the work that they did at the new school. And the amazing Sarah Cruz on will be in the library on Sunday, which is my favorite day at the library because you can also go to the farmers market and the roller skating and do all kinds of things on Sunday at Civic Center. But first come see Sarah Cruz on because she is powerful and empowering. She is over two decades inside for the murder of her abuser. And when she got out. I mean she just learned so many tools and she, her book is so powerful books will also be available at the event. I encourage you all to come come out and be present for this event. Some other last few events coming up are William James Association with brothers in pen, the writing and reading group that meets at Zenquim. And then our final event with Dr. Jeannie Austin San Francisco's own jail and reentry services librarian one of them and author. We'll be doing a panel based on inspiration knowledge and curiosity well incarcerated. Not one city one book related events but also noteworthy and we just want folks to come out we have in person again I know it's iffy to still meet but you can't be an actual gathering around other people. This is tomorrow night, the mission, a documentary about the women behind the Latino task force, and the community work they did during coven and the pandemic, and how it spread beyond just the mission but their work really just value valuable to the city. Friday and not Friday next Wednesday, we have Milo far to leave me and key to Lucas, both amazing women artists and author in discussion about what it means to be home. So please we got lots of events coming up. I'm super excited about. And I'm going to now introduce our tonight's panel. So tonight we have cap Brooks and James Burke of the anti police terror project, which is based in Oakland, and they're going to talk about the current moment in relation to public safety, the defunded movement, and what is really needed in order to keep our communities safe. She's an award winning actress and playwright and artivist. She's KPF is co host of upfront, a resident playwright and actress at the lower bottom players in Oakland, and three girls theater in San Francisco. As an organizer she played a central role in the struggle for justice for Oscar grant and spent the last decade working with impacted communities and families to rapidly respond to police violence and radically transform the ways our communities are incarcerated and incarcerated. She is the co founder of the anti police terror project and the executive director of the justice teams network. Kat was also the runner up in Oakland's 2018 mayoral election facing incumbent Libby chef. James Burke is a policy director for the anti police terror project and the justice teams network. He is the president of the National Lawyers Guild in the Bay Area. In 2007 he worked with the Southern Center for Human Rights where he investigated human right conditions in Georgia and Alabama prisons, jails and court systems. Burke left in 2009 to study civil rights law at Georgetown. After great graduating James moved to the Bay Area. Thank goodness. He worked with the Frisco 500 before joining the anti police terror projects black leadership committee and assuming role the role of policy director. All right, I'm going to stop sharing and turn it over. Good evening. Good evening. Excited to be here with all of you tonight. Thank you so much to San Francisco public library for having us. It was an immediate yes. Yay for librarians and libraries. I'm going to put a new bio out there. So a couple things because my producer if he is watching I will be in deep trouble. I was the co host of upfront for, no, no, totally my fault. I was the co host of co host of upfront and KPFA for six and a half years, and now have my own show called Law and Disorder with Cat Brooks upfront run from seven to nine. Now it's seven eight and law disorder from eight to nine o'clock. And I second that. Yay. Thank goodness James Burch moved to the Bay Area. He's going to take up the bulk of time tonight because he's the real G around this issue. But I want to talk a little bit I want to set some context and talk a little bit about a PTP and actually, thank you Rachel. And actually it's sort of serendipitous that this talk tonight is happening this week because I spent all day on Saturday with a woman named Brenda Grisham. Brenda Grisham's son Christopher LaBelle Jones who was a music musical prodigy was murdered on her doorstep on New Year's Eve 10 years ago they were on their way to church. They were putting the babies in the car. They heard the bullets. They ran into the house. Christopher ran out to go get his baby sister who was in the car seat and was gunned down on before he could make it back into the house. And then I met Brenda through my activism work. I met her as an artist I met her through a project called love bomb. And that project was written co written by mothers who had lost their children to both police violence and street violence. For the PTP we say all violence is state violence and I'll get to this more in a little bit, because the state creates the conditions for all of the violence that we experienced in our lives to actually occur. Anyway Brenda like so many mothers so many families has spent every waking moment of her life since the loss of her son fighting for peace on Oakland streets and for justice and not just for her baby, but fighting to make sure that no other family ever has to go to that loss and I'm leading with that because we're in a particular moment in conversation, not just in Oakland not just in Sacramento, not just in San Francisco but across the country, where we have seen upticks in violent homicides, right. And the response to that has been a few things. One, it's been a blame it on defund James will do a really good job of pointing out how defund really did not happen anywhere I mean the one case you could probably make is in Seattle, but even then it was like this much. But they utilized this very traumatic vulnerable terrifying for a lot of us who actually live in the communities where this violence is happening moment to vilify defund right. The second thing they did to the point about those of us living in these communities. Um, oh, I'm sorry dear you can share this did share the first slide. Um, was that we didn't care about community violence that if we were focused, we were so busy working on issues around police and policing that we must not actually care about the violence that are happening on these streets, quite to the contrary. We must live, as I mentioned in the communities where this violence is taking place. And secondarily, almost every single abolitionist I know particularly abolitionist of color. We have been, we are survivors, not have been your survivors of various forms of violence. And we came to abolition, because the carceral state failed to keep us safe in the first place. And then we found its response to be inadequate, and sometimes an exacerbation of the trauma that we had experienced in the first place. So, that's the context, which I come to you all this evening is having spent a day with families that lost their loved ones both to police violence, and also to to street violence. And I want to start with just a little bit about anti police terror project we are James we are going on 14 years old. And we never celebrated our tenure and like we thought about it was like we never we didn't have like a 10 year you know, gala or whatever it is that that people do we've just really been busy doing the work but 13 years ago. A group of black organizers and some other folks and brown organizers and folks that had been in the streets around the struggle for justice for Oscar Grant. Because we had been in the streets responding to state violence right like they would kill us here. Or they would kill us elsewhere in the country we would take to the streets and we had been about the business of doing that since Oscar's murder, and we stopped and we asked ourselves what are we actually doing. The protest is important. We would call that a reactionary form of organizing a reactionary form of protest and reactions matter right protest matter, interrupting business as usual, actually matters because sometimes that's the only way you can force somebody to actually have the conversation, right, and people were not having the conversation. I'm on the genocide that was happening around black life. I'll give an example here in Oakland in 2015 11 black men were murdered by the Oakland police department and Mayor Libby shaft never once took a knee for them. In fact, she drove by the dead body of Demaria hog to do a town hall on policing without ever acknowledging that this father who acts was the father of my daughter's best friend was laying there and had been laying there dead for hours. But we wanted to do more than just respond. And so we asked ourselves several questions and I think I think now looking back the most important question well second most important question we asked first most important question we asked was, what was happening to families in this process. The second most important question we asked was how do we stop state terror from happening in the first place. Right. Why are we only responding. In the state. And why weren't we talking about all of the ways in which state violence happened in our communities, right when they kill us that's the most extreme form of state violence. But everything from racial profiling to unnecessary unwarranted incarceration to and James will get to this to the violent responses to community crisis as a means of keeping peace. We're also from the state violence, and so we started to have conversations about what it would mean to stop it and the data shows that the way that you stop state violence as you reduce the number of interactions that communities have with the state. And so that's what we got about the business of doing. We can go to the next slide. I want to take a moment to acknowledge all of the lies lost, both to the streets and the state and the city of Oakland we have surpassed 120 homicides this year, and police in this country kill upwards of 1200 people every single year. And there's actually, for those of you who listen on my show you know tomorrow is the state terror roundup. There's a new article out in the Washington Post that I'm going to talk about. And it shows that despite the increased resistance to police violence, despite claims that departments are reforming and things are getting better, the numbers of incidents are being vastly under reported, and they're actually ticking up consistently. And it's a big mission, right but this is the ultimate goal may not see it in my lifetime, but we definitely want the world to look very different. When we move on from this plane, then it then it was when we got here. And go to the next. This is the way we do our work, we work closely with families right supporting them from the moment that they lose their loved ones, for as long as they want and that includes everything from organizing to communications to go to the grocery store to mental health support to financial services, you name it, we are there. Most importantly, and what's something we're getting way more focused around is developing the skills and the leadership of these families, so they can actually be in the forefront of the movement that they should be leading. Next, work a policy at the local and state levels. Here you see two of our most recent victories. James may have more to say about the crisis act I'm not going to spend our time there exactly but the hope with that bill was to replicate the work that we're doing with mental health first and crisis response and and funding grassroots group to create alternative responses to community crisis, our program mental health first we are the only non 911 response mental health crisis support in Oakland Sacramento and Sacramento and San Francisco. And we just released our interpersonal intimate partner violence guide, excuse me all it's been a really really really long day. And we're going to face to non calls for response to IPV. Next. So there's this question about safety and the reason why I started talking about community violence, right in a communal violence, and not necessarily police violence because this is the drum beat. This is what Fox News is talking about in order to terrify you and to justify the bazillion dollars that we spend on law enforcement. This is a response by the way, after something has already happened. And this is actually the drum beat inside of the communities of folks like myself, who every time my child walks out of the door I hold my breath until she walks back inside. I'm going to digress just a minute and tell the story my daughter's applying for colleges, I would be in big trouble if she heard me telling the story but I'm told anyway. My daughter's applying for colleges, and she has to answer questions right in her essays. And I can't remember the question was, but her answer started something like this. When I was three years old, my mother bought a house on such and such street. I remember being sad because there were lots of kids outside but I wasn't allowed to go and play with them. And she puts quotes around these next two sentences. Every year, hundreds of black girls go missing in Oakland. And the next quote was stray bullets have no names. This caused me to listen in my sleep and thief knives that I was shoving to my pillowcases so I felt safe enough to train as sad as this made me. And this was true through reinforce when I had to wait for hours, because it was a dead body in my driveway, or when my best friend's father was gunned down by law enforcement. And then she goes on to talk about being resilient and black and amazing and clear and processing her trauma so that she can survive and and and live in her dreams. And I'm sharing this story, because this is deeply personal for some so I'm sorry I'm not done with that slide yet. This is so deeply personal for us and and and when you see rage in us. It is not rage at individual police officers. Oh, I got worse from some of them. It is rage, because there is mountains of data lived experience that informs that should inform the pathways to safer societies. And none of that data say that investing the vast majority the funds that we have to keep our streets safe, going into policing makes that happen. In fact, there is very little data to demonstrate that more police means more safety. And it's not that the people that make these policies and past these budgets don't know this they know it we've been screaming it, we email it to them, we tweeted at them, we Facebook book it to them, they know it. And yet the people that say that they are committed, invested and dedicated to keeping us safe. Ignore it in the name of protecting bloated budgets in the status quo. So who is it then you tell me that does not care about the preservation of life. Who is it you tell me that actually has little to no interest in actually keeping community safe. The way we do policing in this country results in this. And this actually drives up so cold cry, because the most important sentence on the slide is, if people are locked out, excuse me, of the above ground economy they will make the way in the underground economy. They will feed themselves, they will house themselves, they will clothe themselves by any means necessary, as would you or I. I think that the privilege of being positions of sitting in the seats we are sitting in the season. Next slide please. We've been focusing a lot on trauma. And the reason why this matters is because you have to think about where trauma sits in the cycle of violence. And this is the simplest way that I can say it, right. This isn't my these aren't my words you've heard this before. People with cold people don't hurt people, fed people close people house people people with health care. People with mental health supports people with trauma supports, people with therapists, people with quality education, people who live in each jobs. The vast majority of those folks, right and yet they can't do all of anything. They're not out there hurting people traumatized wounded desperate people hurt people so why would we not invest resources in addressing root causes and stopping. We're being harmed from happening happening in the first place. Next slide please. And it doesn't give a safety. That's what we all want, all of us, every single one of us I don't care if you're a conservative or liberal or progressive or an anarchist we all want safety. The decision should be centered, not on protecting the status quo, not on maintaining miss of what gets us there, but data driven decision making that actually creates us for all of us. Next, and this is just the basic facts, and I feel like I say this over and over and over again but I'm going to keep screaming it at the top of my lungs and people understand that we incarcerate more people than any other planet on the globe, and more than several countries combined. So again, data driven and decision making and logic would dictate that more jails, more prisons, more police are not going to get us outcomes that we want and deserve. Next slide please. I've already said this, but I'll let you sit with this for just a second. When I talk about this is like, right so like when I was doing knocking in Libby's neighborhood. I couldn't find a police in broad daylight with a flashlight. And yet they have right some of the lowest numbers of crime in the hills of anywhere else in the city. I live in the flats at any given moment on any given day, I can spit in any given direction, and I'm going to hit a cop car. Hopefully not literally because that's actually a crime, but you get my point. That's the highest numbers of so called crime in the city. Next slide please. So this is the work that we have set about to do to redefine and reimagine public safety to actually create solutions to move beyond the reactionary beyond the protest beyond the screaming not stopping doing those things because for some folks that's all they can hear right like folks were talking about police terror. And so some of us started shutting things down like freeways and bar trains. We were mad about it, but you were having a conversation. Our work is about getting to the group cause investing and prevention and developing people powered models because we, those of us closest to the pain are the ones that are the experts at the solution. Next slide please. One of the primary ways we do this is developing alternative models of response to community crisis. Next slide please. There's not a lot about folks like me being divisive. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our workers about building unity and power and healing in our communities. They are one of the tactics that the state tried and then I'm going to turn this over to you James to get ready to, to actually put some data and history and organizing plans to this was that they were literally in the media. They were like pitting families, not just folks like me and James, against families, but families against families, families that have lost their loved ones to police don't care about us. Family that have lost the streets don't care about us and they were doing this intentionally because they knew. And they know that when we are unified, when we are able to identify who the actual enemy. That's them. Yeah, who the actual enemy is. When we have an actual target that we can develop a plan around when we can identify the same shared material conditions that have created their strike inside of our communities are families in our lives. That that's when we're going to build the power to change the conditions and improve the quality of life for all of us. So they work actively to separate us. They work actively to divide us. And we have responded back resoundingly with a no. James birch take yourself off mute. Right on. Thanks so much cat. And can you tell me can you see this cat. I can indeed. Right on. Um, so I'm going to, as cat said, try to provide some context around a PTPs overall mission I know a lot of folks have heard a lot of things about defunding the police and the concepts behind defund but just as cat said, there's no one who cares more about our communities than we do. And so when we talk about defunding really to us. It represents a data driven exercise in an attempt to find out what really works for public safety, and then a public education exercise where we try to bring that information to the community. And accessible way, which is what we're doing here. And so I'm going to take a little bit of time and give you all kind of like a municipal budget one on one where we talk about city budgets with a focus on Oakland and explain what we mean by the need to defund the police and explain what we need. When we say there's a need to invest in our communities or reimagine public safety. Okay, so this is a look at the 2020 2021 Oakland city budget. Right. And what's important for folks to see in Oakland's general fund is the massive amount of money that goes to law enforcement. Right. As you can see here, the police get as much money as almost all of the rest of our major programs combined. Right. You can see libraries in there as well parks and rec housing transportation. And so folks often have a misconception right that that we are kind of paying for all services equally and in investing in our city in a healthy way and as cat said that city council members are taking an irrational approach to the budget. Right. And what we've been trying to explain for the past decade or more is that that's really not what's happening. Right. What has happened over the last several decades, in particular, but really over, you know, much more time than that is police budgets have exploded taking up more and more of the city budget. And now the programs that actually keep us safe and that data demonstrates improve public safety numbers, those budgets have decreased. Right. So we're going to start with the police and then we're going to move into what actually keeps us safe. Right. So, again, as I just mentioned, this, this theory that we can police away our problems, right that if there are people who are struggling and need resources we don't need to give them the resources we actually need to arrest and reiterate them for for committing acts of desperation as something that's really exploded over the last several decades. Right. Starting with the 94 crime bill. Right. Under President Clinton with now President Biden in Congress, the 94 crime bill incentivized cities across the country to spend millions of dollars on policing. With the reward of receiving millions of dollars in federal grant money to augment their policing budgets. Right. What we saw across the country was cities, a lot of majority black cities rush to put as much money in policing as possible to get in the crime bill money in the theory that if they had huge policing budgets, then that would lead to safety. Right. What we've seen since then that this is absolutely incorrect. And the data shows clearly that these these these theories were incorrect. But, but that's where the federal dollars were. Right. And so if you were a city and you were trying to get money for public safety, really the biggest available pot was for policing. Right. And you had a federal government that was desperate to get hundreds more police in every city to stop these super predators which were the which was the language at the time. And as a result, a bunch of cities took the bait, invested went all in on policing and let the budgets for other city programs language. Here we see some examples from Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, you can look all over the country. Right. It's the it's the same story and largely every city. Right. And again, we'll, we'll bounce back here to Oakland. Right. So you can see like a little more a granular look at where the money gets spent but again, right, all of the programs on the right side of this budget libraries housing transportation human services, these budgets are not serving the city of Oakland. These budgets are not adequate. Right. All of these budgets need to be dramatically increased race and equity is not even a million dollars. Right. All, you know, all of these budgets need to be dramatically increased, right, but that's impossible. Right. It's impossible to invest in any of the budgets on the right side of this equation. Right. Or sorry on the right side of this chart, because police spending is so high and continues to increase year over year. Right. And the reason that that happens, as, as Kat mentioned, is not because of the data behind police. Right. It's because of the strength of the police lobby. Right. And the, in the knowledge by city government officials, city officials, that if they go against the police, they'll lose their seat. Right. We are, I mean, we're talking in San Francisco here where we saw what happened with the chase of Boudin recall, I could have done a whole presentation on some of the policies, all that some of the data driven policies that chase was trying to bring to San Francisco that were essentially rejected by voters in favor of more draconian law and order policies that the data does not. Right. So you could do your whole, you know, we could do this whole analysis on what works and what doesn't work within the criminal justice system. Right. But it also applies to budgets both here and in San Francisco. And so, and so what are police doing with that money, right? Wow, $330 million in Oakland. You know, there's also a theory that police are spending money efficiently and, and everything happens like we see in the movies where they're out chasing, you know, bad guys as they call them, or as the TV screens that we see all over our television screens would suggest. Right. But unfortunately, like not only is that not true that you know they're there they're also some of the highest paid city employees in any given city. Right. And it's not as if these pay scales were made by design. There's a lot of collective bargaining where the police use their positional power and the, as I mentioned the unwillingness of city politicians. To get in their way to make sure that their contracts allow for the type of exploitation that allows you to make $265,000 and overtime on a $202,000 budget. Right. This slide here doesn't also doesn't include other pay, which is a whole nother category that, you know, that officers can dip into as well. But I just wanted people to get an idea of the type of money that we're talking about. Right. And so, so, so what are these officers doing. Right. What are these officers doing across the country with all of this money. Are they responding to, you know, are they chasing down violent crime as they would violent crime as violent crime as they call it. No, they're not right they spend the majority of their time, they spend at least half, and in some cities the majority of their time responding to non criminal calls. Right, and often spend you know 456, you know, under 10% of their time responding to calls for a way to find as violent. Right. So, you know, we can look at Oakland's calls for service in 2019. Right. And again we see 4.2% for what is defined as violent crime and 6.9% for what is defined as property crime. And then the whole rest you know 90 you know 80 plus percent 85 plus percent is for other things. And so one of the major assertions at the center of this deep end conversation is if police are spending with 50% of their time responding to non criminal calls. Why are we sending police at all. Right. Could we be sending other respondents right mental health first responders like as Kat said we've been working on our mental health first program in the city in Oakland has the macro program on other fire department. Right, or instead of having police respond to for traffic enforcement, which the data show does not improve civilian does not lower pedestrian deaths. Why not invest that money into environmental design, making our streets and curbs safer. So people aren't to improve public safe. Right. So again, if you look across this wheel. You'll see that a lot of conversations with law enforcement is always about violent crime this violent crime that we didn't have the staff we didn't have the resources we didn't have. It's not true. Right. The what's true is that they get paid for all of these calls that they're going out for on this wheel. Right. And they need to maintain the massive budgets and salaries that they have and so if they were only to do to respond to 10% of the calls in this pie chart, they'd be losing 90% of their patrol income. Right. And that's not good for the police officer association. And so they're going to fight against it whether or not it's rational whether or not the data supports it whether or not they actually need to be responding to these calls because they don't have time. I'm going to speed up. I'm going to speed up. No, no, I'm not right where I want it to be. Okay, great. So, so that's, that's enough that's enough on the cops. That's enough on the cops for now. Right. You know, I could, we could talk for a long time and go into in each area, how they take money. And I think I have one more slide that's going to go into that a little bit but I think what's most important for the rest of our time here because we want to leave time for questions is that we want to understand that just like we have the data on the police not doing what they say they do, we have data on the things that would actually work. Right. The programs that we have to be investing. Right. If we want to improve public safety. Right. And we yell about them till we're blue in the face. And as Kat said, what's clear, what's clear to us is that city officials, they all know about this by now. Right. They know about it in San Francisco they know about an Oakland they know about in Berkeley they know about in all these cities. They know the truth of this matter. Right. They just are unwilling to stand up to the police lobby. Right, which is why they don't shift the investments from the non criminal calls that police are responding to, right, to these programs that actually work and so I don't have too much time so I'm not going to belabor the point on these but we're just going to gloss through some areas right like something as simple as housing. Right. Investing in low income housing investing in supportive housing for people with poor diagnosed with what we call severe mental illnesses are both documented to improve public safety right conversely. There's a relation between foreclosure rates and violent crime rates. Right that has been established several times. Right, so you house people data seems like it's pretty good. You kick people out of their homes. I suggest that that's pretty bad for public safety again. This is all pretty common sense when you think about it, but it's important for folks like us who look like us and who advocate in the arenas we advocate in to have the data that demonstrates this in a concrete manner so you shift money from housing to housing from corrections and again there's a violent crime rates go down. Here's some data on improving access to health care and to. Sorry I should say substance use treatment centers. And then there's some data on relevant to the city of Oakland the correlation between air lead levels and property and violent crime rates. And so one way you can improve public safety is by doing lead mitigation across the city. Okay, youth programming. Again, some of these are obvious so I'm not going to belabor them when I do want to find though for the purposes of this conversation. Parks and rec, because that's an area where where Oakland is is really behind where we could be right improving our public spaces cleaning up parks making parks accessible. Improving and creating public gardens, not only makes our city look better it improves public safety. Right. There's studies on violent assault rates going down. Right there are studies on on violent rates of what they've defined as violent crime in general going down. And these programs have been popping up across the country in response to this data. It seems like each one is a success story. Right and I'm not saying that you can do these things in a vacuum and all of a sudden all of our public safety problems will be solved. But these are part of a larger tapestry that is the solution is investing in our people investing in our spaces investing in families investing in all sorts of families traditional non traditional and making sure that everyone has what they need to thrive. And so the what I want to end on here is here's an example from the city of Oakland. That's important for folks to understand how if we are not watching money will flow straight from what we fought for into the hands of law. Right. So the people of Oakland voted overwhelmingly for measure q right I put the text of measure q up on the screen. It's very straightforward $21 million that's supposed to go to as they define it homelessness support services and programs trash removal and accessible park restaurants. Right. So, big win for the city super exciting this money is going to you know it's not going to do the whole thing but it's going to, you know, allow us to invest further in the things that we need to improve. You know the status for the thousands of it has people living the city vote. And then what did we find out that our mayor was trying to do with those funds. We found out that the mayor was through our city administrator, planning to spend a million of those dollars on what they called the, the OPD homeless outreach, which were really police, a police unit that what they do is they enforce evictions. And so, if a group of a street is being swept in all of the unhoused people who live on that street are being forcibly evicted. Right, then the police sit there and use the threat of force to make sure that the eviction goes. Right, that is not what people were paying for, or voted on, right and that's what not not what the money is supposed to pay for. Right, but when you have administrations and the machinery of city government that moves so quickly. This is just a line item hidden in the budget. Right and if you don't have people continuously watching and ensuring that the implementation matches the will of the people, even well intentioned attempts to reinvest in our people will be co opted and will be turned into more money for law. And that's, again, here's this last slide on investing in efforts to interrupt violence. Right, which is something that that we need to be that we have some programs on in the city of Oakland need to be spending more money on these programs work right programs like work there's data from from from across the state, and they really need to be given a chance to thrive in the cities like Oakland and San Francisco. But unfortunately right now they're often attached to programs like ceasefire that pay for in the city of Oakland. And that's really violence prevention programming, but you get you know, $8 million in violence prevention programming, or sorry, sorry you get like $800,000 in violence prevention programming and $8 million for policing, and that's the ceasefire package. Right. And so, again, a lot of well intentioned efforts are are watered down by administrations like the shaft administration that are not down with reimagining public safety. Okay, that's a lot. But I think now I'll just, I'll just wrap there that's a lot I want to, I want to make sure that folks understand that what we've given today or what I've just explained is just a drop try to give you an example of the types of things that reimagining stands for. I want you to understand that they apply across all imaginable areas of our life in the city. Right, whether it be pedestrian access or or traffic or mental health or we're serving our unhoused communities or interpersonal violence or, or serving undocumented folks like all of these things, we have a choice, whether we're going to go a route that relies on criminalization, or whether we're going to go on a route that truly invest in trying to to get at the root causes of that. That's what I do cat. Like I said, you're the G. And I don't know if you, I do know because I know you. James really is the godfather of the defund movement in this country. Oakland has the longest running defund campaign in the nation formed in 2016 here, following bloody 2015. In 2016 with the revelation, excuse me, by Celeste Squat, that she had been raped and trafficked by 14 law enforcement agencies across the Bay Area including OPD. And we were scaling well, I was watching people scale the flag post outside of the Oakland police department and protest and smoking a cigarette and said what the bleep are we paying them for. I clicked my cigarette James walked away and came back. I don't know, we two weeks later with answers about exactly what we were paying them for. And there you have it you want the birth of trying to do something new and different with our dollars. I don't know, are we facilitating the Q&A. I think, I think we're just letting that all sink in for a second. I have to do that at the end of every day to answer a couple questions in the Q&A function and then the chat is also in YouTube viewers I'm happy to bring back any questions as well but there's one that says, since, and this, I can help that document that I put in will help answer this question since incarceration probably results in less safe communities. There are effective programs for reintegration of returning citizens. And, you know, you flipped through a slide about your reentry program but there's many, and I'll put the duck link in but if you want to, when do you want to take that. I mean I'm always in forever going to shut up Dorsey Nunn and all of us are none. I think that they do reintegrating folks back into our community. And, and what's what for me is, is most critical about their work is the skills development of folks that are coming home from what I call American concentration camps so that they could be at the forefront of their movement, but also one of the guiding principles of APTPs work and in partnership with our sister organization community ready core is self determination. It's an agency of black and brown people and black and brown communities, meaning, how do we house ourselves, educate ourselves, employ ourselves, heal ourselves. And, and if you look at the work of all of us are none it has really been rooted in building agency. You know this population this population that society throws away and then just continues to throw away and throw away and throw away until there's nothing left the throw away anymore. So, all of us are men is a group we work in deep solidarity with and folks you know about. Another question from our Q&A is, I appreciate the APTP APTPs approach to change through policy. So mind boggling how folks don't see this example, Chesa Boudin the breed tenderloin state of emergency move. The massive overtime for police. How do we get folks voters and supervisors to like get this through their head. Next up James. For sure. I'll, I'll say that we've been doing this in Oakland for, as Kat said we've been around for well over a decade now, and we've been organizing in the city and building power in the city of Oakland for well over a decade now and so to make clear that the city officials are keenly aware of all the factors that play and in the conversations that we're having now and the information that we're providing they have all of that as we said several times I think it's really important for everyone to walk away with that. Right. And what these folks are determining is, you know, if they do X or Y or Z. What is it how does it affect their chances of getting real life. Right. And that is one of the, if not the only driving factor for the vast majority of the politicians I've had the experience working with, you know, almost regardless of where they find themselves on the political spectrum, almost regardless of what their motivation is for for entering the political arena. Right. They want to maintain, you know, if they want to continue to be in the political arena, and then then they're going to need votes. Right. And so, as a PTP we know this, right and so if we're trying to reimagine public safety and get some of these initiatives past we understand how many votes need to be gained at the city council level. Right. And, and, and in San Francisco. The amount of money in the game is higher. Right. The political entities are more better resourced. And I don't see an organizing outfit that is well resourced enough to fight the fights that are needed right. It was awesome. You know me, I'm going to chime in a little bit, because the politic is just as important as the practice right. And so what I mean by that is when we first formed we actually didn't mess around with with policy. We actually were adamantly against messing around with policy. And that was because our analysis was policies about fixing things. Right. The policing in this country, the carousel state in this country is not is not broken. So you cannot fix it and it can never be fixed it cannot be reformed. Its job from birth out of the Calvary's and chattel slavery was to protect a race based capitalism and the machines, black and brown bodies that were the engineers of a race based capitalism. And so that was necessary, which often was, you know, hunting, incarcerating and killing that practice still continues today. Right. But for us, and again in partnership with our sister organization community ready core. We started having conversations about how dire the conditions for our people were right and so some of the fights that we have actually with the left. We really try not to to fight with our own folks. Right, is that folks live in ideology as opposed to reality, right we want to live in this ideological place you should never do this you should always do that. You shouldn't think this you shouldn't want that. But folks are actually living in the conditions that we're fighting and so the conditions were dying dire enough that we knew that it had to be all roads in. It's not a policy, but radical reform, not just reform and by that I mean, we don't support reforms that reinforce the status quo. So you will never see a PTP championing body cameras. You will never see a PTP championing cultural competency trainings. I don't know how many more millions of dollars we're going to waste on that trash. But you will see us championing things like D D certifying police officers, you will see us fighting for changing the use of force policy in the state of California. For the first 150 years. The other piece about my politics we are never going to get free at the ballot box, or in a legislative session ever. The system is always going to protect itself, we do not, and will never have the means to, to take down one of the most, the most militarized country on the planet, right. So it is just a tool, it is a piece of a much, much larger strategy. That includes, as I talked about earlier, self determination and agency building that up in our communities, because and that's why our theory around small replicable models. People have to see it, to be able to know that it is there is another way. And once people understand that there is another way that actually get some outcomes that they're seeking, they're going to fight like hell for us to be doing it that way instead. Tipping point theory, I guess we could call it. You went back and mute. After three years, you think I get this. I say the same thing every meeting. What can be done if you're not currently politically active but are looking for effective ways to help defund the police and shift funds towards social policy and services. That's from a YouTube viewer. My question is, do you want to be politically active. You're not currently active, but we're active and you don't want to be politically active, you can donate. You can signal boost. You can push back. Right, when you hear the rhetoric, I don't know what is happening in all city. It's just, it's their pieces of it that are just terrifying to me. And I just, you know, I mean, y'all know what you get me ask headquarters to come places I don't miss my words. The fact that Brooke Jenkins is sitting in that seat where Tessa Boudin sat just a few short months ago, it did my whole head The fact that San Francisco is going to re attempt the war on drugs which failed across the country miserably. It explodes my head right like and some of this work is done in coffee shops and over hopefully your mast, your mast holiday dinners over the next two weeks on social media, etc. But I also encourage you to figure out get him where you fit in. Right. Not everybody has to go get tear gas or arrested. Not we need people to cook food to watch children, we need communications folks with you know there's all sorts of things that movement needs. Find what makes your heart sing and do that, get engaged and be data driven the same thing that I was screaming about about the politicians that are making these decisions. Be data driven so that you can hold them to account. Don't just have opinions of facts, because they're out there for you to have. That's right. One thing I would add is that this police money finds it way finds its way everywhere. And so, you know, almost regardless of where you work. It's likely that there's a law enforcement agency or private security agency that your entity is in relationship with and if that's the case just explore that. And be fully aware of what that looks like and what folks are doing in your name or in the name of your organization or not do. And then, another thing is, is defund is a public education campaign as tart as much as anything else. And a lot of the conversation. And the reason why we populate spaces like this one is that the police have an incredible propaganda machine. Right. And they've convinced everyone that they, you know, are out there, you know, diving around corners, saving the day. Right. We're serious right and we just know that's not true. And like I said, we know, you know, the sad fact is that most cops make their hundreds of thousands of dollars a year sitting in their car, you know, idling on like merit scrolling their phone. Right. And so, that's a racket. And those are the dollars that are critical. Right to all of the endeavors that they tell us that we don't have enough money for. I'm sorry we don't have enough money for the rec seven. I'm sorry we don't have enough money for the, for the youth violence interrupter program at your high school. I'm sorry we don't have enough money for the new mental health clinic. Right. It's, it's, it's, it's, you know, when these cops are pulling millions of dollars, getting overtime sitting by like merit, or outside of an Oakland root soccer game, or something else ridiculous and so just having the conversations and just absorbing information like this and making sure you share it out is critical if we're going to move the marketplace of ideas like when you look across the country at the backlash to defund. It didn't hit in Oakland like it hit in other cities. And the reason why is as Kat said, we've been having these critical conversations for a lot longer than many cities in the country. And so a lot of folks really know that the police are car or get a lot of money in illegitimate ways so defund isn't just a four letter word and Oakland defund is kind of a theory of budgeting that folks need to understand. Oh, can I tell a story can I tell the story. And this actually gets at two other questions that that I saw in the chat so I'll do my best to segue smoothly with my tired brain, but folks will remember that during the George Floyd rebellions and excuse me I know that my mouth, my speech is impaired. That's something going on with my mouth and it's been very hard to talk all day self conscious about it but um, George Floyd rebellions, Libby chef attempted to impose her second curfew when I say attempted because you may remember she tried it in 2015, and we shut that one down. And then here comes 2020, and she tried to impose another curfew, an APTP called for an F your curfew march. Right because it wasn't about safety from cove it it wasn't about taking precautions so people didn't get safe because if that was the case, then the city and not community ready core would have been providing the PPE, the information, the supplies, etc that people needed in order to stay safe. So she tried it, and we called for an after curfew march. And there was a some at 8,000 people showed up. Um, and we had PPE and and we did you know our best and we did our best to socially distance and we were outside, but I remember standing on the truck. And all of a sudden, 8,000 people started chanting defund PD. And I just went because we've been beating the drum right for five, six years at that point. And that I want that goes to the question about impact so yeah we're based in Oakland and Sacramento but we do work across the country. We train organizations, we support families, we train municipalities to our point about small replicable models, we don't insist that people replicate APTP chapters. We just share our values of principles and our structures and provide the support and the training people need in order to do that. We have spoken to the United Nations, we have spoken the World Health Organization. So folks were just in Italy, at a conference, and then in terms of impact, Oakland, I won't say just a BT because we didn't we didn't build this movement by ourselves. Oakland is why we are having the conversation about reimagined public safety. Oakland coined the term, excuse me, James Bert as my policy director for my mayoral coined the term reimagined public safety. We've always used communications as a strategy not just a tactic. So we've been talking to reporters forever, folks, and trying to shape the public narrative and building relationship with reporters and holding them accountable to the way that they talked about this issue. We've been done that at the local, state, federal, national and international levels from jump. When Oscar Grant was murdered and the resistance happened or the rebellions happened. There was also the time of Arab Spring. And folks, some folks who were in movement at that time may remember young people in Egypt with signs that said I am Oscar Grant. Right. So this has always been a global conversation. And we are students of movement. And as a tradition of the Panther Party, the Black Panther Party for self defense, excuse me, that we do our best to continue. And to I believe her name was Emily or Amelia's question, you get involved with a PTP any which way you want to we meet once a month virtually, and we are not gathering people indoors just yet. We do do work in San Francisco. We need we need ground soldiers, warriors in San Francisco. And so if you're about that business and want to get down hit us up a PTP info at gmail.com. Because Brooke gonna keep us busy real busy. Let's see there is a couple more questions we will try to keep on time not keep you over over too long but are there any similar groups like this in San Francisco I'm happy to hear you are also infiltrating San Francisco to. Yes, we've been we've been there though those 2015 protests. When we when we said goodbye to chiefs. Sir. We were we were we were on the ground then James, you know, and I both works in solidarity with the fiscal five and continue to work in San Francisco. And we also tried to, you know, we don't live in San Francisco. And so we do our best to support efforts that are happening in the city. And or if folks ask for support and or trainings to provide those to the city, but sometimes we just got to jump in feet first because it gets that hot over there, like with killer robots. They reverse they reverse that vote. Oh, I know that I'm clear. Um, it's interesting, you know, I'm always thinking like, if we if a librarian tried to put in for overtime. There is no such thing else such damn thing. I'm like, wow, if they give overtime to librarians and teachers and library staff. Can you imagine the world we would live in? Can you imagine? I mean, I can, I can. And I think that's what's important. Just what you said, I mean, you know, maybe we should end on this is that yes, we can imagine a world like this and you know, I feel like, you know, I've done this two months of programming with people who are really in it, like, and, you know, I ask often like how do you maintain yourself care and you're, and it's just the devotion and the reimagining that you can see this happening. So folks, this is your last chance. We're going to let our two panelists go for the evening and last questions. There's lots of love from our YouTube crowd as well. Thank you YouTube crowd. I do want to say I want to end on this and unless people do have questions. Somebody in the chat responded to something I said it might have been something James said but with the word radical. And people use that word as an attempt to insult us. Those are radicals. First of all radicals is not a is not a four letter word and I don't think that's how the person utilize it right if radical means that I believe that everybody should be house clothes fed, have health care, have a living wage job, get a quality education, not be unarmed and gunned down by law enforcement, whose model is protected and served and I am as radical as they am a thing come. The second thing is the radical is actually rational. It's what's rational. We're not talking about extreme viewpoints here. We're talking about a way to have a more functional, equitable, thriving, healthy and safe society for everybody. And even the folks, right, even the folks who fight us to the nail we are fighting for you to I hope you're listening we are fighting for you to its rational. James final words. Oh man cat cat just said it I just want to take this opportunity to express appreciation for cat. You know how it is cat. When I came into this work I had a lot of enthusiasm and not so much analysis. And so I'm just grateful to cat for what she's created here in the Bay Area. That can be a home for people like me to learn how to fight for our people, because that's what we're doing. And so shout out to cat and an invitation to anyone listening. If you want to fight for our people. That's what we're doing. I'm sorry and he said we're never going to we're never going to leave. Then I have to pay that forward and he he's not here and he is very rarely visible. But he is just as responsible for the growth of this movement, the in the Bay Area and beyond he is one of the greatest movement scholars and strategists of our time. And he is the co founder of anti police terror project he is what I call reverently my boss, which means teacher, and he is the founder of community ready core. So if you if you want to get more school and deeper Hello, and support community ready core. Oh, I mean, and I will say like they have nine arenas and one that the relief arena is what they would call policy right like how do we lessen the weight of the white supremacist boot that sits on all of our necks, not just black necks, all of our necks, right policies away, but we free up a little bit of that pressure. So we can wiggle around a little more freely in our fight for liberation. Thank you. Thank you so much. And I put in the chat the doc that has all these amazing resources and then some am a throw it in there one more time. There it comes. It's a little slow tonight. All right. James and cat. Thank you so much the anti police terror project. We appreciate you being here library community thank you as always for being engaged and taking part in our one city one book. And invitation is always open. Let me know. Shout out to Annie my brain and James's partner. The organization. Thank you everyone have a wonderful night.