 And I think most of us here as co-sponsors are trying for another a second shot to decriminalize walking here and we're getting to the details about what that bill is and more but essentially this is where this conversation is rooted in from a policy advocacy kind of legislative standpoint. We all were deeply involved in that last year and will be this year. However, there's a long history around jaywalking and racism and sexism and all of the bad parts around jaywalking laws that I think john will help us here. So, and everyone needs to use the mic when we're speaking for the live stream so here you go. Alright thank you everyone how's everyone doing is a second session alright. Just a little bit of background my name is john ye I am the executive director for Los Angeles walks we are a pedestrian advocacy nonprofit in the city that's very car centric like LA. So I'm really excited to be here to talk about this bill it's a bill that really affects me personally living career town I jaywalk all the time. So really excited to jump into this, but to give you a little bit of background, you know, I'm sure y'all can maybe many of you know about jaywalking probably been some research but a brief general history is that it was a term created by the auto industry. Before when the automobile first first started hitting our streets streets back then we're pretty much complete streets, everyone was using them right there was no real delineation between this is where cars and this is where the pedestrians are but as the automobile industry got more powerful as more people bought cars. You started noticing the sidewalks sort of became this like segregated place for pedestrians while the rest of the street majority of the street was devoted to cars. And so today we are dealing with the implication of this idea of jaywalking and it was a term a derogatory term of the street. I think I meant like Rube, a country bumpkin who didn't know, you know, went to cross and went not to but the reality is, we move what is best for ourselves for our family and for our health. And so we cannot call anyone or judge someone for moving what is they know best. So that's sort of the issue around jaywalking I'm sure we'll go into further more about the implications of jaywalking. So that's sort of the issue around jaywalking. I'm sure we'll go into further more about the implications of how that law has impacted us today as a society as our city and the urban landscape. So that's a little bit of a background. Real or something or do you want to add anything to the history or background around that I have a question. If not, I guess what was the main interest for for you as the author and then you as your organizations to to get involved in the bill itself. Thanks. Well, it was great because the Lawyers Committee first approached me with this idea. And for me coming from a city where we are trying to encourage everybody to walk or ride their bike or to take public transit get out of their vehicles. The last thing you can imagine you'd ever want to see happen is for someone to get cited for walking. And what we discovered, what Rio was really helpful in presenting to our office was that oftentimes these tickets are nuisance tickets, they're not they're not tickets. You know, in downtown San Francisco, if you're if you're in downtown San Francisco before COVID there's someone jaywalking every second right across the street, but you don't see a significant amount of enforcement in that area even though there's what a lot of vehicles. There's a lot of bikes there's a lot of buses. I mean, you could you could make an argument that perhaps it's dangerous. Behavior or not, but you see no enforcement. Also, probably like many of you I've I've crossed the street, not at the crosswalk in the middle. Never been cited until I install until I started working on this bill I'd never met anybody who been cited for jaywalking. So if you look at the stats in African Americans in the cities that we were able to find stats, you know, LA Long Beach LA County. You know, LA Long Beach LA County, four to five times more likely to get a citation than everybody else. Beverly Hills issued a little bit over 200 jaywalking to tickets, almost all of them went to African Americans. Right and that's not considered a black neighborhood. So, you know, for me this was two things this is this is about climate change. It's about encouraging people to walk, but it's also about racial justice. And so to me it was such an interesting bill. And I really appreciate all the support from this coalition cow bikes, and really everybody statewide for really understanding what we were trying to accomplish. And it wasn't just a simple bill about what people consider a minor criminal offense. As you know, while it might be a minor criminal offense if you get a ticket it could cost you, you know, upwards of $400 to $1000. That's a lot of money for people who are living paycheck to paycheck or people who are working. And so for me it was just, you know, racial justice, economic justice, and making sure that we make our streets much more friendly for pedestrians. Thanks assembly member and thanks for offering the bill. And thank you all for having me I've never been to the summit before I'm really happy to be here. Jared said my name is Rio sharp. I'm an attorney at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. And when Jared and cow bike brought up the idea of co sponsoring this bill last year. It was a no brainer for us. It, it was really clear to us why this was a civil rights issue why it was an economic and racial justice issue. I'm surprised to find that over the course of the last year a lot of people found it curious that a civil rights organization would be co sponsoring this bill. It doesn't always seem to people like a clear racial justice bill. So I want to just tell you how it fits into our work, which is that for the past eight or nine years we've really had a big focus on racist policing and criminal fines and fees. We've emerged from the Ferguson uprising and from the demands of organizers on the streets in Ferguson and also another anti racist movement since then. Two of the revelations that have really inspired our work. One is the urgent need to reduce low level interactions between cops, and especially low income people of color. The other is the need to reduce the financial costs of interaction with the criminal legal system. So we've done a bunch of work around these two areas, reducing interactions and reducing costs. This bill really allows us to advance both of those. We decriminalize everyday normal safe activity, and we reduce the debt burden that people carry through their lives. We, about two years ago, published a report on non traffic infractions. So all of the kind of lowest level of criminal charges, but the non driving related ones so you think of sit lie laws that mean to criminalize people without homes or J walking or bicycle violations so we did a report on all of these non traffic infractions and the data was stunning even even for people who are already very cynical about racial inequality in our society. In Long Beach, for example, where only 11% of adults are black police had given black adults 36% of all non traffic infractions. The most common one of these was was for J walking in Bakersfield only 6% of adults are black but 28% of J walking citations went to black adults and overall across across all the jurisdictions we looked at black adults were 9.7 times more likely to receive these citations. These non traffic infractions than white adults and Latinx adults were up to 5.8 times more likely so really, really struck us how important it is to reduce the number of these non traffic infractions they typically are for safe activities everyday activities, but they're leading to police interactions and debt burdens that are very significant and sometimes fatal impacts on people so another reason that we were spurred to get involved in this campaign is because there's been some recent high profile and incredibly concerning interactions between police and J walkers. You may have heard the story of non decaying in Sacramento, who was beaten to the point of concussion, simply for crossing the street and current right Kurt Reinhold in Southern California, who was actually killed after being stopped for J walking and the police in his case got off the hook a few weeks ago the district attorney decided not to press any charges so those are some of the most severe consequences we see from J walking. But there's also just the incredible debt burden that the J walking fine is only $25. But when you add the fines and fees and the late charges. It's just shy of $500 for crossing the street. So, those, those are really the motivating forces in getting involved in this campaign we've been fortunate to work with such strong pedestrian and bicycling advocates we've gotten to learn so much about how criminalizing J walking really discourages walking and and really discourages safety in a lot of ways so I've been really fortunate to work with you all and get to learn so much more about why this is a critically important effort. I agree with everything my partner said I wouldn't doubt that the only thing I would add is the reason we support this bill is because it's a small effort to rearrange the hierarchy on our streets. Clearly pedestrians and bicyclists, my fellow friends on a pedestrian, we're on the bottom rung. But this is one small effort to reverse that to level the playing field. If we had a bunch of cars that were like crossing a medium divide because they wanted to get somewhere faster we would change the roads we're still expanding highways in LA, tearing our homes to expand freeways in LA. So if we're willing to put that much money resources attention political priorities in those spaces, we should be able to do the same thing with pedestrians and so once my way of chipping at that block is allowing pedestrians to move uninhibited un penalized or depenalized for that word is. So that's another reason a big motivator for us to do this is we need to change that hierarchy on the streets and this is one way of doing it. So part of that hierarchy is that not every neighborhood has the same amount of pedestrian infrastructure. So certain neighborhoods the wealthy neighborhoods have great pedestrian infrastructure a lot of crosswalks, a lot of signs, a lot of lights. But we found out is in the sack be right before the bill reached the governor's desk they did a, you know, four or five days story great story about how uneven the infrastructure was especially in the lower income neighborhood which is exactly where you saw a lot of policing. You had people sort of get set up because the neighborhoods didn't have crosswalks the neighbors infrastructure so they're just trying to get for pointing to point B, walking across the street well it's an automatic I mean it's they're basically being forced to break the law just to get from point to point B on their feet. What was also interesting is when we were talking to the governor's office and pushing back on the idea that it's not safe because that was a big issue law enforcement said oh this is not safe this is not safe this is not safe. It's very interesting because every single pedestrian safety organization is a sponsor of the bill for supporting the bill. You know, you know, the very people who every day care about pedestrian fatalities and are fighting and every single one of our six, they're all supporting it so I don't understand that philosophy, or that mindset. But what the governor's office told me, I say well look most of these, most of these accidents are actually caused by car she's like no according to the stats. The way they have it the way chp has it was two third I think it's like two thirds of the actions are caused by pedestrians. But to me that's that's sort of like a bias because what pedestrian jumps in front of a car. Right what what pedestrian says hey I'm going to go get in front of a car today, or go get in front of some moving vehicle they people don't do that that's not logical. And so to me it even shows bias and how that data is collected, because clearly, you know officer gets their own must be the pedestrians fall because they they jumped in front of the car and the only people who are supposed to be on this road is a car. All right, so it goes back to john's point. Not only is there a hierarchy it's basically saying that hey we're not even allowed on the road unless we happen to be driving a car. Thank you. I guess just since you brought up last year's campaign, I guess what lessons do you think you'd be learned from last year to carry on for this year's new bill. I mean, I think you mentioned a little bit around kind of rethinking the data and maybe looking at different angle if it's anything you wanted to add to that. So basically I would add that I'm thinking about it now is, we're doing this legislation around hate crimes and there's a police officer standards and training commission which is in charge of training all the peace officers up and down the state. And we're, and we're setting up a policy for hate crimes so they get trained because some jurisdictions shockingly they, you know, in Riverside and San Bernardino they've identified zero hate crimes in the county. It's not because they're not getting reported. It's just because they're not getting identified right so we're going to we're going to set up the policy to create best practices so I think in some ways. You know, we may want to consider, should we have policies to train, you know, the highway patrol all the different law enforcement agencies. How do I identify, you know, who's who's the cause of a particular accident because to me the idea that they've always been blaming the pedestrians for the access just doesn't just doesn't quite make sense, right. And so to me that that might be another policy addition because I think we need to really push back against this bias. Unfortunately, if the data is not in our favor we have to figure out how, how does data needs to get reworked or we looked at because then it really hurts our cause when we say hey, all these fatalities are being caused by cars in the election. According to highway patrol they're all caused by pedestrian. Do we have any, does anybody here identify as a data nerd, or a numbers person or a stats geek, and okay a few people so I'm not a numbers person that's why I decided to go to law school. And I was very much impressed by how important, how useful, how significant the data that we were able to marshal was in this campaign. So I'll talk a bit about the data that we gathered on the racial and economic justice side. And then I think it's important to speak maybe a little more in depth about the public safety data and sort of how we struggled with it. On the racial and economic justice side I shared some of the data with you all that we had gathered in our report a few years ago. That was on non traffic and fractions more generally, we hadn't collected much specific information on j walking. So we were very fortunate to connect with the UC Berkeley PhD researcher Jeff Garnand who offered to do substantial free pro bono research for us. And he dug into the research we'd already gathered, and was able to present very compelling statistics about how much more frequently black people are cited for j walking than white people, what neighborhoods j walking citations are being distributed in. In the makers field, it's like over 90% of j walking citations were in the lowest income communities. And then these citations add a couple hundred dollars of debt on to the people who get the citation. And so it's just as regressive of a policy as you could imagine. He also created maps and visualizations for us which helped us make our points, even more convincingly. So we had some luck gathering data on that side but unfortunately by the end of the campaign. It wasn't really the racial and economic justice arguments that we needed to make anymore the our targets, mostly in the administration. They, from their vantage they said they were convinced they understood there was some serious equity issues but they were so scared about the public safety implications that they weren't willing to to sign the bill. The governor wasn't willing to sign. So I think what we needed to do and what we have not yet been able to do was really marshal more convincing public safety data showing that criminalizing pedestrians, especially pedestrians of color and pedestrians and low income neighborhoods. It does nothing to save lives. We haven't been able to gather that and I wonder, Jared or john if either of you can speak to us, sort of what would have been approaches we could have taken or what are approaches taken elsewhere that would have allowed us to gather stronger data to make that point. I don't have a clear answer to that but I do know that the existing data which which I looked at briefly and I see Robert Prince in the back here from bikey space who helped with this little bit does show. That is simply my routine mentioned like the governor's office was, you know, citing that was the pedestrian's fault, and what they weren't looking at or what they were ignoring actually was the fact that most of the accidents causing pedestrians are the driver, vehicles fall the driver's fault in that case. And we didn't get response to that and I think that just kind of got neglected. In terms of Oakland particular. This is what Robert helped with early on in the campaign was that this Oakland PD actually de-emphasized stopping pedestrians and that the emphasis actually led to more safety or a decrease in accidents among pedestrians and cars. So there is data that exists there and I think again that was a point that was just either ignored or just you know not engaged with at all by the governor or any of the opposition on this. I don't know if you have any more to add to this. So I'm a community organizer so I deal with anecdotes stories very little with data unless I'm speaking with an elected official but I mean I understand we have to give the governor what he wants from to sign the paper so I totally get the politics behind it. And me personally, I mean why do I need to prove a data that is incredibly dangerous to walk in my community. Like, why do I need to make that effort to prove that and again I understand the politics of it. But I think again it's a bias we have with drivers, you know when drivers are reckless. Because the assumption is that pedestrians will be reckless we will run into the street without thinking we won't look at the light well there's all these reasons why pedestrians might make a mistake. But when cars do that we don't nearly give as much sort of concern we don't regulate nearly as much as that, not anywhere near as much. So for me it's again this bias that's baked into our political system with our elected officials about car riders in California at least. So I think that's what my response would be and as a pedestrian advocate is something that I remind a lot of folks it is crash not accident we don't use the word accident because implies that God, it was responsible that it could have been avoided. But all crashes as we know are unavoidable so thanks is anything that you guys wanted to add regarding lessons for this year. Yeah, well one thing just that stood out from last year was the importance of having directly impacted people involved in the campaign that might seem obvious but a lot of legislative campaigns lack that they identify an important issue. And then they spend the next few weeks or months searching for people who have been impacted and who are willing to speak about it. Getting cited for jaywalking can actually be pretty embarrassing experience two of the folks who we worked with last year were their their main feeling was not anger was not frustration but it was mortification they were very embarrassed. They what they said was, we felt like we were treated as though we were criminals in front of our communities, just for crossing the street. In one of their cases, the police officer pulled him over blocking a drive through like a fast food lane. So all the vehicles waiting to get fast food or seeing him get cited and it was a very embarrassing experience for him. That's just to say that not everybody's going to want to talk about these issues publicly, and yet finding people who are willing to can make all the difference in a campaign we can, we can identify great experts, scholars and activists to speak to the legislature to speak to the administration. But sometimes it makes very little impact compared to having somebody who's really gone through this speak to their experience I think it's something we all know intuitively but even as somebody who understood this. It didn't it hadn't really sunk in enough for me last year I waited too long in the year to start to really find people who were willing to speak and could speak passionately and articulately about the issue. And when we did we got them before the legislature we got them to the journalists, and they were really able to make a splash I think it's part of why our campaign got fantastic media coverage last year it really. Though it wasn't early in the year it wasn't talked about as broadly as a lot of other big legislative issues. By the end of the year it had gotten as much media coverage as almost any other bill it got huge editorials, huge articles and I think all of the of the main publications across the state. I think part of that is because each time somebody contacted us, we were able to connect them with somebody who had a persuasive story to tell. It's not enough just to know people have been affected by an issue. You have to really be able to engage them in the campaign and make sure that their voice is elevated and their story is heard. So just to add so, you know, I'm more of a data geek so data drives a lot of my decision making but like if john's the legislator, then john's going to want to hear stories, right so that's why we have to give everybody what they want so we had the data. And every time every hearing we always had real talk and then we had a person who got cited for day walking and an interesting person was, we had somebody who was up from Mendocino County who happened to be homeless. I don't even know how we found them. I think he would call in every single hearing and talk about, you know, his story, how he got cited and basically, you know, it's poor homeless guy was just cited for walking across the street to the park, where he sleeps. And again, you can, I don't want to make too many assumptions, but in my mind I'm thinking okay well this is nothing to do with jaywalking or safety this is just about harassing a guy who looks in a certain way to try to get him to move somewhere and that's how we hear about some of these stories the other interesting irony, as we got more and more press was how many reporters have gotten tickets for jaywalking. I had a number of reporters who were covering this story like oh yeah I got this ticket for jaywalking for jogging in the street and it was very. So it was kind of fascinating but I think it goes both, you know you need both you need the data, and you definitely need it to demonstrate that this is happening to real people in your community we're not making it up this is something that's happening every single day. And if I could add just one small wrinkle. I mean this is part of the law and order effort right or breaking that down the sort of that perception that sort of not perception it's a reality. But if you talk about this issue surprisingly with certain communities like we so we work with a lot of immigrant communities. So when I talk with like even my own parents generation right Korean American immigrants. For them, when they see a lot it's a law is there to protect you. And so actually when I talked to some of my elder Koreans about this love like why would you and they live in Korea town and they navigate those dangerous streets every day will show western Normandy Vermont. And they're like no these these laws are here to protect us. So I don't know why you'd want to get rid of them because I wouldn't want to go out in the car. So there's a level of engagement of a of education of like sort of level setting you need to do with communities and the same goes we work a lot of And when we presented this to a program at all as they it was a similar response like this is all here to protect us. I know my streets are dangerous so why would I want to get rid of a law that would criminalize people being dangerous and that's understandable that perception. So I think it's a lot more nuanced especially in community color and immigrant communities where there's perception of law and order is something that is seen as safety. And so it takes difficult conversations and I think that is what is important about a law like this is that you need to have that kind of conversation. Thanks, John. I forgot to mention while studying the context up front that you know, California is trying to do this Virginia actually did this in the end of 2020 was able to pass it. Along with ending other pretextual stops there's a whole host of things that cops could not stop people for. And I guess I'm thinking just this is obviously a small issue among a broader issue around a variety of racist laws that are still on the books. I'm just thinking about other related issues that could be connected to the jaywalk and there's something that you all can add about how folks could engage with that or other things that folks might be interested in beyond just jaywalking that could be related. Issues, can you relate this to this campaign. I think there's a variety around fines and fees in particular that I think is kind of carrying over from last year I think that's something that I know you both are working on it again. So what's interesting is we do know what does make our streets a and that's lowering the speed limit. So it wasn't like, hey, we are going to, you know, get rid of the jay, you know, we're going to keep the jaywalking laws but we want you to lower the speed limit there was never a discussion. Right, so I think it is very much going back to, you know, fighting what people's bias is based on absolutely no information at all, and actually presenting them with this is what actually works and kind of pushing back on I think that that's a real narrative in terms of really fighting back and ensuring, you know, this is what it goes back to, you know, all the safe streets discussions like what do safe streets look like. I think this is one piece of that, but it's just constantly reminding, you know, people in policy, policy decision making capacities, what safe streets look like so I think having what that rubric looks like and constantly reminding what a safe, you know, safe community looks like and all these different pieces so this is just one piece of that but there's all these other pieces so it's interesting yeah you know you're going to you're going to attack somebody for across the street, but you're not attacking and say hey we have an epidemic of cars speeding down our streets right but that somehow it's this is this one problem, you know, can't be can't be addressed but there's other problems. I don't know if you can speak more to just the criminal justice reforms that I know you're working on separately from this. I started by talking about, you know, the reduction of fines and fees and decriminalization. And I'd say there's other related efforts in both of those buckets that connect to the jaywalking work we're doing, and that I would encourage you all to look at what's involved in so on the fines and fees piece. I mentioned how a jaywalking fine is $25, but all fines and fees included it can be up to $500. Well, a huge portion of that debt burden is this $300 hidden late fee that exists in California. It's mostly used in traffic courts, but it's imposed on both drivers and non drivers in traffic courts, even for something like jaywalking a $25 fine. If you miss your payment deadline, often because you can't afford to pay your hit with a $300 late fee. As you could imagine, mostly affect people who don't have the money to pay, or can't make it to court by the due date, because of work schedules childcare schedules, etc. So our organization, along with the debt free justice California coalition, we've been waging a two year effort to eliminate entirely these $300 late fees. They're extracting about $100 million a year from California communities. It's an incredibly backwards way to try to raise money to fund the courts. As a state, we should be funding our courts as a society, not on the backs of people least able to afford it. So those fees are called the civil assessments. We've been pushing really hard to get them eliminated. The legislature has been fully supportive. But again, we've run into an obstacle with the administration. Governor Newsom wants to reduce the civil assessment from $300 down to $150. Still $150 is wildly unaffordable for so many of us and makes a little difference to somebody who really has no money to pay. So in the next two months, we're going to be fighting hard to get the administration on board to support full elimination of these late fees and relief of all the debt that's already been imposed by these late fees. So that's our big effort on the fines and fees side on the decriminalization side. There's some exciting efforts. One of them is in San Francisco, there's a whole effort to end pretext policing. So there's a coalition that's working to identify, you know, what are all the low level citations that we really want the police to be prioritized or be prevented from enforcing unless there's some other broader violation going on. So that's the stop the pretext campaign in San Francisco. And then statewide, eventually we want to see the legislature create an opportunity for local jurisdictions to remove police from traffic enforcement. There have been some efforts in different cities to remove police from traffic enforcement. But there are state legislative barriers to doing so so it's going to require sort of collaboration between advocates between local electives and between the state legislature to create an opening where states can start to experiment with other ways to do traffic enforcement that don't have the same consequences that that police interactions and criminalization have so that's what I'd suggest in terms of what we see as connected efforts to get involved in. Yeah, it's actually really fascinating to hear what's happening on the state level. So I guess my reaction response to that on the local level is, is that I see echoes of this issue j walking in so many other issues, and the most the common denominator that sort of exists throughout all is who is a good actor on the sidewalk space versus who is a bad actor on the sidewalk space, and the government is trying to make a distinction between one and the other so I'll give you a few examples. Street vending in LA was a years long battle trying to get street vendors are right to sell and then down the streets. And so right now there's moves in city council to limit street vendors because of ADA access, and this is a city that's completely messed up all of its sidewalks so it's kind of ridiculous the talking about ADA access, but they're leveraging that to say you're a good street vendor you're a bad street vendor right same with with the houses crisis going on in LA I'm sure a lot of y'all experienced the same thing. When there was an echo park there was going to be there was a sweep that happened. One of the city council members Mr O'Farrell did a sweep of the park there and he brought in tons of military like style police to go in and push the homeless out. And what was the rational out behind it, at least from his office pedestrian access about who is the, who should be allowed to walk on the space and who shouldn't be allowed. So there's echoes of this in so many areas about who is a good pedestrian versus who is a bad pedestrian, but on the other hand when the pandemic happened. We were like this when it came to private businesses doing, you know, opening up the sidewalk space for dining. Right, we were like this when it came to wealthy privileged communities doing open streets in the community so they can walk and buy it can be comfortable. So it's a complete dichotomy in which we treat certain communities as bad pedestrians and certain communities as good pedestrians. I kind of want to open it up to audience Q&A. I know these folks pretty well for the last couple years and heard a lot and I hope you all have questions. Is that okay is there anything you want to add before I go there. Okay, and I can walk around here with him I can I'll just go around. A lot of hands so let's go here with first with Megan. So I have a super egregious example of victim blaming. That happened about 10 years ago, Clover City PD was doing a safety training. We're one of the few cities that has red light cameras and a woman. This was in a school, a woman ran a red light and hit a pedestrian. Thankfully he lived. But what ended up happening was that the pedestrian, even though it was on camera that this woman ran the red light. Some of the blame was assigned to the pedestrian who was the victim, because two things. He didn't look. They said that the law said that it is the pedestrian's responsibility to look before crossing. Therefore he got some of the blame, and he was wearing a hoodie. And he got some of the blame for that so that to me is, if that is still on the books, like to me that it feels like that fundamentally and quickly needs to be changed. And that's everything because I was a mayor and city council member and I was in this class session meetings where, you know, the city gets sued when there's a crash or something in the city is always like it's in the best interest of the city. You know, to not get sued, but not by solving the problem. And, and I feel like there's this constant frustration, even with elected officials who want to make these fundamental changes. Like the MUT CD and all that, that all those documents say that oh you make it safer by closing down this sidewalk, right or by by closing this pedestrian thing so that you, you know, only so the left turn accidents don't have. So that grants from the federal government for safety. When we close down pedestrian access points and so like it feels perverse. It is perverse and it is racist. And it's, and it feels like even on a local level. It is so hard to do the right thing when the system is poison. Let me just say one thing. Not to address the specific issue but this is all why it's so important to have you know, cow bikes, cow walks all your different organizations all around the state, because when you go through transportation committee, I mean part of the challenges is the state transportation code, right so all the transportation laws. So all the road laws. If you go through each of the Senate transportation or assembly transportation, there is just an inherent bias for whatever CHP says goes. CHP is the, you know, they're the arbiter about whether someone safe walking or whether someone safe biking and I think that's why it's so important for all your organizations to kind of organize, bring up that voice, because, you know, CHP is always sort of like, you know, going to argue for the status quo that they're never really arguing for change they think this is this is the way things are are the way things that are fine so I think, you know you all being in Sacramento having a larger voice in and also having a larger voice at home is really starting to make a difference you have a lot of us legislators who come from communities where we've organized become very familiar with all these fair right of issues when we get to Sacramento we're ready to champion these issues, but we need your continued help up there because it just always defaults to whatever CHP thinks they that goes whether they know what they're talking about or not. More questions. Hi, and thank thank you all for the work you've been doing on this really really inspiring and super important so appreciate you all being here and talking about it. I've begun collecting data in San Diego on all the bike related offenses that people have stopped for and who stopped and where. And I think, ideally all of these pretextual offenses would be changed in the state level but that's kind of a pretty long process and kind of as a as a local nonprofit. Can't drive that effort. So, my question is what kind of decriminalization efforts can we ask for locally that aren't going to put us in conflict with state law. Great question and thanks for the work you're doing also, there is a lot that can be done on the local level there are municipal ordinances related to jaywalking and biking that can be changed. And there are also police priorities that can be changed so Jared mentioned Oakland's effort to de emphasize pedestrian and bicycling violations. That's something that should definitely be looked at at least from what we saw. I think it's helpful in terms of reducing the number of those violations, and also seeing fatalities and serious injuries go down. And then also look to the San Francisco campaign to stop the pretext campaign because it may be that the best option is to is to lead or participate in the campaign to change the police's priorities, or to reduce their authority to site for those kinds of violations except under limited circumstances. I think that you're standing ago. Right. Just finding out who's doing the work like right now I know ACLU and other smaller organizations are like after the 2020 protests you know got really organized to push city council so I definitely can connect later but definitely find those local orgs who are already doing in connect. More questions. I think we have our first selection here so I know you're on there. Here we go. Thank you for the information that you shared I guess my first question is with the data. Do you have the data that you've shared in one central place that we can have access to that or is that something that's possible so that we can consistently share solid information, you know, with all the work that we're doing with question one, and then two is as much as I am for define the police. I live in a community where we have just created bike lanes, first time ever in a red line community that I grew up in that I never had the opportunity to ride a bike and would have to put my bike in the car and go to the beach or some other location. So now we have bike lanes in a still predominantly but very fast changing demographic of brown and black people. And our, our street lanes have been reduced it's been reconfigured through LA dot two lanes going west and east and basically now it's dropped down to one lane on both sides and we've added a bike lane. This was done because Adams Boulevard was a high injury network lives to being taken hit and run and those lives were mainly black and brown lives. The cars are misusing the bike lane, they are still they're resisting this change. So, basically, what do we do, you know, I, I, my question is from a standpoint of citations and the historical activities that have taken place, how do we slow cars down still because our lives will be taken. And in most cases those will be black and brown lives. And I don't know who the motorists are, I'm not doing that serving they could be black and brown people for all I know they can be white people, I don't know what the bottom line is on the streets complaining. Where's the LAPD, because this is dangerous and someone's going to be killed so we are. There's a lot happening, you know, in this conversation but I just wanted to get your recommendation on. How do you see us going forward what are your recommendations. So this is the first question and then I'll defer to others to talk about street design and infrastructure question. In terms of the data we have not made it as easily available as we should have and so I appreciate the question. And I'm looking at Jared and I'm going to commit that we're going to try to add some of our most recent data to the website that's been sort of a center piece of the data that's maintained through cow bike, we're going to make an effort to do that so that the, so that the freedom to walk website has the most relevant and recent information available so thank you for encouraging that, and then I want to invite I want to invite either of you all to talk to the second issue. So what one of my first bills with cow bikes when I got to legislature was around protected bikeways. And so obviously you could work with planning to make sure that the, that the bike lane is actually protected. You could also limit access by, you know, as you know by putting pylons or something as people can enter so it's really only a bicycle could enter versus a vehicle. And so I think there are a number of different ways you could design it I really, I understand the first thing is to work to go get law enforcement to start writing a bunch of citations but I don't know that that's really the ultimate solution. You really want to make it so that that laying is easily accessible for the bicyclists, but maybe not easily accessible for for cars. You know, crosswalks beat homes flat sidewalks more regular bus intervals so people don't have to run and jwalk to catch the bus bus shelters, better lighting better shade. I mean these are all tons of stuff that can make reduce j walking. So yes, let's work together. All right, next question. Yeah, so I just had a quick question about some of the systemic racist issues that we have even with getting pedestrian and bike infrastructure implemented. And this is more of a question for john as well to specifically for john it's a little cheating because I've worked with john before, but can you discuss the work that you've done with the promotores and the issues that they've had with getting a simple life saving infrastructure like crosswalks installed and the issues that they face while trying to work with the like local, like city council or local like do t and stuff like that as well too. Yeah one speed hump and LA takes you over a year to secure. And if you don't speak English if you don't know how to work a PDF, if you don't know how to work a Google form, you're pretty much screwed you're left out entirely of government services and the only recourse you have is to beg your city council member to do what you want and at that point it becomes a political thing it doesn't become about a city service about who is louder in that political office. So the whole system is entirely messed up and so I think we need to reform how we dole out, you know, city resource when it comes to pedestrian infrastructure so yeah I can go on about the systems issue about what we face as community Thank you for your presentation it's been it's been really great to hear from you all. And so my question is Jay walking this kind of a term coined by the auto industry in the 1920s. So kind of wanting to know are you still having pushback from the auto industry or is it solely now from CHP where you're seeing these concerns of safety. In regards to who's had influence in the capital I'd say it's primarily law enforcement and primarily CHP and I think what we did was, we're able to work out an amendment that still got our bill what we needed, but wasn't as ideal as striking the law, but it was able to get CHP to a neutral position but just demonstrates how they have an outsized influence because again, it's not CHP and every single one of our communities policing the roads right so it's kind of interesting. They're the ones providing the advice but they're not in LA I mean outside of the freeways right they're not in, they're not in they're not on Adams. They're not they're not on Wilshire they're not on any of the streets they're not in you know on Marcus Street and my in my community. So yeah, just demonstrates it's why our voices need to be louder and that's just going to take time. It's going to take it's going to take John to organize is going to take all of you as organizers that's why you're all here and your voices are definitely growing I remember I had that I sat down with Dave Snyder. You know in 2012 when I was running for the legislature, and you know Cal bike was just kind of getting started and I said look you know when I get to Sacramento I want to be your bike, you know I want to be your bike legislator right I want to be championing all these issues because I think they're so important and you know I get to do that coming from San Francisco because my constituents get it I don't know if I was coming from Fresno I couldn't necessarily do that. But just being able to you know, myself grow and watch Cal bikes grow it's just been huge. And so that voice is getting bigger and bigger but it still needs to grow we still got a long way to go but there's been huge progress in the last 10 years. It's a good question I know the insurance industries is pretty active in Sacramento but they didn't come down with the position did they on this at all so not to my knowledge. Thank you. I want to thank you for the work that you're doing to decriminalize walking. As you know I'm sure everyone knows that the black community has been over police for the last 400 years. And so I'm glad that there's some conversation and some concrete work being do being done. I also like to talk I'm an Oakland native, but there's a city a neighboring city to Oakland that actually penalizes black youth preteens and teenagers for riding their bicycles into their city. They take the bicycles from children and tell them don't come back to our city. So it's so much larger than just walking. It's, it's, it's everything. It's, you know, you're in your black skin you're in your brown skin. You literally cannot go into the next city that city needs Oakland to get to San Francisco. So I mean come on, all your residents are coming through our city but we are forbidden from going to your city without being penalized so I don't know if you've run into any of that or any efforts are being done to address this situation. Thank you. Yeah, I haven't run into that exact situation but I will echo what you said that this is, I mean, we see it as essentially low hanging fruit like we it's possible it's feasible for us to decriminalize jaywalking but there are so many other activities that people are punished for criminalized for made to feel marginalized for and that's really the broader effort is how do we extricate police and policing from many, many, many more aspects of our lives because for the black community and for many other communities in our country. Policing, especially low level policing is just a continued form of harassment and sort of social control. Because decriminalizing jaywalking is really difficult, even though there's broad widespread agreement that it's a ridiculous criminal violation. So if we want to do more if we want to decriminalize more broadly, we need a much stronger We faced a governor's veto just to decriminalize jaywalking so doing other low level citations that are more controversial. I don't know that we have the collective power for yet and it's that kind of collective power building the bridges that we're building between the civil rights community, the pedestrian community the bicycling community. It's kind of bridge building, but also a great deal more power building that we're going to need to do because we, we felt how limited our leverage was last year, even with 90 organizations signed on active organizations like the ones in this room, we still couldn't get the bill over the over the finish line. And that was a relatively uncontroversial bill so in terms of the broader work we want to do to make life less full of harassment and policing for youth for people of color in the Bay Area. We've got a lot of work to do in terms of movement building and we're here to do it but we're all going to need to do it. That's right yeah and they're involved in the coalition, we can absolutely do better. In fact, with other campaigns were a part of we've had more success partnering with black and brown led coalitions and movements. We haven't as effectively shown how this campaign is critically important to advancing racial and economic justice as as we could, but certainly that's that's core to our strategy and essential. Hey Kathy talking about Beverly Hills. I mean a assembly member just brought up he brought up an actor which is Beverly Hills, and they did someone had to sue the city they, I think, almost 99% were black men that were ticketed. And do you know what that sort of project was called, it was called the safe street project or something but the word safe street was in it. Do you have any programs Los Angeles walks has this called safe streets, right, safety program program safe streets Wilmington, we use that term as well and so it's being co opted. And so again it's a perception of who would deserve to be there who doesn't deserve to be there and so when you see the word safe streets always ask yourself, what do they really mean by that safe for whom. So, can I, but but I will add just to give us a little bit of hope so not normally when the governor office vetoes the bill. They say oh yeah yeah hey we're going to get together we're going to work on it we're going to work on it for next year. But I think we had done such a good job all the advocates have done all of you had done such a great job we had, you know, editorial I mean all the newspapers editorialize this is stupid we should get rid of these laws. They literally called us the next week and it's the first time that I can remember after a veto that we actually had a solution ready to go in January I mean they really did spend the fall really working out a solution I think because they were wrong to the realize you know they couldn't really defend this that we were we had provided all the information all the data everything was moving, you know our way there was no real justification. The desk demonstrates again, all your work is is moving the needle. There's no question. Before the next question I just add a little bit to the last question what we was already saying I think I think the bigger movement is part the big picture of this and I think it wasn't an accident that the George Floyd killing and the protest that were after that this bill got a lot of traction, you know just brought everything to the table and I think to the second part around the 400 plus years that you mentioned I think as real mention this is kind of like low hanging through j walking but I think whether it's the law enforcement like that is touching on that 400 plus years history so it's it's a it's a lot bigger than that but you know in some ways it's a little smaller I saw a question. Hi, I'm a recipient of a j walking ticket. I got it back. All my life. I was walk. I was taught to walk between the lines from growing up in the very first time 1985 out here I was walking across the street going to work and the very first time that I j walked I got a j walking ticket. I was going to Bart, and I parked my car and I walked across I was like walking and I'm not going to make this light and so I walked up and boom I shot across the street and there was an officer right there to give me a ticket. And I went home that night and I told my parents what happened and they said that's what you get. I was a travel trainer for United Seniors of Oakland Alameda County and when I travel train seniors toward transitioning from taking their cars from driving their cars to taking public transit and walking I teach them to walk in between the lines. I went back to work and she works she worked down here somewhere and the very first time six months I work with her are a little less learning how to get back and forth taking the bus routes working with discontinued services and different things like that that we have to deal with in our neighborhood. And the first time that she went out to lunch with her comrades she got hit by a car. They were all j walking. So I mean I'm just saying what's wrong between what what's so wrong with walking between the lines. Can you know. Can we put it there. There's nothing wrong with walking between lines. I don't think we're saying you shouldn't walk walk between the lines. So if you look at the data the Chronicle did an article a couple months ago so I mentioned the SACP article last year, not every community downtown has it, because again a lot of people a lot of pedestrians, a lot of public transit, but not every community downtown has those lines. And again, you have some people in, you know, more neighborhoods which have a little more crime, literally I have stories of my colleague these are just my colleagues I'm not even talking about, you know, regular folks you should just find the legislators they said, you know I would j walk because I got to the crosswalk, and I walked there. You know, there were dangerous people over there. So then this is just them walking to school I'm not talking about, you know, today. But you have what you have is if every neighborhood had good crosswalks, good pedestrian state, absolutely right you know we want, we want, we want that pedestrian infrastructure so that's something that we all talk about we want that infrastructure to know, given that you don't, we don't think that people should be criminalized for walking in their own community walking in their own neighborhood, just walking to the bus stop, walking to work. You know, again, we absolutely I always want to encourage look safe, pedestrian behavior. But again the way we did the bill was, you could still get cited if you're not safe and there was always the case like you could, even when we got rid of the laws last time, if you're not being safe you could still get cited. Now, the question is, is when you know when you cross the street, were you, were you running yourself at risk, or was it just hey the officer just had an easy citation and I think. Right, that's right. I agree, right. And I think the question is, is where they were they citing as many pedestrians as they were automobiles. Right, we all know what do I stops look like so when they take us here to get these do I stop so were they doing what they needed to do to slow down police I work at San Francisco City Hall we had a pedestrian crossing the crosswalk. Right in the middle of the crosswalk got hit right right just right literally right in front of city hall one of our officials. And now there's a stoplight because of that, but, but if you get but again it you know it's because it was in front of city hall right and so that doesn't happen in every single community so I think yes we know they're dangerous intersections we want to make it safer. But we don't think, at least I don't think I'm not gonna say we I don't think that you should only be citing one group of people, if you are trying to make that whole area safer. You're reducing speeds for the vehicles, you're making sure that the vehicles are also being conswatch as well as the pedestrians or the cyclists hey that's that's okay. I think the concern is that only one group of people is ever being cited, not the other. I love this conversation because I feel like we need to have more conversations like this, because I feel like your perspective on this actually is a lot of people. And what I would say is, sometimes it is safer to jaywalk sometimes it's not sometimes that many times it's more dignified to jaywalk. Many times it is more convenience to jaywalk and so those circumstances do exist. And so yeah. One last question and I see other hands just find me after like I'll talk your ear off about this if you still have questions and make our be here at the last one. Yeah. So, I mean, I live in a side show capital of the world. I don't know if y'all know about side shows, but the car culture in Oakland rules the road as well as the law. The thing I learned as an advocate thanks to Robert here is that laws is enforced only on education. So we we had an incident like she was talking about with the youth I work with the youth. And so when we ride south of East Oakland and San Leandro officers were like pulling up in a cars opening that car doors trying to door the youth cyclists. Because they didn't understand the style of riding that the kids was doing, as well as like OPD like, I got probably over like 50 tickets from just riding my bike in East Oakland, like taking a ticket for the team. And it was more of the education concept like the officers didn't understand that three feet is the law. They didn't understand that pedestrians had a right away, especially with people in big metal boxes like pedestrians are always had a right away whether they're in a crosswalk or jaywalking, as well as cyclists riding on the sidewalk. So as a father, I got a six year old kid that California law say he can't ride in the street and he has to ride on the sidewalk but if I ride on the sidewalk, it's a $590 ticket. So I'm just curious to like, I mean the data is cool but I think the education behind it like for law enforcement and the public is is key. To respond, this law isn't going to save us. We can't just push for this law, this has to come with infrastructure change. This has come in public education, you know, driving safer so it's a constellation of issues and I think this is one of those stars that we're trying to try to get to. Thank you. That was a great last word and thank you panelists for this session. Thank you everyone.