 embargo on Cuba. And this year it was 184 countries against two. The two were the United States and Israel. So we are calling on Biden to listen to the world community which he hasn't done yet. And there are a lot of exciting grassroots things happening. There are car vans happening every single month around the country including in Miami organized by Cuban Americans that I've had the privilege of participating in. We get attacked or tried to sabotage us from the right wing Cubans. But the group is very strong and growing. And on Sunday they started a march from Miami to Washington DC to arrive in Washington on July 25th to urge Biden to do something to lift the embargo. And there will be a large gathering in DC when they arrive. And if you're interested please contact us for ways to get involved because people will be coming in from around the country. We also are nearing the end of our fundraising drive for syringes to Cuba. We've raised over $400,000. We're going to go for the $500,000 mark and that has allowed us to buy six million syringes. Cuba has developed its own vaccine which is quite remarkable for a tiny island of 11 million people. But they are short the cash to buy the syringes which are hard to get on the world market these days. So that's the update when it comes to Cuba. And finally I want to say we have a very exciting grassroots project which is to have a flotilla that goes from Key West the 90 miles to Havana. And we're planning on that in November. So we need people with boats. We need people that have captains licenses. And we need people who just want to be members of the crew. We'll also have a group that will fly to Havana to meet the flotilla when it gets there. So you can go to the Code Pink travel to Cuba site. I think Mary just put it up on the website. And join us in November for that exciting flotilla that will be part of an effort to pressure the Biden administration to normalize relations with Cuba. Thank you. Thank you, Medea. That's very exciting. How much did you say we had raised for the syringes? We raised $400,000. And Marcy, since Hanya's in here, I think we should give a very, oh, you know, Yasmin can give us an update on Iran, right? Yeah, great. Yes. And I just wanted to update everyone on the visit by the Shiptons. They are related obviously to Filena Sange. Gabriel Shipton is his brother. He's been on Code Pink Congress before. And John Shipton is his father. They have been on a month-long tour, a nationwide tour to raise awareness about Julian's case and the threat that this prosecution poses to press freedom. They were in Los Angeles on, well, Sunday night, and we had a very spirited rally in Venice for them. It's great. And we wrote postcards and we wrote to the Justice Department. And tonight, for our Code Pink calling party, we will also, there's a bonus action where you can email the Justice Department as well to urge Merrick Garland, our Attorney General, to drop the charges, the underlying charges and extradition proceedings. There was a big story over the weekend that has been widely left out of corporate media. I mean, they're just not reporting this huge story that broke in, I believe it's called Stundin. It's the news outlet in Iceland. They interviewed a man who admitted that he lied about accusations that Julian Sange had hacked into the computers of members of parliament in Iceland. He said it was a complete fabrication. He made it up. And he is a key, he was one of the key witnesses for the U.S. government's prosecution of Julian Sange. So what the next step is, we don't know, but it just shows how desperate the DOJ and the FBI were to go after Julian Sange because they collaborated with a convicted child abuser and a diagnosed sociopath to try to railroad him. So we are working over time at Code Pink and we hope that you will as well to free him and expose this craziness to the world and this great, great threat to freedom of the press. What else is happening? Well, there's a group of about six, I don't call them moderate, I would call them right-wing Democrats who are saying that they absolutely will not stand for lowering the military budget and they are threatening not to vote for this or that if Biden or Congress agrees. Meanwhile, progressives from Ila Jaya Paul and others with the Progressive Caucus are saying they are not going to vote for any kind of jobs program or infrastructure bill that does not include substantial money or climate. So we'll see where all that goes. We know we've probably all heard about the bombings over the weekend of Iraq and Syria. Senator Christopher Murphy came out very strongly denouncing this, this in the wake of the House voting to repeal the authorization for use of military force, the AUMF for Iraq, the 2002 AUMF. And what do you know right after that, Biden and Austin ordered the bombing of Syria and Iraq saying, well, they're covered under Article 2 of the Constitution that says we can bomb anybody who threatens our troops or the defense of our troops. Never mind that we are occupying Iraq, that they want us out of there, we are defending ourselves. So we'll have to keep up that drumbeat, the drumbeat of outrage. Medea, did you want to say something about that? Oh, just that Ali put in the chat that anybody who's in the DC area, we're going to have a participate in front of the Department of Justice on a protest calling for the freeing of Julian Assange, and that's the last stop on their tour. So she put the link in there for the information. Excellent. Okay, we're going to turn to our first guest, Paige Fernandez. She is the Policing Policy Advisor for the National ACLU. Her approach is to root any kind of reform in the community, community first, and she has a history of organizing. She directed multiple chapters of Together We Stand, which is a nonprofit aimed at dismantling racism and police brutality. Paige Fernandez has a master's degree in public policy from Oxford University. Welcome, Paige. Thanks so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. Ritual to have you. So should I just dive in and do like a quick presentation? Awesome. Okay, so I have some slides. I'm just going to share my screen quickly. Can you see the slides? Yes. Okay. Awesome. Great. So I'm just going to quickly give some background. So in the wake of George Floyd's murder, there were uprisings and protests across the country demanding divestment and defunding from the police. So I wanted to provide some context around why people are demanding that, what policing looks like in the U.S. today, and what's happened in the past year, since people have been making these demands. Just to provide some context around what policing looks like in the U.S. today, the United States spends more than $115 billion per year on local and state law enforcement. That's excluding hundreds of millions of dollars that are given through grants, through the federal government to state and local police departments. Sorry about that. There are about 18,000 police departments in the United States, and 10.3 million arrests are made every year. So only 5% of those are for what we would consider the most serious offenses. So thinking about things like murder and aggravated assault. 95% of those arrests are for minor violations, traffic enforcement, low level offenses, drug possession, etc. So the underlying problem we have with policing is their broad scope, power, and excessive resources. Since their inception as a slave patrol in Charleston, South Carolina, police continue to be used as a mechanism for political and social control over black people. They are leading cause of death for black men in the U.S. A recent study found that 1 in 1,000 black men can expect to be killed by police. Here you can see that black people are three times more likely to be killed by the police and also more likely to be unarmed than white people were engaging with the police. So not only do police kill black people at disproportionate rates, but they also stop and arrest people of color at disproportionate rates. So here you can see that across the nation, black people are 3.6 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than white people. And across the country, police stop and search black people at disturbing rates. In Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered, police stop and search black people in cars at 29 times the rate of white people. So what people have been demanding over the last year is divestment and reinvestment, which really refers to a shift of power, funding, resources, and responsibility away from the punitive and harmful institution of policing and into life-affirming community-based and community-led supported services. So what we mean when we talk about divestment is not just shrinking the budget, but it means dramatically reducing the role of police in the U.S. and reallocating the savings that come from reducing their role and responsibilities to alternatives to police and specifically to communities that have historically been targeted by police. So black communities, indigenous communities, Latinx communities, and low-income communities. So people often are like, why is divesting and reinvesting the answer? Why is it not putting more money into the police? And there are a few answers for that. The first is that crime often occurs when someone cannot meet their basic needs through any other means, and not just economic means. And this is why it's so important, sorry about that, there's a weird timer on this. That's why it's so important to invest in community-based services and resources so as to allow people to meet their basic needs and provide them with the opportunities to thrive. Another reason is that crime is truly a social construct. So current law creates the mass criminalization of poverty, drug use, LGBTQ status, disability status, and immigration status. So many of our existing criminal laws, which police spend their time enforcing, shouldn't exist in the first place. So people are then demanding kind of this dismantling of our punishment system and the reallocation of funds so that we can create therapeutic landscapes and environments for people of color and low-income people to thrive in. People often ask, well, what can we possibly reinvest in? What other options do we have? And there really are endless options. But what's critical here is that we reinvest in communities of color that have suffered from decades of underinvestment in everything except police, racist practices, and their related punitive programs. Specifically, we talk about needing to invest in life-affirming solutions. Sorry, my cat's making an appearance. And examples of these life-affirming programs are restorative justice and transformative justice programs, which address harm and abuse without relying on the criminal legal system and punitive measures, investing in public education, including hiring school counselors, social workers and nurses for all schools instead of cops, affordable housing, mental health services, including alternative responses to police for people in crisis, so on and so forth. So truly, the possibilities are endless, but where the money is reinvested should be determined by those most impacted by police silence. So an example of a program that we would endorse and support instead of police is the Kahootz program in Eugene, Oregon. Eugene piloted Kahootz a few years ago, and it's a program that dispatches two-person teams of medics and crisis workers rather than law enforcement to emergency calls involving severe behavioral health crises. So the teams provide not only immediate stabilization support to individuals experiencing medical or psychological crises, but they also offer broad wraparound supports as well. So that means providing crisis counseling, suicide prevention and intervention, conflict resolution, mediation, substance use treatment, and housing support, so really providing a broad range of services to people who are in crisis. This has led to Kahootz responding to one in five 911 calls that are made to the city. They have taken over 20,000 calls per year and have only had to, in the past few years, ask for police assistance 100 times. So it's a really great model of alternative programs we can implement. And finally, there are a lot of changes happening across the country. Obviously, people have mixed feelings around defunding the police, but across the country we've seen public officials agree to reducing police resources and investing in alternative services in all the cities highlighted here, notably Minneapolis where George Floyd was murdered. And that is it. Thank you. So I'm sure there'll be lots of questions. That's a very interesting map, so maybe we can take a look at that again later. Thank you so much, Paige Fernandez, with the ACLU and her cat. What's your cat's name? Little Buddy. Little Buddy and Paige. Great to have you with us. Somebody is going to introduce our next guest. Yes. I want to remind people that you can put your questions into the chat and also just say hello, tell us where you're from, maybe what you're working on. And I'm really delighted to introduce our next guest, Yasmin Taib, who I have worked with on many different projects. And I find her just an astounding organizer, not only brilliant, but just so sharp in terms of what is good strategy. She is an Iranian American human rights attorney. She's a progressive strategist and former senior policy council at both Demand Progress and the Center for Victims of Torture. She served on the Democratic National Committee and was a 2016 DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders. Most recently she organized a campaign involving 150 organizations supporting legislation to repeal the 1033 program that transfers military equipment to local police, which she will tell us more about. So we're delighted to have you on. Welcome, Yasmin. Thank you so much, Medea, for that gracious introduction. It's so nice to be with you guys tonight amongst friends and allies who've really been in the trenches and fighting on so many different issues that are of priority to our community. So really, thank you for everything that Medea, you and your colleagues and everyone on this call is doing on a day-to-day basis. So as Medea mentioned, I'm Yasmin Taib. I'm going to just spend the next couple of minutes talking a little bit about the 1033 program that I'm sure most of you probably are familiar with this program. This is, you know, it's known to be a military surplus equipment transfer program that's authorized through the Department of Defense. At first, you know, became kind of well-known and gave notoriety after Michael Brown was gunned down in Ferguson in the summer of 2014. And since then, there's been various efforts by lawmakers, the executive branch to try to rein in this program. Since, you know, its inception, it was established in the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act. This is the annual defense bill that goes through Congress every year. More than 7.4 billion in surplus military equipment and goods, including, you know, we're talking about armored vehicles, rifles, MRAPs, aircraft have been transferred to more than 8,000 law enforcement agencies. And as many of you know, this program, unfortunately, you know, it's mostly, again, problematic because the military equipment that has been used in our post 9-11 wars, the excess property gets transferred, goes into the 1033 pipeline. There's concerns right now, because we are going to be leaving Afghanistan, lawmakers have reached out wanting to know what's going to be happening to that excess equipment. There's been rumors that the 13,000 pieces of military equipment that already is going to be coming back is potentially going to be going into the 1033 pipeline. So just wanted to kind of flag that as potential opportunities for ways that our communities can engage on this issue moving forward. So just wanted to highlight a couple of just legislative actions that are going to be coming up during the summer, during the NDIA fight in the House and Senate, but also wanted to just quickly talk about the executive order that President Obama issued in 2015 and what we hope to get from Biden on this issue this year. So as many of you know, in 2015, President Obama issued an executive order that, you know, for many of us that have been kind of following this issue, we didn't feel as though the EO did enough. Frankly, we didn't think that it made a difference in terms of demilitarizing our local police. It did, you know, provide some transparency and oversight and it did ban certain equipment and recall certain equipment. You know, specifically it was tracked armored vehicles, grenade launchers and certain ammunition and firearms and weaponized vehicles and aircraft, but for the most part, it honestly, it could have done more. And, you know, in 2017, unfortunately, as many of you know, even that EO, which was really the bare minimum, was rescinded by the Trump administration. So our ask right now of the Biden administration has been to issue a moratorium completely on the program. It's, you know, an ask that we had of the White House back in January that our coalition met with them. It's also an ask that's going to be articulated and hopefully in a coalition letter and a wide coalition letter that we're going to be sending to the White House in the next week or two. And in terms of, you know, what's going to be coming up in the NDA fight this year, we are lucky in the sense that there's been a delay in the markup for NDA in the House and also the floor vote. It's not going to be happening until September. So just wanted to just drop a couple of links in the chat. So the link that I'm dropping in the chat is the link to the coalition letter that we sent to the Hill last month that, as Medea mentioned, it was signed by more than 150 organizations calling on members of Congress to support Representative Laska's legislation to completely shut down the 1033 program. And the other links I want to kind of drop in the chat is right now we are setting up meetings with members on the House Armed Services Committee. And I just dropped in the link for who's on the committee. And the reason why I did that was because so the meetings that we're setting up with the HASC offices are asks, you know, are fairly simple. One, we're asking them to cosponsor of Alaska's repeal bill and to cosponsor Representative Johnson's demilitarization bill. Representative Johnson's bill is another bill that many of the organizations in our 1033 coalition are supportive of because while his legislation does not, you know, explicitly shut down the program, what it does is it would absolutely demilitarize the local police in the sense that all the military equipment that they've gotten would be recalled. And then the only, you know, it would it would stop short of shutting it down. And the only thing it doesn't touch is the non military equipment. So for those that are not familiar, this this program, the reason, unfortunately, it's been kind of so difficult to make any, you know, progress on it in the last few years. And it's been difficult to even kind of chip away at it is because it includes, you know, it transfers not only just the military equipment, but also computers and, you know, popcorn makers and toasters and desks to all these, you know, police departments and members of Congress, unfortunately, are have just been reluctant in saying that they support shutting this program down because they're they're scared to tell, you know, that their local police and these police unions that they're also going to be taking away their access to the non military equipment, right? I mean, they are in a way, a lot of them they use that as an excuse, but I just wanted to kind of highlight that the one of the reasons why members of Congress don't support an outright repeal is because it's it's unfortunately still difficult to get a to get an amendment or any sort of provision ending the program passed on the floor, whether it's in the House or in the Senate. I think those were the main points I wanted to make. Oh, and then sorry, just one quick thing for for those who have for those whose members do serve on HASC, you can feel free, and I just put my email on there, you can feel free to send me an email as we're setting up the the meetings with the House Armed Services Committee members, we would be delighted to have constituents in those virtual meetings. So anyway, that we can be supportive of your advocacy efforts. Please let us know. Thank you much, Yasmin. A progressive strategist 2016 DNC delegate for Bernie Sanders, demand progress, torture victims, senior policy advisor, human rights attorney. Okay, so now we're going to open this up for Q&A, both Yasmin and Paige. Mary, if you could put them both up on the screen, that would be great. I would love to see that that map again, Paige, where you mentioned we have efforts to defund the police, I think, and establish other programs. Are you able to put that back up on the screen? Okay, let's take a look at that. So while we're doing that, can I just ask, Yasmin, if you could clarify what the opposition is to the repeal, you mentioned the police unions, I'm not sure, you know, if you can clarify that, and what are, you know, who are the other lobby groups or the other issues that come to play in this? No, that's a great question. The obstacle has been, unfortunately, that the police unions, fraternal order of police, there's a couple that I'm kind of blinking on their names, they, you know, without fail, every time we're doing their advocacy, they are in the 11th hour of kind of NDA negotiations, you know, whether it's right before the rules hearing, we're trying to get an amendment, and they do massive lobbying and they start calling HAASC members. This is what happened last year. This is why we weren't able to even get a vote on Hank Johnson's amendment on the floor. It was something that was promised to us, frankly, by House Democratic leadership. It was something that, you know, CPC had told us it wouldn't be a problem. Less than 10, 12 hours before the rules hearing, we had heard that some of the unions started calling up the moderate, however you want to define them, right-winging, you know, right-wing Dems on HAASC and they went and complained to the WIP's office, they went and complained to Smith, and they made it clear that if Hank Johnson's amendment was going to get a vote on the floor, that they would be forced to vote no on the final NDA, and that would mean that the bill would have failed, right, because we already at that point had a number of pledges from Congressional Percussive Caucus members that they were not going to be voting for the NDA, so at that point, you know, like, yeah, leadership was like, well, we need this bill passed, so we got screwed, unfortunately, in the process. But I would say, you know, we've gotten questions also whether, you know, weapons manufacturers are doing lobbying. I honestly have not seen that, but if folks have, please definitely flag that for us. I've mostly seen the police unions, and I've seen the letters that they send to Senate offices, House offices, incredibly misleading, and it's just filled with lies in terms of what the different provisions would do, but yeah, that's unfortunately our main obstacle. Thank you, yes. Hey, are we able to look at that now? Yeah, okay, here we go. Cities where public officials have proposed their pledge to reduce police resources, so have they actually? Oh, I think you're on mute. I can't hear you. Sorry, I do that all the time. I'm so sorry. It's like we're a year and a half into this pandemic, and I can't figure out how to unmute myself. It's ridiculous. Yeah, so a good chunk of these places have divested and reinvested in alternative services. So, for example, Minneapolis divested $8 million from their police department in December, and $2 million of those dollars went directly into violence prevention programs and mental health care. The other $6 million is currently being decided on by the city council to invest in community-based services, but pending what services they want to invest in after community conversations. Austin divested a good chunk of money from their police department and then invested $20 million in programs for unhoused people for mental health and family violence prevention. Los Angeles cut their police department budget and invested money into summer youth job programs, and Milwaukee divested and invested $2.9 million into a housing program. There's a really good report by Interrupting Criminalization called The Demand Is Still Defund the Police that highlights a bunch of wins that have happened across the country over the past year related to divestment and defunding. Thank you. There have been a few comments in the chat addressing this defund the police, some saying it should be or you know they appreciate the framing tonight. Demilitarize the police that the defunding of the police is getting a lot of pushback and may not advance the effort. On the other hand, we are talking about taking a lot of money out of policing and investing in the community, so I'm just wondering what what you both think about defund the police as the as the demand. I think like there's, I think it's first important that like I don't like to tone police like black and brown organizers who develop the demand. I have a lot of conversation with abolitionist partners outside of the work, outside of like my day job at the ACLU. I do organizing work with an abolitionist grassroots group in Philly. I think you know there are very strong feelings about this that the demand quite literally is defund the police and for abolitionist orgs that the demand is abolition. I think particularly in the history like the history of black people in the United States the demand was abolished slavery they weren't going to mince their words around that and this is not the time to mince our words around it. I think like as a representative of the ACLU we're very intentional about our language around divestment and reinvestment. We are not an abolitionist organization and defund the police is directly tied to abolition. I think you know when you get into the details of this work it's very rare that anybody who's running a campaign for example we are working with our Minneapolis grassroots partners who are all abolitionist organizations on a ballot measure that will be on the ballot in November that would drastically reduce the size of the police department and create an entirely new department of community safety of which police would only be a small part of and in doing that none of our materials say defund the police. When you're working actually on campaigns there's very little language around defunding the police it's like this broader narrative around defunding. So you know I think they're like at the ACLU we're working on messaging like what persuades people the most we know based on a lot of polls we've run that while people might not support the like moniker defund the police they absolutely support the ideas behind it the actual reallocation of resources so I think there's other ways we can message around it depending on what our goal is. Thank you. Yasmin you want to add anything to that? I think we should agree. Okay great. We did have some questions about the way that there is this pushback now in the narrative that places that have been moving money are experienced higher levels of crime that there is a massive exodus of police from police department just when they're needed that they can't recruit new police how do you respond to that kind of what I would call propaganda but it's out there in the public narrative page you want to start us on that? My short answer is that crime has risen across the country not just in cities that have divested from the police so whether it's cities that increased police funding last year maintain the same police funding or decrease the police funding in some way crime levels are pretty much the same and I also think you know we actually it's funny that this question is mentioned because we had a two hour meeting about this issue today as a team to talk about what we do about it and we know that a lot of the crime that's up is like gun related crime so I think you know the pushback is first this is happening everywhere so we cannot there is nothing to tie this to defunding the police also no police like no city has actually defunded the police like the maximum amount of money that's been diverted from police departments to other services I believe is like seven percent of police department budget so I think that just speaks to how ineffective the police are that despite having 115 billion dollars at their disposal every year that crime continues to go up even as police departments got budgets go up as well. Thank you so I just wanted to tying it to the 1033 isn't most of the police killings are done by guns it's not by tanks and assault weapons and all this kind of military equipment so is the military equipment really just like toys that they like to have in these police departments and not really use that much or are they actually being used? So there's actually so there's actually a provision in the agreement that these local agencies have with DLA which is you know where they get the equipment from that they have to use it within a year or essentially they lose it so it's this perverse like incentive where you know they like law enforcement agencies actually have to use like military equipment and these assault weapons and these weapons of war against residents in their own communities otherwise they have to return this free equipment that they received from from the Pentagon so I mean that's right that's one of the reasons why this this this program has been so problematic is that you know you have law enforcement agencies that are under investigation by DOJ for violating you know and for civil rights abuses and they are still getting this equipment you know through the 1033 program when there's been numerous studies you know done by you know ACLU and and various allied groups that indicate that law enforcement agencies that actually get military equipment are more prone to using violence right against our own community members so yeah but I but I do think that this approach has to be you know a holistic approach obviously for advocates that have been calling to abolish the 1033 program and demilitarizing local police we're well aware that you know that's just one aspect of policing that's that's been problematic in our communities and that's been you know obviously disproportionately used and impacting communities of color but but yeah definitely wanted to note that and appreciate the question the deal thank you yes somebody posted in the chat they're using a military equipment to knock down doors and shoot children with assault rifles I know they use they use rubber bullets armored vehicles yeah so a question I have is about President Biden yes I mean you said he signed an executive order that progressives found unsatisfactory I you know I tried to find his executive order on this subject and couldn't find it I don't I don't know if it even exists anymore but I would love to get your thoughts on what was wrong with that executive order and also Biden recently said that he it's going to be fine for states and cities to use some of their pandemic money for the police to stem this spike in gun violence I'd love to get both of your responses to that sure so I so the executive order that then you know Vice President Biden right supported back in 2015 so that was a very sorry I keep getting pop-ups of folks being in the waiting room needing to get in um that was a very kind of narrow scope I would say it was a very limited EO that frankly didn't have much of an impact there's there's also been a number of studies done just in the last year in terms of looking into whether whether Obama's EO in 2015 actually made a difference in reducing the amount of military equipment we're seeing being transferred to to law enforcement agencies and it actually did not um it actually I think at some point we saw increases um but that that executive order specifically banned uh tracked armored vehicles grenade launchers there's certain ammunition and firearms definitely not all it was like ammunition that was greater than 0.50 or something weaponized vehicles and and aircraft the the ask that we have of the Biden administration I think most of you probably remember that the first week that Biden came in he actually was supposed to do an executive order on on this program we got an outline from the transition team uh the day of his inauguration like telling us exactly the day that he was going to be issuing this EO on the 1033 program and while it said you know something to the effect of the Biden administration was going to reinstate the the previous Obama era restrictions on the transfer of military equipment to to law enforcement that certainly was was not the ask of of the community as you know our ask consistently has been for Biden to issue a moratorium and for him to essentially signal to congress that he supports the program being completely shut down so legislatively that's I mean that's the only process the only way we can make that happen is is for congress to to act so you know there's obviously rumors going around and I guess not rumors but you know it's it's well known that the reason at this point Biden has kind of delayed in in doing anything on the program is because he's trying to see if the George Floyd justice and policing act gets through congress whether it addresses 1033 and he's hoping uh I imagine that you know it does and that way he wouldn't he wouldn't have to do anything right um whereas for for advocates we are pushing both fronts we're we're calling on congress to act but we're also simultaneously calling on the administration to issue a strong executive order on this program because regardless of what congress does or doesn't do we I mean we do we do want um the administration to understand that this is a priority for the grassroots uh that there's absolutely no reason why this program is in is in existence when there's absolutely zero evidence that it's that the program is even effective right it's it's done nothing in terms of you know making our community safer reducing crime um in fact it's it's it's had it's had the opposite effect so why is the program still in existence why why why are we actually seeing more military equipment being transferred into our community there's there's a study that was done by one of our coalition partners in our 1033 strategy list that indicated that the Biden administration unfortunately uh in just in the last five months alone the the rate at which the military equipment has been transferred to law enforcement has has increased under this administration and that's been really disappointing so um just wanted to flag those points and and any sort of efforts you know you can do and continuing to push the administration to act and issue an executive order would be thank you any other comments you want to make before we move to our capital calling and emailing party closing perhaps you know calls to action but those who are listening to the live stream okay I do actually have one on Monday Cory Bush introduced a really exciting piece of policing legislation um this legislation is based off of the breathe act which was developed and created by organizers with the movement for black lives um and the book the bill that representative bush introduced is called the people's response act um which would establish a division on community safety within the department of health and human services um that focuses and would call upon non-police first responders for emergency situations um and developing alternative responses to police this is a really exciting bill and probably the most progressive bill we've ever seen on policing on the federal level so definitely keep an eye out for that and any actions around that thank you and I I think that even though we don't have uh much of a majority in the house and we barely control the senate and we have all these corporate democrats that when you introduce bills and you get a lot of co-sponsors it does send a message to the administration so there's value in that is there any just uh is there a link to that legislation somebody just asked uh is there a bill number and also I want to call people's attention to what page put in there about a 1033 report that aclu released last month it's an excellent report uh people want to take a look at that and also if you're looking for bills you know you can go to congress dot dove and you can put in Cory bush and see what comes up if it's not there then it hasn't even given a bill number yet thank you yes do you ask me to call to action as we wrap this up sure I would say uh two quick calls uh to action would be making sure that your house members or co-sponsors on hank johnson's 1033 bill as well as representative belasca's 1033 repeal bill all right thank you so much for joining us yes rest of strategist and page bananas with the aclu we really appreciate all that you shared yes let's unmute and thank them we do that thank you so much wonderful work yes