Inclusive Action for the City stands in solidarity with the Movement for Black Lives
Friends,
As we write this statement, thousands of Americans in Los Angeles and other cities are protesting and mourning the killing of George Floyd and the all too frequent extrajudicial killings of our Black neighbors by police. Along with them, our organization is proclaiming that “Black Lives Matter!”
What is painfully clear about the murder of George Floyd is that we have yet to reckon with the need to eradicate racist policies and infrastructures in our society. These are not isolated incidents. We’ve seen them take place here in our beloved city despite the advocacy and pleas of Black communities for decades. In fact, this violence is seemingly rewarded by our governments with consistent budget increases and minimal accountability. In addition to an unprecedented global pandemic, our country’s original virus of racism and white supremacy continues to fester.
The racism and violence Black communities experience is not always filmed, and manifests itself in various forms. We see it in how our city balks at investing meaningfully in supporting entrepreneurs like street vendors, in the sluggishness of our region to build affordable housing, in the volume of payday lending storefronts that operate unchecked in Black and brown communities, in the health disparities that torment our communities, and most visibly in the deployment of law enforcement to criminalize our communities.
Collective calls for justice on all these fronts are met by elected officials with requests for meetings to talk about when it will be the “right time” to do the right thing. We wait patiently for government leaders to stand with us. We write letters outlining policy recommendations. We turn out for public hearings and follow the rules of engagement - waiting in line to give our 1-minute public comment for the record. When we organize our communities to participate, they are often met with disdain, a lack of translation equipment, and even mockery by those voted into office to serve us. It feels like elected officials don’t really want to hear from us and their actions too often show they haven’t listened to us.
The future of our cities requires the courage to transform our systems and center the experiences of Black people.
To begin, we’re calling on the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Garcetti to take tangible steps toward eliminating police brutality; eliminating the over-policing of Black people; and creating fully transparent measures for holding police accountable. We are also asking our elected leaders to urgently act to address other systems that perpetuate racism: a speculative real estate market that gentrifies low-income communities, housing policies that discourage affordability, financial institutions that leave out the vast majority of Black entrepreneurs, and public hearings and processes designed to make it almost impossible for working people to participate.
We believe that change will begin by transforming our current priorities and how we invest in them. In that spirit, we are joining the growing chorus of residents and community-serving groups who are reasonably demanding the reallocation of public resources we invest in the Los Angeles Police Department. Why? The current budget proposal allocates 54% of the City’s total discretionary budget to the police department, a department that has met many community members we serve with violence and harassment. This has become simply a part of life for too many of our Black neighbors whose cries for accountability are met with silence. This is unacceptable. We are asking that the City adopt a budget informed by the needs of the people, repurposing some of the resources that would otherwise go to more policing and directing them to support housing, small business development, education, and other priorities that are often first to get cut in a budget crisis.
To us, this makes sense. We should invest in what works and disinvest in what doesn’t. Policing is not working, especially for Black people.
The team at Inclusive Action stands with Black lives, and standing with Black lives means standing with their needs and priorities too. Join us! Black Lives Matter!
Sincerely,
The Staff and Board of Directors
Inclusive Action for the City