25 Jul
2013
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Press Release: 2nd Annual Peaceful Streets Project Police Accountability Summit

The media and the public are invited to join the Peaceful Streets Project at our 2nd Annual Police Accountability Summit from 10 am to 4 pm on August 17th at the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center in Austin, TX.

The Peaceful Streets Project is an all-volunteer, grassroots effort that seeks to end police abuse and hold police accountable by empowering communities to exercise their rights and stand up for one another. Over the past year the Peaceful Streets Project has led over a dozen know your rights training sessions, provided a platform for scores of victims of police abuse to tell their stories, organized over 100 cop watches, and grown from a local effort in Austin into a national movement with a dozen chapters from Manchester, NH to Honolulu, HI.

The 2nd Annual Peaceful Streets Project Police Accountability Summit will be an entertaining, educational and empowering experience for the community, and will serve as a celebration of our wildly successful year in the struggle against police abuse. We will be bringing in activists, speakers and entertainers from all over the country for this powerful event.

The keynote speaker for the summit is Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party and long time police accountability activist. In an attempt to aid African-American victims of police brutality and racial prejudice, Seale and the Black Panthers pioneered the practice of cop watch, often times carrying rifles. As part of his speech, Seale will talk about how the camera is a more powerful weapon against police abuse than a rifle is.

Other headliners include Radley Balko, writer for the Huffington Post and author of the new book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Force, Carlos Miller of PhotographyIsNotACrime.com, Pete Eyre of CopBlock.org, and Antonio Buehler and John Bush, co-founders of the Peaceful Streets Project. Entertainers include B. Dolan who will perform “Film the Police” and Tatiana Moroz who will perform a song written for the Peaceful Streets Project.

In addition to hearing from speakers and entertainers, participants will have the opportunity to listen to a panel covering family pets killed by law enforcement, engage in a debate over whether we should try to reform the police or abolish them, participate in a Know Your Rights training session, and receive hands on training to learn tactics for filming police. Food and refreshments will be provided, and there will be free childcare on site for families who attend.

The facebook event page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/events/465581550193801.

Peaceful Streets Project Mission: Through community organizing, engaging in non-political and non-violent direct action tactics, and utilizing new technologies, the Peaceful Streets Project seeks to bring about a cultural shift where individuals understand their rights and hold law enforcement officials accountable, and communities protect and serve each other.

So, what do you think?