Recap of Peaceful Streets Project-Austin Community Meeting

I. Theme: non-political direct action we can all take to combat police abuse and create more peace in the streets.

What is Peaceful Streets Project? The Peaceful Streets Project is an all-volunteer, grassroots effort uniting people to end the institutional violence taking place on our streets. Through community organizing and direct action tactics, the Peaceful Streets Project seeks to support communities in understanding, exercising, and standing up for our rights.

Vision: A society free of state-sponsored institutionalized violence.

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.

II. We’re committed to creating safe spaces for activist and community
No talk of using violence for political change
No insults. Ad hominem
No sexism. No racism. No hate.

PSP has suffered from this type of negativity in the past and we are currently working on institutions and safeguards, including a dispute resolution policy as well as a code of conduct for our communication channels and meetings, to prevent this type of behavior in the future.

III. Why PSP is holding community meetings?

John Bush was inspired to organized a series of community meetings in order to provide a juxtaposition to the meetings being put on by community leaders close to the establishment that offer false solutions that rely on the very institutions responsible for the abuse and murder.

See this Liberty Beat story about the East Side Coalition Community Meeting – http://thelibertybeat.com/community-meeting-on-apd-use-of-lethal-force-offers-no-real-solutions/

IV. The State solutions offered by those close with establishment

• Don’t run from the cops
• Use the police monitors office
• Have faith in the internal affairs process
• Vote
• Lobby local, state, and federal officials
• Have faith in the District Attorney’s Office
• Lobby the City Council

All of these solutions have one thing in common, they all rely on the state to hold itself accountable!

V. Peaceful Streets Project recommended solutions

To fulfill our mission, the Peaceful Streets Project is undertaking the following actions:

• Know Your Rights Trainings
• Police Abuse Complaint Department
• Cop Watch
• Annual Police Accountability Summit

Other solutions discussed

• Legal action; sue the city, APD, Chief in personal capacity
• Oathkeepers style outreach to APD
• Know Your Rights and Police Abuse Complain Department outreach to homeless communityTarget the chief as he is responsible for discipline in APD to have him fired
• Spread Know Your Rights DVDs throughout the community
• Peaceful Streets Dove Springs initiative
• Find attorneys to help activists and people standing up for their rights

VII. Takeaways

If people want to volunteer for any PSP actions, like organizing know your rights trainings, copwatch, police abuse complaint dept, or general outreach, email us at peacefulstreets@gmail.com

Link up with us to get involved in doing outreach to APD

Help us find attorneys that will help with the cause and provide pro-bono or inexpensive support!

Abel Gomez is organizing Peaceful Streets Dove Springs and will be doing community outreach and organizing in order to create safer streets free of institutional violence. Marita Heyden also lives in Dove Springs and will be assisting along with many others who indicated they wanted to help at the meeting.

CopWatch Scheduled for Sat October 5th to be led by Stephen Sheftall
Know Your Rights Training at Brave New Books October 9th 6:30 – 8:30
Police Abuse Complaint Department being organized by Richard Boland to possibly be set outside of Del Valle Jail.

Help John Bush organize a PSP Community Meeting in the next month on the East Side of Austin.