By Patrisse Cullors
.
.
LA Justice Defenders confront Los Angeles County’s top politicians, including LA District Attorney, Jackie Lacie, who has refused to prosecute police officers who killed civilians.
RESIST is a 12 episode docuseries that follows the grassroots work of the intersectional organizations fighting the Los Angeles county’s $3.5 billion jail expansion plan in 2018. RESIST examines the issues of cash bail, unlawful arrest, over-policing of Black and brown neighborhoods, and mass incarceration.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:07
– Good morning. My name is Patrisse Cullors.
00:10
I’m one of the founders of Dignity and Power Now,
00:13
and one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matter.
00:17
– We’re asking you as Board of Supervisors
00:18
to imagine something different, and put resources
00:21
into a new way of looking at our communities.
00:25
– Members of Justice LA have consistently been speaking
00:27
to the Board of Supervisors
00:29
against the 3.5 billion dollar jail plan.
00:31
– There is a public health crisis,
00:34
and that looks like the death of Black people,
00:37
almost every 28 hours…
00:41
That’s a state of emergency.
00:44
(traffic passing)
00:50
The LA County Board of Supervisors are in charge
00:53
of the 88 cities that are inside of LA County.
00:57
They are in charge of the budgets
00:59
for all of the major government offices
01:02
such as the Sheriff’s Department, DCFS,
01:04
the court’s systems.
01:06
The County Board of Supervisors
01:07
will be deciding if they are going
01:09
to give us alternatives to incarceration
01:13
or give us the 3.5 billion dollar jails.
01:16
The LA County Board of Supervisors
01:19
are Hilda Solis, who used to work
01:21
for the Obama administration.
01:22
– The primary purpose of the motion today
01:24
is to reduce crime by removing barriers
01:28
that prevent men and women from leaving incarceration.
01:32
(Patrisse): Supervisor Mark-Ridley Thomas
01:33
has been a huge ally for us,
01:36
but he has not said he’ll stop the jail plan.
01:39
We have Kathryn Barger,
01:41
who is not an ally at all.
01:43
She has taken over one of the most
01:46
right-wing seats in our county.
01:48
We have supervisor Kuehl,
01:50
who’s done a lot for the LGBT community.
01:52
She has historically been an ally,
01:54
but on the women’s jail,
01:56
she’s unfortunately not been on our side.
01:59
And… We have Janice Hahn.
02:02
She is also a long-time elected official,
02:04
but she comes from a long-standing family
02:06
of elected officials.
02:08
Her father was the mayor, her brother was the mayor,
02:10
– There are a lot of great organizations,
02:14
a lot of great non-profits,
02:15
who deal in second chances,
02:17
and third chances, and fourth chances.
02:19
Many of those we helped fund, and we support.
02:24
(Patrisse): Today, a few of us from Justice LA
02:26
have a meeting with supervisor Hahn
02:28
to try to gage whether she will be willing to support us
02:30
in our fight against the jail plan.
02:36
I’m hoping, and I’m praying that this elected official
02:39
stands up differently than the rest of them.
02:43
The Board of Supervisors,
02:45
they don’t want to offend
02:46
the Sheriff’s Department and the Sheriff.
02:48
And so that’s why they’re going with this jail plan,
02:50
but all of them in the same breath will say:
02:52
“We need alternatives to incarceration.”
03:01
I’ve never sat in a meeting that felt that positive.
03:04
– I hear you. – Have you?
03:05
– We cracked something. – Yeah.
03:07
– Here’s a thing that we’ve known,
03:08
working with the County.
03:10
None of them want to be the first one to do it.
03:12
They wanna make sure they have at least another ally.
03:15
– Yeah. – And if we can…
03:16
I mean, Kathryn Barger is not going to be an ally,
03:19
but we should reach out to her office anyway.
03:22
Are you also going to hit up
03:23
Kuehl’s office? – Yeah.
03:25
– I think you should basically check in with both offices.
03:27
And be like, “We had a very positive meeting
03:29
“with Hahn’s Chief of Staff and Public Safety person.
03:33
“This is what they’re saying about this, and we wanna know
03:36
“if we can revisit this conversation with you.”
03:38
I did not think that meeting was gonna go as well as it did.
03:41
We still have a long ways to go…
03:43
But both the Chief of Staff and the Justice Deputy…
03:47
really listened to us. We had a fruitful conversation.
03:50
They agreed we need alternatives to incarceration.
03:53
So I actually am feeling hopeful.
03:57
(rhythmic music)
04:03
– Wait, there’s all…
04:05
– I have check-ins, updates from all the committees,
04:07
updates on money and next steps for the jail fight campaign.
04:10
We should include updates from the Hahn meeting,
04:12
which I think was really productive.
04:13
She seemed to agree with us that these alternative programs,
04:17
specifically for mental health care,
04:20
could really be beneficial.
04:21
But again, it comes back to the community buy-in.
04:24
And I think that’s where really we come in.
04:26
(Patrisse): The biggest goal right now
04:28
is for us to make alliances with at least three of the five
04:30
Board of Supervisors.
04:31
But in the meantime, we have to keep
04:33
attacking this jail plan from as many different angles
04:36
as possible.
04:37
Next steps for this campaign…
04:40
– I think one of our challenges is to keep that momentum.
04:42
– Mm-hmm. – So that’s the hard part.
04:44
‘Cause people are gonna expect something bigger and better.
04:46
– A strategy that has worked in the past
04:48
is unseat someone.
04:50
– Yeah.
04:52
– All you have to do is file your recall paperwork,
04:55
gather enough signatures,
04:57
and it triggers a special election.
05:00
– Yes.
05:01
So you could try to unseat
05:03
Jackie Lacey to make a point.
05:05
And that’s something I think you would get…
05:07
county-wide support on,
05:09
especially if your target was someone like Lacey.
05:13
(Patrisse): District Attorney Jackie Lacey
05:15
hails from south Central LA.
05:17
But what we’ve seen over the last three years,
05:20
especially in Los Angeles is L.A.P.D.,
05:23
the LA Sheriff’s Department, continue to kill
05:25
and harm our loved ones.
05:27
And the District Attorney, who has all…
05:30
of the powers to prosecute officers,
05:33
has decided not to.
05:35
– We rejected the case for filing homicide charges
05:38
against Officer Wampler and Villegas.
05:41
We determined that, um…
05:43
the evidence supported a belief that we have that this…
05:47
and the conclusion that we’ve made,
05:49
that this shooting was made in self-defense.
05:55
(soft piano music)
05:59
(woman): Darryl Atkinson.
06:01
(crowd): Darryl Atkinson.
06:02
– Bruce Douglas Brown.
06:04
(crowd): Bruce Douglas Brown.
06:07
– Ezell Earl Ford.
06:08
(Patrisse): We thought Jackie Lacey
06:09
was going to challenge
06:11
mass criminalization in this county.
06:13
She ran on a platform that really called in
06:17
the Black community to show up.
06:18
She made serious promises to us,
06:20
and has turned her back against the community.
06:25
– In less than five years,
06:26
more than 300 people have been killed by law enforcement,
06:29
or killed in custody,
06:31
and she hasn’t prosecuted a single officer.
06:35
– I wanna thank everybody for coming out.
06:37
And we’re support each other because we need each other.
06:40
In order for us to change this, we need each other.
06:43
We can’t keep asking Jackie Lacey
06:46
to do nothing for us.
06:47
We demand you.
06:49
We are mothers. Like you’re a mother.
06:51
Your sisters and brothers,
06:53
and your family members have kids.
06:55
And if this was one of your kids,
06:56
you would be fighting just like us.
06:58
You would never stop.
07:00
– The only way that we can ever be safe,
07:03
the only way we can ever have a peaceful community,
07:07
the only way we can ever walk freely in this world
07:10
is to struggle for a more just system.
07:12
– Who’s the people? – We are!
07:14
We’re the people, and we have the power,
07:16
and we have the power to topple this.
07:19
So we’ll start by tying up fax lines and phone lines.
07:23
We understand the principle of escalation.
07:26
This whole system is in jeopardy
07:28
when it continues to treat us as if they are at war on us.
07:33
It’s not about creating better cells.
07:36
It’s about recognizing that the system itself
07:40
is hugely problematic,
07:42
and designed to keep people in cages,
07:45
to keep people targeted,
07:47
and it has to be abolished.
07:49
(Patrisse): There’s so many people in Los Angeles,
07:51
and in the country.
07:52
Who are not only against the idea
07:53
of two new jails being constructed in LA,
07:55
but who are against mass incarceration.
07:58
Our goal is to inform people
08:00
about the conditions that people face
08:02
when they are inside prisons and jails.
08:04
I believe that together, we can win this.
08:07
It may take some time, but we aren’t going to stop
08:09
until we succeed.
08:11
– No justice, no peace!
08:13
(crowd): No justice, no peace!
08:15
– No racist police!
08:17
– No racist police!
08:19
Subtitling: difuze
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want a deeper connection with our community, please join us as a Premium Member today.
Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Screenshot from video
The post Resist: Activists Confront LA’s Top Politicians Part 9 of 12 [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.
By Patrisse Cullors
.
.
LA Justice Defenders confront Los Angeles County’s top politicians, including LA District Attorney, Jackie Lacie, who has refused to prosecute police officers who killed civilians.
RESIST is a 12 episode docuseries that follows the grassroots work of the intersectional organizations fighting the Los Angeles county’s $3.5 billion jail expansion plan in 2018. RESIST examines the issues of cash bail, unlawful arrest, over-policing of Black and brown neighborhoods, and mass incarceration.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:07
– Good morning. My name is Patrisse Cullors.
00:10
I’m one of the founders of Dignity and Power Now,
00:13
and one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matter.
00:17
– We’re asking you as Board of Supervisors
00:18
to imagine something different, and put resources
00:21
into a new way of looking at our communities.
00:25
– Members of Justice LA have consistently been speaking
00:27
to the Board of Supervisors
00:29
against the 3.5 billion dollar jail plan.
00:31
– There is a public health crisis,
00:34
and that looks like the death of Black people,
00:37
almost every 28 hours…
00:41
That’s a state of emergency.
00:44
(traffic passing)
00:50
The LA County Board of Supervisors are in charge
00:53
of the 88 cities that are inside of LA County.
00:57
They are in charge of the budgets
00:59
for all of the major government offices
01:02
such as the Sheriff’s Department, DCFS,
01:04
the court’s systems.
01:06
The County Board of Supervisors
01:07
will be deciding if they are going
01:09
to give us alternatives to incarceration
01:13
or give us the 3.5 billion dollar jails.
01:16
The LA County Board of Supervisors
01:19
are Hilda Solis, who used to work
01:21
for the Obama administration.
01:22
– The primary purpose of the motion today
01:24
is to reduce crime by removing barriers
01:28
that prevent men and women from leaving incarceration.
01:32
(Patrisse): Supervisor Mark-Ridley Thomas
01:33
has been a huge ally for us,
01:36
but he has not said he’ll stop the jail plan.
01:39
We have Kathryn Barger,
01:41
who is not an ally at all.
01:43
She has taken over one of the most
01:46
right-wing seats in our county.
01:48
We have supervisor Kuehl,
01:50
who’s done a lot for the LGBT community.
01:52
She has historically been an ally,
01:54
but on the women’s jail,
01:56
she’s unfortunately not been on our side.
01:59
And… We have Janice Hahn.
02:02
She is also a long-time elected official,
02:04
but she comes from a long-standing family
02:06
of elected officials.
02:08
Her father was the mayor, her brother was the mayor,
02:10
– There are a lot of great organizations,
02:14
a lot of great non-profits,
02:15
who deal in second chances,
02:17
and third chances, and fourth chances.
02:19
Many of those we helped fund, and we support.
02:24
(Patrisse): Today, a few of us from Justice LA
02:26
have a meeting with supervisor Hahn
02:28
to try to gage whether she will be willing to support us
02:30
in our fight against the jail plan.
02:36
I’m hoping, and I’m praying that this elected official
02:39
stands up differently than the rest of them.
02:43
The Board of Supervisors,
02:45
they don’t want to offend
02:46
the Sheriff’s Department and the Sheriff.
02:48
And so that’s why they’re going with this jail plan,
02:50
but all of them in the same breath will say:
02:52
“We need alternatives to incarceration.”
03:01
I’ve never sat in a meeting that felt that positive.
03:04
– I hear you. – Have you?
03:05
– We cracked something. – Yeah.
03:07
– Here’s a thing that we’ve known,
03:08
working with the County.
03:10
None of them want to be the first one to do it.
03:12
They wanna make sure they have at least another ally.
03:15
– Yeah. – And if we can…
03:16
I mean, Kathryn Barger is not going to be an ally,
03:19
but we should reach out to her office anyway.
03:22
Are you also going to hit up
03:23
Kuehl’s office? – Yeah.
03:25
– I think you should basically check in with both offices.
03:27
And be like, “We had a very positive meeting
03:29
“with Hahn’s Chief of Staff and Public Safety person.
03:33
“This is what they’re saying about this, and we wanna know
03:36
“if we can revisit this conversation with you.”
03:38
I did not think that meeting was gonna go as well as it did.
03:41
We still have a long ways to go…
03:43
But both the Chief of Staff and the Justice Deputy…
03:47
really listened to us. We had a fruitful conversation.
03:50
They agreed we need alternatives to incarceration.
03:53
So I actually am feeling hopeful.
03:57
(rhythmic music)
04:03
– Wait, there’s all…
04:05
– I have check-ins, updates from all the committees,
04:07
updates on money and next steps for the jail fight campaign.
04:10
We should include updates from the Hahn meeting,
04:12
which I think was really productive.
04:13
She seemed to agree with us that these alternative programs,
04:17
specifically for mental health care,
04:20
could really be beneficial.
04:21
But again, it comes back to the community buy-in.
04:24
And I think that’s where really we come in.
04:26
(Patrisse): The biggest goal right now
04:28
is for us to make alliances with at least three of the five
04:30
Board of Supervisors.
04:31
But in the meantime, we have to keep
04:33
attacking this jail plan from as many different angles
04:36
as possible.
04:37
Next steps for this campaign…
04:40
– I think one of our challenges is to keep that momentum.
04:42
– Mm-hmm. – So that’s the hard part.
04:44
‘Cause people are gonna expect something bigger and better.
04:46
– A strategy that has worked in the past
04:48
is unseat someone.
04:50
– Yeah.
04:52
– All you have to do is file your recall paperwork,
04:55
gather enough signatures,
04:57
and it triggers a special election.
05:00
– Yes.
05:01
So you could try to unseat
05:03
Jackie Lacey to make a point.
05:05
And that’s something I think you would get…
05:07
county-wide support on,
05:09
especially if your target was someone like Lacey.
05:13
(Patrisse): District Attorney Jackie Lacey
05:15
hails from south Central LA.
05:17
But what we’ve seen over the last three years,
05:20
especially in Los Angeles is L.A.P.D.,
05:23
the LA Sheriff’s Department, continue to kill
05:25
and harm our loved ones.
05:27
And the District Attorney, who has all…
05:30
of the powers to prosecute officers,
05:33
has decided not to.
05:35
– We rejected the case for filing homicide charges
05:38
against Officer Wampler and Villegas.
05:41
We determined that, um…
05:43
the evidence supported a belief that we have that this…
05:47
and the conclusion that we’ve made,
05:49
that this shooting was made in self-defense.
05:55
(soft piano music)
05:59
(woman): Darryl Atkinson.
06:01
(crowd): Darryl Atkinson.
06:02
– Bruce Douglas Brown.
06:04
(crowd): Bruce Douglas Brown.
06:07
– Ezell Earl Ford.
06:08
(Patrisse): We thought Jackie Lacey
06:09
was going to challenge
06:11
mass criminalization in this county.
06:13
She ran on a platform that really called in
06:17
the Black community to show up.
06:18
She made serious promises to us,
06:20
and has turned her back against the community.
06:25
– In less than five years,
06:26
more than 300 people have been killed by law enforcement,
06:29
or killed in custody,
06:31
and she hasn’t prosecuted a single officer.
06:35
– I wanna thank everybody for coming out.
06:37
And we’re support each other because we need each other.
06:40
In order for us to change this, we need each other.
06:43
We can’t keep asking Jackie Lacey
06:46
to do nothing for us.
06:47
We demand you.
06:49
We are mothers. Like you’re a mother.
06:51
Your sisters and brothers,
06:53
and your family members have kids.
06:55
And if this was one of your kids,
06:56
you would be fighting just like us.
06:58
You would never stop.
07:00
– The only way that we can ever be safe,
07:03
the only way we can ever have a peaceful community,
07:07
the only way we can ever walk freely in this world
07:10
is to struggle for a more just system.
07:12
– Who’s the people? – We are!
07:14
We’re the people, and we have the power,
07:16
and we have the power to topple this.
07:19
So we’ll start by tying up fax lines and phone lines.
07:23
We understand the principle of escalation.
07:26
This whole system is in jeopardy
07:28
when it continues to treat us as if they are at war on us.
07:33
It’s not about creating better cells.
07:36
It’s about recognizing that the system itself
07:40
is hugely problematic,
07:42
and designed to keep people in cages,
07:45
to keep people targeted,
07:47
and it has to be abolished.
07:49
(Patrisse): There’s so many people in Los Angeles,
07:51
and in the country.
07:52
Who are not only against the idea
07:53
of two new jails being constructed in LA,
07:55
but who are against mass incarceration.
07:58
Our goal is to inform people
08:00
about the conditions that people face
08:02
when they are inside prisons and jails.
08:04
I believe that together, we can win this.
08:07
It may take some time, but we aren’t going to stop
08:09
until we succeed.
08:11
– No justice, no peace!
08:13
(crowd): No justice, no peace!
08:15
– No racist police!
08:17
– No racist police!
08:19
Subtitling: difuze
—
This post was previously published on YouTube.
***
If you believe in the work we are doing here at The Good Men Project and want a deeper connection with our community, please join us as a Premium Member today.
Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. Need more info? A complete list of benefits is here.
—
Photo credit: Screenshot from video
The post Resist: Activists Confront LA’s Top Politicians Part 9 of 12 [Video] appeared first on The Good Men Project.
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