Dear Friend: 

Did you know that if you are killed by a stranger that there is a 1 in 3 chance that it was a police officer? 

The notion that police officers keep us safe has been proven to be a myth over and over again and yet the police still receive huge proportions of city budgets, while community services languish without nearly the funding they need to thrive.

Oakland City Council will vote on their Mid-Cycle Budget on Tuesday, July 21, and Berkeley City Council will decide about a 50% budget cut of their police force TODAY, July 14. 

WHAT CAN YOU DO?

IN OAKLAND

Join the Last Phone Bank Before the Vote. On Thursday, July 16 from 6-8 p.m. via Zoom. Join us for the final push for this year’s Oakland budget! Expand our power and bring more people into the fight for our community!

Flyering & Postering Oakland. Join us this Saturday at Lake Merritt from noon-4 p.m. to let people all over Oakland know what they can do to support defunding the police. If you want to start flyering now, here’s the link to the flyer PDF’s so feel free to print them and start putting these up in your neighborhood! 

Keep sharing email and call scripts with your Oakland friends and family so they can tell their city council members that the people are serious about defunding OPD. We want the City Council to vote for councilperson Bas’ proposal to defund OPD by $25 million now with clear guidelines to defund by more than 50% in the future. 

We will be sending you further details on the City Council meeting at a later date in another email. Keep an eye out for that one! 

IN BERKELEY

Last night a group of Berkeley High students camped out for 10 hours to pressure the Berkeley City Council to defund the police. Support their efforts:

City Council Meeting Today at 6 p.m. Submit an e-comment or call into the live meeting. 

Email or Call Your City Councilperson. If you live in Berkeley, find your council person here.

Solidarity forever!

Chairs of EBDSA's Defund OPD Campaign
Neha, Kara and Ruwi

P.S. To learn more about the Defund OPD campaign launched 5 years ago by APTP, check out this great webinar!