Austin City Council is holding a virtual emergency meeting this Thursday, June 4 at 3 p.m. to address the police response to this past weekend’s protests against police brutality and murder of Black lives. Please follow the link below to email all members of city council and ask them to defund the police and cease violence against protesters. You can copy/paste the below template or write your own.

EMAIL ALL CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS HERE (CITY COUNCIL WEBSITE APPEARS TO BE WORKING AGAIN!)

INDIVIDUAL MEMBER EMAIL ADDRESSES:

District 2 Council Member Delia Garza: delia.garza@austintexas.gov

District 3 Council Member Sabino "Pio" Renteria: sabino.renteria@austintexas.gov

District 4 Council Member Gregorio "Greg" Casar: gregorio.casar@austintexas.gov

District 5 Council Member Ann Kitchen: ann.kitchen@austintexas.gov

District 7 Council Member Leslie Pool: leslie.pool@austintexas.gov

District 9 Council Member Kathie Tovo: kathie.tovo@austintexas.gov,

**Please let us know if you have email addresses for the missing districts!**

You can also testify at the meeting via phone call. The deadline to register is Wednesday, June 3 at 12 p.m. You can find instructions for how to register to speak HERE.

You can watch the meeting take place on Thursday HERE.

Alt link to watch the meeting: http://media.swagit.com/austintx/atxn1/

Each Council Member will have 2 minutes to share their thoughts starting at 3 p.m. and then we will hear speaker testimonies. 334 speakers signed up! The discussion will then continue Friday morning at 9 a.m.

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Email Template:

Dear City Council Members,

My name is ________ and I am appalled at the APD’s use of violent force against protesters this weekend who were rightfully demanding justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Mike Ramos, and countless other victims of anti-Black police murder. The majority of the protesters were peaceful and exercising their constitutional rights when the APD unleashed tear gas and bean bag rounds on the crowds.

Among multiple others, APD shot a 20-year-old Black man, a 16-year-old Latino man and a pregnant Black woman with these “less lethal” rounds. The mother is still recovering, and the two men are in the hospital in critical condition, fighting for their lives. Clearly, calling these methods of force “less lethal” is nothing more than wordplay designed to free the police of any accountability for their violence. The officers who shot into the crowds remain on duty.

APD also employed tear gas to disperse protesters — how is it possible that a weapon that is banned during wartime by the Geneva Convention is still legal to use against civilians? The APD initially denied using tear gas, claiming it was only “smoke” until enough first-hand accounts forced them to tell the truth. When clarifying their actions in this weekend’s protests, APD claimed via Twitter that “the safety of the community is always our priority.” This does not sound like community safety to me, and I implore you to critically examine these vague statements as the propaganda they are.

And while APD alleges that a few protesters threw objects like water bottles at officers, let us remember that, regardless, protesters have little to no protection compared to the full protective riot gear and arsenal of the APD.

Make no mistake — these are not the actions of “a few bad apples” but the result of a systematically racist organization that was originally designed as a slave patrol to protect white property owners against the recently emancipated Black population. We continue to see this institutional racism within the APD through the blatant disparities demonstrated in the recent city report published this January. While the Black population in Austin is about 8%, they made up 15% of drivers pulled over by police and 25% of people subsequently arrested in 2018. These disparities indicate a deep-rooted problem that calls for more dramatic action than bias training and reform.

APD currently takes up nearly 40% of the city’s budget, sucking valuable resources away from other agencies that truly promote community safety like Austin Public Health and Neighborhood Housing Community Development. This city has a widespread history of racism, from the physical segregation via the construction of I-35 to the recent years of gentrification. It’s long past time for Austin City Council to show up for its Black constituents.

I call on you to truly protect the community you serve and take action to defund the APD.

Black Lives Matter.