| Dear Friends, This Monday, more than 100 people gathered outside the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct for a National Day of Outrage to demand justice for Atatiana Jefferson, Charleena Lyles, and numerous black women killed at the hands of the police. Family members, faith leaders, and racial justice advocates all spoke powerfully, calling for police accountability and real community engagement for justice and healing to be possible. As part of this call, each speaker echoed in different ways the local Day of Outrage demands for the City of Seattle to fund restorative justice not mass incarceration: “We demand a shift from police and prisons as frontline approaches to violence and all other social problems to a meaningful investment in the solutions which actually keep us safe. This includes investments in community-based restorative justice programs, affordable and transitional housing, mental health and trauma care supports, wrap around services, drug addiction treatment programs, and employment and educational opportunity.” Your voice matters! Right now Seattle City Council is discussing the City budget. NOW is the time for Councilmembers to PUT THEIR MONEY WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS! FUND RESTORATIVE JUSTICE NOT MASS INCARCERATION! |
| Email Seattle City Councilmembers Right Now!! |
| Tell them to support Councilmember Kshama Sawant’s budget amendments to fund the following community-based restorative justice programs: *$300,000 for Community Passageways’ Youth Consortium program to develop black and brown youth from diverse social, economic, language, ethnic, and educational backgrounds into politically engaged and active community in their community. *$122,600 for community-based Creative Justice programs that use art to empower youth of color to speak truth to power, center youth voice and solutions, and build supportive organized community to dismantle the school to prison and/or deportation pipeline. *$100,000 for the youth-generated Rainier Beach Action Coalition’s Corner Greeters program, a non-arrest crime reduction, autonomous community safety project that transforms spaces that are most prevalent for youth crime and organizes around a number of issues including Restorative Justice and neighborhood beautification. Seattle City Councilmembers have talked a lot about Zero Youth Detention, even as the $210 million New Youth Jail nears completion. It’s time for them to fund these restorative justice programs. Please email Seattle City Councilmembers RIGHT NOW! Explain to them in your own words and drawing on your own experiences why you think the City should fund the Community Passageways/Youth Consortium, Creative Justice, and Corner Greeters restorative justice programs and not mass incarceration. For real progress on police accountability, we need an independent, elected oversight board with full power over the police, as called for by the national Movement for Black Lives. Please join the People’s Budget movement to build a movement to win Restorative Justice funding and other critical demands for workers, people of color, and other marginalized communities (see leaflet below.) Solidarity, Kshama Sawant |
