A quick update, though we'll have more details to share soon.
From my perspective, last night went really really well. We exceed building capacity at The Records Department, so the "No More Flocks to Give" presentation ended up as being a really great discussion with 50-60 of us in the parking lot. Kelly and Michael were ready for such a contigency and though all our plans changed, it still went off without a hitch. They're fantastic people who really care about their community and I feel lucky that I get to work with them.
Then we made our way over to City Hall. Again we exceeded capacity of the council chambers, so after a short recess we moved over to the opera house. The opera house was staffed (big thanks to the opera house staff for the accommodation) and staged showing the city was prepared for a large crowd, but for some reason we had to go through the motions of putting 2 too many people inside of chambers to trigger the move instead of just having the meeting at the OH to begin with.
During public comment we submitted our petition, officially with 1,926 signatures, followed by ~50ish commenters (i lost count) again making really powerful and thoughtful comments. Unfortunately, again, our words seemed to fall on deaf ears. Melissa, Darrin and Natalie indicated they were all on board to have the issue added to a future agenda for consideration. Again, Mayor Turner shut that down, speaking for Gregg and Bob (who seemed to have lost their voices) and declaring that since 3 is not a majority, that will not happen. Not entirely unexpected, but dissapointing none-the-less. A fraction of self-reflection would've been welcomed, but Tom and Mike seemed to treat our distrust and fear about the Flock Safety contracts as a personal attack or something and just dug in.
So no progress legislatively, but the evening made it clear to us that this is the right fight to fight. Unfortunately, our 3 allies on the city council are the only ones up for re-election this cycle, and half of the others have indicated that they will hang it up in 29 when their term ends so applying pressure by threatening replacement isn't as powerful a threat as it could be. That doesn't mean we can’t make them regret their decisions, and we plan on working those levers as much as possible. We're going to make sure that when people are turned off by this no-trust, mass surveillance infrastructure foisted upon our community, they know that it was Gregg Hanson, Tom Neirman, Bob Seegers and Mike Turner who thought that they knew better.
We're going to continue outreach and having informational sessions. We've got plans to partner with area activist and political groups who we're aligned with on this issue (everyone is aligned on this issue as far as i know except for the 5 that are supposed to be representing us or keeping us safe). Protests and boycotts are on the table. We're going to explore other options to proceed on the legislative side as well. This is all new to us, so to find so many people willing to help us and provide support is encouraging and very appreciated.
There's a lot to unpack so we'll have more details soon. I'd expect there to be media coverage of the evening which we will amplify as much as we can.
If anyone wants to get involved, please reach out through the website or socials or whatever. We've got more work to do and the more hands we have, the better.
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