{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "Austin DSA",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/austin-dsa",
"title": "Stop the Cops - Write the Mayor and Council",
"thumbnail_url": "https://actionnetwork.org//images/generic_facebook.jpg",
"description": "Instructions: Please use the “Find a council district by address” tool on the page linked here to look up your City Council district and use the below text to email your City Council member demanding they vote down the police contract on Oct. 10th. Feel free to copy + paste the entire email, or copy just one section and rewrite it to emphasize a certain point you want them to understand. Please write your own subject line! Sometimes the receiving email will thread emails with the same subject line to make them look like one email, which can make it easier to ignore a mass emailing campaign like this. If everyone writes their own subject line they will show up separately and create more inbox pandemonium. Draft email to City Council member below: Hi, my name is ___ and I’m a resident of D__. I’m a voter, I knock doors, and I talk to my neighbors and coworkers about the issues in our community. I’m emailing to urge my Council member to vote against the police contract Austin City Council is slated to consider on October 10th. This handshake deal was brought to the table through an embarrassing and disgraceful process. Sarah Metcalf Griffin and Lowell Denton were selected to represent the City in negotiations with the Austin Police Association over the police contract, and these individuals have been anything but tough bargainers for Austin taxpayers. Both Griffin and Denton are either former or current attorneys at Rampage Law, the firm hired by the City of Uvalde after a school shooter massacred 21 people, mostly children, while Uvalde Police did nothing. Further, Denton himself was disqualified from working as outside legal counsel for the City of Austin in a 2022 police-whistleblower lawsuit, as reported in the Austin Chronicle. Rampage Lawyers defend some of the most violent and unscrupulous police officers in the country, and now they are being paid millions in taxpayer dollars to hand a sweetheart deal to the police association and undermine the Austin Police Oversight Act. In 2021, over 68% of Austinites voted against increasing police. Again in 2023, voters defied the Austin Police Association’s lies and deceptive tactics and passed the Austin Police Oversight Act with nearly 80% of the vote. Most City Council members and the Mayor publicly endorsed the APOA, including Mayor Watson, Natasha Harper-Madison, Vanessa Fuentes, Jose Velasquez, Chito Vela, Ryan Alter, Paige Ellis, and Zo Qadri. Congress members Lloyd Doggett and Greg Casar endorsed it as well. It is indefensible for the "g file" to be made public only starting now, rather than retrospectively. It is disrespectful to the families of those killed at the hands of police and the individuals victimized by police misconduct because those are the very people who have led the fight for police accountability. It makes our communities markedly less safe for officers who have perpetrated misconduct to be less scrutinized by virtue of having executed their wrongdoing before a certain arbitrary date, and Austinites will not accept this. The financial elements of this deal do not add up and spell disaster for our community. This would be Austin’s most expensive police contract in the City’s history, providing higher raises than ever before - 8% pay increases are unheard of for any City worker. According to the City of Austin’s wage study, APD already offers the highest salaries in the state even before considering the $15,000 hiring bonus paid to officers and the $18M increase previously allocated to APD. This contract locks our City into a permanent budget expenditure that we cannot sustain without cutting other crucial City programs and services. Under Texas state law, police department budgets can not be decreased once raised. ADP already receives 40% of our City’s budget - why haven't the EMS workers, the Firefighters, and the other City of Austin workers been treated with the same coddling and ability to bargain for raises? Why do countless programs that have (unlike the police) shown great success routinely struggle for a tiny fraction of the resources City Council is willing to offer APD? With the recently approved I-35 expansion, the City is expected to spend $50M annually on maintenance and operations for nearly ten years. How do City leaders plan to afford this additional strain on City coffers while simultaneously paying for this police contract? Which City workers and departments will you cut if you support this contract? We know based on past experience that the enormous bill would be laid at the doorstep of Austin taxpayers, with massive tax increases year over year. Even then, we can assume that crucial City departments and workers, most of whom already struggle with too few resources, would also be cut in service of giving police historic raises. The City of Austin has been a trailblazer nationally in piloting alternative and more effective methods of addressing non-violent crises, such as establishing a new option for 911 calls that dispatches social workers and substance abuse specialists when appropriate. The backroom deal that produced this police contract ignores the priorities your constituents have made clear at the ballot box, and it doubles down on outmoded strategies for ensuring public safety. I urge you to oppose the police contract in your vote on October 10th.",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/forms/stop-the-cops-write-the-mayor-and-council"
}