AgdaPkt 2020-10-26 Joint SA PFA - Laserfiche WebLink

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From: Livey Beha To: GRP -City Council Subject: Public Comment on Item 8.A. for city council meeting on the evening of 10/26/2020 Date: Monday, October 26, 2020 6:33:22 PM Content Warning: Suicide is discussed Dear City Council Members, I know you're going to pass this budget regardless of how scintillating our public comments are tonight. So here's just some food for thought: Six months of desperately trying to communicate the needs of the community to you. Contrary to what was previously implied, we are not some random group of friends who all believe the same thing. We are a broad coalition of community members, with racial and economic backgrounds as diverse as Redwood City who believe that we need a new vision of public safety in this city. We've come to you meeting after meeting and listening session after listening session, asking you to reinvest the money currently in the police force into life affirming services in our community. I thank you for engaging in this dialogue. However, it's clear that the moral principles we have tried at every step to instill into the dialogue have become buzzwords, and the movement for racial justice in this city is at risk of becoming bureaucratized into obscurity. When I hear about the equity proposals put forth by the city I am reminded that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once warned us that the white moderate is the greatest stumbling block to freedom, saying, "1 must confess that over the past few years 1 have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. 1 have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but 1 cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. " Plenty of my fellow community members will give you very detailed lists of many of the inconsistencies, potential challenges within the budget and expenditures that we feel are unnecessary for our community at this time. I also appreciate that many of the community's asks regarding the police have been accommodated including what I feel will be most important in our continued conversations, the data collection and publication initiative, which will allow us to have a common language and understanding on what works and