Wednesday night, police in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, shot and killed Philando Castile, a 32-year-old black man, during a traffic stop. The day before, the police shot Alton Sterling, who was killed in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The relentless toll of graphic videos of people dying can make the issue seem hopeless — police shootings stem from two of the oldest, most intractable American problems, racism and gun violence.
But police are controlled at the local level. And local politics is also where individuals really can make a difference, as Ijeoma Oluo, an editor at large for the Establishment, pointed out on Twitter. So here’s what you can do:
I'm so tired. I want to just go to bed but shit. I just have to get this all out there because what if you don't hear anybody else say it.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
1) Do you know your city's police accountability procedures?
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
2) Do your police have any provisions for citizen oversight?
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
3) Is there a civilian oversight panel to review police shootings and misconduct?
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
4) if you do not know this you can google your city with police accountability/review procedures
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
5) what is the threshold for indicting police for misconduct? Example: in Seattle (where I live) you have to prove willful malice.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
6) Do your police have body cameras?
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
7) When you do your research, if you don't like the answers to these questions, if they do not hold police accountable, here's what u can do
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
8) Demand your city council member make police reform a priority. If they won't, vote them out - recruit friends to do the same.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
9) Demand that your mayor do the same. If he/she won't vote them out & recruit friends to do the same.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
10) Do not give money or votes to any candidate who will not make police reform a priority. Make sure they know that is a requirement
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
11) Demand that your sheriff and local DA's office do the same.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
12) just google your city name + city council - all the contact info should be there.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
13) along with phone numbers, email addresses - all the info u need to remind them that black lives WILL matter whether they want it or not
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
14) Do this today, do this tomorrow, do this every day like your life depends on it - ours actually does.
— Ijeoma Oluo (@IjeomaOluo) July 7, 2016
Most people know more about national politics than local politics. It’s easier to name the president or your member of Congress than your city council representative. But local officials oversee things that can be matters of life and death — not just police and courts but public transportation, housing policy, and so on.
Voter turnout in local elections is pathetically low, around 20 percent of registered voters — or about 15 percent of adults who are eligible to vote. So here’s an even more basic place to start: Verify your voter registration status and make sure you’re actually registered in the state where you live. Find out when your elections are. Then figure out how to go about making sure your elected representatives are addressing your issues.
Watch: Why recording the police is so important
