AN ACTIVIST S DIARY,
Saturday May 01, 2021 - 11:26:00 AM Where I grew up, May 1 was a celebration of spring with leaving surprise baskets of candy on doorsteps and then running away. I didn’t learn about May 1 as International Worker’s Day until years later after I left that little town in Minnesota. May 1 is also the birthday of a friend who caught COVID-19 in January 2021 and is still struggling with what we call “long haulers syndrome.” An attendant for her daughter went partying over New Years and brought it in. I am sharing the story of my friend as the COVID-19 pandemic is not over even as the incidence of new cases in the US is dropping and California is looking good. For some like my friend COVID may never be over. Please do all you can to persuade unvaccinated 16 year olds and older in your circle of friends to get their COVID-19 vaccines and complete the two shot regimen.
Alameda County’s faltering mental health system needs reform
COUNTY AFFAIRS: US Department of Justice report reveals undue reliance on Santa Rita Jail for psychiatric treatment
Rachel Lee/Staff
One of the largest providers of mental health services in Alameda County is not a community clinic or treatment center but a jail. And not just any jail: Alameda County Santa Rita Jail, a facility notorious for dangerous and inhumane conditions.
For decades, as access to psychiatric care has dwindled, jails and prisons nationwide have become de facto destinations for people with mental health issues.
Alameda County is no exception. Almost half of the people currently held in Santa Rita Jail struggle with mental health issues. One quarter face severe mental illness. The situation is dire: A recent report by the U.S. Department of Justice, or DOJ, deemed the mental health services provided by Alameda County so abysmal as to be potentially unconstitutional.
The Voices of the People in the Center
One of the RPS Task Force s working groups focused on community engagement, including the strategies used by the task force itself to involve not just a broad range of Austinites, but those most directly harmed [who] stand in the center of the engagement and design of our recommendations. On April 10, after the task force released its draft recommendation, it held a virtual community listening session (with simultaneous translation in nine languages), which collected testimony from more than 150 Austinites and which was viewed on livestream by more than 1,200 others. In its report, the task force presents the following top 10 list as a snapshot of what we heard :
Art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images (Photos by David Brendan Hall and John Anderson)
At their April 20 work session, the members of the Austin City Council certainly sounded thankful for the recommendations the City-Community Reimagining Public Safety Task Force had just laid at their feet. Vanessa Fuentes expressed her gratitude. Ann Kitchen promised to study the recommendations. Alison Alter praised the task force members for pouring themselves into the work.
Those whom they d praised – the community activists the task force comprises – were quite untouched. With the three-hour meeting wrapping up, they wanted to know where they stood. It s imperative that we see the city manager s office, staff, council, and the city as a whole make a public commitment, said Monica Guzmán of Go Austin/Vamos Austin.
City auditor’s office finds racial disparities in Berkeley police stops
Karin Goh/File
The city auditor’s office presented an audit of Berkeley Police Department that found racial disparities in stops and response times. The audit used computer-aided dispatch to analyze more than 360,000 events involving police between 2015-2019.
The Berkeley city auditor’s office released an audit of the city’s police department focusing on racial disparities in stops and response times to incidents involving mentally ill or unhoused individuals Thursday.
In response to the national conversation on race and policing sparked by the killing of George Floyd, Berkeley City Councilmember Ben Bartlett proposed collecting data about police activities as part of a process to discuss police reform. The proposal was later incorporated into Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguín’s Safety for All: George Floyd Community Safety Act, which was passed by the city in July 2020.