I’m? on? strike? today? – which from all the extra question marks is a big thing to say, but here we are. I’m not sure I’m yet in a place where I want to do a lot of writing about how I got here, only that I took today to do research and write to officials.

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FRIDAYYYY

A post shared by flyers olympia (@flyersolympia) on Jun 10, 2020 at 7:06pm PDT

(more information from Black Lives Matter Seattle)

So I’m going to drop a bunch of my research here in case it is useful for others, because looking stuff up is what I do. In no particular order:

• Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) affiliates (Olympia’s is all on Facebook, alas, which I refuse to go back to)
• Info about WA civil asset forfeiture laws (it’s bad)
• DoD page with spreadsheet of all local LEO that have military equipment
• The short fraught history of the ‘Thin Blue Line’ American flag
• After the cops (scifi cartoonist imagines agencies that might come after police abolition)
• Confessions of a former bastard cop (is it a real cop? I don’t know, but food for thought)
• Chart of reform vs abolition steps (follow the money is apparently ALWAYS the word for the day)
• Email for BLM (side note: if you don’t live in one of the largest 100 cities in America, it’s REALLY HARD to get information from some of these sites with stats or actions, which is really frustrating!)
• Very long thread on Elinor Ostrom’s policing research

Notably, this is mostly cop stuff, which is important but insufficient. It’s what I’m focusing on today but maybe not what I want to focus on long term.

The rest of these links should be considered somewhat aspirational, for my own reference and future work. (I know, I have Pinboard, but it’s a mess. This is also a mess, but at least it’s on one page for me to go back to.)

• Indivisible has a whole list of actions to take
• Decolonizing Decisions: an inclusive framework for collaboration (Google Slides)
• Power dynamics and inclusion in virtual meetings
• This piece from Brain Traffic was particularly thoughtful and got me thinking
• Long thread of stuff for thinking about racism in fandom
• Detour spotting for white anti-racists (PDF)
• One of the 8 million reading lists (this is the one that happened to be in my tabs, and also it’s from an LA bookstore) (I have read The Warmth of Other Suns, and it’s so so so important)
• Scaffolding for anti-racism resources (Google Doc) (appreciate that it organizes resources, prompts, and actions based on internal mindset!)
• Do the work (I originally was looking at the “Reflect” section, but the whole thing has info for being a better ally to Black people)
• Thread about going from current to systemic actions

I’m doing a lot of thinking, and I’m trying also to take action, in ways that I can handle right now. I want to be accountable without making it a me me me thing, which is tricky, and why I’m writing it all out in my own space.