Join Dignity and Power Now's Health and Wellness team on Saturday, June 20th from 12 - 1:30pm PST on Zoom for a virtual Dignity and Power Now Freedom Harvest.
Freedom Harvests are traditionally a pop-up art and wellness clinic held in front of Los Angeles County jails meant to support people visiting their incarcerated loved ones.
During this pandemic, we are bringing Freedom Harvest online. We will practice healing meditation, breath work and restorative yoga led by Sacha and Camille Christine Greenberg. Before and after, we will hold space for one another and share reflections on this experience.
Dignity and Power Now will hold a Virtual Family Meeting for families directly or indirectly impacted by incarceration trauma on Friday, June 26 at 6 pm PST.
Meeting will include health and wellness, yoga, breathing exercises, meditation, the current Civilian Oversight Commission meeting information on LASD efforts to address COVID - 19, LASD use of force policy and AD hoc committee recommendations, and the importance of public comments at the Los Angeles Civilian Oversight Commission Meetings.
On Tuesday, June 30th at Noon PST, tune in to Dignity and Power Now's second webinar with Dr. Lamia El Sadek, Managing Director of DPN and Melanie Havelin, Executive Director of the John M. Lloyd Foundation.
We'll discuss transformative leadership: advantages, methods and best practices, as well as what makes a compassionate organization and ways to shift the culture within organizations to become more compassionate. We'll also cover ways organizations can avoid falling into the trap of HIGH-ALERT-EMERGENCY-STATUS-24X7.
The budget that LA County creates over the next two weeks will determine who lives and who dies. Protecting our residents in this moment requires us to address the three-pronged crisis of COVID-19, economic and racial inequality, and incarceration.
However, LA County’s 2020-2021 proposed budget hands 42% of taxpayer dollars to an unjust policing system, which includes The Sheriff’s Department, The Probation Department, and The District Attorney’s Office. The lion’s share of that budget – $3.4 BILLION – is going to the LA Sheriff’s Department, a department notorious for the murder of our community members inside and outside of the jails. By contrast, services that promote community health and well-being receive $1.3 billion – only 15% of net county costs. The proposed budget does not align with the needs of LA residents or the County’s own “care first” mission.
Join JusticeLA and Dignity and Power Now in demanding that the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors #DefundTheSheriff, #DefundProbation and #DefundTheDA and invest in a CARE FIRST BUDGET!
You can support the Care First Budget by taking 3 Easy Actions Today:
We have until June 29th to make sure the LA County Board of Supervisors adopts a Care First Budget! Together, we can transform LA County from the leader in incarceration and policing, to the national innovator of public health and community-based care.
Since its implementation in April, Dignity and Power Now's Emergency Fund has provided assistance to nearly 8,000 community members across California, including Los Angeles, Sacramento, Inglewood, San Fernando and Bakersfield.
The Emergency Fund aids in connecting community members to essential supplies during COVID-19 through three phases of essential needs such as pantry items, cleaning supplies, baby wipes, diapers, formula, and face masks.
On June 5th, Justice LA,along with Dignity and Power Now staff members, held a #RoseFromConcrete action honoring those who have been killed by police, died in jail, died from COVID-19 while in custody, and for the 12,000 people currently held in Los Angeles jails. Hundreds of people brought flowers to the Hall of Justice in honor.
Revisit Dignity and Power Now's Director of Campaigns and Policy, Lex Steppling, speaking on defunding the police & LA’s fight for a just justice system on The Mother Jones Podcast.
“What we see every time those kind of measures are codified are the same thing, which is a lack of compliance in combination with an increase in police budgets because they ask for money for training and implementation,” - Lex Steppling, our Director of Campaigns and Policy at DPN. “So for us it’s a lose-lose.”
