A liberal group has created a website that allows citizens to know when their local governments are holding discussions on city budgets, specifically, those involving police funding. The site also has a feature that allows concerned citizens to offer public comment on the subject, letting their governmental officials know how they feel. Liberals are very organized when it comes to this sort of activism.
Recent press for the site, called Reinvestin.us, is geared towards encouraging those who believe in defunding the police to proactively use the site.
According to Fast Company, the site was created by a group of allies and web developers and spearheaded by Jane Kim, who previously served on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and as president of the San Francisco Board of Education. It lists clear information on what meetings are coming up and when, what specifically is on that meeting’s agenda, who the local decision-makers are, and how exactly a resident can make a public comment.
Kim said the idea was born out of her taking not that BLM activists came to meetings to demand police reform, but that they typically did not know what was on the agenda for the meeting.
“I’ve seen it from my personal experience that the meetings where relevant budget decisions are made are often under-attended, hard to locate, awkwardly timed, and we know that there are a lot of barriers to attendance,”
Said Kim.
The site, whose target audience is “engaged citizen” that are attending city council meetings for the first time, not only gives dates, times and locations, but also gives an overview of what the budget discussions will center around. The page also includes a links so those at home can watch meetings online, with instructions on how to call in with comments.
Reinvestin.us currently focuses on meetings in California, where the creators reside, but has included Tucson, Arizona. They claim to have received calls from numerous other localities asking to be added. They also state that they are collecting data about where the greatest number of conflicts between citizens and the police are occurring, in the hopes of focusing on bringing those areas on line first.
