Public Comment

We need money for affordable housing, food stamps, universal health care, education and job creation. By reducing the military budget for foreign wars and for the militarization of our police, money can be freed up for those forced into poverty and then terrorized by the police so they fear to protest their condition. 

The corporations and their republican allies are not going to voluntarily cut the military budget and the Homeland Security programs which are militarizing our police. But we can start at the grass roots City Council level by demanding that our City Councils opt out of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Urban Areas Security Initiative (UASI) program, which includes the Urban Shield convention and urban warfare training; and its companion program the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) coordinated by the FBI’s Bay Area Joint Terrorism Task Force. 

NCRIC is the Fusion Data Center to which our local police send Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs). Examples of reports sent by the Berkeley police who stopped persons for traffic violations showed SARs were sent to NCRIC not for a raggedy tail light, but because these persons made anti-government remarks. This is a violation of their constitutionally lawful right to free speech. 

Berkeley City Council, Santa Clara, Alameda County and other jurisdictions have discontinued cooperating with the US Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, under which jailed undocumented persons are held beyond their release date so that the U.S. Immigration Department can pick them up, detain them indefinitely and/or deport them. If City Councils can do this, they also can opt out of these other Homeland Security programs: UASI and NCRIC. 

Moving the Urban Shield convention from one location to another will not stop police departments from shopping for free military equipment and taking part in urban warfare training. Demand that your City Council cut ties with this Police State apparatus.