Welcome to the listserve - and an action update

[Meagan J.]

Hi everyone,

 

Welcome to the e-mail list for the Community Response Project! The meeting minutes should be landing in your inboxes by tomorrow afternoon, so get ready to bask in the glow of our collective awesomeness.

 

I'm sure many of you have seen the open letter published by the LGBTQ Liaison Committee on Facebook (and many other mediums) today (take a look here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6377206822&ref=mf#!/topic.php?uid=6377206822&topic=14584).

 

A few of us, (myself, Aliya, Lucas, and Ted) were really concerned about the wording in the letter and we were worried about the media picking up on the story without a voice that supported Shannon's story and called for more police accountability. On Wednesday night, many of us expressed frustration with how the Committee has been handling the situation - especially their use of the word "alleged." Given this commonality, and given the relative urgency of putting out a response to the media, we threw together a press release and Lucas graciously agreed to be the media spokesperson on the issue. I've attached the press release so everyone can take a look.

 

Obviously, this process was not ideal. I hope that on Wednesday we can decide a process for media stuff so that future media situations will be more democratic and there can be a stronger mechanism for group input. So let's start brainstorming about what that could look like in the meantime!

 

Lastly, we thought that it could be powerful to adapt the press release into our open letter that we could send back to the Liaison Committee. I will put together a draft and send it out to the list tomorrow - that way we can all comment and the letter will reflect the entire group's position.

 

Hope y'all are as excited for the meeting on Wednesday as I am...we're in the final process of confirming a space so stay tuned!

 

Meagan