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On this episode, Roqayah and Kumars interview Cat Brooks, an Oakland-based community organizer and founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP). We ask Cat how she got involved in community organizing and what drives her to do the work. Cat also tells us about her organization, which provides victims of police terror and their families with support services, as well as engaging in organizing and direct action to pressure police departments in the Bay Area to end their assault on black and brown communities. We learn about two victims of police terror, Yuvette Henderson and Richard Perkins, murdered by Emeryville Police and Oakland Police respectively, and how APTP supported their families. We learn about some of the direct action work of APTP, including their phenomenally successful 96 Hours of Direct Action events over the past two MLK Day Weekends, which aimed to commemorate and reclaim the radical legacy of MLK. Finally, we discuss how APTP and other organizations active in the Bay Area have in recent months ousted police chiefs in both San Francisco and Oakland. Oakland, which went through three police chiefs in the span of a week as a result of community pressure, now currently has no police chief because everyone in the department is too corrupt to be given the job.
We also ask Cat about her views on reform and revolution, and her view for how we get from where we are now to an end to policing and prisons. We also compliment her on a well-placed hyphen in the name of her organization.
Follow Cat at @CatsCommentary on twitter, and also follow @APTPaction.