ELGL wants to recognize our members’ sadness, anger, frustration and other emotions in response to the officer-involved shooting deaths of Mr. Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, LA and Mr. Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, MN.
We will do this by swiftly providing a forum in which to discuss these emotions, and also by developing an actionable and tangible learning opportunities where local governments can think bigger and bolder about how to talk about race, use of force and community relationships.
On Thursday, July 7, 2016, at 1:00 p.m. PDT/4:00 p.m. EDT, we will host a Twitter chat about these incidents and the larger framework in which we serve local communities as public administrators and law enforcement professionals. We’ll use the hashtag #BlackLivesELGL for this chat.
Our goal from this Twitter chat is to collect ideas and responses that ELGL can use to connect, communicate and educate about use of force, shooting deaths, and race in our communities.
Here are the questions from the Twitter chat:
- Let’s start by talking about how we are feeling today.
- What about your own identity (race, gender, etc) and your personal story informs these feelings?
- What has been stirred up for you as a result of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile?
- In 2014, we talked #ELGLFerguson. Is current climate better or worse than in 2014 to respond to racism in our communities?
- As local government administrators, what should we do when officer involved shooting deaths happen in other jurisdictions?
- What would you like to see your #localgov org do to help employees cope/struggle with their feelings around these tragedies/incidents?
- What role does broken windows policing play in the officer involved shootings that we’ve seen?
- @motherjones article notes coincidence btw minor fines and police shootings. Has your #localgov researched this link?
- Do you feel prepared to address systemic racism in your community?
- How an MPA programs prepare local gov’t administrators to address & change racist policies/practices?
Over the weekend, we’ll continue to crowdsource your responses using this anonymous survey form*, as well as the #BlackLivesELGL hashtag.
On Sunday, we’ll post signups for our members to join us in thinking and writing about the topics we address in our Twitter chat and our crowdsourced discussion, with an output of a recurring column series, training and learning opportunities, conference sessions, and future podcast episodes that attempt to harness our members’ reactions and emotions, and also best practices from public administration and law enforcement.
Our hearts go out to the families of Mr. Sterling and Mr. Swift, and we also hope for peace in the communities of Baton Rouge and Falcon Heights.