Moving into 2019, we propose to focus on the futurity of the city of Los Angeles and its police. The project we are proposing to NAVEL includes a research group focused on creating a new Charter to reform the governmental structure of Los Angeles. A charter is a legal document, like the constitution, that formulates the foundational laws of the local government system (Ballotopia). In our charter, we hope to address issues of gentrification, police brutality, public banking, etc… These would be the principal subjects on which our commission would focus at the local level.
We will not, in fact, be creating the charter in this Assembly, but will instead use the three months to research the feasability of the project within in the next year. By month two, we plan to make a decision and move on to proposing what our next steps will be for the year ahead.
We acknowledge that an exhaustive and ambitious project like this will only be possible with a dedicated and extremely organized group of individuals, so we are open to the option of finding that it is not, in fact, possible. For more information, please see our extended proposal.
GOAL: We have two potential goals: the first, to assess how realistic the goal of creating a new charter for the city of Los Angeles actually is. The second, in case the first is not possible: to form a progressive citizen oversight committee to keep tabs on the LAPD. The current LA Police Commission works as a superficial committee of players appointed by Mayor Garcetti, even though the LAPD leads the US for charges brought against officer-related shootings. In either case, we hope to create more power for citizen committees and to decrease the amount of power city council and the mayor have over the direction of the city’s future.
IDEAL NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 5-40
