A Packed House for the RISE Houston Kick-Off
A packed house for the RISE Houston Campaign Kickoff
EVENT PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, June 23, 2023
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RISE Houston Steering Committee: Pure Justice, Houston Abolitionist Collective, Texas Civil Rights Project, and Civil Rights Corps.
A packed audience of over 150 people attended the kick-off campaign rally held by Re-Imagining Safety for Everyone in Houston (“RISE Houston”) at the AFL-CIO Building in Houston, Texas on Tuesday, June 20, 2023. The audience included survivors of police violence, concerned community members, and numerous elected officials and candidates for city council.
RISE Houston, a new grassroots coalition led by Pure Justice (PJ), Houston Abolitionist Collective (HAC), Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) and Civil Rights Corps (CRC) launched a people’s campaign to stop police violence and demand that Houston tax dollars be spent on community programs that make Houstonians safe.
RoShawn Evans, the Co-Founder and Organizing Director of PJ, shared the vision for the campaign, “We envision a Houston where everyone has the tools and resources they need to strive and thrive in their homes and communities.” The RISE campaign demands include:
ending the City's $3.5 million contract with ShotSpotter, Inc. (now rebranded as “SoundThinking”);
prohibiting police from making stops for minor traffic violations; and
freezing HPD's budget and using taxpayer money to invest in communities.
The coalition is demanding that all the municipal candidates seeking office in the November election agree to enact these three demands. Alfredo Dominguez, a Houston native and CRC’s Policing Project Manager, stated, “The RISE coalition at its core is committed to creating a safer Houston for everyone, and our three demands are sensible policies that move us toward that reality. Houstonians have always wanted more freedom and safety, not more police violence and surveillance, so our government needs to invest in the people, not the police.”
Community members of the HAC called on City officials to cancel the ShotSpotter program currently surveilling Houston residents, explaining, “Numerous research studies conducted by both police departments and academic institutions have found that ShotSpotter does not stop gun crime and, instead, it misidentifies loud noises for gunfire at extremely high rates, with false positives as high as 48%. It’s a waste of taxpayer money and it does not work.” The technology also invades residents’ privacy, recording conversations and other sounds that, in other jurisdictions, have been used in criminal prosecutions.
Christopher Rivera of TCRP explained why RISE is seeking to stop police officers from pulling drivers over for minor traffic violations in the City of Houston. “According to HPD’s data, over 98% of all HPD-initiated traffic stops do not lead to arrest for serious violations of traffic law. Instead, we see the same discrimination that is happening across the country. The data proves that HPD is racially profiling Black drivers by stopping them at disproportionate rates. These senseless traffic stops have led to horrific violence, including the tragic deaths of Sandra Bland, Tyre Nichols, Philando Castille, and Daunte Wright.” In the year 2022 alone, police nationwide killed at least 86 people after stopping them for a traffic violation.
RISE Houston is also seeking to freeze HPD’s budget. Currently, the City of Houston spends $988 million on the HPD — more than any other city agency. In 2022, the City gave HPD a $33 million dollar budget increase—a larger raise than any other city department. “In 2020, despite a rise in funding for HPD, the homicide rate increased. It is clear that policing is not the answer to reducing violence. Instead, the City of Houston needs to invest in programs that get to the root causes of violence and truly provide for the safety and welfare of all Houstonians,” said Brittany Francis, a Deputy Director of Litigation at Civil Rights Corps.
A recent survey conducted by Pure Justice of over 400 residents found that 60.2% of those surveyed did not believe there was a need for more law enforcement officers to make their communities safe. Attendees were also asked to share what programs and resources they wanted to see funded in the City of Houston; their answers included grocery stores, fair chance housing, and a fair minimum wage.
After hearing moving testimony from survivors of police violence and abuse in Houston, the audience was also treated with spoken word performances by Aris Brown, the poet laureate of Houston, and filmmaker Nikki Luellen. The event opened and closed with the musical stylings of DJ Weedie.
The RISE Houston Campaign is currently endorsed by BLM HTX, Engaged Voters, Houston Leads Coalition, Houston in Action, Immigrant Legal Resource Center, West Street Recovery, Texas Jail Project, and Young Invincibles.
To learn more about RISE Houston, visit: www.risehouston.org and follow us on social media @RISE_HOU_TX on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok.
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