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Tell The Alameda Board of Supervisors To Change Urban Shield

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted to "end Urban Shield as it is currently constituted" in March of 2018

They appointed a task force (the second one) to figure out how to do that.

The task force has created a set of recommendations that would radically transform Urban Shield from a militarized SWAT and weapons expo.

It is now upon them to make good on their committment by approving the Task Force's recommendations.

To do this they will likely have to overcome intense opposition and pushback.

If you can, edit the suggested text with a few of your own words for maximum impact.

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Alameda County Board of Supervisors

Subject: Ending Urban Shield As We Know It

Message:

Dear Alameda County Board of Supervisors, After two task forces and years of tumult and protest, you will have an opportunity soon to bravely chart a much-needed new path for emergency and disaster preparedness in Alameda County. I write to ask you to fully embrace the package of recommendations from your Alameda County Ad Hoc Committee on UASI (Urban Areas Security Initiative) and emergency preparedness. It is time to build our post-Urban Shield future. For a long time, there has been a mismatch between the real needs of the County and the UASI exercise. The Ad Hoc Committtee has researched, discussed and articulated the problems at length, building on the work of the initial Urban Shield Task Force and put forward a whole community approach to emergency preparedness that will better equip the people of Alameda and the Bay Area to deal with the challenges of increasingly severe forest fires and floods, the risk of a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault, and the mental health issues that confront us on the streets every day. This transformation is long overdue. Among the important changes are an emphasis on building community capacity in vulnerable communities, resources for public health and social services for preparedness, an end to the troublesome vendor show, a redirection from SWAT teams to other emergency personnel, and focusing less on contests and violent responses and more on de-escalation, mitigation and response, and standards-based evaluation. The full package points us toward a robust program that is consistent with our Bay Area values, does not traffic in stereotypes and racial profiling, does not conflate product marketing with emergency preparedness exercises, and defines our priorities differently than those laid out by the Trump administration. Please support the full set of committee recommendations. It is time to change Urban Shield to something better.

Remaining:

Tell The Alameda Board of Supervisors To Change Urban Shield

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