Have you been furiously sending off emails to public officials in the last few weeks? You might be able to speed up the process.
Automatically populated emails can help you demand justice for victims of police violence like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and advocate for defunding the police department in your city, depending on where you live.
If you're trying to fight for racial justice in the United States, emails like these are obviously just a start. Promoting antiracism and fighting for racial justice are lifelong endeavors.
Still, these tools could be useful if you've been having difficulty finding the correct contact information for a given public official, or if you're totally at a loss for what to say.
You can always add to (or otherwise change) the email templates provided. Taking the time to think about why you're sending an email in the first place can be a valuable exercise in and of itself. It might mean thinking deeply about a history of violence against black Americans (and perhaps your own privilege within this history, if you're not black), or it could mean critically looking into the policies that might make your dreams for a more equitable America a reality.
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Before sending off any pre-populated email, it's also crucial to carefully analyze the demands included within it. You should consider, for instance, how they align (or deviate) from demands being advocated for by black activists on the ground today.
The tools mentioned here were not made by the groups organizing protests, so you'll need to apply your own research and judgment to the content of the emails.
That's going to be important to do considering the shifting tide of public opinion: Unlike some police violence demonstrations in the past, which have sometimes advocated more heavily for police force reform, leading figures in the current push against police violence have called specifically for the defunding of police departments.
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Though calls for defunding have certainly been made in the past, this demand appears to be gaining momentum this time around. On Sunday, the Minneapolis City Council announced its intent to disband the city's police department; instead it will focus on creating a different form of public safety.
Keep these things in mind as you look into these email tools.
Email your city council
With the email templates available on Defund12.org (made by a software engineer who has chosen to stay anonymous), you can email city council members and other government officials about the allocation of funds in your city's budget. The emphasis, in most of the templates, is on defunding police departments. Currently, multiple cities in 38 states are included.
(You can access Defund12.org here.)
The demands within a given city-based email template are concerned with currently proposed funding, which primarily relates directly to police departments budgets. In Los Angeles, for instance, where considerations of the mayor's budget proposal are still ongoing, the email template asks city council to "meaningfully" defund the police department, calling for a full revision of the city's budget.
Before sending one for your city, it's important that you research the policies proposed, as well as the history of your city's funding (and specifically its police budget).
Contact the Louisville Police Chief
Sisters Maasai and N'Dea Godwin created templates for contacting the police departments associated with the cops involved in George Floyd and Breonna Taylor's deaths, respectively. (The officers involved in Floyd's death have all been charged; those involved in Taylor's death have not.)
As the charges against the officers involved in Floyd's death have evolved, the email template for Floyd is out of date, but you can still turn to it for context here.
The link that seeks justice for Breonna Taylor is available on N'Dea's Instagram bio, as well as here.
This link will fill in a pre-written email to Robert Schroeder, Louisville's acting police chief, demanding that charges against all of the officers involved in Taylor's death are pressed. Specifically, the email calls for them to be fired, charged, and "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for murder."
You should do appropriate research before sending an email advocating for a particular charge. A Black Lives Matter statement, for example, advocated for charging the officers involved with Taylor's death with homicide.
The email also calls for the elimination of No Knock Warrants, a rule that allows law enforcement in some areas to enter property without informing residents, in the Louisville Metro Police Department, as well as for the city council to address the "excessive use of force" used by LMPD.
Reach out to the mayor of Louisville
The resources here, which were created by a teenager named Nico, according to the site, provide a variety of action-based items.
Among other resources, you can find automatically populated emails here. The email for Taylor will be directed to the Greg Fischer, the Mayor of Louisville, Kentucky. It cites a number of particular justice goals, which reflect the demands of community organizers in Louisville:
Address the use of force used by LMPD
Fire the officers involved
Provide needed information to a "civilian community police accountability council"
Draft policy "for a transparent investigation process due to law enforcement misconduct"
Bring charges against the officers involved; appoint a special prosecutor to oversee this
As you research the demands suggested in this template and all of those included above, you might consider expanding your research to include other essential topics, like teaching kids about antiracism or learning how to be an effective ally.
