Events and Actions
Care Not Cops organizes events and actions to educate, mobilize, and build stronger community resistance to policing in Portland. Check out some of our past events and join us at upcoming events!
Mobilizing at City of Portland Budget Hearings
Since 2017, Care Not Cops has mobilized annually to City of Portland budget hearings, drawing out hundreds of people to testify in person and send letters to the City Council over the years. This work has resulted in reductions in the Portland Police Bureau budget with particular focus on preventing increases in police officers, technology, and community policing programs. We have demanded the city end the use of police as first responders, invest in voluntary user-led mental health care centered in the hands of community, and dismantle the gang policing unit of the PPB. We continue to call for a reduction in police spending towards ultimately disarming and defunding the police.
2019 Report Launch with Community Partners
In February of 2019 Care Not Cops created a report with community based recommendations of Portland organizations in regards to policing in the city. The following organizations were profiled in the report and/or included in the panel. Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, Community Alliance of Tenants, Critical Resistance Portland, Don’t Shoot Portland, Movement of Mother’s and others Standing up together (M.O.M.S), Portland Parent Union, Portland State University Student Union, VOZ Workers’ Rights Education Project, Right 2 Survive, Sisters of the Road, Street Roots, Youth Environmental Justice Alliance (OPAL), and more! Check out the report here.
Building Beyond Policing Workshop Series
Policing is rooted in the repression and control of communities of color—from enforcing borders and racial exclusion policies to SWAT, Anti-Gang policing and community policing programs. This history can be traced through Portland and the surrounding area, resulting in ongoing economic displacement of Black and Indigenous people and other people of color, houseless people, and people with mental health needs. To actively work toward an abolitionist Portland without policing, we must build up our own resilience to meet our community needs while simultaneously bolstering our knowledge and power.
In order to learn and develop our shared skills towards anti-policing efforts, Care Not Cops is hosting a four-part series “Building Beyond Policing”. Save the date for the final event in the series where we will continue to build community and mobilization, coming February 1, 2020!
Saturday October 26th, 2019: Narcan Training and Harm Reduction Workshop
Our third event was jointly hosted by PPOP - Portland People's Outreach Project (PPOP) and Care Not Cops! PPOP, is an all-volunteer organization in Portland that provides clean syringes, Naloxone (Narcan), and other harm reduction supplies directly to users. PPOP provided a skills-building training on harm reduction strategies to reduce the impact and violence of policing, which was accompanied by a conversation around harms reduction and the criminalization of drug use. The event was hosted at the Dismantle Change Build Center (DCBC).
Tue August 27th, 2019: Abolition of Policing Workshop
For our second event, Critical Resistance presented a workshop on the Abolition of Policing, to give participants an understanding and historical overview of policing in the US, and to provide abolitionist ways to resist and not rely on the cops in a range of situations. Participants completed an interactive timeline on the history of policing in the US, then discussed how to respond to different scenarios without engaging the police or 911, leaving those who attended with a lot to think about regarding our organizing in Portland. The event was hosted at Sweet Magic, a workshop + event space by Seagrape.
Sunday July 28th, 2019: A Half Day Event of Community Resilience and Resistance
To kick off the launch of the series, Care Not Cops hosted an event where participants mapped out how we can rely on each other instead of the police through an interactive workshop and then we heard from a panel of community members about the history of anti-gang policing in Portland.
Thank you to the over 100 people who attended! With PDX Alliance for Self-Care and Empathy Riot, we held a "Mapping Community Resources to Respond without Policing" workshop which was followed by panel on fighting anti-Black and anti-gang policing in Portland - past and present - with Julius McGee, Alyssa Pariah, and Teressa Raiford. It was so great to meet people and we are excited that so many people are interested in Building Beyond Policing.
The audience and panelists discussed robust questions, such as:
What resources or skills could you bring to your communities? Do you know your neighbors? Do you have neighbors you could call in an emergency? Who could you call on instead of the police? How has Gang Policing developed in Portland and elsewhere? and how is it intertwined with broken windows and community policing to serve the same goal of state repression and violence?