The Voices of the People in the Center
One of the RPS Task Force s working groups focused on community engagement, including the strategies used by the task force itself to involve not just a broad range of Austinites, but those most directly harmed [who] stand in the center of the engagement and design of our recommendations. On April 10, after the task force released its draft recommendation, it held a virtual community listening session (with simultaneous translation in nine languages), which collected testimony from more than 150 Austinites and which was viewed on livestream by more than 1,200 others. In its report, the task force presents the following top 10 list as a snapshot of what we heard :
Art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images (Photos by David Brendan Hall and John Anderson)
At their April 20 work session, the members of the Austin City Council certainly sounded thankful for the recommendations the City-Community Reimagining Public Safety Task Force had just laid at their feet. Vanessa Fuentes expressed her gratitude. Ann Kitchen promised to study the recommendations. Alison Alter praised the task force members for pouring themselves into the work.
Those whom they d praised – the community activists the task force comprises – were quite untouched. With the three-hour meeting wrapping up, they wanted to know where they stood. It s imperative that we see the city manager s office, staff, council, and the city as a whole make a public commitment, said Monica Guzmán of Go Austin/Vamos Austin.