Access to data about policing has become the subject of increased advocacy and police misconduct data has become increasingly available in the United States, leading to a growing cottage industry that has arisen around collecting, analyzing, and publicizing information about policing. Unfortunately, these efforts are often disconnected from organizing aimed at effecting change by reducing and eliminating police profiling, violence and criminalization. 

In an attempt to address these issues and discuss the potential benefits and harms of collecting and disseminating policing data, WITNESS co-hosted a 4-day online convening in collaboration with the Invisible Institute and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Full Disclosure Project in November 2021.

The event brought together grassroots organizers, advocates, data scientists, journalists, lawyers, advocates and funders. The full report from our convening is now available and aims to share the key principles, tensions and practices that we discussed; help guide ongoing conversations and development of best practices; and inform future project planning and funding decisions. 

Some of the key themes that emerged from our conversations include: 

• The importance of protecting privacy, agency and humanity of people whose experiences of policing are reflected in the data, and offer prevention tools and material support.
• Involve those who are most directly impacted by policing in the data collection, analysis and dissemination process. 
• There is no “objective” data.
• Decisions about which data to collect and how to describe and publicize it are subjective and political.
• Institutions and organizations with greater access to data must commit to making the information available and sharing it with directly impacted communities.

This convening builds off WITNESS projects and collaborations with groups like El Grito and Berkeley Copwatch in which we have co-created resources and guidance to support grassroots organizations in collecting, organizing and analyzing videos and data about the police. In 2018, we also co-hosted a convening in Chicago with the Invisible Institute to cover similar topics. Learn more about this work, the convenings and our partners here.  

These in-person gatherings are the final modules of ‘CORAL’, which started in September as an online school and has been meeting to cover topics on narratives, strategic communication, and more. The objectives of the gathering are to strengthen the strategic vision of groups and collectives working in communications, in particular audiovisual media, to advance their skills around advocacy and documentation, and to provide tools to help them train others in their communities.

This work builds off WITNESS’s long-standing partnerships and projects with collectives, communities and movements working to respond to violence and aggression against their lives and the land. Through this work we’ve had the opportunity to provide documentation workshops at large gatherings of Indigenous Peoples’ in Brazil and co-created guides such as the Guide to Strategic Communication in Defense of the Territory in Mexico.

Follow our social media channels (@WITNESS_USA, @WITNESS_es and @witness_Brasil) and visit https://redcoral.la to learn more about the work. Continue reading for additional information about CORAL. 

MORE ABOUT CORAL:

#CORAL is a network of #audiovisual groups from different places, that support movements defending their land, territory and #commons. It seeks to strengthen community #communication for the #defense of the territory and the construction of its own #narratives

Faced with the excessive advance of the borders of capital and extractivism, communities, populations, social movements, civil and collective organizations need to organize themselves to respond to the violence and aggression that threaten their lives, bodies and territories.

Therefore, our focus is the training of trainers to support the continuity of processes in popular education, especially the #communication strategy for the development of the different territories and communities.

Do you want to know more? Visit: https://redcoral.la

CORAL is a network of audiovisual groups in Abya Yala (an Indigenous term used to refer to the “Americas”) that from different geographies accompany struggles for the defense of the land, territory and common goods. This articulation of regional scope seeks to share tools to strengthen community communication, with an emphasis on the use of audiovisuals for defense and the construction of their own narratives.

Thus, in the face of the advance of the borders of capital and extractivism, communities, peoples, movements, organizations, collectives self-organize to respond to the onslaught of violence and dispossession that threaten their lives, bodies and territories.

The criminalization, repression, judicial harassment and harassment of human rights defenders is on the rise. This is accompanied by different media strategies to stigmatize and invalidate any alternative that challenges the progress of the so-called “development”.

For this reason, we see it necessary to add to the strengthening of the audiovisual fronts that are formed from different latitudes to give dispute in the symbolic and narrative field in the struggles for the defense of the land, the territory and the common goods. Our commitment in this area is the training of trainers that allows us to support the continuity of processes in popular education in the communication strategy to develop from different territories and communities.

Follow #CORALTerritorioAudiovisual for more updates!

As organizations that regularly seek funding to support our documentation and archival work, WITNESS and our partners at Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) – have seen how “traditional” funding requirements and guidelines often become significant impediments to our work, despite funders’ best intentions. With this in mind, we drafted an open letter that highlights five key challenges and offers constructive recommendations to center community and care in archives grantmaking.

Join us in adding to this conversation and making funding for community archives more impactful! One of our hopes for this open letter is to spark conversation within community archives across the country on how to advocate for this work. Head over to the Sustainable Future’s blog to read all recommendations. We encourage you to share it and welcome your thoughts.

Explore some of WITNESS’s archiving resources and projects below:

• People’s Database for Police Accountability with Berkeley Copwatch
• Policing the Police with El Grito
• Rohingya Genocide Archive with Rohingya Vision
• Should I Collect and Archive These Videos? tipsheet, co-created with Texas After Violence Project
• Activists’ Guide to Archiving Video

Inside the Guide you’ll find in-depth research and examples, practical tips and guidance, case studies and exercises.  And this Q&A blog post with WITNESS’ U.S. Immigration Legal Fellow and author of the Guide, Leila Shifteh, offers more about what the Guide is and who it’s for. 

Download the full guide here. You can also access just the Legal section here, or just the Filming section here. 

And join our Facebook Live conversation to learn more about using video as evidence in immigration legal proceedings on December 8th 2pmEST to hear from Leila Shifteh,  author of the guide,  Michelle Quintero, senior attorney at Brooklyn Defender Services’s New York Immigration Family Unit Project , and Benjamin Prado, long time community filmer with American Friends Service Committee San Diego. For Spanish interpretation you’ll need to register on zoom. 

This resource was a true labor of love, time, and passion for the potential of community filmers and lawyers to better work together in order to support immigrant rights. We extend our deepest gratitude to the following individuals and organizations. The knowledge you shared with us and your feedback have been invaluable: 

Yasmine Chahkar Farhang, Richard Bailey, Genia Blaser, Golnaz Fakhimi, Eva Bitran, Jodi Ziesemer, Andrew Wachtenheim, Yasmin Sokkar Harker, Ellen Pachnanda, Meghan McCarthy, Sarah Deri Oshiro, Mitra Ebadolahi, Liz Kenney, Adriana Piñon, Alexandra Smith, Margaret Garrett, Sarika Saxena, Brooklyn Defender Services, Immigrant Defense Project, the creative brilliance and guidance of the WITNESS U.S. Program team, Palika Makam & Jackie Zammuto, and the tremendous vision of Kelly Matheson of WITNESS, who conceived of the original Video as Evidence guide for the international human rights legal context! It takes a village.

We would also like to thank Brooklyn Defender Services, the American Civil Liberties Union, Media Tank, and Variant Strategies for so generously giving us permission to use beautiful stills from their powerful animated video series, We Have Rights. And Gregory Buissereth for the stunning illustrations.

DETAILS

This Thursday, August 31, the state government of Rio de Janeiro will make the call for bids for the construction work on the land known as Favela da Skol, located in Complexo do Alemão. The event will be broadcast live, at 12pm UTC time (9am RIO; 8am NY), by one of the most prominent and inspiring community leaders, Camila Moradia from Quero minha casa. The livestream will include English translation and additional local context through the support of WITNESS’ Mobil-Eyes Us project.

Since 2009, about 500 families who occupied the land – where the Skol brewery was once located – have been removed on the grounds that the homes were at ​​risk because of the presence of the abandoned brewery building.

During his time as deputy governor of Rio, Luiz Fernando Pezão (who is now governor) promised that he would deliver new homes within nine months. Seven years have gone by and the residents still remain without adequate housing. And they receive insufficient rent assistance to be able to afford the city’s high cost of housing.

This Thursday, we have a great opportunity to change the way this community has been treated in the struggle for housing rights. Your support is urgent and fundamental, as well as the support from the people around you, so that this victory does not become another empty promise in this history of resistance and fight. Now it’s more important than ever to show that we’re on their side and that there are a lot of people watching!

Show support by sharing the Facebook event, invite your friends to do the same and on August 31st, make yourself present wherever you are! We will be documenting everything, providing English translation and offering links with contextualization of all the other promises made and not fulfilled by the Brazilian State.

This livestreaming event is a continuation of our pilot Mobile-Eyes Us project during the Rio 2016 Olympics. The project brings ‘distant witnesses’ into livestreams and offers context, translation and other meaningful ways to take action. Learn more about the pilot here.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 31

WATCH (with translation & local context – no registration needed): http://mobile-eyes-us.itp.io:8000/

REGISTER (receive notifications & give feedback on our Mobil-Eyes Us project): email claramedeiros@gmail.com

SHARE: Invite others to attend via this Facebook event

This week the extermination of the black residents in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro continued.

Police operations in the north of the city left at least 13 people dead as a result of “stray bullets.” Additionally, about 2,500 children went without classes because of these clashes, an operation that mobilized at least 500 police officers.

Photo from her Facebook page.

Maria Eduarda Alves da Conceição, 13, was one of those victims murdered yesterday. She was hit by three shots while playing basketball in her physical education class at the Municipal School of Jornalista Daniel Piza in Fazenda Botafogo. Maria Eduarda was a talented basketball player who collected medals at school Olympics and teachers saw a promising future for her sports career.

Her future was interrupted by an operation led by the 41st BPM (militarized police force) which is already known by local residents and human rights organizations as a veritable extermination group.

The case of Maria Eduarda is important in deconstructing the “stray bullet” narrative of the press and the police, particularly because she was shot three times, according to the expertise of the Legal Medical Institute.

Responsible for about 20% of all deaths resulting from police operations in the city, the 41st BPM is the same group that fired 111 shots at five young people of Costa Barros in November of 2015. They are also the subject of an Amnesty International report “You Killed My Son”, that was published two years ago and details nine cases of execution in Rio’s Acari favela.

Also this week, local residents filmed these same policemen firing on men who were already injured or dead, laying on the ground in front of the same school where Maria Eduarda was killed, as shown in the video [Graphic Content] on our partner Coletivo Papo Reto’s Facebook page.

Still from Facebook video showing police fire at two men lying on the ground [Graphic]

We’re joining forces with

Hollaback! is a global network of grassroots activists using tried and true organizing tactics and new technologies to open conversations and strategies to end harassment and ensure equal access to public spaces. WITNESS is excited to collaborate with Hollaback! on resources around safely, ethically and effectively documenting and reporting incidents of hate and harassment.

It’s time to end harassment in public space. RSVP today and invite your friends and family!

https://www.facebook.com/events/1168505523248809/

Advocates against the pipeline state that the project disregards treaty rights of the Standing Rock Sioux and poses serious environmental threats. Resistance efforts have brought together a historic number of Native American tribes, water protectors, activist and military vets, yet they’ve been met with violence, threats and heavy surveillance from authorities.

Photo: Tomas Alejo

Video and photos have played a crucial role in exposing human rights abuses against journalists and activists fighting the pipeline. Livestreams, drones and video footage brought worldwide attention and widespread condemnation of violations, such as the use of excessive force, dogs, water cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets against activists and the targeting of journalists. This footage has also helped counter false statements and misleading narratives put forth by authorities and pipeline investors.

To support these efforts, WITNESS and our partners at WeCopwatch collaborated with indigenous activists and allies at Standing Rock to create a new guide that can help strengthen the evidentiary value of this video documentation. The resource builds off our Video as Evidence Field Guide and is largely informed by the knowledge and local experiences of indigenous activists and legal experts. It also includes guidance for activists interested in organizing their own copwatch groups.

We first printed the guide in November 2016 and WeCopwatch shared it at the Oceti Sakowin camp where they spent several months conducting trainings and building strong bonds and alliances with indigenous leaders, water protectors and the National Lawyers Guild’s Water Protector Legal Collective.

With the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline far from being over – and a threat of more dangerous pipelines being pushed through by the Trump administration – we hope this guide serves as a general starting point for anyone wanting to document the resistance.

Please use it, remix it and share it. This is a living document and we will continue updating and improving it. We welcome your input! Download the guide here.

Feature Image: WeCopwatch

WITNESS is doubling down on our work in the U.S. We are continuing our support of people documenting police violence, and we are expanding to support at-risk groups such as immigrants, refugees and LGBT communities to use video as a tool to expose abuses and amplify personal narratives.

Right now, we know that people are witnessing and reporting acts of hate. Below we share tips to documenting these acts more safely and effectively. Filming hate can expose abuse, substantiate reports, deter violence and serve as evidence.

We also encourage you to check out these resources from the SPLC: Ten Ways to Fight Hate – A Community Response Guide and the ACLU: Feel like you’re at risk?

FILMING HATE

If you witness a hateful act, let the victim know you are there to help. If you feel that filming could make the situation worse, don’t do it.

Take Action Now:

• Enable auto backup on your phone
• Free up space on your device
• Protect your device with a passcode

BE SAFE!

Download the tip sheet here!

Your camera can protect you or put you and others at risk. Could exposing the identity of a victim, such as an immigrant or trans person, endanger them or others in their community? Ask yourself: Does anyone’s identity need to be protected? Who can I call for help? Do I have an escape route? Could someone take my camera? Are there others around? Can I film without being seen?

FILM SO OTHERS UNDERSTAND

Show what happened with details like injuries, torn clothing, blood stains, hateful chants, slurs, threats, license plates, threatening symbols, graffiti, spray paint cans, property damage and weapons. Talking to someone on camera can help capture important parts of the story, or cause harm by making them a target or revictimizing them.

PROVE IT’S REAL

Film (or say) the time and date. Show street signs, landmarks, others filming and nearby surveillance cameras to help prove your location. Film without stopping if you can. If sharing online, include a clear, factual description.

DON’T SHAKE

Keep your camera steady and hold important shots for at least 10 seconds. Film multiple angles from different distances. Getting good video in low light can be hard, but the audio can still be valuable.

THINK BEFORE YOU SHARE

Uploading your video or livestreaming on a public channel can turn you – or the victim and their community – into a target. Once it’s online, you lose control of who sees the video and the context it’s shared in. Before sharing publicly, ask for advice from a lawyer, the victim, a trusted friend, local activist or journalist.

BACK IT UP

Save the original file in a safe place. Don’t delete the original file or change the filename. Ever. If you do edit, do it from a copy.

WHO TO TELL

Many non-profit and state organizations are recording reports of hate-related incidents. Look for a group near you to file a report and find additional support for the victim.

Download these tips here and learn more about filming safely and effectively at library.witness.org. Also available in Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish.