Maddy (00:08): Hello everybody. My name is Maddy, and you are listening to All My Leftists Live In Texas. This is season two, episode one, and today I am joined by Lindsay LaGrange. Lindsay, hello. Hello. How are you?
Lindsay (00:20): I'm doing great. How are you ?
Maddy (00:21): Doing just fine. Who are you?
Lindsay (00:25): I am Lindsay LaGrange. I'm a local activist. I work for a homeless service agency here in Austin, and I'm very passionate about advocating for our unhoused neighbors. I've also worked on a handful of campaigns in Texas and love educating folks on local elections and voting rights, and I sometimes make progressive voting guides on Instagram.
Maddy (00:49): Beautiful. Everybody loves the progressive voting guide. Lindsay and I have been DMing on Instagram for a long time. Yes. And this is our first time meeting in person, so super cool.
Lindsay (01:00): Yeah. Yeah, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Maddy (01:02): Absolutely. Thanks for coming. So today we are talking about the upcoming May election and the props that are on them. There's two propositions, both dealing with police oversight, and they look pretty similar at first glance, but there's actually a whole lot going on behind the scenes. So today we're going to dive into what the props are, how they got on the ballot, and everything that would go into law, and what we can do about it. So let's do it. All right. Let's start with A, so first we're going to start off with the ballot language. And the ballot language for prop A is Shall the voters of Austin adopt an initiated ordinance circulated by equity action that will deter police misconduct and brutality by strengthening the city's system of independent and transparent civilian police oversight.
Lindsay (01:55): And the ballot language for prop B is Shall the voters of Austin adopt an initiated ordinance circulated by voters for oversight and police accountability that will strengthen the city's system of independent and transparent civilian police oversight.
Maddy (02:13): Perfect. So those sound pretty similar, and they are very similar.
Lindsay (02:18): Yeah. Quite literally. Only six words are different.
Maddy (02:22): And Prop B, prop B omits the words that will deter polices misconduct and brutality, which is red flag number one. So there's the ballot language. So that's what you see when you show up to the poll. That's all the information that you're given. If you don't look at anything else but the ordinances behind these ballot, behind these ballot, behind this ballot language, that's what actually goes into law. So there's quite a few differences in these that I think would be too long and too wordy to get into. But equity action made a really good form where you can look at the differences yourself. But today we're going to talk about what those differences are, the highlight reel. Maybe we can start by talking about the petitions.
Lindsay (03:15): Sure. Yeah, that sounds great.
Maddy (03:17): Okay. So both of these props came about through civilian petitions. What does that mean?
Lindsay (03:27): What does that mean? Well, let's start with equity actions petition. Sure. So last Summer Equity Action, which is a very legitimate activist organization in Austin, started canvassing for signatures to get a police accountability measure on our ballot. This measure aimed to strengthen our office of police oversight, which if you don't know the O P O as we'll call it, is our city's way of hearing an investigating concerns and complaints regarding police misconduct. So it's all about, let's see, from their website, the O P O is here to provide impartial oversight of APDs conduct practices and policies to enhance accountability, inform the public to increase transparency keyword there, and create sustainable partnerships throughout the community. And I think it's important to note that currently the Office of Police Oversight is largely just an advisory board. They don't really have a lot of power, really. They just make recommendations to our police chief. So equity actions started canvassing for signatures to let the people of Austin vote on this measure that would strengthen our opo, which would hypothetically lead to more police accountability and oversight.
Maddy (04:46): Absolutely. And so with these civilian petitions, you've got to get something like 20,000 signatures across firm qualified voters in order for it to get on the ballot. So they accomplished that, and then somebody called Bopa swung in and wanted to do their own petition. So equity actions calling their petition and their ballot measure, the Austin Police Oversight Act. And then VPA swung in after equity action, got theirs submitted and approved maybe. But they came in at second, and they started putting out, they started, I don't know. Do you want to talk more about that?
Lindsay (05:33): Yeah, yeah. So again, yeah, equity action, they got their petition accepted by the city back in August or September. So everything was good. Proppe is on our ballot. Great. And then a couple months go by, and I think it was just before Thanksgiving, a couple of folks started noticing they were people collecting signatures outside of businesses claiming that they were with equity action, which is peculiar since their petition was along over at that point. So yeah, equity action quickly announced that this was not them. They had nothing to do with it. And a lot of folks started recording their interactions with these canvassers to try and get more info about who they are, what this petition actually is that people are signing, and why they're lying about it. (06:22): But no one really knew what was going on for a while. So some of the canvassers were claiming that, Hey, we are equity action, but we failed to get enough signatures last time, so we have to get more, or, we missed the deadline, so we have to start all over again. And they were pretty convincing. So a whole heck of a lot of people assigned this fake petition. And I also think it's important to note that some people who were collecting the signatures did not really know a whole lot about what was going on. I think there were some people experiencing homelessness who just someone on Craigslist said they would give them a dollar for every signature they collected. So yeah, we're not mad at them. Right.
Maddy (07:08): The people who were collecting signatures might have been just as clueless as the people signing. But what's important to note is that the organization that put this ballot on the med, or put this petition out, was instructing people to pose as an organization that they weren't, and to, they even called their petition, also the Austin Police Oversight Act, which just makes it all the more misleading, but unfortunately, it worked. And they got enough signatures, despite many people, hundreds of people signing up to take their signatures off the petition. And here we are now with two ballot measures called the Austin Police Oversight Act. So I think we can talk about the differences, but I think it's important to know from the start who Equity Action is who we talked about and who VPA is. Yes. The voters for Oversight and Police Accountability, which sounds reasonable at the start. Sounds great. Yeah. But there's a whole heck of a lot of drama here too. Do you want to talk about that? Sure.
Lindsay (08:23): Just pausing for a second. Yeah. I don't know if I could speak offhand a lot about equity action and what they do. I don't know if you have stuff you want to say about that, but I can definitely go into VPA and Okay. Figure out who they are.
Maddy (08:36): I'll get a sound clip for what I found about Equity Action. This is actually a, I messaged them yesterday. Cause I was looking this up and I was like, there is just as little information about who equity action is as there is about vpa. I know that's really frustrating, but I did find just now that Chris Harris is like a board trustee or something. He's legit. And he's legit. Yeah. Okay. Logan, sorry about this. Equity Action is an activist group in Austin that are, its grassroots. They're a 5 0 1 [inaudible] nonprofit, and they were behind the campaign, no way on prop a last year, which was successful because Prop A got slaughtered and they've come back and are now working to increase police oversight in Austin. If you look through their Instagram, you can see exactly who they are. It's a community coalition who are fighting for fighting for progressive causes in Austin and doing so very well. VPA on the other hand...
Lindsay (09:46): Who the heck is vopa? So after these signature collectors started showing up around Austin, a lot of people went on deep dives to try and figure out who the heck was behind this. No one had ever heard of VOPA before. There were a few obvious suspects. So Matt Mcac, I think is how you say it, the chair of the Travis County, g o p. He also is the founder of our least favorite organization, save Austin. Now, he's obviously suspect number one. Folks also suspected the Austin Police Association, which if you don't know, they are our local police union, and they have done lots of conniving things in the past as well, but nothing quite like this. So no one took responsibility for this petition. Everyone said they have no idea what it is, who's behind it? Never heard of him. But so all we know early December, all we know is that these canvasers are being directed by someone named John, and we know that someone registers the domain name equity action.org, whereas the real equity action is equity action atx.org.
Maddy (11:04): Fucking John.
Lindsay (11:07): I don't think anyone ever did anything with the website, but they registered the domain. So equity action is understandably freaking out consulting their lawyer, trying to figure out what the heck to do. But in mid-December, a local reporter at Fox seven Austin did this really deep dive into their actual website, which is called Safer austin.com. This is VO PPAs website that they've been using. And this reporter was able to find an internet archive snapshot from April, which showed that the banner at the top of the page previously read Austin Police Association Pack operates the safer austin.com website.
Maddy (11:49): I think they even spoke on it, and they were like, oh, yeah, they needed help. So they gave them the website, even though they were previously, I have no idea who that organization is.
Lindsay (11:57): Never heard of, but we did let them use our website. Yeah. Because we're nice.
Maddy (12:03): And we believe in police oversight.
Lindsay (12:06): So yeah, sure. If we want to believe that, great. But then a couple weeks later, it comes out that, sorry, a campaign finance report is filed with the city, and it shows that of the $288,000 that VOPA raised for this campaign, 287,000 of it came from the Austin Police Association.
Maddy (12:29): Yeah. Oh my God.
Lindsay (12:32): I think it's interesting that the only other money, there's 1500 other dollars came from the Corpus Christi Police Association.
Maddy (12:40): Okay.
Lindsay (12:42): Curious why they have a stake in this? But yeah, so the jig is up. We now know as of early January that it's the Austin Police Association behind vpa. It's clear that their intentions are to get a second prop on the ballot with very similar language, just to confuse voters and cause chaos.
Maddy (13:02): And it is working. I am confused and more chaotic than normal.
Lindsay (13:10): It truly shows just how committed to accountability and transparency our police are.
Maddy (13:15): Absolutely.
Lindsay (13:17): Why wouldn't we trust them to lead their own office of police oversight?
Maddy (13:21): And I think it's especially humorous and kind of a fucked up way that we're talking about police oversight and how it needs to be independent. But the police association is the one telling us how it's going to be independent in their mind. And I honestly don't know how they thought they were going to keep it secret. They know that finance, those finance reports are public. I don't, yeah, I
Lindsay (13:51): Know. Best investigators in the city. I know. I couldn't figure it out.
Maddy (13:56): So yeah. So that's basically who's behind these propositions. We have, they're both about police accountability, but Prop A is led by a grassroots coalition of progressive leaders, and Prop B is led by the police union. So I mean, we're going to talk about what they are, but you can stop listening now basically, if that helps you, how to, helps you figure out how to vote.
Lindsay (14:23): Oh, one other thing, I'm not sure if we're going to mention this later, but I think it's important to notice in the ballot language that because these props were worded so similarly, the city actually put in the agency's name into the ballot. So if you have an aneurysm on election day and forget what prop A or prop B is, it literally says equity action in prop A and vo PPA and prop B. So
Maddy (14:47): Equity action, good vo ppa bad. Yep. Remember that? That's all you got to do. Or just write it on your hand. Write it on your hand. A yes. Okay. So that's all the drama. We've got two super similar ordinances run by two completely opposite organizations on the ballot. So let's talk about what would actually change if these were passed. The list is quite extensive, so maybe we can just do a highlight reel on, let's start with A, what would change if prop A was passed?
Lindsay (15:29): All right. So here's some things in prop A that are intentionally left out of prop B. So this is stuff you would only get with a participate in investigations of officer conduct, including those stemming from anonymous complaints with the right to gather evidence and directly interview witnesses as determined by the director conduct at minimum, a preliminary investigation of every complaint, determine whether a full investigation is warranted, conduct random assessments of department use of force reviews, and determine training requirements for members of the Community Police Review Commission.
Maddy (16:10): So what does all that mean?
Lindsay (16:14): Okay. So essentially there's a lot of language that is intentionally left out of Prop B that is in A, that would really help to strengthen the abilities that our Office of Police Oversight would have in conducting investigations. Both of these measure, sorry, my notes are really bad on this
Maddy (16:36): Section. It's okay. I have almost no notes. I think the main, what's most important to me personally is that with A, if the OPO doesn't agree, if the OPO isn't okay with it, then this council cannot pass it. It has to be passed by the OPO before it's passed by the council, and that doesn't exist with Prop B. Another question I have is, the Awesome Police Association says Prop A is in violation of a lot of state laws. I'd love to know what those are, but I just cannot. That's way too deep.
Lindsay (17:18): Yeah. It's interesting that a lot of canvassers were saying that too. The reason that they were trying to put this second initiative on the ballot is because the first one wouldn't work essentially because of state laws. But I just find that a little fishy that they would spend $280,000 go through all of these hoops to help the voters hold the police more accountable. I just don't buy it.
Maddy (17:45): I don't buy it either. What are the state laws like spill? You're basically just saying, if you pass this, we're going to sue you, which we already knew was going to happen. So
Lindsay (17:56): Yeah, both measures also have different provisions when it comes to the type of access that the Office of Police Oversight has to police files during internal investigations. But PPAs measure does not include the without hindrance provision, and it adds a line about releasing such records to O P O in accordance with Texas law.
Maddy (18:17): Yeah, that seems super suss to me. It's just seems like obviously we're going to work in accordance with Texas law. We are in Texas. Why does that need to be said? But it sounds like they're putting that in there to preempt getting away with more stuff.
Lindsay (18:36): Yeah. Sounds like a loophole to me.
Maddy (18:37): Sounds like a loophole.
Lindsay (18:39): I also noticed that our police chief said, even if the provisions mapped out aren't able to immediately go into effect as law in the city, he said that there would just have to be upcoming discussions, and the city and the APA would have to go back to the drawing board on a long-term police contract. So he said, presumably it would guide the future contract negotiations and the way in which oversight is done. And so all of that is going to have to be examined and ultimately implemented. So even the police chief has implied that if we do vote for A, it would be implemented down the road.
Maddy (19:19): And that's major. So even the police chief says that prop A would have to be implemented. So it's interesting that the Austin Police Association is trying to scare voters into thinking that that's not what would happen.
Lindsay (19:35): Yeah, absolutely. Do we want to talk about some things that are on prop B that we're a little worried about? Sure. Okay. So here is a summary of Prop B. The VPA prop, as equity action described it, they essentially believe that prop B would strip powers from oversight office, including access to information about complaints. It would strip us of the ability to file anonymous complaints with the civilian oversight office, which would force both the public and fellow officers to risk retaliation for coming forward about police wrongdoing, which is not good,
Maddy (20:15): Not good.
Lindsay (20:17): It would retain the current black box record system that keep most police conduct records hidden forever and feeds a police culture of secrecy and impunity.
Maddy (20:28): Yikes.
Lindsay (20:29): And it would maintain the 180 day rule that blocks any officer discipline after six months have passed from an incident and arbitrarily prevents accountability.
Maddy (20:40): So that doesn't sound like police oversight or accountability. That sounds a lot just protecting cops after they do bad things.
Lindsay (20:46): Exactly. And interestingly, it removes every mention of the word brutality.
Maddy (20:53): I noticed that as well. It was very intentional. I don't know. We all have a problem with brutality. I think it's like first they're denying that they are brutal. They're saying, they're probably saying that all of their use of force is necessary, but the whole point of these acts is so that we have some independent third party to look at that that is nonpartisan and decide if that use of force should be investigated.
Lindsay (21:26): Yeah, absolutely. I know we keep saying this, but it just really shows that their intention is not to create a world with accountability, or
Maddy (21:41): They don't want a world with accountability.
Lindsay (21:43): They don't want a world with accountability, transparency, all of these things that the OPA O was created for.
Maddy (21:50): They literally made a fraudulent petition hiding behind some third organization that they made up, lied about, wouldn't tell anybody who is in charge of, and then said, oh, we want to increase transparency. We're real good at that.
Lindsay (22:08): Yeah, it is. It's somewhat amusing. It's not amusing, but 2% amusing that agree. Any pro-police ballot measures have failed so badly in Austin that this is what they have to resort to.
Maddy (22:23): Absolutely. And what we're trying to do is move forward. Police are in Austin, police have the largest budget they've ever had in the history of ever, and there's not much we can do about that. But what we can do is improve this current situation, which is what a is trying to do. And the fact that every single little piece of progress that is tried by any organization to provide some sort of accountability or some sort of oversight just to check is fought so aggressively by the Austin Police Association, really does not build the trust that we're trying to build with things like the Office of Police Oversight, who I just want to say, if there all, I don't remember what the exact statistics are, but I think almost none of the complaints from the Austin, the Austin or the opo will provide recommendations, and almost none of them are taken by the police chiefs. So right now, if prop B passed and Prop A didn't, that's how it would continue. But if Prop A passed at the OPO gave a recommendation and the police association didn't take it, then city Council wouldn't be able to pass any measures.
Lindsay (23:51): I don't think that Prop A is going to solve all of our city's police problems by any means. But no, I do think it's a stepping stone towards some accountability of which right now we have very little to none, and Prop B would unfortunately just really cement that into being that we just will continue to have no accountability, no oversight, and we need to change that.
Maddy (24:18): It also sets a standard like Prop B would set a standard that you can put on a fraudulent petition in Austin and get whatever you want passed and squash local progressive efforts with lies, which is a really scary thought, and I look forward to City Council doing something about fraudulent petitions.
Lindsay (24:38): Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I read there was something going on with that already. They're looking into not letting this become the norm.
Maddy (24:47): Yeah. Because it seems to be happening every year. Yeah. So
Lindsay (24:52): One of the more interesting, exciting, maybe that's the right word, parts of prop A that's not in prop B, is that the OPO would have to conduct at minimum a preliminary investigation of every single complaint. Yeah, that sounds like it's needed.
Maddy (25:10): Definitely. There's a lot of complaints that I feel like are just swept under the rug and not addressed at all.
Lindsay (25:19): Absolutely.
Maddy (25:20): Yeah. I would love to talk more about what is in the actual props, but it's so much and it's so wordy. So that's where I've been struggling these past couple days.
Lindsay (25:41): I mean, I think that's very intentional, right? It's confusing by design so that the average person will just kind of throw their hands up and not want to keep reading. Yeah, it's very wordy. It's very similar. I think a lot of the language, even in the actual measure, not just the ballot language, is very similar, but very intentionally, vaguely leaves that little vague details very intentionally to create these little loopholes to gut this so that there's really not a whole lot the O P O can do with it.
Maddy (26:20): Yeah. So equity action says that the Austin Police Oversight Act will strengthen oversight by empowering the O P O to access all police records, gather EV evidence and interview witnesses. So that's a lot more power than they have now, I believe interviewing witnesses is, I feel like we've all watched crime shows where we're watching the cop just lie to and deceive the people that they're interviewing, and it's turned out really dangerous for in a lot of cases. So that sounds very exciting to me. So sometime in May of this year, Austin is going to certify a new police contract. So it's super important that we have some sort of idea for how O P O is going to be involved in that police contract before that happens. So even though it's just a few weeks, we are voting hopefully to increase police transparency before we solidify a new police contract. So we can ideally see some differences in how police function in Austin in the next year.
Lindsay (27:47): Yeah, absolutely. Thankfully, city Council was able to negotiate with the APA fairly recently to get a one year contract, whereas the police department was really pushing for a four year contract. But council really wanted voters to have a say in this. And now that we have our one year police contract, if prop A passes in May, then that will shape how they negotiate the new longer term police contract.
Maddy (28:23): I wonder what happens if prop A and prop B pass? I think probably nothing.
Lindsay (28:32): That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about that. Actually.
Maddy (28:37): Somebody knows if, let me know. My thought is if prop B passes, then nothing will change. There will. And if prop A and prop B pass, there will be so many cancellations between the two that it'll effectively, nothing will change.
Lindsay (28:57): Yeah. It's so chaotic for me to think that someone would walk into the voting booth and vote yes on both of them or only vote on one of them. I guess it's important that we educate people that it's not enough to just vote yes on a right. You have to vote no
Maddy (29:12): On B, you have to vote no on B too. Ideally, my thought is most people showing up to a May election with two props probably know a little bit of what's going on before they get there. But there's probably a lot of people who don't, when I was in college, I was so busy, I'd just walk past and be like, oh, it's voting time. And just walk in and be like, that sounds good. Yeah, I literally know I was clueless and I, I'm worried about those people.
Lindsay (29:40): I think we've seen, especially in Austin, these may off year elections, it's incredibly low voter voter turnout every single time. And the majority of people that are voting are very passionate about this one way or the other. And we do know that we have a lot of back the Blues people in Austin and they are going to show up,
Maddy (30:00): So they always do. But last year, equity Action was super successful in squashing APAs initiative. I assume that other one was an APA initiative too. So this year we're going to do it again.
Lindsay (30:18): Exactly. I think most people I've heard from that kind of have some intel on how these things might go from research and data. Say there's a very little chance that Prop B will pass, but it's obviously important that we all show up and talk to our friends and family members and
Maddy (30:38): Strangers. Fuck it.
Lindsay (30:39): Yeah, your Tinder dates, all of
Maddy (30:41): It. Tinder dates, random people sitting next to you at the bar. Yes. Make 'em all. Make 'em all vote. Alright, y'all early voting is Monday, April 24th to Tuesday, May 2nd. Election day is Saturday May 6th. Make sure you show up to the balls and you ask all of your friends and all of your family and all of your Tinder dates to show up as well and vote yes on A and no on prop B, so we can have increased transparency and accountability for the Austin Police Department. Little tiny baby step in restructuring the police department.
Lindsay (31:17): Yeah, absolutely. There's also more information on equity actions website, equity action atx.org. I think they have some volunteer opportunities. You can sign up for a yard sign. I did that and they randomly brought it over. There's nothing you have to do, which is cute. Maddy (31:32): Sweet.
Lindsay (31:33): Yeah, check it out.
Maddy (31:34): I'm sure they need volunteers and donations as well. So make sure you get all up in Equity actions business to give them all the help that they need and all the help that you can offer.
Lindsay (31:46): Absolutely. One other fun fact. So equity Actions pack raised $387,000 this past summer for their ballot initiative. We think in its most recent report, it had about $164,000 left, and the experts think that they probably need about twice that much to have a really successful petition. So please donate if you
Maddy (32:09): Can give them some money. Yeah, $5, $1, a hundred dollars, whatever you got. This is a worthwhile initiative. And if it passes, I think I feel confident that it would save some lives.
Lindsay (32:22): Absolutely.
Maddy (32:24): But other than that, thanks for tuning in everybody. This has been another episode of All My Leftists live in Texas, and we will see you next time
Maddy (32:51): If you like the music that you hear today, that is a local hip hop group called Hermit Kingdom, and they're fucking awesome and you should definitely check them out.
Maddy (33:00): And one more thing before I go. All of the equipment that we use today, all of the microphones and cords and controller and all of it was all bought with donations from people like you. I feel like P b s. So I just wanted to express my deepest gratitude. Thank y'all so much for supporting my page and for supporting this project and this podcast. I really, really appreciate it, and I'm so happy that I get to use equipment that works because of y'all. All my leftists will always be a labor of love. I don't get paid for this, but I would love to pay the people that help make it happen. And I would also love to get a little financial help to covering costs, paying for Canva and paying for the fucking statesman and things like that. So if you'd like to help me make that dream a reality, my website is all my leftist.com. You'll find some donate links there. But no pressure though. I know money's tight. Anyways, Texas means friend, and y'all means all. I hope you'll have a lovely rest of your day.
SOURCES:
https://equityactionatx.org/
https://www.saferaustin.com/
https://communityimpact.com/austin/central-austin/city-county/2023/02/09/dueling-austin-police-oversight-measures-set-to-appear-on-may-ballot/
https://www.austintexas.gov/page/may-2023-election
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/politics/vote-texas/police-oversight-propositions-may-election/269-12f057d6-82a0-498c-a0d0-9e0199f92fe5
https://yesonanoonb.com/press/
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/columns/2023/01/09/opinion-austin-police-oversight-act-impedes-honest-debate/69784794007/
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/vopa-pac-misleading-austin-police-oversight-petition
https://www.austinchronicle.com/daily/news/2022-12-08/pro-cop-fake-oversight-petition-drive-still-raises-questions/
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/whos-the-group-behind-the-other-austin-police-oversight-act/
https://thedailytexan.com/2023/01/30/austin-police-association-funded-petition-imitating-police-oversight-act/