Photo: Stop The Station
The Green Party of Pennsylvania has joined the Stop The Station coalition, an organization of local activist groups fighting for police accountability in the city of Pittsburgh, PA. It was initially formed in the summer of 2020 to fight the relocation of the Zone 5 Police Station to East Liberty at a cost of $3 million.
There was a backlash from the community to the project and to the city’s lying that the decision was by popular demand. Since then, Stop the Station has gained much support and momentum. The Green Party of Allegheny County (GPOAC, https://www.alleghenygreens.org/) is a member of Stop the Station’s Community Control Coalition.
Riley Mahon, a Green Party activist, says, “Stop the Station has increased the scope of its demands, including an immediate halt to all police-related capital budget projects pending community review. It also supported the recent direct ballot initiatives in Pittsburgh to enforce Breonna’s Law and expand the power of the Civilian Police Review Board. Stop the Station now additionally pushes for a 50% decrease in police funding, which would essentially bring the police budget back to levels prior to the current city administration. The cut funding should be redirected towards democratically owned housing and social service.” For more information about Stop the Station, please visit https://stopthestationpgh.com/.
Perhaps most notable is the recently launched Community Control of the Police campaign, another push for a direct ballot referendum. The referendum will be whether or not to implement a piece of legislation, written by Congressional candidate and law professor Jerry Dickinson and a group of his students, to replace the current appointed and toothless civilian police review board. This legislation would create a new, independent, democratically elected board with the power to hire, fire, subpoena and otherwise discipline the police as well as control their budget. Essentially, the new body would function very similarly to the school board, but for the police department.
The Green Party of Pennsylvania (GPPA) is an independent political party that stands in opposition to the two corporate parties. GPPA candidates promote public policy based on the Green Party’s Four Pillars: grassroots democracy, nonviolence, ecological wisdom, and social justice/equal opportunity. For further information about GPPA, please visit www.gpofpa.org. Please follow GPPA on social media: Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/gpofpa/; Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/pagreenparty/; and Twitter, https://twitter.com/GreenPartyofPA.
