In March of 2021, Defund Concord PD members voted to become an Action Team of Concord Communities Alliance. CCA agreed that Defund Concord PD should maintain the original mission and demands and continue to take guidance from the Movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter Movement. CCA would just be providing some much-needed organizational support. 

Leaders of the Defund Concord PD Action Team spent the next year working with CCA to determine what the merger meant and what it would look like for both memberships. In February of 2022, they made another big decision: to rebrand. Here is an excerpt from the announcement.

Throughout this transition, we have been reminded that our work to Defund the Police is about more than simply taking money away from the Concord Police Department. Our goal is to increase funding for programs and services that restore and uphold community-centered safety in Concord.

The beauty of Concord Communities Alliance is that their work already supports many of our community investment goals. There are CCA organizers working on housing and homelessness, land use and sustainability, government accountability, tenant protections, and even redistricting. Merging with CCA allows us to focus on policing- and surveillance-specific issues in our action team without losing sight of or losing connection to the reinvesting-in-communities aspect of our work.

As we have been reflecting on all of this, we have been considering changing our group name. While we still plan to focus on policing and surveillance issues, we want our name to reflect our community focus instead of centering on police. 

Defund Concord PD Action Team members voted and agreed that the best name for the action team moving forward is the Community Safety Action of Concord Communities Alliance. 

The group goals remain: 

End surveillance and prioritize community control over community support
Eliminate surveillance of targeted BIPoC and Immigrant communities
Eliminate gang databases and related information sharing.
Significantly reduce police patrol staff

 

End the war on drugs
Immediately and retroactively decriminalize drug-related offenses.

 

Hold existing, reduced public safety accountable
Create an oversight branch that exists outside of the Concord Police department
End qualified immunity

 

Invest in Concord Communities
Divest existing community services from the police.
Uncouple access to services, care, and support from the criminal punishment system.
Hear needs identified by the BIPoC and Immigrant communities impacted by drug trades, over-policing, racial discrimination, LGBTQ+ discrimination, and gender discrimination.
Develop community-based, transformative approaches to harm, health services, housing, job programs, and other programs.
Provide quality affordable housing, living wage employment, public transportation, education, and healthcare.
Provide voluntary, harm reduction and patient-driven, community-based mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Invest in community-based transformative violence prevention and intervention strategies that offer support for criminalized populations
Link community-based programs to emergency and non-emergency dispatch centers and provide them with the resources needed to respond effectively.
Provide reparations to survivors of police violence and their families, and to survivors of prison, detention, and deportation violence, and their families.

For current news and events the Community Safety Action Team is working on with CCA, please visit the Issues page.