Chispa is a brave organizing political home for young Latinx identifying peoples. Chispa seeks to engage with excluded peoples to uproot systems of oppression and cultivate systems grounded in community accountability, solidarity, and self-determination for our communities to thrive.
Write to Sharon Quirk-Silva, Cottie Petrie-Norris, Thom Daly, and other Orange County based Assembly Members to ask for their support for the California Act to Save Lives (AB 392) to address the crises of fatal police shootings in Orange County and California.
Demand: Rescind your approval of $25M MOU with the Santa Ana Police Officers Association, thereby relieving the City of its obligation to pay the increased salary and benefit packages committed to therein.
Demand: Uphold accountability and transparency, do not destroy police misconduct and brutality records.
Deport This! is a partnership between Chispa, OC Weekly, and Orange County Immigrant Youth United. The column is a rebuttal to Donald Trump’s racist politics and his OC cheerleaders, who’ll no doubt get triggered week after week by the news and vies undocumented young people and our allies.
Across California, police departments shield their misconduct records by delaying their release, charging high fees, or outright destroying them at times. Photo by City of Santa Ana.
If showering the department and its police officers with money is supposed to improve safety, the desired outcome has failed to materialize.
Excerpt: Lawsuit by former SAPOA boss, John Franks and Laura Franks, alleges he was forced to resign as union president for refusing to participate in the union’s successful election scheme that supported city council candidates in exchange for their pledged to vote for the removals of then-City Manager David Cavazos and then-Chief of Police Carlos Rojas.
We challenged Councilmember David Penaloza to defend his vote for the $25M Police Contract. See the letter we sent him to learn why. Photo Credit: City of Santa Ana.
On February 5th,the Santa Ana City Council wrote a $25.6 million blank check to the Santa Ana Police Officers Association (SAPOA) in the form of a new contract, despite having no money in their pockets to approve the largest police pay raise in decades with
On January 31st, the City Manager and Police Chief made a joint statement in response to the Santa Ana Police Department’s (SAPD) request to destroy police records. In their statement, SAPD Chief David Valentin stated that the destruction of police records is a “routine process,”
