We are a group of 28 community organizations in Portland who have come together around a set of demands for the City during the COVID-19 outbreak to protect the most vulnerable people in our community and our community as a whole.

Members of our community are unhoused, under-resourced and compelled to work at frontline jobs, deprived of healthcare coverage and put at risk of deportation or police violence in accessing healthcare, incarcerated in immigrant detention centers, jails, and prisons, and facing diminished support due to school closures and inaccessible systems and infrastructure. COVID-19 enhances the trauma and economic devastation of policing and incarceration. 

We know public funding is available in the police and jail budgets, and we want our leaders to use this money to protect our community in the life-affirming ways we have listed in our demands. We know this crisis is preventable if Kate Brown, the City of Portland and Multnomah County acts now. 

Find updates on our demands here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WXnKsXgyvf7jXan0yX_GDicCBFIUZrKcRTS5WAjN46c/edit?usp=sharing

Email carenotcopspdx@gmail.com to get on our mailing list. 

HOUSING FOR ALL

• Immediately enable those unhoused, those being released from jail and prison facilities with no housing set up, and those fleeing domestic violence situations to inhabit vacant properties across the city, free of charge, and in a long-term capacity.
• Maintain the eviction moratorium, including expanding the moratorium to include all renters in Oregon, and immediately implement a rent freeze where rent is not required to be paid later. Implement a freeze on mortgage payments.

DECARCERATION

• Advocate for the immediate release of anyone being held in Portland's ICE detention center, halt all ICE sweeps, and halt all immigrant transport to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. 
• Immediately release all people being held pretrial, serving misdemeanor sentences, or on parole or probation violations in Multnomah County jails (MCDC, Inverness, and the Donald E. Long Youth Detention Facility). These releases should NOT be coupled with electronic monitoring.
• Immediately halt all transport to Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for those who have recently been convicted on felony charges and sentenced to serve prison time.  
• Immediately release all prisoners held in the state’s minimum security prison, Columbia River Correctional Institution. 
• Immediately release all prisoners over 50 and those who have underlying health conditions that will be more at risk of a lethal COVID-19 infection, as well as those who have one year or less left in their sentence. For all others, identify community based diversion programs and reentry services that can support their swift release.

END POLICING

• Immediately end all police sweeps and patrols of houseless community members.
• Immediately end all quality of life policing activity.
• Immediately place a moratorium on all arrests made by the Portland Police Bureau and Multnomah County Sheriff's Office.
• Immediately eliminate the Gun Violence Reduction Team (previously the "Gang Enforcement Team"), to stop its well documented practice of targeting people of color in Black and brown neighborhoods, and particularly of youth, especially as Portland has temporarily closed its schools.

NEEDS AND ACCESS

• Immediately freeze all Trimet public transit fare.
• Immediately provide guaranteed sick pay for workers who do not have it.