Editor's Special Note, 10/28/96
As some of you already know, at the annual conference &
meeting of N-COPA (National Coalition on Police Accountability) in Chicago
the first week of October, I elected not to continue editing the
newsletter, "Policing by Consent," beyond a combined, year-end anniversary
issue that was already in the works & tentatively slated to come out
mid-November.
Besides re-scheduling the regular October issue because production
week would have coincided exactly with the conference this year, we
specifically moved the year-end issue forward in order to be able to
include coverage of Coordinadora. Isabel Garcia of Derechos Humanos in
Tuscon, who spoke at the rally, had joined N-COPA the morning of 10/6 to
speak to our conference and hear that we had endorsed Coordinadora. In
addition to N-COPA's long-time Steering Committee member Maria Jimenez of
AFSC-ILEMP with her very important role in La Marcha, we delegated Andres
Valdez of Vecinos United in Albuquerque to convey N-COPA's greetings as
well. I myself also attended La Marcha with a contingent from Syracuse,
where I live. The interviews that Isabel, Maria and Andrez so graciously
provided to Bertha Rodiloff have now been among those aired on radio here
on the intervening Sundays.
Unfortunately, however, plans for the year-end issue of "Policing
by Consent" have been suspended at this point. We do expect that N-COPA
will have another newsletter up & running but cannot predict exactly
when that will happen. We are going to be exploring whether a sufficient
number of folks and organizations would be willing to pay to be listed in
a directory of police accountability activists to make it feasible to
produce that. If you are presently on PBC's mailing list you'll most
likely get a mailing about that in the near future, and if you aren't but
would like to be contacted to get that mailing, you can reply to me and
I'll pass it on or write directly to N-COPA's national office in
Chicago, Attn.: Mary Powers, in order to be placed on the list to get that
inquiry directly.
Citizens Alert does not have on-line capacity at this point but I
understand that may change in the not-too-distant future, perhaps in
early 1997.
In the meantime I will continue to maintain the web-site for the
time being. This is a partial & temporary solution as many N-COPA folks
aren't yet on-line. One thing I will do for this interim is construct some
links to related sites -- if there are recommendations for that, now's the
time to send them along -- as well as post a "digest" of what would have
appeared in the year-end issue and how you can follow up on those
stories. You might notice some "construction dust" right at the moment too
as we up-date over the next week or so.
Finally there are efforts underway to revive some kind
of listserve on police abuse/police accountability issues since Bob
Witanek's list is currently not operating. While not an official N-COPA
effort, I'd be glad to forward any queries directly.
Nancy Rhodes