Last month, a can of worms was unleashed by the STOP LAPD Spying Coalition, unsurprising, yet terrifying truths were realized. LAPD has contracted the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Councilmen Koretz’s office to coordinate a surveillance program on youth activists in LA.
Through winning a lawsuit, the Coalition has compelled the city to hand over records to reveal the scandal. It's bad, the guilty parties were “expanding youth surveillance in Los Angeles, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center ghostwriting a “letter of support” from Koretz to help them procure a surveillance grant funded by the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security.
Specifically, the “Simon Wiesenthal Center secure funded “Preventing Violent Extremism” programming in Los Angeles schools that would train students, teachers, and school police in labeling youth behaviors as “extremism” and reporting them directly to the Simon Wiesenthal Center through a phone app.” The database on the app was designed to account for common themes “to use in these trainings”, these themes were lists of “multiple Pro-Palestinian student groups, a BLM co-founder, and anti-police hashtags as examples of “terrorism and hate.”
The scandal is so bad, even “the mayor’s office rejected a similar DHS grant to expand its “Countering Violent Extremism” youth surveillance program. The goal was to sidestep the city’s rejection of the program, housing the same funding within the nonprofit.”
To learn more about this case and the impact, read Councilmember Paul Koretz’s Role in Youth Surveillance Revealed.
The word should spread around, LAPD has an interest in monitoring and antagonizing youth activism.