AFTER GEORGE FLOYD Los Angeles activists were already pushing to defund the police. Then George Floyd died. In a matter of weeks, Black Lives Matter activists went from struggling to get a response from the L.A. City Council to presenting their budget demands in person. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles, leads a protest on June 10, 2020. Alexis Hunley / for NBC News June 15, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC By Tyler Kingkade Breaking News GEmeta bilsreaking news LOS ANGELES — A week before George Floyd was killed, Jane Nguyen alerts and special created a bar graph. reports. The news and stories that Nguyen, co-founder of Ktown for All, an activist group that advocates matter, delivered for the homeless, plugged numbers into Excel from the budget that Los weekday mornings. Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti released a few weeks earlier. City spending on housing appeared on Nguyen’s graph as a sliver compared to over $3 SUBSCRIBE billion going to the Los Angeles Police Department — 54 percent of all discretionary spending — which she considered an “obscene amount.” Municipal government budgets are usually an “obscure, niche, boring” topic, Nguyen conceded, but when she placed the numbers in a chart, “I think it’s so visually impactful — you see why our society is so messed up just from that graph.” Under Garcetti’s budget, most city agencies faced cuts to deal with the economic downturn, but police were slated to get a boost, including a $41 million bonus package arranged with the police union. Garcetti defended the cuts to other agencies, including the transportation, cultural affairs and parks departments, as necessary given the economic conditions. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Outraged that Garcetti’s budget prioritized police over social programs, Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles gathered several local activist groups, including Ktown for All, in early May to create their own budget proposal, based on surveys of thousands of Angelenos. They called it the “People’s Budget,” and emphasized allocations for housing and mental health services, while cutting police to 5.7 percent of spending. They also organized hundreds of residents to flood the City Council meeting’s online public comment session. However, City Council members largely ignored their proposal, Nguyen said, and there was little coverage of the People’s Budget in the media — until racial justice protests sparked by Floyd’s death took over the streets. Demonstrators hold up fists at a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Hall of Justice in Los Angeles on June 10. Alexis Hunley / for NBC News Suddenly, huge marches in Los Angeles were demanding what Black Lives Matter-LA had spent years calling for — defunding the police — and they used Nguyen’s chart to make their point. She saw her bar graph displayed on signs at protests, and tweets using her chart collected tens of thousands of retweets and likes. The People’s Budget became a national trending topic on Twitter, and traffic to the website for the project tripled. On Monday, Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter-LA, and four other activists were invited to present the People’s Budget in person and in detail at a City Council meeting. They were able Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD to speak without interruption about problems they’ve faced with police and a lack of resources for their neighborhoods. In response, City Council members pledged to “reimagine” how the city will approach policing. The recent activism in Los Angeles, the nation’s second most populous city, has ramped up scrutiny on local elected officials, and in particular on the budget, in a way not seen in a generation. Though it’s too early to tell what the long-term result will be, if they succeed, the Los Angeles organizers could offer a playbook for activism elsewhere. The stratey focuses on elected leaders at the city level, takes advantage of online meetings local governments implemented because of social distancing, and shifts the ground beneath the feet of politicians in places long ruled by one political party. “The masses of people were awakened by George Floyd,” Abdullah said, “but the response was already organized.” City considers scaling back LAPD spending While Los Angeles has a long history of tension between Black communities and the police, the largely Democratic city government has spent decades pushing to expand the number of officers on the street, arguing this results in lower crime rates. Racial justice activists say the city has failed to hold officers accountable for misconduct. There were no charges in more than 1,500 shootings by police in Los Angeles County from 2000 to 2018, according to the Guardian. Black motorists in L.A. are nearly five times as likely to be searched during traffic stops compared to white drivers, a Los Angeles Times analysis found. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Protesters speak about the lack of prosecutions over police killings in Los Angeles at a Black Lives Matter demonstration on June 10. Alexis Hunley / for NBC News As protests gained steam in Los Angeles, and advocacy for the People’s Budget ramped up, Garcetti and the City Council called for trimming as much as $150 million from the LAPD’s budget. While activists say much more needs to be done, they saw it as a victory. Recommended AFTER GEORGE FLOYD AFTER GEORGE FLOYD Police seize rifle from St. Louis couple who pulled Video of Pennsylvania police officer with knee on guns on Black Lives Matter protesters man's neck prompts protests Garcetti said the move was “an inflection point” for L.A., and that it was “time to move our rhetoric towards action to end racism.” “I have always prioritized funding and policies that promote equality and racial justice," Garcetti added in a statement. "This moment has shown that we must do more and I’m grateful to many Angelenos who for bringing critical attention to this issue." Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD City Council President Nury Martinez tweeted, “We cannot talk about change, we have to be about change,” as she introduced a motion to reallocate money from the LAPD to "disadvantaged communities and communities of color." Council members also promised to push back on the police union, which is now running TV ads against the budget cuts. Sgt. Jerretta Sandoz, vice president of the Los Angeles Police Protective League, the LAPD’s union, said the cuts will make residents less safe. “These cuts also mean less money for special programs like cracking down on human trafficking or working compassionately with the homeless,” Sandoz said. “So, we ask those who want to cut the budget, what do you want less of? Patrol officers responding to 911 calls? Outreach to our homeless population? Slower investigations of crimes?” A primary and a pandemic A lot of the momentum behind Los Angeles progressive activists built up in the spring. The City Council primary lined up with California’s presidential primary in March, which had increased significance this year since it was held earlier in the primary cycle, on Super Tuesday. That gave activists, especially those who backed the progressive City Council candidate Nithya Raman, an opening to reach more voters who otherwise might have ignored local politics. Raman won enough votes to force a runoff in the fall against incumbent David Ryu. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD ‘Defund the police’: What does this mean, and what could it look like? JUNE 14, 2020 / 03:56 “Because of the timing of the election, more people were making sure they were doing their due diligence down the ballot,” said Meghan Choi, co-manager of Raman’s campaign and co-founder of the activist group Ground Game LA. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD Two weeks after the primary, the spread of COVID19 shut down California. Los Angeles residents reliant on service or entertainment industry work suddenly didn’t know whether they’d get a paycheck in time to make rent in April. One survey found 55 percent of Angelenos were out of a job. Many began getting more involved with local activist groups. The Los Angeles Tenants Union, an independent group of renters, saw the number of dues-paying members more than quadruple from 700 to over 3,000 in three months. Usually, the new members have little knowledge about their rights as renters in the city, or how much city funding goes toward housing programs compared to other priorities, like the police, said Walt Senterfitt, an organizer with the L.A. Tenants Union. “People start finding out things about the budget that they didn’t know before,” Senterfitt, 75, said. “The idea that more than half of the discretionary city budget goes to police — most people were absolutely flabbergasted by that fact and they say this is a police force that is often on our necks, so to speak.” Into America Into Defunding the LAPD 00:00 / 30:52 Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD The increased attention on the City Council’s budget and policies soon led to protests. When the City Council failed to pass a full eviction moratorium in late March, a group of activists — later calling themselves the People’s City Council — gathered dozens of cars to drive around the homes of council members and the mayor honking their horns and yelling through megaphones.