Just Voices Iowa Speaking Truth. Seeking Justice Our website is a place for your voice to be heard. Being Black in Iowa ain’t easy, especially when it comes to disproportionate rates at which we are stopped, ticketed, and too frequently arrested by the Des Moines Police Department. Finally, there’s an organization that knows this, who has done the research, and collected the stories. Just Voices Iowa is a new organization committed to speaking the truth and seeking justice for Black and Brown people who have lived through racially-biased policing. Their far-reaching vision is a society free from racial oppression. Their more immediate mission is to see a state-wide ban on raciallybiased policing, a mandate for complete and accurate data collection, and the decriminalization of marijuana. While Des Moines finally passed an ordinance, a law, banning racial profiling in June, it came only after two years of community-led pressure. In the end, an alliance of organizations combined forces to demand that our city’s elected officials implement real change in policing of people of color. Those organizations included the community-based social justice giant, Iowa-CCI, the ACLU of Iowa, the Des Moines NAACP, Pastor Fredrick Gaddy, and retired attorney, Harvey Harrison. The awful murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis also added pressure to our city leaders. Many feel the ordinance is a good start, it falls short of all the changes the community truly demanded. While that battle for an anti-racial profiling ordinance waged on, Just Voices Iowa was building an organization and a website that would be ground-breaking and very revealing. Their website is www.justvoicesiowa.org and there you will find the true stories and the real data collected over six years, from 2014 through 2019 which proves raciallybiased policing is happening in Des Moines. Here’s some highlights from the website, but go there to find much more. The URBAN EXPERIENCE | 2020 31
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