October 26, 2016

Dear Friend,

One of our core policy goals is to reform national security policies that violate civil liberties, negatively affect our communities, and are counterproductive to building trust with our government.

Using this criteria we advocated for the Department of Justice to suspend its government-led CVE intervention program called Shared Responsibility Committees (SRCs). The SRCs would have allowed the FBI to convene community leaders to intervene with any individual the FBI identified as potentially at risk for violent extremism, essentially using community members as intelligence gatherers. This a bad and ineffective policy that has failed previously.

I am happy to share that because of our advocacy with coalition partners the Department of Justice and FBI is suspending the SRC policy.

Our engagement with the federal government on national security issues is a powerful example of how MPAC’s model of advocacy works:

1) Engagement - Building relationships with decision-makers by having direct, honest, and consistent engagement, especially when we disagree with bad policies.

2) Building Coalitions - Partnering with our allies around issues of common concern to amplify our collective voice and strengthen our individual work.

3) Offering Solutions - Applying a solution oriented approach to working with others.

This is a policy win, but we have more work to do. We will continue to work with our elected officials and federal agencies to protect our civil rights and liberties while maintaining our national security by reforming bad and counterproductive national security policies.

Sincerely,

Hoda Hawa

Director of Policy and Advocacy