Survey the schools in your area. Request that the local School District provide you with the graduation rate data for your local high schools. Step one is to make sure its disaggregated. Then take a look at the graduation rates of all student populations. If there are glaring disparities, you could begin by finding out why. If not, before you look away - compare the graduation rate data year by year for at least the last 4 or 5 years, looking specifically to see if there are any unexplained sudden leaps in reported outcomes (64.3% one year that jumps to 80.5% the following year). When you see those sudden leaps, chances are the district didn't suddenly discover some new effective teaching method - they more than likely just changed the formula they used to determine the graduation rate and found some way to exclude some sub-group of under-performing kids. If you see that - go back and recalculate the graduation rate using the most inclusive formula and hold their feet to the fire.

Check to see if your local schools employ SRO's (Uniformed police Officers sometimes referred to as School Resource Officers)

Take a hard look at contracting and jobs in your community. Request a copy of the annual budget reports from your City Council, School Board, and County Commission. Add your total County budget, to your total City budget, to your total School Board budget... In most mid-sized cities you'll be looking at roughly 1 BILLION dollars. Then request (through the purchasing departments of each agency) a report on the number of dollars spent with minority and women owned businesses. Again, make sure you receive Disaggregated numbers. If that number represents an abysmally low percentage of the public dollars flowing through your community (in many cases it will be less that 1%), then go to work with each agency on ways to make their purchasing processes more inclusive. Remember: Small businesses that are able to "get work" and receive contracts are then able to produce jobs for the folks and kids in our neighhborhoods.

Survey the shops and stores that service your community and ensure that your community is receiving the same levels of service and standards of merchandise as other communities. In many communities, even major grocery chains have a history of moving products that are nearing their expiration dates into poorer neighborhoods to make room on the shelves for fresh fruits, vegetables, and merchandise in whiter more affulent areas. Look particularly at items like baby food, formula, milk & dairy, and the quality of meat products. Also, ensure that standards of cleanliness and product availability are uniform regardless of neighborhood or zip code. 

Become fluent with the language and content of the Community Reinvestment Act, which is designed to eliminate red-lining, fight discriminatory lending practices, and ensure that low and moderate income citizens have access to credit. (Our folks need opportunities to own and not just rent) Lending intuitions are scored based on their compliance. Learn the scores of the lending institutions that service your community and push them to improve whenever possible...

Many of our communities, especially in smaller and more rural areas, have been subjected to environmental racism. Survey your local community and determine whether there are landfills, coal ash dumping sites, sprayfields, or 'brownsites' near residential areas. Request county health data on lead levels in your local drinking water. Also, gather local health data on the prevelence of asthma or other respitory diseases in the community. Work to educate the community on the dangers of these and other environmental challenges and fight to remove health hazards from your community. 

Survey your community to determine how far local residents have to travel to reach a full service Grocery Store that sells fresh fruits and vegetables. Many smaller and predominantly African American Communities are disproportionately serviced by corner stores, bodegas, and discount groceries that provide easy access to heavily processed foods, canned goods, and generic food products, but only limited access to fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. People who live in lower income areas shouldn't have to travel to the ends of the earth to have access to healthy foods for themselves and their families. If you have a community in your area that is in a food desert, challenge the major grocery store chains to invest in your community. 

Find out what are the alternatives to incarceration that your City/County uses and what are the opportunities for expansion. (Sadly, sometimes Cities/Counties don't invest in alternatives to incarceration because prisons are a primary employment source for some small town populations) Ask questions and FIGHT for good answers! Are there enough in-patient drug treatment facilities (and beds) to handle non-violent drug offenders? Are they using up-to-date screening tools to determine which persons convicted of crimes can be helped through intense supervision outside of jail or prison? Are they screening to determine which persons convicted of crimes are likely to re-offend and are they investing in decreasing those risk-factors?

Request that your police department provide you with a copy of their Use of Force policies (sometimes referred to as the use of force continuum). This should spell out the allowable levels of force officers should use and the the progression of force they should follow prior to resorting to tasers or deadly force. Become FLUENT in these policies. 

Also look for data concerning homicide closure rates. You want to make sure that commensurate amounts of time and resources are used to catch bad actors in our community, as they are in other communities. You want to gather (through whatever means you can - they won't make this easy for you) data on the number of Officers charged with excessive force, who conducted the investigations, and the outcomes of each of the cases. (Sadly, in most communities you'll find the total numbers hard to secure, Police Departments are usually in charge of investigating themselves, and very few Officers are terminated for misconduct or excessive force). Push to ensure that Officer involved shootings and cases of excessive force are investigated by independent agencies. If you don't have a citizens review board - work to establish one. DO NOT settle for an advisory board - you want a Review board who reports at least to the City Manager's level, with subpoena power, and who's findings are binding.

This is a far more complex campaign to design and run effectively than the others I've suggested thus far so forgive me, but this will be lengthy (and it needs to be to ensure its thourough...)

An Effective Racial Profiling campaign will require litigious and legislative advocacy and those pieces must (by jurisdiction) be handled by a State Conference instead of a Branch. However, there are some very important pieces of data that you can and should collect at the branch level which should then be provided to your respective State Conference to assist in the overall effort...

Many (If not most) young'ish Black men have had the experience of driving along in their vehicle and noticing a police Car following behind them. The car may follow you for several minutes or miles, changing lanes and turning along with you, watching and waiting for any traffic infraction (no matter how minor) to justify a stop. Once stopped, the Officers ask for your paperwork, ask a barrage of questions, and may even ask or attempt to initiate a vehicle search. THIS is the common experience of Racial Profiling.

Profiling is very easy to identify when you're experiencing it - but very difficult to prove after the fact. Why? (Glad you asked)

The classic act of Racial Profiling in a vehicle, involves an Officer selecting a person who they want to question or search, not because of some crime or infraction, but rather because of their appearance, the appearance of the vehicle, the neighborhood they're in or some other extraneous point.... They follow that vehicle until they can find a legal justification for stopping them. Police Departments refer to the action as a "Pretext Stop". (Thus acknowledging that the 'infraction' was in fact a pretext to conduct the stop)

Police departments DON'T consider Pretext Stops to be Racial Profiling. In fact, Police Departments around the country will tell you that they believe that Pretext Stops are legal pursuant to the decision of the Supreme Court in the Whren vs United States case of 1991.

*Background*
A police Officer recognized Mr. Whren and knew that he had a history with drugs. The Officer performed a pretext stop for a minor infraction and searched Mr Whren's vehicle where he found drugs. Whren filed suit claiming that the stop was illegal since he had committed no crime that would have warranted the Officer singling him out and therefore asked that the search be ruled illegal and inadmissable. They filed a 4th amendment claim, citing the constitutional protection against illegal search and seizure.

The Supreme Court ruled that because the Officer pulled him over after noting a (minor) traffic infraction, the stop was legal.

Now while this would seem like a pretty clear-cut indication that pretext stops are in fact legitimate policing techniques, they are NOT. To fully understand the issue, you have to read the dissenting opinions in the case! Wherein, one of the Justices stated that the problem was that Mr Whren argued his 4th Amendment protection from illegal search and seizure - HOWEVER HE SHOULD HAVE considered arguing his 14th amendment protection for Equal Protection Under the Law!!!

THAT, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the blueprint for fighting Racial Profiling. - Let me explain...

All across the country Officers and Departments are using minor infractions (such as "Wide Turn", "Failure to Signal 100 ft from the intersection", "Tires crossing the Center Line") to affect traffic stops on persons who they wish to question or search. Now while there is NO reliable data ANYWHERE that suggests the different "races" of people have different driving abilities, a detailed analysis of traffic stop data would likely show that certain types of traffic enforcement are predominantly used on certain populations and in certain neighborhoods. And having detailed data that showed a racial correlation to the application of certain policing strategies or the statisical likelihiood of a being stopped, searched, or questioned, would provide the necessary raw data to make a prima facie 14th amendment claim.

This is why all serious Racial profiling bills and efforts stipulate the need for data collection - And this is why YOUR Police Department either doesn't collect the data, or if they do, its why they won't want to release it to you...

To fight racial profiling - fight for detailed, disaggregated, categorized stop data. You want that data to be GIS Mapped as well (any mid-sized city or larger has the capability to provide it)

Fight for answers to explain enforcement disparities and demand a plan to end them. Consult with Legal Counsel to consider your options if a clear racial correlation can be established. And by all means, SHARE the data you receive with your State/State Area Conference so that they can look at State-Wide patterns and practices and consider further Legal and/or Legislative remedies...

Begin meeting with your School board members, City Councilmembers, and County Commissioners RIGHT AWAY. Make your issues known to them BEFORE you're calling on them to vote a certain way on something.

Similarly, meet with the Editorial Board of your local newspaper. And spend time getting to know your local reporters. You need to develop relationships with them BEFORE you need them to cover your story. The time you invest on the front end will pay off in the long run by the degree to which your positions are accurately reported in the press...