Care Not Cops

Fellow: Jenica Garcia | Category: Case Studies

Jenica Garcia describes herself as “creative, optimistic, silly” and serves as Cultural Organizer with Lavender Phoenix, a Bay Area organization building Trans and Queer API community power.

Campaign Overview

Garcia developed the “Care Not Cops” campaign to challenge San Francisco’s city budget. The initiative aims to expose how municipal spending priorities harm vulnerable populations, particularly working-class Trans and Queer people facing economic violence through budget allocations favoring police over services.

Narrative Strategy Application

The campaign employed story-based approaches to counter “copaganda” narratives. Key tactics included:

• Video documentation of three-month action campaign
• Instagram-based exposés of budget allocations ($821 million to police)
• Public comment coordination with community supervisors
• Zine-making workshops for community storytelling

Garcia used the “Elements of the Story” tool to identify conflict, characters, and narrative framing for both internal and external audiences.

Key Outcomes

The team assessed campaign effectiveness and sustainability, recognizing opportunities for deeper cross-organizational collaboration on shared narrative strategies in future iterations.

SBS Impact

Story-based Strategy frameworks helped Garcia shift from individualist creative approaches toward interdependent, collective organizing methods accessible to non-artists.

Follow the work: @lavphoenix | lavenderphoenix.org