Democracy Ateneo Announcement 1-9-16

Compañer@s,

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, January 9, 2016, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose) to resume our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles briefly mentioned below.

Within the last month, we have witnessed prominent police killings with the officers involved protected by the court process and as a result enjoying a nationally visible impunity. The officers who killed Tamir Rice in Ohio were protected by a Grand Jury that refused to indict. Those responsible for Freddie Gray's death in Baltimore benefitted from a mistrial. Following the death of Sandra Bland, the only indictment was a misdemeanor level perjury charge against the arresting officer; a grand jury reached the decision that neither the sheriff's office nor the jailers were responsible
for the jail cell death of Bland. Across the nation, officers walked free even as protests shut down streets and police commission meetings, such as in San Francisco where the community mobilized demanding the resignation of SFPD Chief Greg Suhr as part of the response to the SFPD killing of Mario Woods on December 2, 2015. Similar protests have taken place across the country including Chicago where a mobilized community has demanded the resignation of mayor Rahm Emanuel for the assassination of Lacquand McDonald. While the nation watched the struggle unfold in Chicago officers took the life of 19 year old Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones, a 55 year old mother. An innocent bystander, Jones was well known in the neighborhood as as an important resource looking out for the well being of the community. From the
struggles in the streets, call outs were issued to gather in cities on verdict days for networked direct actions nationwide.

As the new year begins, law enforcement killings are tallied and those documented for 2015 stand at 1201 nationally (See, "Killed By Police 2015"). In San Francisco, six lives were taken, and in Los Angeles, Fresno, San Jose, Oakland and across the peripheries, the violence continues as well. These killings occur against a backdrop of increasing criminalization, specifically directed at communities of color like East San Jose, Bayview Hunters' Point, and the Mission, to name just a few. At the same time, as homicides continue to rise, including a homicide in San Jose on Christmas day, we are reminded that the police are not functioning to make our communities safer or to pursue investigations that result in justice for a community. From the streets to the courts, justice has been severed from the communities facing the impacts of violence.

Despite people's refusal to name it as such, the system of apartheid in this country is stark. On January 6th, in the streaming rain, a crowd of protesters harmlessly marched down a Bayview street to draw attention to a grave misjustice in the police shooting death of Mario Woods and Alex Nieto, a young Latino youth on his way to work. The march marked a convergence of Black and Brown struggles against police violence in San Francisco. Folks marching to demand justice and that we not forget the state's deeds were confronted with the full force of an American police state. Meanwhile a white supremacist anti-government group storms a federal building and the government publicly declares "hands off." “A major aspect of the violent seizing of Malheur [National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon], then,” explains Arthur Scarritt, “centers on the distribution model of these federal subsidies. Should they prioritize the interests of the large resource extraction multinationals? Or should they primarily serve the needs of the manifest destiny frontiersmen? Seen in this way, this is an old conflict at the racist heart of the United States. Poor white men could enjoy their God given right to property through dragging their families into the backwoods and pushing the frontier of the country, therein conditioning the land for eventual corporate exploitation. Communism for white men eventually led to socialism for corporations.” (See, A. Scarritt, “The Rationality of the Malheur Gunmen: Fighting for the White Future of This Country”.) While the government has little problem avoiding confronting far right anti-government groups, it has no problem making very public the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) launch of raids targeting undocumented immigrants with the start of the new year. Many of those deliberately targeted are families who have fled difficult circumstances in their home countries and have been up until the new year the lowest priority for deportation. (See, H. Ahmad, "DHS Immigration Raids Reverse Policy of Deporting Felons, Not Families")

As the year closed members of the Tila Ejido denounced the current mayor
for "reactivating" Paz y Justicia [Peace and Justice], a notorious paramilitary group operating in the northern part of Chiapas. Paz y Justicia are known to be responsible for the "death or disappearance of 122 indigenous in Northern Chiapas and the displacement of more than 4 thousand indigenous Chols and Tzetzals in that region between 1995 and 2000." (see, Chiapas Support Committee, "Accuse Tila mayor of reactivating paramilitaries"). Paz y Justicia have been brazen. They are attributed with the attack of the Bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, Samuel Ruiz García and his "pastoral caravan" that carried the Bishop coadjutor, Raúl Vera, two catechists and the majordomo of the Señor of Tila Sanctuary, Manuel Pérez. The past and current attacks on the ejido are of little surprise given that the Tila Ejido is a supporter of the Sixth Declaration and active in the Zapatista mobilization in the region.

Despite the state's reliance on low intensity conflict in its effort to control populations that pose a threat or are simply in the way, there are a number of projects that not only denounce decades of paramilitary violence and state disappearances and displacement but also continue to build an autonomous alternative. In some instances, these efforts include constructing systems of information, such as databases, tactical cartographies, postcards, and FB pages that document the amount of military, police, and paramilitary violence that impacts marginal communities. These systems of information also often situate older
violences against violences in the present --denouncing impunity, refusing
erasure, and contributing to a broader analysis of low intensity war and its impact in our communities. Often these systems, or temporary autonomous zones of knowledge production, function as spaces of encounter where the community converges to develop a shared analysis, coordinate mobilizations, share information, and, most importantly, construct the alternatives to state directed and capitalist determined institutions. While these efforts of documentation and mobilization are marked by a necessary call for accountability, there is also a growing sense that the state is beyond reform. The police and the courts are not designed to serve justice.
It is in this context that other spaces of shared learning become critical.

Not surprisingly, the rebellion and opposition to state and state manufactured violence has heightened the emerging commitment for autonomy. Those places plagued by low intensity conflict seem to be sites actively engaging strategies of autonomy as in the case of Occupy Alemão. According to Raul Zibechi, "Occupy Alemão was born to resist police brutality [from the Pacifying Police Units (UPP)] with rock festivals, cine-debates, children’s games, 'graffiti' workshops and an 'economic blackness fair,'
inspired in the solidarity tradition of the 'Quilombos' (republics of fugitive slaves); they destine [sic] 20 percent of the sales to a fund to support the mothers of victims of the State in Río de Janeiro." (see, R.Zibechi, "Domination and resistance in the favela") But, the struggle for autonomy can be a slow and at times difficult process. In the case of the Zapatistas, they are celebrating their 22nd year of struggle (not including the 10 years prior to their officially becoming known to larger publics). (see, "EZLN’s Words on 22nd Anniversary")
South Bay and North Bay Crew

NB: If you are not already signed-up and would like to stay connected with the emerging Universidad de la Tierra Califas community please feel free to subscribe to the Universidad de la Tierra Califas listserve at the following url <https://lists.resist.ca/cgibin/mailman/listinfo/unitierracalifas>. Also, if you would like to review previous Democracy Ateneo and Social Factory Ateneo announcements and summaries as well as additional information on the ateneo in general please see <http://ccra.mitotedigital.org/ateneo>. Please note we have altered the schedule of the Democracy Ateneo so that it falls on the second Saturday of the month.