Democracy Ateneo Announcement 12-13-14

Compañer@s,

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, December 13, 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 mentioned below.

Not long after we learned of the Ferguson grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson for the shooting death of Michael Brown, Robin Kelley reminded us that the police violence currently associated with Ferguson and other instances of state violence around the country amount to a low intensity war against Black and Brown communities (see, R. Kelley," Why We Won't Wait"). The application of counter insurgency against historically marginalized communities was affirmed just days later in a second grand jury's decision not to hold officer Pantaleo accountable for choking Eric Garner to death. The justice system's refusal in each instance to address the consequences of zealous, criminal policing we know to be only a small part of the state violence directed at working class, poor and racially segregated communities. Nor are we fooled by the diversion created by the discussion of lapel cameras or the systematic criminalization of protests that have continued unabated since the most recent revelation of racist violence. In our communities of struggle it is clear that the police will never monitor themselves into a justice that serves us. Monitoring the police from the community may offer possibilities as a stage towards community control, but our struggles for justice do not coincide with accountability, we instead re-claim our autonomy. At the same time, the calls for cameras make observable the greater injustices that families and communities face when they are asked to accept mis-information/dis-information about the violence exacted on loved ones when the only witnesses are the state. This call can be a provocation for examining and challenging aspects of the "prose of counterinsurgency" as criminalization strategies are deployed against families in the state's efforts to legitimize its own violence (see, R. Guha, "The Prose of Counter-Insurgency").

Much of what constitutes militarized policing has been understood recently as the result of excessive military grade equipment and technology visibly on display, for example, in the response to peaceful protests. However, overlooked has been the more complex dimension of militarized policing organized through such programs as "broken windows policing" and other strategies related to community policing that, as Kai Wright has recently explained, results in an everyday level of persecution targeting select communities (see, K. Wright, "The Ugly Idea That Killed Eric Garner"). The state's efforts to control certain populations is underscored by the fact that officers like Pantaleo, according to Wright, distinguish themselves by severely harassing Black, Brown, and poor residents in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant designated as "impact zones." It should be of little surprise that a squad of officers accosted Garner and then let him die.

The state's commitment to low intensity war and the collusion between the military, police, courts, and, increasingly select non-profit organizations has been well known and documented as in the case of Oakland, Salinas, and Fresno. Kristian Williams has recently shown that local police forces have successfully applied military training, tactics, and material to execute a counter insurgency strategy aimed at controlling entire populations through a coordinated effort of both militarized policing and community policing, or a systematic effort of police outreach programs that make community members complicit with more aggressive policing strategies while also dividing the community by criminalizing some members and rewarding others (see, K. Williams, "The Other Side of the COIN: Counterinsurgency and Community Policing"). Much of this complex approach to policing that is better understood as counter insurgency is made possible through "social network analysis," a strategy for gathering information about the "population" and mapping relations across communities. This analysis also explains how it is possible to attack select groups while offering aid to others and collaborating with still others to eliminate any insurgency by criminalizing select portions of the community. In the present, much of this is achieved through the highly competitive economy that structures the non-profit industrial complex. More importantly, policing (and incarcerating) are big business. Imagine where the $75 million earmarked for 50,000 police lapel cameras could go --back into the community to address the gross structural inequality that produces local crime and makes survival difficult? Instead, much of that contract could go, for example, to Taser Systems, a company that recently "posted back-to-back weeks of double-digit percentage gains on growing demand for its products and services." In addition to its infamous stun guns, the corporation's products and services include Axon body worn cameras and the video storage platform Evidence.com (see, Munarriz, "Last Week's Biggest Stock Movers").

The application of low intensity doctrine is hardly new to the periphery in the U.S. It has a long history of domestic uses, especially with its application along the U.S.-Mexico border since 1992 as Tim Dunn has documented (see, T. Dunn, "Border Militarization via Drug and Immigration Enforcement: Human Rights Implications"). The application of low intensity conflict doctrine and counter insurgency strategies along the border has had a devastating consequence on the lives of local residents and especially the risks to migrants attempting to cross into the U.S. in search of work. The amount of deaths due to increased border militarization, and increasingly detentions and deportations, has been staggering. Mexico has suffered to an even greater extent due to the U.S. commitment to the War on Drugs (see, border war map). Laura Carlsen reminds us of the epic numbers of lives lost since 1994 and the ghastly increase of victims with President Felipe Calderon's war program after 2006 to the current phase of life lost resulting in over 130,000 dead and over 28,000 missing. But, according to Carlsen, the War on Drugs is also a war on youth and a counter insurgency effort against those sectors across Mexico committed to political and economic change. The war makes it possible for the U.S. to enlist Mexican elites in its service to eliminate dissent while also displacing whole populations. In the end, Plan Merida and related bilateral agreements that have channeled more than $2 billion worth of aid to Mexico make it available for corporate interests to exploit long sought after resources (see, L. Carlsen, "Mexico's Youth Under Siege"). On Thursday, December 4 we awoke to yet another moment of low intensity conflict in the heart of Silicon Valley. Beginning at 6 a.m. San Jose police executed a plan to "clear out the jungle," one of the nation's largest houseless encampments. The city of San Jose's intentions to shut down the encampment have been well known for some time. This particular moment of state violence underscores the commitment to low intensity conflict in general but specifically to the war on the most marginal of what Raul Zibechi calls the sótano, the urban poor occupying the urban periphery (see, R. Zibechi, "Subterranean echos: Resistance and politics 'desde el Sótano'"). Through these events we see the confluence of multiple wars and an overlap of counter insurgency projects and strategies that are not limited to physical repression only. The collective witnessing of these recent events makes more urgent the role of assemblies as critical spaces of democracy. These are spaces where we are able to claim and affirm the sinews that hold us together as families, neighborhoods, and communities. They are also spaces of justice, where democracy is a process of recognizing connections across struggles as a way of making decisions regarding our own collective well being.

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/cgi-bin/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.

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