Social Factory Ateneo 2-28-15
Compañerxs,
We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Social Factory Ateneo, Saturday, February 28th from 2 - 5 p.m. at Obelisco (3411 E 12th St Ste 110; Oakland, CA 94601; b/t 35th Ave & 34th Ave close to Fruitvale BART) to continue our regularly scheduled reflection and action space and to explore some of the questions and struggles mentioned below. The space is fully accessible and we can share and support childcare.
On Saturday, February 21, Laurie Valdez and others hosted a community gathering in San Jose on the anniversary of the death of her partner, Antonio Guzman Lopez at the hands of the San Jose State University Police. It was an anniversary of refusals and commitments, and also a moment of community regeneration. Laurie and her children, Josiah and Angelique, were joined by families from across the greater Bay Area. Dionne Smith and Cary Downs, parents of James Earl Rivera Jr. of Stockton; Tony Garcia, brother of Yanira Serrano-Garcia of Half-Moon Bay; Cadine and Angela Evans and Raheim, family of O'Shaine Evans of Oakland; "Uncle Bobby" and Sister Beatrice, family of Oscar Grant of Oakland; Denise and Gregory Johnson parents of Gregory Johnson, Sr. of San Jose State University; Vickie and Jim Showman parents of Diana Showman of San Jose; Elvira and Refugio Nieto, parents of Alex Nieto of San Francisco; Al Osorio representing the Kenneth Harding Foundation on behalf of Denika Chatman and the family of Kenneth Harding Jr. of San Francisco, while others spoke of a collective effort to launch a people's investigation together with mother Kathleen Espinosa into the San Francisco Police killing of Asa Sullivan in 2006, to support the family's appeal.
Several families had just come from the direct action lockdown of the Home Depot in Emeryville after the fatal shooting with an AR 15 rifle of Yuvette Henderson by Emeryville Police on February 3rd after a Home Depot security guard had reportedly called police with the suspicion that Yuvette may have shoplifted.
Saturday’s year-anniversary gathering and picnic hosted by Laurie Valdez marks a critical moment in a larger series as a growing network of families continues to construct autonomous spaces of convergence to share knowledges on lawyers, cases, and new moments in ongoing community based investigations. In his essay, “Regenerating People’s Space,” Gustavo Esteva theorizes expandable points of connected support as a "living hammock." This offers a way of understanding how as families continue to weave together shared struggles and collective experiences of grief and resilience across an ever expanding geography of the greater Bay Area, they are constructing a mesh formed of care and forms of justice outside the state, a mesh prepared to catch new families who are targeted. These are anniversaries of violence, and difficult for those who must host them and difficult as well for those for whom the anniversary recalls their own family anniversaries. But they are not devoid of joy--children, several of whom have been orphaned by police violence, had a chance to have their faces painted and share in bursting open a piñata in the sunny and warm San Jose park. Stories are swapped and new plans discussed as the community reflects itself back to itself in its strength and dignity.
Drawing from the work of the Latina Feminist Study group, these are spaces held together through testimonio where families speak against erasure and violence. Theorized by CCRA as spaces of "relational testimonio" they are autonomous spaces for the co-production of knowledge that make observable how militarization impacts the social factory.
The Nieto family was present with their knowledge to share that the San Francisco Police who had killed their son, Alex, were not indicted, as was announced the previous week. The Johnson family was present with knowledge acquired following the supposed suicidal hanging by their son at San Jose State University, a hanging that included explicably a massive gash in the back of their son's skull. The Johnsons shared that the San Jose police officer, Officer Dote, who arrived on the scene to respond the incident on the SJSU campus was also involved in the fatal police shooting of Phillip Watkins on February 11th. Two SJSUPD officers named in the federal lawsuit by the Johnson family, Santos and Van Der Hoek,were also named in the federal lawsuit filed by Laurie Valdez against the SJSUPD and SJPD in response to the killing of Antonio Guzman Lopez. Each of the men killed were men of color. Dionne Smith Downs and Cary Downs shared that after interviewing new witnesses to the killing of their child, James Earl Rivera Jr in Stockton, they learned that Rivera had been pinned by law enforcement vehicles in what is known as a "pit maneuver.” During the execution of the maneuver officers had taken the time to retrieve an assault rifle from the trunk of a squad car while James pleaded, pinned in his vehicle before 48 rounds were fired into him. Families shared experiences of calling for mental crisis help for a loved one and instead of care, they were confronted with a militarized police force shooting within minutes of arriving, and killing their loved one in a moment of crisis.
As our efforts to de-militarize grow stronger, we recognize the many spaces--vigils, anniversaries, birthday parties, and gatherings where the community reclaims its struggles from the institutions of the state and searches for new ways to assert and strengthen its own autonomy. These spaces amplify the ongoing struggles to confront this violence and as new practices of justice imagined and lived outside the state. These are relations established and strengthened over time, emerging in the form of a family weekend picnic. Such relations between us are central to our efforts to demilitarize and live together in new ways in the present.
North Bay and South Bay Crew
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