Democracy Ateneo Announcement 4-20-13

Compañer@s,

The Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo scheduled for this Saturday, April 20 follows two recent convergences notable for their pursuit of community safety. Against Hired Guns <http://againsthiredguns.wordpress.com/> convened a number of active community organizations on March 8th in an effort to establish a dialogue to find new ways to go beyond simply responding to each police driven crisis. A number of groups brainstormed different possibilities while also sharing projects already underway. Similar to the Against Hired Guns gathering, on April 7th San Jose's 50.50 crew hosted a Community Safety Skill Share at the MACSA <http://www.macsa.org/>. The South Bay encounter brought together a number of projects and community members from across the Bay committed to "share and learn about various Skills and Tools used towards keeping our Communities Safe!"

Both spaces brought a number of organized efforts into dialogue in order to raise critical questions about the impact of the "disproportionate levels of violence directed at particular communities throughout the Bay." More importantly, together they raised vital questions about the intersections of community efforts, both past and present, to advance defense, justice, and assembly. Thus, these convergences are not only committed to exploring the intersections of defense, justice, and assembly but also expose the different strategies that produce violence in the various micro regions of the San Francisco Bay Area. Thus, they provide an insurgent learning space to analyze the role of multiple violences in maintaining the boundaries of opportunity throughout the Bay.

The recent convergences spaces documented above speak to a longer history of community self organization in opposition to the excess of state violence. The current oppositions to violence in our communities must confront multiple sites and strategies of violence and terror --this includes the domestic applications of low intensity warfare. "Violence," according to Allen Feldman, "is the media of and for political essentialization; it is the primary means for literalizing the metaphors and allegories of power through the material expropriation of the bodies and places of others, a process that paralles the self-valorization of Capital through dead labor and dead memory." (see, Allen Feldman, "The Becoming Non-State of the State" available at <http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/2011/05/the-state-become-nonstate---allen-feldman.php>).

We will convene the Universidad de la Tierra Califas' Democracy Ateneo, Saturday, April 20, from 2 - 5 p.m. at Casa de Vicky (792 E. Julian St., San Jose <http://www.casavicky.com/>) to continue our regularly scheduled reflection and action space in order to address these and other questions in relation to the struggles mentioned above.

South 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 announcements and summaries, they can be accessed from <https://www.box.com/s/liojs7y9zv1fsf19atq1>. For more information on the ateneo more generally, please see <http://ccra.mitotedigital.org/ateneo>.