Phoenix Anarchists Support Glendale Community's Struggle Against Police
mattd
mattd at useoz.com
Mon Dec 31 20:43:29 PST 2001
Phoenix Anarchists Support Glendale Community's Struggle Against Police
posted by Brian on Sunday December 30 2001 @ 12:47PM PST
Members of a largely immigrant Glendale community battling police
brutality, other victims and families of victims of police brutality, the
Phoenix Anarchist Coalition (PAC), the Arizona Anarcho-Punk Federation,
Phoenix Copwatch, North Phoenix Anti-Racist Action and the Phoenix
Industrial Workers of the World joined together for a march through
downtown Glendale and a Know Your Rights Forum on Wednesday, December 19th,
the one-year anniversary of an early morning police raid which left 23
young men arrested. The day was also coincidentally the one-month
anniversary of another police shooting in nearby Peoria in which the cops
killed an unarmed man when he reached for a cell phone.
Phoenix Anarchist Coalition members first met the Glendale families at last
year's Martin Luther King, Jr. march. The families had taken over a hill
overlooking the event, carrying huge banners and signs denouncing the
Glendale police as racist brutalizers. A conversation was begun there, and
the families were eager to talk about what had happened to them. Over the
course of the next year, several PAC members went across town to hear their
stories and to offer any support that was needed. Despite some difficulties
in communication because of the lack of Spanish speakers within our group,
a special effort was made to keep in touch with these families to stay on
top of developments and then, when this year's October 22 police brutality
march was planned, the families were invited. We were definitely aware that
it was up to us to be relevant to their struggle, not the other way around.
Happily, they came and spoke at several points along the march, bringing
with them the most passionate speakers and the most wonderful banners.
The stories that the families told were brutal ones indeed. In a series of
early morning attacks, officers of the Glendale Police Department (GPD)
simultaneously raided 23 homes in Glendale, serving warrants on sons and
brothers who were alleged by the GPD to be members of the Califas gang. The
families vehemently deny this allegation. Instead, they complain about a
pattern of harassment in which the GPD intimidated, categorized and
photographed their sons based on a very loose set of gang criteria. They
were effectively tried and convicted by the police merely because of their
income, skin color and who they knew.
When the police came, they blew down doors with explosives and charged into
the houses with overwhelming force, including automatic weapons, surprising
many of the residents in their pajamas and underwear. In one case, the GPD
lay in wait outside a home and arrested two brothers as they left for work
in the early morning, down the street, then waited for their father to
leave as well. Then, when the house was almost empty, the police charged
the door, knocking hard without declaring themselves. Thinking that one of
her sons had forgotten something, the mother of the two newly arrested
young men made her way towards the door with a small child in her arms to
open it. Mere moments after knocking, the GPD set off explosive charges
which blew the door to smithereens, sending pieces of the metal hinges and
doorknob flying through the air like shrapnel. But for a second or two,
this woman would certainly have been killed or seriously injured - the
doorknob flew through the air, through the wall and into an adjoining
bedroom from the force of the explosion. As a result, this family was left
without a door in the middle of December. All the families, including small
children and pregnant women, were held at gunpoint while police armed with
automatic weapons ransacked their homes and arrested many young men. Police
were rude, aggressive and uncooperative when residents asked to see
warrants or for explanations. Eventually 25 young men were arrested, and 22
of them still sit in jail one year later.
The attorneys for the police have pressured the young men while in jail to
take plea deals. One sixteen year old boy who took a deal has been
sentenced to 10 years in prison for illegal possession of a handgun. Gus,
the father of one of those still in jail and one of the neighborhood
organizers characterized it this way: "They [Glendale police] are
pressuring these kids to sign plea bargains. They [the young men arrested]
are not killers. They are not terrorists. Is this the law? Is this the
civil rights for the United States? This is like Gestapo! They [Glendale
Police] don't respect anything."
As if that weren't bad enough, there is also some evidence that the GPD
orchestrated this raid as a way to justify a new Federal anti-gang task
force grant it was applying for. Two weeks after the raid, Glendale was
approved for the money. Not that we should be surprised by this, but it
certainly casts the GPD in a truly shameful light.
A few weeks after the O22 march, the Glendale families decided that they
wanted to have a march of their own on the anniversary of the police
attacks. Explaining why, Gus said, "It has passed one year, but it still
hurts me and the Mexican community. They do not need to commit police
brutality. We still remember. That is the reason that we march. I will
never forget what they did. It was four months of investigation and we have
been waiting one year for evidence. Do you think it's fair? I don't think
it's fair."
PAC members were asked to assist in the planning, and so a hurried series
of meetings took place in which anarchists and neighborhood residents
decided cooperatively on a route, on a press release that was written and
faxed out, on inviting groups, and on designing flyers to distributed in
both english and spanish. Once this was done, PAC mostly focused on getting
out anarchists to the march. However, on one of the flyer distributions we
assisted in out in Glendale, two Glendale neighborhood residents and two
PAC members hit up shoppers at a local grocery chain and another nearby
westside neighborhood that had recently seen an unarmed man shot and killed
by police after reaching for a cell phone, leaving his young girlfriend
widowed and their 2 month old baby without a father. When we got there, I
was disturbed to find that it was a neighborhood in which I had spent a lot
of time as a younger punk. I'd spent probably three or four days a week
hanging out just a block from where the shooting happened. It was a mixed
working class white and hispanic neighborhood.
While handing out flyers, two interesting things happened. First, through
asking around, the house where the young man lived was located. We knocked
but no one was home and so we left Copwatch literature, along with a note
expressing sympathy, information on the march and a contact number. We knew
his girlfriend would be grieving, but we also knew that this was an issue
she would have a personal connection to. We were a little unsure if this
was appropriate or not, but, not having any other ideas, we did it anyhow.
A few minutes later, while handing out flyers in the same neighborhood,
about two blocks away, we ran into a man whose sister was now taking care
of half a dozen kids orphaned when a mentally ill woman was shot and killed
by police on May 1, last year. Most of us remember this event clearly
because it came on the same day as our local May Day march in which 11
people were arrested.
As part of its new strategy, Copwatch, a group I am involved with, had
decided to increase its patrols of this neighborhood, and the week before
the march there was a patrol in which the Glendale police stopped one of
our cars after we pulled over to observe a stop. The cops were ticketing a
hispanic man for a broken headlight at a corner gas station. After being
detained for 20 minutes, it turned out that it was just a bad fuse. At one
point the man, explaining to the cop, reached out and kicked the headlight
- it came on immediately. Too late - he was still ticketed. While we were
there the cops called out a bunch of unnecessary backup, including a
sergeant, who promptly came up to us like the big man he is to tell us what
we could and could not do (as if we don't know). He told us we made the
cops nervous by the way we pulled up on the scene. When the stop was over,
we drove off, only to be pulled over a few blocks down the road by a cop
car that had immediately swung in behind us after we left the gas station.
The officer who pulled us over demanded to know who Copwatch was, what it
was doing, where it was based and various other information. When we were
released, an unmarked car followed us out of Glendale. Clearly, the
Glendale cops are nervous about being watched.
When the day of the march came, everyone gathered on a street corner
downtown. About 80 to 100 people eventually showed up and the march moved
out. Copwatch shadowed the march, sporting their trademark orange shirts
with cameras in hand while we proceeded down the street towards the police
headquarters, stopping periodically to show the beautiful banners made by
the Glendale families. The cops were trying to play nice by stopping
traffic for us. People were generally very supportive, and many honks from
passing cars followed us as we marched thanks to a "Honk if you hate the
police" sign. At this point I'd like to make a critique of the way the
march proceeded. Probably unconsciously the march had segregated, with
mostly white anarchists up front and mostly non-white folks at the back.
This was particularly distressing because it was not the anarchists' march.
Several people tried consciously to remedy this and by the time we left the
police station, the march mixed up more, although some anarchists continued
to take the lead, which I found distressing, since our role was to be
supportive and not co-optive.
I was also a bit distressed by the number of anarchists wearing masks on
the march. While I recognize the utility of masks, and have worn one on
many occasions, this particular time it seemed inappropriate. For me,
although I had a mask, I opted not to wear it for two reasons. First of
all, I was just so impressed that these people could stand up, without
masks, and denounce the very cops who had brutalized them that I just
couldn't justify hiding my identity. How sad would that be if I, not even a
resident of this community, and being white, felt I had to hide my face,
despite all my privilege, while these people with so little and who had
been so recently victimized refused to do likewise. Could I, despite being
a victim of police brutality myself, honestly say I was in more danger than
these people were? My answer was clearly, no. In fact, many times in front
of the HQ I heard residents demand that the cops show themselves and come
out of the building, chastising them as cowards for not doing so. Hiding
behind a mask at that point seemed insupportable to me. Secondly, the
Glendale cops were not filming the march, unlike they were in Phoenix at
O22 or Mayday. So, even strategically, it made little sense to conceal my
identity. I was glad to see most anarchists going unmasked, though. I was
also glad to see most of the anarchists playing supportive roles and taking
their lead from the residents themselves about what was appropriate behavior.
Eventually we reached the police station. The bullhorn was passed around as
people spoke, denouncing the police. A few cops guarded the building's
entrance and were treated to condemnations from one angry resident after
another. It was mostly women who spoke, often shaking with emotion,
screaming about their sons' situations and the fascist, inexcusable
behavior of the cops. About 20 people spoke, probably more, each followed
by supportive applause from those assembled. The most moving part for me
was when the sister of one of those incarcerated stood, a few feet from the
cops, screaming, "My brother got ten years for having a gun in our house!
How much time are you guys going to get for bringing your guns into my
house and pointing them at us?! How many years are you going to get?! Fuck
you!"
Another inspiring moment came when it was revealed that the girlfriend of
the man shot with the cell phone had come to the march. She had called our
house the night before the march asking about it. She brought with her
their small baby and a photograph of her boyfriend. Shaking tearfully, she
told her tragic story. When she was done, one of the anarcha-punks rushed
up to comfort her and the two embraced. The cops stood there without
expression, unmoved. More peeked from behind the glass doors, cravenly
taking in the scene on the street.
After about 20 or more minutes of loud denunciations, while some of the
media took pictures and filmed (only one english-language media outlet
bothered to come - the rest were all spanish-language), we began to move
out. Suddenly, however, half the march stopped and started running back to
the entrance. One of the cops had gone inside, apparently, and a group of
people started chanting, "Chicken! Chicken!" over and over at him. This
continued for a while, along with a few more angry words from
demonstrators. Eventually, though, the march moved out again.
As we headed down the street some of the residents moved into the streets.
Following their cue, so did some of the anarchists. The cops were busy
blocking off streets and one lane of traffic. This continued off and on for
a little while until we reached the library and turned around, heading back
along the other side of the street. The police ignored it, unlike on Mayday
where they attacked us, armed to the teeth. There were some attempts to get
some chants going, but it was difficult. One failing is that during the
actual march the bullhorn was rarely in the hands of the residents. At the
stops it was, but in between it wasn't, most of the time. Further, we
hadn't prepared any spanish-language chants, and neither had the families.
As a result, most of the chants that were started petered out pretty
quickly. We should not make this mistake again. In the future we need to
have printed out, english and spanish language chants to distribute in case
no one else does. PAC has a regularly meeting spanish class, so hopefully
this is something they will take up - they recently translated our
anti-police flyer.
Finally, as the march was about to reach the end, it came across an
unmarked police car in the parking lot of Pete's Fish and Chips, occupied
by four fat and arrogant pigs in long-sleeved dark blue shirts emblazoned
with "POLICE" across the front. Gus, stopped and called for the megaphone.
It turned out that one of the cops in the car was one who had raided his
house. The megaphone was handed over to him and he let loose on that cop,
denouncing him for his role in the raid, and asking him whether he was
ashamed or not and if he understood the consequences of his actions. Things
were really heating up as the crowd began to mass around the cop car. The
pigs were visibly nervous as the crowd grew bigger and began moving on
them. The car slowly began to move backwards down an alley, unable to turn
around. The crowd, encouraged, began to advance and cheer, following as it
went. It began to retreat faster as it called for backup and cops on bikes
and motorcycles moved in to surround it so it could make an escape. The
people surrounded these cops, who seemed scared and began blaring their
sirens and revving their engines to intimidate us. Some anarchists locked
arms on one side of the cops while the neighborhood residents carrying the
banner used it to block off the cops from the other direction. Everyone
else closed in from the other sides. Partially surrounded, the cops beat a
hasty and disorganized retreat. Cheers and curses went up from everyone as
they fled.
We regrouped and several people took the megaphone and spoke while the cops
eyed us from a distance. A female PAC member spoke about solidarity and
communities standing together in spanish, and there were cheers. Gus spoke
again, this time standing on something. He attacked the cops as worthless,
finishing off with a loud "Fuck the cops!" Another woman, also a PAC and
Copwatch member, spoke about the strength that occurs when different
communities stand in solidarity together and about her commitment to seeing
an end to the shoot-to-kill policy of the police in the Phoenix-area.
Everyone cheered. Slowly everyone dispersed, making their way to the Know
Your Rights Forum a couple miles away.
At the KYRF, a spanish-fluent lawyer answered questions about rights, with
the assistance of an interpreter. Most the questions, predictably, centered
around the recent events in Glendale and the way the police handled
themselves. People were very interested in telling their story, venting and
asking about their rights. They were also very aware that this kind of
harassment does not happen in wealthy white neighborhoods (unless one of
them happened to stray into one late at night). One of the obvious points
that several people have made coming out of this forum in particular is the
necessity for an all spanish forum. It sounds like several people are
committed to working on this for the future. Hopefully by then the number
of anarchists who speak spanish will have increased as well. There is also
the upcoming March 15th international day against police brutality which is
coming up. Perhaps there will be another march.
Additional story in Spanish: Reclaman castigo
Link: http://www.phoenixcopwatch.org
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