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Ceres Community vs. Department of Justice

by crudo (modanarcho [at] yahoo.com)
A panel picked by the Department of Justice danced around issues facing the Ceres community, as tensions grew at Ceres' Town Hall Meeting on Wednesday night.
Following the Andres Raya shootings in Ceres CA on Jan. 9th, in which a young Marine on leave killed one Ceres Police officer and wounded another before being shot himself, police have stepped up involved in the Ceres area. Many parts of Ceres are rundown, with no sidewalks, pilled up trash, and allowed to stay this way because they are not considered "parts" of Ceres, as supermarkets and gas stations are built around them, and the city deems them “no man’s land”. It is here in the poor areas that police are conducting gang sweeps, stops, and profiling of mostly young and Latino youth. Police, through the local news media, have been reported to have harassed Rayas friends, pointed guns and made threats to people, documented youth at gun point, illegally searched people's homes, and began policing areas of Ceres, (that even Ceres Police Chief De Werk admits), that they wouldn’t even patrolling before Jan. 9th.

The Department of Justice, a branch of the US government that has units for a wide variety of issues, has been working in the Ceres community since last month. The Ceres City Council meeting that it organized was a sham, all across the board. It, (DOJ), had been preparing with it's "panel" through "several workshops", that as far as we could tell was not open to the public, and created a list of 10 issues that it was going to answer as a panel for the public. The panel's main goal was to talk about public safety, while the main issues for those in the community were those of police harassment, and involvement in their communities, were totally left out.

The meeting was to go like this: The panel would discuss it's various talking points, (which include such major issues such as "Are there positive role models in the area for young people", and almost nothing that even addressed the police issues), with no public response or discourse. Then, people would have the opportunity to write questions for the panel on cards to give to the panel. The cards would be read by the DOJ MC, as she took out the questions that were “repeated”. This allowed statements or questions that were critical of police policy to be taken out, and repeating themes to be minimalized. Then, IF time permitted, people could talk at an open mike. Keep in mind the meeting was to go from 8-9:30pm.

The panel went through it's routine, and mostly just talked about fluff things. Police issues and policy were only vaguely mentioned, there was no real dissenting voice on the whole panel. Attempts were made to frame voices that were critical of the police as black and white, and give the appearance that if you weren’t behind the police, we were simply some cop hating gangster terrorist. Various community groups including activists from the Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians (DAAA) Collective, Modesto ACLU, Local Black, etc were becoming increasing restless. Eventually several people stood up after raised hands were not called upon, and asked if they were going to be able to speak to the panel. The DOJ MC shot the persons down, and over and over said that people's concern's were going to be addressed through the cards, and later, with time permitting, people would be able to speak. The DOJ MC also used that fact that another meeting for Saturday was also called, (announced at that meeting), on the subject of “community solutions”, and that all voices critical of the police, simply were off subject.

About a minute later, more people rose, and stated that under the Brown Act people had a right to speak to the panel, since it was a public meeting. The DOJ person said that she was familiar with the Brown Act, and replied that they would not be following it during this meeting. More people rose still, and grew angry. People stated that time was ticking, and that people were not being allowed to talk and be heard. This lead to the panel calling short, (at least from what I could tell), talking about it's talking points, and moved on to the index cards with questions to the panel.

In the first five minutes, most of the cards were supportive, (which matched the largely middle class white crowd, which did not represent a very mixed Ceres, and the communities that were being effected by police). Then, some people rose again, and began yelling at the DOJ MC, stating that she was picking and choosing the cards that were being read. A verbal battle ensued, and then the DOJ MC finally read a critical question. It was from a local woman, asking what the police had done with photos taken of non-gang member youth that had been photographed at gun point because they were suspected of gang member affiliation. The police chief simply said that he did not know, and the announcer moved on. The woman stood up, and stated that what the DOJ MC had read was not the entire question. The DOJ MC tried to move on again, but with several supporters to the woman, was made to go back and read the entire card. Then the DOJ MC tried to move on again. Again, she was stopped, and the police chief was made to respond.

At this point, people became very angry. Most of the DAAA Collective had written down the same thing on their cards, and the question was not addressed. Many people rose and said that nothing was going to change with working with the police and the City government, because they weren't even interested in listening to the people. At this point, it was 8:15, and there was no sign that people were going to be allowed to speak. More and more people became angry at the panel and DOJ MC, and one woman stated loudly, "You don't even live here lady!". At this point, several people in the back, got up and walked out, and DAAA Collective and other community activists followed, shouting, "Democracy not Autocracy!", as around 25 people walked out of the meeting of around 200. DAAA Collective activists headed for the door, but tried to go out to the left, following the other walk-outs. I was stopped physically by two police officers, and eventually allowed to pass.

According to those that stayed, the meeting went on till 9pm, and a mike was put out to people to speak, although, the Ceres Police chief, Art De Werk, left. According to people who were there, people with pro-police policy issues were allowed to speak, while those with dissenting voices were cut off by the DOJ MC, claiming, they were "off topic", or their "time was up".

For anarchists, this signals what we are already aware off. That city government, like all class based hierarchal structures, are not interested in involving the whole community on issues that face them, and are in fact scared of the very idea of community control and involvement. A group of hand picked people talking down to a community that they supposedly work for is not democracy, real democracy is self community control, and self-management over the community by those that are effected. What happened at the Ceres City meeting was an attempted by the US government, working with local police and city elites, to try and steer the discourse of a community, and spin issues so people would not be able to become engaged in changing things. This presents us with a new opportunity, for anarchists and anti-authoritarians, to engage in working to create counter-structures and build really directly democratic institutions of real community power and control.
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Robert W. Stanford
Sat, Mar 5, 2005 8:26AM
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Fri, Mar 4, 2005 8:54AM
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