Phoenix Anarchists Support Glendale Community's Struggle Against Police

[mattd]

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