A Response to Jeff Jardine - As the Modesto Police Kill Again

This post is a response to a Modesto Bee columnist's piece, 'Modesto: A sleepy little burg — with anarchists?' His article was in response to our blog post detailing the protest at the police station last week. Read that article here. This response is a collective effort and represents various individual contributions. Expect further written responses in the near future.  

A protester takes the mike wearing a mask of Francisco Moran.

Most of us in this ‘burg’ haven’t got much sleep for some time, Jeff.

In Modesto, we are on the front lines of the current crisis, facing off against budget cuts, job lay offs, fee increases, environmental pollution, home foreclosures, anti-social crime and drug addiction, and especially now, police brutality. It comes as no surprise that as we write this, the Modesto Police Department has killed yet another person. Some of the officers involved in the most recent shooting were also involved in the September shooting death of Francisco Moran. This latest killing is the third in only 4 months. Also, as this response is written, the family of Craig Prescott, who was killed by guards in Stanislaus County Jail, is still releasing information detailing his death. Prescott is the 6th person in the past year to die in the jail.

Despite these glaring atrocities, Jardine paints the image of Modesto as a "sleepy little town" before “the anarchists got here.” However, the Central Valley is no stranger to social struggle. Perhaps the next time Jardine is on a lunch break, he would do well to take in the statue that stands on 11th and I Street, that of Estanislao, who this county is named after. Rarely taught in the history books, he was a Yokut leader of an indigenous rebellion against the mission system and the colonization of what is now California. Was there calm then, during colonization which left millions dead or during resistance to it? Was it calm when thousands of union strikers in the United Farm Workers (UFW) marched on Modesto decades ago against the Gallo wine company, as they fought for better working conditions in California fields? Or perhaps there was nothing but tranquility when in 2006, tens of thousands of young people and workers walked off their jobs and out of their schools against legislation that would criminalize immigrants, shutting down streets and blocking traffic. We draw lessons, inspiration, and context from this history of resistance, which all sought to rattle the false illusion of “calm” within capitalism that Jardine helps give air to.

Furthermore, if Jardine wants to be the first to claim that anarchists are among us in Modesto, he’s a little late. Anarchists have been spilling ink for years in the Modesto Bee. The anarchist collective Direct Action Anti-Authoritarians (DAAA) existed from 2003 – 2006, graced the pages of the Bee numerous times, largely for work against homelessness and poverty, such as the weekly Food Not Bombs meals. The group was also involved in many other local campaigns covered by the Bee, such as the struggle to shut down the Modesto Tallow Plant. Modesto Anarcho was given front page news in January of 2009, when the group put on the ‘People’s Bailout,’ which featured free groceries and workshops on foreclosure. The group also organized a large BBQ against the closure of PaperBoy Park this summer, in which the Bee only showed up to take pictures for. This is not to mention the wide distribution we’ve given to our magazine, Modesto Anarcho, for close to 4 years now. We mention this not because we expect or even desire coverage in the Modesto Bee, which has never served as a voice for the people — we simply wish to point out that Jardine has failed to do his homework.

First off, we should state that Bee reporters were called to the meeting at the station by protesters, however the newspaper told them that they were not covering the event because the issue was “unfolding.” However, that night, when the story hit the internet, it caused quite a stir on the Modesto Bee’s ‘The Hive’ blog site, as well as up on our site, www.modestoanarcho.org. Many people began to ask why the Bee was not there to record the story? Another columnist, Judy Sly, however, responded to the protesters in passing, writing a rant about how anonymous internet posters were on the same level as those who covered their faces that night. So, in fact the Bee did have people at the meeting – they were simply choosing not to run anything on the story. If Modesto is truly as “sleepy” as Jeff says it is, doesn’t it then make sense for the Bee to run an article on what happened at a meeting regarding a police department that is under investigation for corruption and brutality – and also seeking accreditation? Aren’t we supposed to expect ‘fair and balanced’ reporting from the mass media? Of course, we all know this to be false, but it’s interesting when it’s right out in front of our faces. So then, what storyline is the Bee hoping that we do swallow? Pardon us, as we spit.

We then arrive at Jardine’s article. Either pushed to write an opinion piece about the meeting disruption by an editor, or deciding to do one himself, the piece has the same effect. It takes the issue away from that of police brutality and also from the fact that a group of people actually stood up to the police and instead points the spot light on Modesto Anarcho. It’s ironic, but while Jardine blasts MA, without its reporting on the issue, he wouldn’t have much of a story at all! And while we enjoy the free link to our website, we must point out that those at the meeting came from a variety of groups, including some from families murdered by the police. We did receive an email from Jeff, which we opened on the day that his story came out. It simply asked us to call him, although it did not detail what the conversation would be about.

Jeff Jardine of Modesto Bee.

In the end, Jardine’s article simply serves as a smokescreen from the real issues that are being discussed. Issues of police brutality that people have fought tooth and nail to get into the Bee for years, only to have the newspaper slander, demonize, and belittle them. On the 6th, when a group of people did stand up, to denounce the police and sheriffs to their face, the Bee was there as it always is to make sure that the story didn’t get out. When they couldn’t accomplish that, it made sure that a lid was put on the opposition.

According to Jardine, our problem is not only in our delivery, but because we “…set out to disrupt government, not to help solve its problems." To Jardine, our position of organizing against the police is problematic because we reject the activist model of pressuring and asking those in power to change. This also doesn’t mean that we think the alternative is U-Hauls full of fertilizer at the Federal Building. We don’t want to work with the political structure, not because we don’t want change, but because we want to build power in our communities, streets, and workplaces outside and against the government and the economy that it protects.

We have no interest in working with the police as groups like the NAACP have done throughout the years. The NAACP, which has hosted forums on police brutality cases and had the police out to speak in churches after recent murders, have done nothing but give the cops a chance to explain to those they exploit, abuse, and murder why they have the power and authority to do so. Stopping police violence has to come from within working class communities themselves; as people get organized to not only stop harassment, but also deal with other problems such as home invasions, heavy drug dealing, and assaults.

Jardine, unsurprisingly, bases most of his arguments on the fact that many Modesto Bee readers will have no idea as to what anarchism actually means or stands for. In this way, he joins the scores of politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and police, who have used the term ‘anarchist’ as slander without having the faintest idea what it even means. This attack has come from the Left as well as the Right, against those that would confront and attack injustice, as well as those that reject the rigid and authoritarian nature of Left parties and politics. Thus, Jardine, having never read a copy of Modesto Anarcho, can make major assumptions about what it is and what we stand for.

So what then, does anarchism stand for? Anarchism is not chaos. Nor is it terrorism. It comes from a Greek word meaning without hierarchy. Anarchists believe that all governments exist to protect the divisions between rich and poor and achieve this through violence and coercion. Anarchists believe that capitalism is a system that exploits and oppresses us and will never benefit the majority of those who make and create the wealth of this world. Instead of decisions and power coming from the top down, anarchists believe that decisions should be made from the ground up, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, and where we produce the things that we all need to survive. Likewise, anarchists believe that the work that we do should go towards human needs, not profits, and the means of existence should be shared in common, not owned by bosses and corporations. Furthermore, anarchism proposes that we must struggle to create a new world outside of the political process. Instead, we promote direct action and community organizing. Members of Modesto Anarcho, for instance, have helped occupy foreclosed homes in order to stop evictions. We have hosted BBQs in order to bring people together and stop anti-social crime. We help run a social center for community groups to meet and organize around issues that affect them. Most recently, we have found ourselves engaged in a variety of struggles against police brutality, often in the wake of vicious killings by local law enforcement.

Modesto Anarcho magazine.

When we decry the police, we do so because we understand that their violence comes from their function within a society divided by class and broken apart by race. It is not the starters of wars, the bankers who evict, and the corporations who exploit that the police imprison, beat, and murder, it is us. The police are a force of class rule. Thus, we do not believe that an ever growing power of the police and the creation of more prisons creates a freer world – far from it. We think that justice must come from people having their needs met and out of the bonds that are created when people have real and true communities and can govern themselves. We work towards a world without police and without prisons, where peace and freedom are created and maintained by communities of people together, without an outside force of the state mitigating “justice.”

In many ways, the disruption of the meeting on the 6th and the threats of arrest from the chief of police crystallize the tension that has been ongoing between law enforcement and the larger community for some time now. Many of the people protesting at the meeting that night, who were indeed born and raised in the Central Valley, have grown up in a town where they still remember the police murder of Alberto Sepulveda in 2000 and Sammy Galvan in 2004, among many others. They remember police brutally beating young children coming out of a downtown concert and then blaming it on Bay Area black culture in 2006. For all of us, the recent atrocities in 2010 have pushed us again into action against police terror. Regardless of what Jardine, or anyone in the mass media writes — it is up to all of us to write and produce our own media for our own struggles. We must create and maintain lines of communication between each other, because we know that papers like the Modesto Bee will forever sway to the side of power, wealth, and the police.

As the bodies pile up, we must ask again… How many more must die before we all stand up and stop this?