DECOLONIZE EL MONTE

MARCH 22ND EVENT

GATHERING AT TONGVA PARK

(FORMERLY KNOWN AS PIONEER PARK)

TO CELEBRATE THE FIRST WEEKEND OF SPRING

ACTIVITIES WILL BEGIN AT NOON WITH A CEREMONIAL RENAMING OF THE PARK LOCATED NEXT TO THE EL MONTE BUS STATION (3535 SANTA ANITA AVE). WE WOULD LIKE TO GIVE RECOGNITION FIRST AND FOREMOST TO THE TONGVA PEOPLE AND GIVE THANKS TO THE LAND FOR ALL ITS RICHNESS, DIVERSITY, AND ABUNDANCE OF NATURAL RESOURCES. MUSIC, ART, POETRY AND THEATER WILL ALL BE INCORPORATED IN THE PROGRAM AS WELL AS WORKSHOPS ON NATURAL HERBAL REMEDIES. WE WILL ALSO BE TOUCHING UPON CRITICAL ISSUES SUCH AS GENTRIFICATION, POLICE BRUTALITY AND WAL-MART. IT IS AN OPEN FORMAT, SO COME WITH IDEAS OF WHAT YOU'D LIKE TO SEE IN OUR COMMUNITY. CONTRIBUTIONS WITH POTLUCK ARE MORE THAN WELCOME BUT NOT REQUIRED, HOWEVER WE DO ASK PEOPLE TO BRING THEIR OWN PLATES, CUPS AND UTENSILS SO WE DO NOT CREATE SO MUCH TRASH! WE ALSO ENCOURAGE PEOPLE TO WALK, BIKE, CARPOOL OR TAKE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION TO THE EVENT.


FEATURED SPEAKERS AND ARTISTS:

GUADALUPE MARTINEZ

(Poet, writer and singer)

The lines on his face are a map of his life's history.
Guadalupe Martinez, 82, sat in front of a laptop compute at the United Farm Workers' 50th anniversary convention in Bakersfield on Saturday and shared some of his memories to be archived on video.
Later he spoke of his birth in the Mexican state of Michoacan in 1930, his entry into the United States as part of the controversal Bracero worker program and his experience with el cortito -- the short-handled hoe that forced field workers to bend over all day as they worked their way across the long furrows. "It wasn't necessary," Martinez said through a Spanish interpreter. "They didn't empathize with us," he remembered of his employers. "They couldn't feel what we were going through".

http://www.bakersfieldcalifornian.com/local/x243434345/UFW-pioneers-get-to-share-their-stories

LA REFALOSA

(Nuevo Folklore Latinoamericano)

Charango Power!!!!

"La Refalosa", el otro poder.

La sonoridad y ritmica del floclor muscial de Latinoamerica vibra con "La Rafalosa" en los parques y calles de la ciudad de Los Angeles. Liricas de entranables autores Latinoamericanos emergen de la extraordinaria voz de Kendor y Lupitaya Yeye (Norte de Mexico) charango, ukalele y guitarras brillan al potente pulso percutivo de Mariano (Peru). Producidos por ABCHE (Argentina) y Caren Braj (USA-Guatemala), "La Refalosa" se revela como una experiencia musical interactiva, intrepida y festiva, sin intermediarios y accessible, llevando la musica a quien y a donde pertenece: a la gente y a la calle.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/La-Refalosa/420107914764475

KZAR of the RIME FYTAHS

(EL MONTE HIP HOP)

Established in 1995, Rime Fytahs quickly gained an infamous reputation for aggressively attacking local open mics, backyard parties and anything else that stood in their way. In 2002, after losing his Mother to breast cancer, Ksar released his solo CD entitled "KillahRhymeZaar: Please Give Me an Outlet." In the Summer of 2004, tragedy strikes and Haewhyer's physical was lost in a fatal car accident, it was a sad time, but Kuaesar pushes on with another prokect entitled "For the People, by the People". Ksar continues the Fyte. By now, Rime Fytahs has acquired enough production equipment to stay self-reliant. From disc-duplication, silk-screening, beat production and mastering. 

www.rimefytahs.com



CESA

Community Education for Social Action (CESA) is a collective in the Greater Los Angeles are collaborating with working-class communities to educate each other about social-economic issues to gain political consciousness for social action. 



RELATIVE PEOPLES
El Monte Hip Hop

Dedication to the Land and Original Peoples
Recognizing that this is Indigenous land, we would like to begin our gathering with a dedication to Toypurina (see previous post) and the Tongva people. The original name of the area we call El Monte is Houtngna, which means "the place of the willow". Not much is taught in our schools about the original peoples of this land and for this reason we find the urgency to symbolically rename Pioneer Park, Tongva Park. The institutional violence continues to take place in our neighborhoods through the colonizing police force, economic development agency and education system. We work to dismantle the dominant discourse and decolonize our ways of living through art and collective action. 




We will begin our gathering with Danza Mexica Cuauhtemoc, a practice dedicated to political/cultural resistance through learning and teaching indigenous danza, philosophy, language, art, history and culture.

Housing for ALL!!!

Tongva Park is the site of an economic development project in which public land was basically given to a private developer to create market rate housing units. The city and its developer try to make a good sell to the people by providing 131 affordable housing units; however, we see their true intentions with the construction of 345 condominium units and numerous retail spaces. During this entire process, the city is criminalizing poverty by sending out the police displacing the homeless who live in the park and under the bridges. This project does not address issues of poverty and inequality in our community; rather, it tries to place a band-aid over the situation by sending people to prison or out further east. We need housing for all!

http://www.sgvtribune.com/government-and-politics/20140227/el-monte-breaks-ground-on-long-awaited-housing-retail-development

We will also be joined by members of the Brookside Mobile Home community who are fighting for rent control. People are forced to pay increasing amounts of money for their trailer spaces, some costing more than $1,200 (not including other living expenses). The city has taken small steps to address the issue, but the bureaucracy has not lead to any tangible solutions. The people of Brookside continue to struggle for rent control and we would like to extend our hand of solidarity as we raise critical issues concerning our access to housing and land. 

http://www.sgvtribune.com/article/zz/20130808/NEWS/130808956

Organizing against Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is currently conducting an environmental impact report. We are gathering signatures against the proposed project. Check out our petition:

We the undersigned would like to express our concerns in regards to the possible construction of a Wal-Mart supercenter in our community. The 182,429 square-foot commercial/retail building planned for the 15.41-acre site located at 4000 Arden near the intersection of Valley Boulevard will negatively affect the health and safety of not only the surrounding neighborhoods, but the entire global community.  We question the intent and validity of the environmental impact report and reject the plans to build a big box store for the following reasons:

l  Wal-mart has settled lawsuits with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency and paid millions of dollars in civil penalties for numerous violations of the Clean Water Act after contaminating local water sources through storm runoff. 

l  The construction and operation of the Wal-Mart Super Center will materially endanger public health and the environment by causing an increase in the levels of heavy metals, fecal coliform bacteria, herbicides, pesticides, nutrients, sediment, oil and grease contaminating the waters of the Rio Hondo River.

l  The production, processing, and consumption, of commodities require the extraction and use of natural resources (wood, ore, fossil fuels, and water). It requires the creation of factories and factory complexes whose operation creates toxic byproducts, while the use of commodities themselves creates excessive waste.

l  Wal-Mart imports approximately 20% of their goods from foreign countries on ocean liners with Category 3 marine diesel engines. The big ocean vessels are the dirtiest and cheapest source of transportation, leaving trails of smog across the world's most heavily plied shipping routes.*

l   On average each Wal-Mart store services about 6000 customers a day which contributes to congested parking lots. Each customer’s car contributes to global warming and the amount of green house gasses in the parking lots is equivalent to a mild traffic jam. The culture of mass consumption promoted by Wal-Mart and other transnational corporations puts into grave risk the lives of our future generations.

A critical analysis on the social and environmental impacts of a Wal-Mart Supercenter will reveal that this store is not needed in our community. Apart from the grave ecological concerns, the company’s atrocious labor relations should also be brought into perspective in addition to the economical effects of the local small businesses. We support alternative uses of the proposed construction site to foster better health and social development for the community and its residents. Such proposals include the expansion of the Urban Agriculture program to strengthen the local eco-system, as well as the development of a Native Cultural Center to expand our knowledge on the traditional ways of living based on a fond love and respect for life in all its forms.

*Carnegie Mellon University researchers found that ships account for 14 percent of all global nitrogen emissions and 6 percent of sulfur emissions from all fossil fuels. Both pollutants are linked to global warming.

Dedication to Victims of Police Brutality
School of the Americas Watch

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works to stand in solidarity with the people of Latin America and the Caribbean, to close the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institue for Security Cooperation and to change oppressive US foreign policy that the SOA represents. We are grateful for our sisters and brothers throughout the hemisphere for their inspiration and the invitation to join them in their struggle for economic and social justice. 




ALONI BONILLA

Bonilla was on her way to spend the night at a friend's house to be closer to an early morning math final at Cal State LA. But before she arrived she was pulled over for suspicion of driving under the influence. In the early morning of March 21, 2012, the CHP officer took her to the hospital for a blood sample after the breathalyzer read her blood registered at .139 alcohol content. But the blood sample was never taken because a physical altercation took place between Bonilla and the officer. The officer contends that Bonilla waved her arms around and approached him to head butt him. A video shows the CHP officer pushing Bonilla against the wall and then forcing her to the floor. He then pins her down with his knee. Bonilla ended up with a black eye from hitting a wall-mounted medical device, according to court documents. Today, she has five slipped discs in her spine and neck she says ere a result from the altercation with the officer. Bonilla was confident that if a jury saw the video they would side with her. But the judge denied the use of the video as evidence. 

Khoa Anh Le

When the yelling match between Diane Le's schizophrenic brother and their father escalated into shoving, Le did what families of the mentally disabled are repeatedly advised to do. She called the police. Hours later, Khoa Anh Le was dead. Investigators said the 37-year-old had been beaten, choked and tasered by the El Monte police officers whom the family had called for help. "If I could go back in time, I wouldn't call for help," Diane Le said. "Because of my call, my brother is now gone. 


Kiki the dog

An EMPD officer shot a 2-year-old German Shepherd inside the fenced-in front yard while following up on a report of a runaway teenager. The family was forced to put the dog down following the shooting. "I'm hurt that they would do this to my pet, but at the same time I'm angry because they act like they don't even care. They didn't apologize," Cathy Luu said through a Vietnamese translator. 

In an encounter recorded by a home security camera shortly after 4:30 pm, two police officers arrived at the home of Luu. The officers had an appointment to meet with Luu and her husband to discuss their teenage son who had apparently ran away from home over the weekend, and pick up a photograph, according to EMPD officials and dog owners. Police and family gave conflicting reports of the events leading up to the shooting. Police said the officers shook the gate and otherwise took care to check if there were dogs present in the yard before opening the gate and entering. But a video captured by the family's home security camera appears to support Luu's claim that the officers simply parked their patrol car and entered the yaard without checking for dogs, despite two posted "beware of dog" signs, including one mounted to the gate itself. After being shot, the wounded dog ran to the backyard of the home. It was later euthanized at the veterinary hospital. The loss of the female German Shepherd, named Kiki, devastated the family, Luu said, especially the couple's 11-year-old son. 

David Viera

July 2004

David Viera, a young father of three, was shot to death after El Monte PD Ralph Batres and Lt. Santos Hernandez stopped the car he was riding in. Police said Viera and the driver, Raul Moreno, were suspects in a "gang shooting". Police claim that Viera failed to obey orders to vacate the vehicle and attempted to retrieve something from beneath the passenger seat--possibly a weapon. The police riddled the car with bullets, mortally wounding Viera who was shot in the back 7 times. No weapon was recovered. The shooting was found "Justified" despite Viera and Moreno being exonerated as suspects in the earlier shooting.  


Some names of Killer Cops in El Monte
Victor Ruiz - tazered and beat man with schizophrenia to death
Jesus Rojas - tazered and beat Khoa Anh Le to death w/Ruiz
Ralph Batres - multiple killer and killer of David Viera
Arlene Castillo - Killer of family pet Kiki
Retired George Hopkins - killer of Mario Paz, grandfather shot at his bed after PD raided wrong house
Santos Hernandez - threw two stun grenades at wrong house, co-killer of David Viera

JAIL KILLER COPS!!! 
END THE CORRUPTION!!!




A BRIEF HISTORY OF EL MONTE POLICE DEPARTMENT

        An explicitly spatial manifestation of early “police” powers exercised against the working-class mexicano community came in the wake of the organized “revolt” of guerrilla bandit Juan Flores and the attendant marshaling of official and unofficial state forces against the nascent Sonora Town barrio. In conscious retaliation against Anglo rule of the land, Flores and a band of followers took control of Mission San Juan Capistrano in 1857, using it as a launching point for their guerrilla raids throughout the southern counties. After a popular Anglo sheriff and two deputies were killed in an ambush by Flores’ men, the fear of a broad mexicano uprising, coupled with the racial vengeance stirred up by the Los Angeles Star (Escobar 85-86), spurred Anglo leaders and their elite Californio allies to form a vigilante committee, which called on the notorious “El Monte Boys” to help quell the incipitent rebellion. The El Monte Boys were left by several former Texas Rangers—a para-state police organization infamous in its home state as violently anti-Mexican—who helped found El Monte as the first separate, all-white township in the region. Consequently, their activities as a quasi-police body may be viewed through the twin critiques of a racially and spatially manifest antagonism to the local working-class mexicano population.

        In the purported interest of community security during the peak of the Flores rebellion, the self-appointed vigilante committee declared martial law and worked with the El Monte Boys to surround the working-class Sonora Town barrio. Having cordoned off the residential zone, the vigilantes invaded barrio homes in search of pro-Flores sympathizers. Without legal warrant or notice of any kind, several persons were rounded up in a nocturnal raid (Griswold del Castillo 1979:105).  Whether in fear or in solidarity, there was certainly some support given by barrio residents to Flores’ men. However, many of the mexicano residents arrested in the barrio and elsewhere during the anti-Flores campaign (some of whom were summarily shot or hung) were clearly unconnected to the rebel leader. Their guilt lay in being poor and mexicano in an emerging social order that needed their labor but feared and reviled their culture and their potential collective mobilization along racial and class lines.

EXCERPT FROM "BARRIO LOGOS" WRITTEN BY RAUL HOMERO VILLA

Now EMPD is involved in a massive Towing Scandal 
http://ktla.com/2014/03/11/el-monte-residents-accuse-tow-truck-company-of-illegal-practices/#axzz2vmVhIohm

FURTHER DETAILS TO COME....
CONTACT: HOUTNGNA@GMAIL.COM