Decolonize El Monte
Fall Equinox Celebration
September 21st 2-6pm
11100
Bonwood Rd.
El Monte 91733
El Monte 91733
~Workshops~Art~Dancing~Music~Poetry~Food~
Bringing Love
and Compassion
to the
Community
On Wednesday July 30, 2014, the El Monte Police
Department (EMPD) ran several raids with federal agents of the Drug
Enforcement Agency (DEA), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and
explosives (ATF), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in an operation
called Black Rose. 400 officers in total were involved
in this raid, searching for forty-one people accused of crimes
including murder, extortion, drug trafficking, and assaults. The
indictment alleges that the Boys and Girls Club of America / San Gabriel
Valley served as a base of operation for the named 'career criminals'.
The report also says that gang members in El Monte operated under the
command of the Mexican Mafia and executed attacks against African
Americans who live in the community. From a historical-materialist perspective, we can see generations upon generations of impoverished and criminalized communities, subjected to racism, slavery, and genocide. Today, nothing has changed. Police officers still operate with impunity as they murder unarmed civilians in broad daylight, and remain free, terrorizing the community. The system is designed to suppress the people organizing against injustice. The patriarchal- capitalist-settler system which is based on inequality is to blame for social problems in our communities of color. Mass incarceration does not solve anything; it just perpetuates a culture and industry based on violence.
And it is no coincidence that our communities have an exaggerated percentage of unemployment and school dropout rates. The social reality of communities is not taken into account when the fascist system carries out operations of social cleansing, forming a market of criminalized black and brown bodies. The Black Panther and feminist professor Angela Davis says that "the law does not care if someone has a good education or not, or whether people come from impoverished living conditions because companies in your community have closed and moved to an underdeveloped country ... the law does not care about the conditions that lead some communities for a career that makes the prison inevitable (A. Davis 2005).
To further its social control, and to fill their pockets, the fascist powers of private industry, along with their political puppets and pigs, have formed a market of private prisons that depends on the imprisonment of more and more people. In an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (Securities and Exchange Commission), Corrections Corporation, America (CCA), said: "The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by ... leniency in conviction or probation goals and sentencing practices..." The system of (in)justice operates in the name of economic interests, and not necessarily for the well-being of families and communities,.
“HOW DO WE ADDRESS VIOLENCE WITHIN OUR COMMUNITIES?”
We are told to call the police and rely on
the criminal justice system to address violence within our communities. However, if police and prisons facilitate or perpetrate
violence against us rather than increase our safety, how do we create
strategies to address violence within our communities, including domestic
violence, sexual violence, and child abuse, that don’t rely on police or
prisons?
Community accountability is one critical option. Community accountability is a community-based
strategy, rather than a police/prison-based strategy, to address violence
within our communities. Community
accountability is a process which a community – a group of friends, a family, a
church, a workplace, an apartment complex, a neighborhood, etc – work together
to do the following things :
Create and affirm VALUES AND PRACTICES that resist abuse and
oppression and encourage safety, support, and accountability
Provide SAFETY AND SUPPORT to community members who are
violently targeted that RESPECTS THEIR SELF-DETERMINATION
Develop sustainable strategies to ADDRESS COMMUNITY MEMBERS’
ABUSIVE BEHAVIOR, creating a process for them to account for their actions and
transform their behavior.
Commit to ongoing development of all members of the
community, and the community itself, to TRANSFORM THE POLITICAL CONDITIONS that
reinforce oppression and violence. ”
One of the most vital resources for a community is land and safe(r) spaces for personal growth and recreation. It is difficult for a place like The Boys and Girls Club (BGC) to function as it should, fulfilling the goals of reaching the youth, because they have to face the reality of the entire area that surrounds it. Poverty, hunger, mental illness and the problem of homelessness are some aspects of our reality. The neighborhoods of “Five Points” (the intersection Garvey, Valley and Cogswell) are some of the most impoverished areas in one of the poorest cities in Los Angeles County. Densely populated, with few green spaces and almost no social programs, our youth do not have many outlets to express themselves. The closure of the BGC denies access for the people to a community space and tremendously affects the welfare of the neighborhoods.
The club’s supposed association with certain members of the community is not a crime. Community meetings and fundraising for deceased friends is not a crime! Stop the criminalization! We refuse police intervention in our community spaces! It is illogical that the police receive at least $ 23 million per year and the parks and recreation department and receives $ 2 million (less than 10% of the police). What is the city’s intention on their supposed approach to ‘crime’? The criminalization of our community is a business for the police and prisons. We need more spaces like the BGC, but with more autonomy!
End the school to prison pipeline! Police out of our schools!
Our struggle is to make available different workshops on music, art, and cultural history, as well as develop more community gardens, alternative health centers, and support groups for the PEOPLE and ran by the PEOPLE.
We
strive to reclaim our humanity! Giving life opportunities to the youth
instead of criminalizing them is our intention. We help organize the people
to defend our common interests to promote our collective physical,
psychological, social, spiritual, and environmental well-being; the
purpose of Operation Red Rose is to bring love and compassion to the
community. With the ideas, energy and resources of the people around us,
the possibilities are immense! Continuing on the path of our ancestors
who have fought in the name of life, we work in solidarity with the
peoples’ struggle in Palestine, Ferguson Missouri, Central America, and
whichever space of resistance. In regards to the inter-racial violence often found within our oppressed communities, it is evident that the social boundaries installed from colonization have reinforced the divisions amongst working class populations. The system categorizes people by color, race, ethnicity, age, gender, sexual orientation, class and a violent hierarchy is formed, with the large landowners and businessmen on top of the pyramid scheme. Their workers are the police and military who are trained to take orders and kill; their job is to maintain the system and attack any perceived threat. The unity between the oppressed peoples is a threat to their power and Malcom X once said:
There can be no workers’ solidarity until there is first some racial solidarity. We cannot think of uniting with others, until after we have first united among ourselves. We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves. One can’t unite bananas with scattered leaves.
The people united will never be defeated!
