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by MUDP
Friday, Jul. 01, 2005 at 10:34 PM
ricardo@mudp.org (760) 451-1754
This is a revised version of the first article published, "Baldwin Park 2: A lesson in movement building"
Baldwin Park Round Two
A lesson in movement building and keeping the peace by
any means necessary
There was a lot riding on the event that happened this
last Saturday, June 25th. There was much more
activity going on aside from the presence of the
Minutemen/SOS in Baldwin Park. There was much more at
stake than simply protesting the Minutemen/SOS, and
that was to make a significant effort to control our
own event, our own protest, build our own movement and
to support the local organizers from the Baldwin Park
community in their own struggle.
Within our own demonstration, which was surrounded and
contained by an army of police and separated from the
Minutemen/SOS camp by approximately 100 yards we had
to be alert for anything that would disrupt the event
and allow the police (who were armed to the teeth with
assault rifles and much more) to repress our cultural
protest and our growing movement. We understand well
from the experience of the Chicano Movement that
repression on behalf of the police is almost always
instigated by “protesters” amongst the people, whether
they are paid police agents or just plain idiots who
don’t know what they are doing. We also understand
that repression on behalf of the state has been
effective in destroying movements and the people’s
fighting spirit and morale, especially when
organizations are not in a position to respond to
repression in an effective manner, either by legal or
other means. So as organizers of the event, and
especially as security personnel for the event, we had
to keep the peace by all means in order for this
movement to grow and to keep the men, women and
children who attended from being hurt, beaten or
gassed by the police.
Errors and Lessons from Baldwin Park 1
Due to the number of people who participated and the
lack of security for the event, Baldwin Park 1 was a
free for all event. Certain organizations, such as
the International Socialist Organization (ISO) and
others who attended broke unity with the event and
split the demonstrations into two factions. People
left the permitted protest area to confront the
Minutemen/SOS face to face and ultimately put the
entire event at risk of being called an “unlawful
assembly” and repressed by the police. Known agent
provocateurs such as Frank “Mohammed” Martinez,
dressed in Muslim garb were a part of this crowd and
eventually, some unknown person threw a water bottle
at the opposing side. This and other undisciplined
acts compromised the whole event, but luckily, there
was no further response either by the police or the
Minutemen/SOS. Our concern here is not so much for
the safety of the Minutemen/SOS, or a “fear” of the
police and their guns (which any unarmed person in
their right minds should have some fear of, especially
if you’re Mexican or African), but for the
working-class people from the community who brought
their babies and their children with them. Our
concern is for these people who have never come out
to protest anything before, who are outraged enough to
begin to take a political stance at this particular
moment and who we need to protect in order so that
they can come out again to the next meeting or other
political function. Our concern is for the future of
a movement we are trying to build which is the only
means we have to deal with people like the Minutemen
and the bigger problems we have and will continue to
have once they leave the scene.
Having learned from the errors of the first Baldwin
Park demonstration, the organizers of Baldwin Park
Round Two made the efforts to prevent these situations
from arising again. In order to create an environment
which will allow for the community to come out of
their homes and participate in this protest, the event
was organized as a cultural event with live music,
teatro and piñatas. It was agreed that since these
Minutemen/SOS fear or hate our culture, or languages
and our history so much, we would counter-protest them
with our culture, our languages and our history. This
would be an alternative to just yelling and screaming
at the Minutemen, which in fact, is what the
Minutemen/SOS expected and what they wanted from us.
They wanted us to yell and scream at them because they
are looking for this kind of attention. So instead,
the organizers became creative and used culture and
art to protest these lunatics. A team of artists, in
which renowned Chicana artist Judy Baca participated
with, created a powerful picket-sign display which
expressed the sentiments of much of what has been
discussed throughout these months of madness since the
Minutemen moved their lazy asses off their couches and
onto lawn chairs to observe “Meskins”. This would
take away the focus from their pathetic protest and
would reaffirm the value and the worth of our culture
to our community. This in fact was the most
revolutionary stance we could have taken this day and
is evident of new and meaningful tactics being used
which will allow for our movement to grow.
Also, a security team was formed with the combined
efforts of the Harmony Keepers and Mexicanos Unidos en
Defensa del Pueblo along with others and a permitted
protest area was designated and announced to everyone
with the cautionary note stating that should anyone,
or any group protest outside of the designated area,
they would be on their own and would no longer be a
part of the organized protest and if they were to
leave the area, they were not to not be allowed to
re-enter our demonstration. In other words, if they
were going to create a confrontation with the police,
they would deal with it themselves and would not bring
the community along with them.
Having set the terms for how the protest was going to
take place, the event had gone much calmer and
smoother than the previous one and allowed for a clear
line to be drawn between a disciplined and organized
demonstration versus any other type of demonstration
which only invites for agent provocateurs to do their
thing. As the culture and art took their place in the
event and took the focus away from the Minutemen a few
incidents took place which tested the emotions and the
discipline of the organizers and the protesters. On a
few occasions, Minutemen and SOS members deliberately
walked either through the permitted protest area or
very near by the area, occasionally animating the
crowd. Our security team was on the scene to tell the
police about these intruders and to calm down the
crowd in order to avoid confrontations.
Also, the ISO or so called “socialists” and their sub
organizations had decided, for reasons only known to
them, to disunite with a Mexican/Latino led event to
demonstrate on the other side of the taped-off area
which separated the permitted area of protest from the
non-permitted area. All they needed to do was step a
few feet to the right in order to be in the permitted
area, but again, for reasons only known to them, they
chose to be on their own and disunite with the
cultural demonstration. In a further show of disunity
and in an opportunistic manner they managed to pull
people out of our event and led a march toward the
police barricade, as if they were a part of the
demonstration and the coalition. Their attempt to
animate the few people from the community who joined
them did not last long, especially after our security
team, using a bullhorn, warned the people that anyone
on the other side of the tape was not in a permitted
area of protest and were on their own.
As if this form of disrespect wasn’t enough, they
again went back to the main area where the cultural
demonstration was taking place to get some more
people, and marched back to the same un-permitted
location. This time they had a few more people with
them. At first the police did not seem to react to
this situation, so we did not make a big deal out of
it either. But then it became apparent that the
police had called for back up, so once again, we
announced to them that anyone on the other side of the
tape was not in the permitted protest area, that these
people were instigators of illegal actions and that
they would only provoke a police confrontation. All
they needed to do was be on the other side of the
yellow tape to do the same thing they were doing, but
without putting people at risk. Apparently, most of
the people there weren’t ready for a confrontation
with the police, so the “socialists” were left
wandering around on their own. The fact that they
call themselves, “socialists” is a cruel joke because
if they truly had some type of socialistic
inclinations, they would unite with Mexican/Latino and
colonized people’s rights to self-determination and
would not attempt to factionalize and divide an event
in order to get people to join their protest. Since
they are pseudo-socialists, (or maybe they are sincere
but they don’t know what the hell they are doing) they
have no ability to recruit or mobilize the
Mexican/Latino community on their own, so they
parasitically survive off the work of other
organizations and eventually take the credit as if
they did the work themselves.
This has become even more evident in the articles and
summations that have come out after the June 25th
event, where these “leftist” organizations have not
given any mention or credit to the organizers of the
cultural protest. Not once have they been
self-critical and mentioned that they broke unity with
a Mexican/Latino led demonstration, nor do they give
any explanation as to why they behaved so
undisciplined and selfish. Furthermore, not once have
any of these “socialist” groups addressed the question
of this land being stolen Indian and Mexican land,
which is part of the reason why the SOS have a problem
with the monument, and which furthermore does not set
the ISO too far apart from the Minutemen on
ideological terms. Both groups are coming into our
communities to tell us what to do and what not to do
and neither are uniting with us on practical terms.
The so called “socialists” luckily left our event to
go play into the hands of the Minutemen/SOS by yelling
and screaming at them. What was ridiculous is that
when the Minutemen/SOS’s permit expired and they ended
their demonstration, these “socialists” came back to
our demonstration claiming that they “won” because
they stayed there longer than the SOS! These people
had no clue that the real battle was within the
Mexican/Latino led demonstration.
One final provocation took place which could only be
summed up as a clear attempt to sabotage the
demonstration and provoke a violent confrontation, and
not between us and the Minutemen, but between us and
the police. A Minutemen/SOS supporter (or very likely
a police agent) had again walked nearby our protest
area, at a time when the event was at its peak in
terms of the number of people who were in attendance.
This blue-eyed white male bearing a large American
flag hanging from a stick quietly walked by a crowd of
angry Chicanos and stood next to the police in the
same un-permitted area of protest where the
“socialists” had been an hour or so earlier. He did
not say a thing, he just walked by, and stood in one
place long enough for the angry young Chicanos to
gather around him and get even angrier. Our security
team had been escorting him out in order to prevent a
provocation, but since at this point he wasn’t
leaving, and the police weren’t doing anything about
it, we had formed a circle around him. This
Minutemen/SOS supporter/police agent stood right next
to a line of police, so that if someone would have
thrown an object, or tried to push or hit him, the
police were right there to come down on the people.
Using a bullhorn, one of our security members began
to inform the crowd that they must calm down and get
behind the yellow line. The security person informed
everyone about how this idiotic person was clearly
there to provoke an incident and cause for the police
to get involved. People then hesitantly began to back
away, while the rest of the security team began to
tell the rest of the crowd to move back.
After about 10 minutes of this, a fully armed platoon
of police dressed in riot gear, donning assault
rifles, shotguns and hand guns, arrived and placed
this person under arrest. They could have easily
taken this person across the police barricade and
carried him away without any further interruptions,
but they chose to parade him back along side of the
area where the main event was taking place. The angry
crowd of Chicanos, Mexicanos and other protestors
followed the police and the security team quickly
formed a buffer between the rifle yielding police and
the angry crowd. This was an intense moment,
especially being in the middle of it all, for as you
looked to your right, you literally saw assault rifles
and police with their fingers on the triggers almost
in your face, and on the other side the emotional
crowd of Chicanos and Mexicanos who could barely
contain their anger. We had to maintain the peace at
all costs. The European-American/Minutemen/SOS
supporter/police provocateur was eventually taken away
and the security team was quick to sum up this action
as a provocation by the state. The crowd was informed
in English and Spanish how important it was for us to
remain peaceful and disciplined, and that this person
was only trying to create an incident in which the
police would have a reason to end the event and keep
it from being successful. The fact that this incident
was conducted within the proximity of the
Mexican/Latino led protest and not where the
“socialists” had been at the time, testifies to the
importance of our protest in that they attempted to
cause our event to fail.
This incident was what tested the character, the
organization and the discipline of the entire event
and we met the challenge successfully. This is where
the victory occurred on Saturday, in that we were able
to maintain the peace and discipline by any means in
order for our people to struggle another day. The
biggest enemy we faced on Saturday was not the
Minutemen, nor the SOS, nor even the colonial state.
The hardest enemy to deal with is the internal enemy,
our lack of organization, our lack of discipline and
our lack of willingness to unite with other forces who
struggle for the same cause, which keeps us from
getting our shit together and which allows for the
state to do their job that much easier. We succeeded
in building and controlling our own movement.
www.mudp.org
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by mayra
Saturday, Jul. 02, 2005 at 4:52 PM
so this "nationalist" prefers that people follow judy baca's advice and "turn their backs on hategroups"? well, while you have your back turned they're attacking the community. Breaking unity? it sounds like you're united with the BP pigs who didn't want anyone to confront the racists.
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by Siqueiros
Saturday, Jul. 02, 2005 at 9:50 PM
What some people fail to realize is that the Minutemen/SOS have the state behind them, so when you are confronting the Minutemen, the police will be the ones to respond, not these retired old racists who by themselves are of no threat whatsoever. So how are you truly going to "confront" the Minutemen when there is an army of pigs between you and them? If people want to go ahead and do that, fine, just don't bring innocent men, women and children along with you when you do it. That is what we are saying. History proves this is a reactionary way of organizing, and you don't confront your enemy directly when they are stronger and better organized than you are. They've got guns, and you've got water bottles. That makes no sense whatsoever.
That is setting yourself up for failure. And that is what pigs do, they set up a movement for failure, and they divide movements. Now we aren't going to say all people who do this are pigs, but they sure as hell are acting like them, knowingly or unknowingly. We choose to not set up our movement for failure but to choose our tactics appropriately for each battle. This is what these so called "socialists" fail to understand.
What is also looked over by these primarily white socialists is the importance and the power of culture. Almost every revolutionary movement in Latin America, Africa, and Asia has understood the importance of culture. White socialists have never been able to grasp this because they belong to a people whose culture has been based on stealing everything from everyone else. They have no culture outside of imperialism, colonialism, genocide and theft. Even when trying to organize in solidarity with other peoples, they do so in an arrogant and ideologically imperialistic manner. They don't understand the importance of culture in a struggle, so naturally they will dismiss anything cultural or "nationalistic". Let me ask you, what is the ISO's position on the question of this land being stolen Indigenous people's land? And this is the point we are trying to make, that Mexican/Latino people should lead our own struggles. That nobody else has the right to come into our community to tell us how to live our lives and how to free ourselves from our own conditions. Neither the SOS nor the ISO. We oppose all forms of white supremacy, be it capitalistic or socialistic. Freedom, self-determination and democracy has to be an organic process, otherwise it is neither freedom, self-determination, nor democracy.
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by Ixachilanca
Sunday, Jul. 03, 2005 at 3:14 AM
Baldwin Park 2: Statement of a Harmony Keeper
In Honor of All of you who made Baldwin Park 2 a unified and potent expression of the heart and will of our People .
Dear Sisters and Brothers;
As a member of the Aztlan Mexica Nation Harmony Circle – the Harmony Keepers – I want to thank all of you whose thoughtfulness, focus, spirit and power made Baldwin Park 2 a unified and potent expression of the heart and will of our People -- and we want to thank all of you who helped invoke and defend of the spirit of the land. Tlazocamati.
We came to Baldwin Park 2 embracing the spirit of the young Tongva medicine woman – Toypurinah – who united her people at a time when their ceremonies were threatened by the invading Spanish, and who led them to rise up in defense of their land of their self-determination.
We honor all who do likewise.
We are the red shirt people. You have seen us at Baldwin Park 1 and 2, and at Garden Grove, and at other batallas where the spirit and future of our people is in the balance.
You might have thought of us as “security.” But we are, in reality, something other than that.
We are a warrior society – an akicita, to use the term of the plains Indians – and our task is to safeguard the ceremonies and traditions, the cultural integrity of our Peoples.
Our outlook is indigenous, our leadership is indigenous and our practices are indigenous.
We come to keep Harmony – our work is an extension of the purposes of our indigenous elders and spiritual leaders. All indigenous ceremony is focused on Harmony. Our task is simple – to assure that the balance and power in the ceremony – as led by the spiritual guardians of this land - remains undisturbed. We do so by keeping harmony in the environment in which the ceremony is taking place.
Such work requires, first of all, a will and an ability to extend oneself to respect all those present. It requires a consciousness of the subtleties of the energies of people, of the environment and of events. To keep the harmony one must be attuned to it.
Our approach is, simply put, not European. It does not reduce to “security” - we are not security guards protecting anyone’s property.
We do our work, not for the hatred of our enemies, but for the love of our People.
We consciously and at a very practical and direct level follow the leadership of indigenous elders and of the traditions that have been maintained in the face of over 500 years of genocide aimed at destroying those traditions.
The traditions are strong.
They have withstood every effort to eradicate them. Our purpose is to ensure their continuation. As Tia Oros of the Zuni people has pointed out, “Indigenous peoples of the Americas live on intimate terms with the shadow of terrorism.”
In their “Basic Call to Consciousness: The Hau De No Sau Nee Message to the Western World,” the “Iroquois” people make it very clear: “The Indo-Europeans attacked every aspect of North America with unparalleled zeal. The Native people were ruthlessly destroyed because they were an unassimilable element to the civilizations of the West”
They tell us that Spirituality is the Highest Form of Political Consciousness.
We are in accord with them.
And the traditions teach us self-reliance. We rely on the spiritual powers, on the awareness of our People, and on ourselves.
We do not in any case rely on the powers of the state, or on the police powers of the colonizer to protect us. Five hundred years of genocide points clearly to the reality that we cannot, under any circumstance, depend on our oppressor for our well being, much less our liberation or rights to self determination.
Our purpose has never been and will never be to “tell the police about...intruders and to calm down the crowd in order to avoid confrontations.”
Finally, while we sought to avoid any situation in which riot police might be brought down on our people in a situation in which our children were present, we respect all forms of struggle, and those who engage in them. There were strong and heartfelt reasons why our people cheered and saluted the bravery of our returning warriors that day in Baldwin Park.
We respect all of you who came with good hearts, and recognize that, in the end, everything worked together, weaving a whole, in the way of nature, that comprised a ceremony of depth and dimension, one that honored the land and the ways of all our peoples.
In the Spirit of Toypurina,
A Harmony Keeper
Author: A Harmony Keeper
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by johnk
Sunday, Jul. 03, 2005 at 4:47 AM
I'm not sure if we're talking about the same demo here.
The cultural event was a temporary alliance between the City, cultural nationalists, and artists. The forces of the state were actually allied, temporarily, with the forces of resistant cultural nationalism.
The artists and performers were not all cultural nationalists either. In fact, the organizing forces appeared to be opposed to cultural nationalism and favored eclecticism. The City wanted something multicultural, but mainly, I think, something quiet.
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by Observer
Sunday, Jul. 03, 2005 at 6:29 AM
Whatever tactical leeway the state gave to the demonstrators - and let's be real - people of all persuasions were at the center of the event and down the way bravely confronting the enemy .
The police were in no way allied with the community, and tried to provoke violence from those attending the cultural / political event.
They did so not only by parading an antagonist past the crowd - see Leslie's story on the main page - but also on other occasions when reactionaries showed up. If only by taking a hands off attitude while the Nazis tried to provoke confrontations.
They gave these people - including one armed with a club - free rein to come among us, while keeping our people as far as they could from the Nazis.
They needlessly arrested 23 of our people, mostly for walking on the tracks - a ticketable offense, at best.
They stood joking with the Nazis while, on the other hand, they harrassed us.
The Nazis got escorted to their cars, while, as our event closed, we were threatened with a sweep of arrests and with having the ceremony declared an illegal assembly.
That's why the SOS had nothing but praise for the police. No matter how many provocateurs they sent to molest and threaten us, they walked free. No matter how minor the infraction, we went to jail.
It should be needless to say that the "anti-terrorist" political police were all over us filming _everyone_ they could for hours.
The mayor only supported the monument openly after the political / electoral consequences of _not_ doing so were made clear to him.
It should also go without saying that all the piggishness was done under the mayor's authority. There is no such thing as a mayor who cannot control his pigs.
By the way, to my knowledge there were no cultural nationalists involved at all.
There were political nationalists with a socialist bent, Mexican day laborers, MEChistas, a smattering of Brown Berets, Mexican socialists, anarchists of several stripes, white socialist groups, and Xican@ indigenists, who politically tend to fall in the broad category of Zapatista supporters.
And of course the vast majority - who belonged only to the community, their people, and their families and friends.
Perhaps the closest thing to a cultural nationalist was the Mexica Movement - but they played no role in the organizing of things or in the cultural aspects of the event, and remain an anomoly in the broader Xican@ indigenist movement - although I have to say that their signs, like their "Not Latino" Tshirts, were great.
All that said, the MUDP lack understanding of key matters. If there were no possibility of directly confronting the state or its paramilitary storm troopers like the Militia / Minutemen, then no demonstration worthy of the name would have occurred in the last 50 years.
It's spirit and politics - its understanding the political limitations that their so-called "democracy" and their fear of alienating the middle class put on them. _All _ effective action from the oppressed requires creativity. (It was a very creative day.) It's not who has the guns. This is not warfare, it's politics.
They're right though, in a broad sense, anyway, about the disrespect that groups like the ISO show in our community.
It goes way beyond tactics, though, and I think the criticisms about confronting the SOS fiends is shallow, at best, rigid as hell at worst.
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by johnk
Monday, Jul. 04, 2005 at 12:20 AM
I used the blanket term "cultural nationalists" to lump together a range of positions ranging from political nationalists to indigenists. I should have been more refined and not played into the divisive narrative.
Also, I didn't distinguish between the police and the state, but mainly thought of the city position as the driving force. This was a pretty weak analysis, because the tensions between the interests of the city, police department, and even individual officers, are often at odds.
Still, there is no denying that the state, as a form of authority, is willing to accommodate its adversaries for its own interests, and vice versa.
The event still stands as a strong unification of different people with different ideas. The creativity of the event, as well as the connections made for its planning, and the planning for future actions, seems like it's productive.
This discussion is productive too. Having different perspectives up is instructive. Thanks to everyone who is contributing to these discussions.
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