Something happened on Saturday night in downtown Santa Cruz. There was a ruckus. There was a dance party. There was also aftermath—broken glass, graffiti on walls, police in riot gear.
There were circle-a’s spray-painted on businesses. And even though rebellious teenagers for the past 40 years have scribbled that symbol wherever they felt, it makes it easy for people to believe that all anarchists are evil and responsible for all the destruction and all the fear. And swept into this melee is SubRosa, an anarchist infoshop.
It must be their fault. The fact that SubRosa didn’t have anything to do with the event doesn’t seem to matter. That the only link is an arrested person who saw a flier at SubRosa. Of course there was a flier at SubRosa. There were fliers all over town. You can still see them on the telephone poles lining Soquel Drive.
This isn’t the first time anarchists have been blamed for the problems of society. In fact, the history of May Day is tied up in the demonization of anarchists. In 1887, four anarchists were hung in Chicago after being framed for throwing bombs at police during a protest. Three more were to spend six years in prison until pardoned by Gov. Altgeld, who said the trial that convicted them was characterized by “hysteria, packed juries and a biased judge.” The anarchists were a part of a massive strike that began on May 1, 1886, demanding an eight-hour work day.
SubRosa is pretty innocuous, really. It is based on values of self-responsibility, mutual support and free association. Like anarchism itself, it encompasses a wide range of perspectives. The shelves are filled with books espousing a variety of ideas, some in contradiction to each other. The room is filled with a variety of people, young people, old people. The volunteers spend their time and energy working to create a positive and family-friendly space.
Some of the people who frequent SubRosa are homeless. SubRosa is the one place in town where you can sit down without having to pay for anything. You can’t sit on Pacific Avenue, not with all the statues and parking meters and downtown ordinances. Not with all the business owners who don’t want you anywhere near their stores if you aren’t going to buy anything. Not with all the downtown hosts who walk up to you, shake their head and move you along down Pacific. They point you to the block where SubRosa is; the downtown hosts don’t go south of Laurel.
In the atmosphere of downtown Santa Cruz, where there is so much conflict between so many haves and so many have-nots, May Day’s eruption doesn’t seem so out of place. The homeless and other “undesirables” are constantly being forced off Pacific Avenue, and it comes as no surprise that some of them stood up and pushed back against the city that rejected them.
But really we don’t know what actually happened on May Day. There were hundreds of people there, but no one can stand up and say “I was there. I was a part of this.” Because to do that is to throw yourself into the maelstrom of accusation, is to label yourself a criminal even if you never picked up a rock or held a can of spray paint. “Known anarchists” who were safe at home in bed are now having their names posted on the internet, being accused of planning the whole thing. It doesn’t matter that they were in no way involved, because an accusation is a very powerful, very dangerous thing.
Simone Chandler is a member of the SubRosa collective.
Comments (5)
Reply to this comment
Reply to this comment
Reply to this comment
Reply to this comment
Reply to this comment
Post a comment
Dan Wed, May 05, 2010 - 1:59 pm
Congrats to Santa Cruz Weekly for having the guts to run this. It’s refreshing to read something well-reasoned in the midst of all the reactionary noise that followed May Day. Congrats to SubRosa as well, for responding to the accusations so rationally. I don’t hear any glass shattering…
O. Hutchinson Thu, May 06, 2010 - 9:40 pm
I think that in the court of public opinion, SubRosa is feeling blowback from an initial statement attributed to them that seemed very unsympathetic to the local merchants and artists who got their stuff smashed.
eric Thu, May 06, 2010 - 10:33 pm
Nice message Ms. Chandler - about the positive aspects of S.R.
Now why can’t you or S.R. condemn the vandalism? Oh, is it that you support it? Why the original statement from S.R., “The people who make this town a fantastic place to be are far more important than the walls and windows of businesses that suck our souls away for their profit.”
‘We didn’t do it, but we approve,’ isn’t good enough for me or 99.9% of the members of our community.
If you want folks to be nice to S.R., you have to play nice too.
J.Mathers Thu, Jun 17, 2010 - 11:02 am
Yes, it is so nice of SC Weekly to allow this kind of spin. Of course we all know that just because you have buddies at SC Weekly isn’t going to take away the fact that Sub Rosa not only didn’t condemn the acts but also I suggest anyone who wants to see what they are really about to take a stroll in there and see the literate they hand out. Things like “We are against all governments and capitalism….we have no demands for this system; we only seek it’s destruction.”
Really, you people are not welcome here. You have a choice. Stop threatening us with your destruction rhetoric or GET OUT! We are NOT going to let you act like this anymore. You can’t advocate destruction and then when it happens pretend like you sit around drinking coffee and reading Emerson. WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Make a choice, we the people demand it. A couple of your buddies a community does not make.
Constitution Wed, Jun 23, 2010 - 9:14 pm
Hey, “J. Mathers”. Apparently you are completely ignorant of the fact that the first amendment to the US Constitution provides EVERYONE a right to hold whatever political views they want, and to discuss these views freely. For you to say GET OUT! to those who are against capitalism and against all governments means it is YOU who doesn’t respect the laws of the land and what our society is built on. I think it is YOU who should GET OUT if you don’t like our constitution.
In fact, Such anti-capitalist anti government views were expressed by Thomas Jefferson, such as this:
“I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”
You would probably label Jefferson a terrorist if you didn’t know who said this, right J Mathers?
Or the fact that Jefferson believed that periodic revolution, “at least once every 20 years,” was “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”
How about this Lincoln fellow:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
—Pres. Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864 (letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
So, J Mathers, would you label Lincoln and Jefferson communist terrorists, or what?