Modesto @ Cafe' is shut down for "loitering" by authoritarians

DAAA C.members arrive downtown tonight (Fri.Jan. 28th '05) in it's usual routine skateboarding over between Starbuck's & Jamba Juice a huge bucket full of radical reading goodies, shirts, stickers, books, & posters. Upon arriving we are met by the typical security guy telling us that we are not aloud to lay out our litature anymore & to talk with the officer "over there", he pointed. After moments of discouragement, one DAAA member proceeded to go into Jamba Juice & ask if we were ok to lay out our litature to the side of their business. They gave us the O.K. (in the past Jamba Juice has alway's been nice to us, we have talked with management aswell as employees about who we are & what we do). A cop walks over to us & in so many words say's that we arent aloud to do this anymore & that we have to pack it up. We asked, "why"? Something about loitering, he say's, & begins to do the normal short-attention-span-routine, bad attitude-cop shit. With little resistance & a couple words more telling the cop that what we were doing wasnt loitering & him telling us that we had to purchase something from somewhere in order for us to....ummm....stand around! We left with a couple wise crack's & forgetting to get the officers name & badge #.

I could go into the typical complaining about how we do Food Not Bombs, Mutual Aid (free clothes hand out) & other various projects in attempting to bring the community together, go to a city council meeting & vent, or go down to the Modesto Police Dept. & fill out a complaint form, bitch about why their are no "No Loitering" signs up anywhere downtown, whine about not having enough money to afford a space to rent of our own because rent is so high, make a stencil for a T-shirt that reads "I table info here & all i got is this lousey T-shirt that say's the police told me to go away"!
I will say that we just held a Counter-Inaugeration protest of Bush in the same area that we table at & even the security guard told us that, that was one of the reasons why we were kicked out. The police have been looking for a reason to get us off "our" block for sometime now. They first started with the "we needed a permit" routine & that didnt work because it is public space. The next several times they tried to see if Jamba Juice had a problem with us. Jamba Juice has never had a problem with us.
Downtown Modesto's 10th & J.streets is a haven for the social functions that go on there. There is a movie theater, pizza place, coffee hang out, smoothy hang out, ect.....
All city's have a place where the social like to meet friends, talk about life, & interract with one another. These places are usually in an area such as a downtown. If the city is going to develop a structure that attracts artist's, freaks, hip-hoppers, punk rockers, goth's, homeless, yuppies, working class citizen's, intellec's, & even activist's! Than we say.....WHO's BLOCK?......OUR BLOCK!!!