Santa Cruz March for Justice for Trayvon

I made it to the Trayvon Martin rally and was the only one talking or carrying signs about local racial profiling. However, the NAACP leadership was young, female, and interested in those issues. I may have a spokesperson on my show, if she contacts me.

I did announce at the rally that there's (yet another) meeting of the local ACLU today at 7 PM at Louden Nelson Center. Whether racial profiling is on their agenda or not, I don't know. Steve Pleich, Vice-Chair, hasn't yet sent me their agenda, but perhaps he'll post it here.

The chair of the NAACP did confide in me that there have been numerous complaints about racial profiling in Santa Cruz, as yet apparently unpublicized, which need attention. Five years ago, SCCCOR solicited dozens of such complaints and did nothing about them to my knowledge (though they have applied for more grants).

The Citizens Police Review Board was dismantled by City Council in 2003 after a black chair (Mark Halfmoon) began investigating racial and class profiling, selective enforcement, and police use and display of force. See http://www.metroactive.com/papers/cruz/02.05.03/nuz-0306.html --halfway down the column.

It was a good march hough far too controlled for my taste. Everyone but myself and the two photographers dutifully walked along the sidewalk and only one person took the median in violation of the new "no signs on the medians" law that went into effect July 11th). Still spirits were high and the march was encouraging.

I may have some more positive reports on the NAACP in future. It's a tribute to the rather elementary wisdom that organizing must really start with those who are under attack.

Correction: I wasn't the only one carrying signs attacking local racial profiling. Others also carried signs and made some general remarks referencing Santa Cruz (which I was able to hear on line at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F8S9NpeX84 --thanks to the journalist who posted them ). However there were few if any specifics. (I didn't have any either, though Isaac Collins--see below--did appear and join the march.)

I've invited some NAACP marchers to come in or call in on tonight's Free Radio Santa Cruz show where I'll be playing some audio from the march on my streaming-but-not-broadcasting radio show tonight at 6 PM ( http://tunein.com/radio/FRSC-s47254/ , archives at http://www.radiolibre.org/brb/brb130725.mp3). Folks are invited to call in (427-3772) with any comments.

It's my usual practice to encourage groups who express civil liberties principles to apply them locally and to come down hard on them (like I have on the local ACLU) when they don't. If I've missed the local focus by the NAACP or the SCCCCOR specifically targeting local abuses, I'm happy to be educated.

We need, as I've mentioned before, to target specific practices and responsible (or irresponsible) individuals. I try to do that in my own fragmented anecdotal way by playing interviews with those who've suffered from police abuse, but it would be great to see more focus--particularly by those groups whose mandate seems to me to be to do just that.

I regarded Isaac Collins, an African-American rapper, poet, and Occupy Santa Cruz stalwart, as an example of profiling last year when UCSC police targeted him out of a crowd of thousands at the Great Meadow on April 20th for felony marijuana sales charges. (See https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/04/21/18711773.php?show_comments=1#18711803 ).