Community Town Hall on Police Brutality

Join us for a town hall Thursday February 19th to help plan a community-led ofrenda workshop to honor those killed by police, as well as an anti-colonial walking tour of Santa Cruz. The workshop and walking tour will happen March 7th, and we want people's input!

As folks across the country demand justice for Mike Brown and Eric Garner, community members in Salinas, CA are fighting the police murders of Angel Ruiz, 42, Osman Hernandez, 26, Carlos Mejia-Gomez, 44, Frank Alvarado, Jr., 39, and Jaime Garcia, 35.

We seek an analysis of the historical relationship between anti-black and anti-brown violence in the U.S. in the hopes of strengthening cross-racial solidarities. We seek, too, to raise awareness about the intersections between racialization and economic violence, between police brutality in the streets and mass incarceration inside prisons, and between intimate and state-based gender violence. We are interested in building connections between those who are grieving the loss of their loved ones, those who fight to stay alive despite the injustices of the U.S. justice system, and those who mobilize poetic imaginaries to build the world anew.

On March 6th and 7th, community members from UCSC, Hartnell Community College in Salinas, Sin Barras, Critical Resistance, Dignity and Power NOW, California Coalition of Women Prisoners, Justice Now, and TGI Justice Project will gather in Santa Cruz to discuss the ongoing historical crisis of state-sanctioned violence against people of color and the movement that has emerged to oppose white supremacist policing in the U.S.