Author
queer-j brad
The Sagon Penn Chapter of CopWatch Conference, focusing on Police Brutality, was held on October 22, 2005 at the Hot Monkey Love Cafe in San Diego. Audio and transcribed excerpts from the fifth panel "Sagon Penn Panel." Audio Duration: 1:37:40.
Prior four panels:
http://radio.indymedia.org/node/7402
http://radio.indymedia.org/node/7404
http://radio.indymedia.org/node/7433
http://radio.indymedia.org/node/8506
Panel 5:
Sagon Penn Panel
Facilitator: Janice Jordan
Panelists: Barbara Gunner, Joe Williams, David Agranoff
Audio Duration: 1:37:40
Janice Jordan (0:34):
A little bit of history about CopWatch here in San Diego. CopWatch came out of the Committee Against Police Brutality, which was formed in 1999 after the shooting death of Demetrius DuBois. What we realized at that time was that we needed to be part of a larger movement. And that theme has been spoken about again and again today, how we need to come together. Usually on the national day of protest against police brutality we hold huge demonstrations. But because of the chaos, we decided that we need to bring all of these great people who are doing all of this great work together into one forum... I just hope that everything that all of the presenters talked about and all of the feeling that we have incurred today will actually come together. We have a lot of work to do comrades. Racial profiling will continue to exist. Sexual assault will continue to exit. The incarceration of poor people and people of color will continue to exist, until we come together and stamp it out. I dont believe we can change the system. It really needs to be broken down, dismantled and start over again.
Barbara Gunner (godmother to Sagon Penn) (3:04)
To know Sagon was to love him... One summer day he was headed to the beach, he and his brothers and another little guy in his grandfather's truck, and he saw one of his friends that had broken down with his girlfriend and they were walking. So
he decided being the sweet person he was to give them a ride, and so instead of going to the beach they went all the way back over to where that incident happened that day... When you hurt the city in their pockets, they understand that better than anything...
There were people who wanted to do movies, ten years ago when this first happened, do movies and books and they had found the people to play the parts of the mother and everybody. He said you know I cant do this. I cant do this. Make money off somebody else's blood. People died that day. He turned down all of that. He refused to sue the city. He said I dont want to sue the city. That was a tragedy. I dont want to make money off of someone else's tragedy. He didnt know that the time would come that he wouldnt be able to get a job...
After high school, he had put an application in to apply to be a peace officer. That just shows you where he was. He was a peaceful man...
He got justice, but he didnt get peace. There was no peace in this city... The nicer people are, the worse treatment they get. He even went down after this was finished, and he asked if he could be apply to be a police officer and they told him no, no way...
He said, when i was in jail for that whole year. Many nights I went to bed hungry and cold. The police officers would come right to my door, to bring me my food tray and they would spit in it right in front of me and then get a little bit of glass and stir it around in there. So I couldnt eat the food many nights. But there was one officer who was kind to him, and on those days he was like a camel, and he would store up those days for the days he knew he wasnt going to be able to eat. The young man was a warrior, he was a chief, putting up with things that the average person couldnt have gone through...
I feel so sorry for the people here who lost their children for no reason. Its not the money that compensates you, but that is the one thing they respect. That's how Johnnie Cochran cooled everything down in Los Angeles...
Those two police that Sagon had the encounter with, the community had already written letters and had complaints against those two officers. Because they had been doing this for a long time, beating up the people in the community. It didnt just start. It was that day they met their match. Thank God that Sagon had the power of the karate that saved his life.
Joe Williams (15:30)
I want to talk about the psychological makeup of why we are not winning this war. It's something going on in our mind that we keep losing battle after battle after battle. And the reason why i say it is psychological is because we have all the physical resources. we have the mental capacity, we have the education. And we have everything but the will to overthrow international capitalism. To overthrow monopoly. I want to talk about what is holding the working class back...
We can only go so far, but when it comes time for us to really defend ourselves, pyschologically, politically, socially and if necessary militarily, we ask the question are we ready and the question always come back, not yet. And so consequently we are dying from a disease called fear. And as long as we hold on to that disease, we will continue to die, and the police will continue to kill us in the streets, and they will continue to draft us into illegal wars, and they will continue to send us to prison and we will continue to die from their medication in their hospitals and we will continue to be illiterate because of their education out of their higher institutions of learning.
As long as we take their prescription, we will remain slaves...
Everybody in leadership is part of the ruling class but everybody who is getting killed is part of the working class. So we have to understand that prescription. They call the shots and we die... The killing of gangbangers in the streets by the police is not about the gangbangers, it is about us. It is to tell us we will be next if we get out of line... If we can break the psychological chains of the minds of the masses of people, those young gangbangers can be working class soldiers. We got the numbers, we just dont have the will...
The reason why our people are not fighting as a class because they are buying us off with trinkets, with cars and videos and stuff that makes us feel good. But we are empty on the inside. We need to realize that the destiny of humanity depends on us and we need to begin to act like it. Half of the working class is locked up in prison, because they have not created jobs for us. Our children are in gangs because they have not created jobs for us. Our seniors are dying because they have not guaranteed security for us.
We must understand that the real criminal of this society is the military industrial complex. The police are the ones that are out there raping our women; the men who are security guards in the prisons are the ones who are getting those female inmates pregnant. These people are criminals and we must begin to fight back. We can be passive any longer thinking that we are protecting our family and protecting ourselves.
They are killing us anyway,
Katrina was not about the levee breaking, Katrina was not about Bush answering the call too late. Katrina was about Louisiana being a bucket of poverty. People for generations on welfare who had no way to escape this crisis. Louisiana and New Orleans did not have to happen if there had been an equitable distribution of wealth in this society...
It's no accident that the crimes are happening in city hall, it's no accident that the crimes are happening in Sacramento, it's no accident that Delay and others are going on trial in the u.s. government. These people are criminals. They are exploiting our wealth and our labor and our human resources.
None of these children we talked about today needed to die. Not one of them...
We need to get rid of the education that they have given us. Because they have educated us into a system of follow the leader. Dont step out of line. Take care of your family. Dont worry about your neighbor...
Claim your rightful place in history and God will bless you.
David Agranoff (39:30)
I took on the federal government and won a week and a half ago. It was a 2-1/2 month, 80 day battle of wills. I knew i wasnt going to lose...
The federal bureau of investigation has not labeled al Qaeda as the number one domestic threat. They have labeled the animal rights and enviromental movement as the number one threat... There's reason why they do that... The reason why we are the number one threat to the system is because we are fighting a linchpin of capitalism. You want to talk about greed, disgusting business. You want to talk the number one polluter in this world. There is no industry on this planet that pollutes the world more than the meat and dairy industries. We are the ones that are bringing attention to this issue...
When you heard that three animal rights activists were at in jail for three months, you might have been wondering why they were doing it. It all comes back to a speaker that we brought to san diego a couple of years ago, Rod Coronado. If you dont know about this brave native american activist...
In this lecture, Rod Coronado was going to be talking about why he became an arsonist, why he took the struggle to property destruction, why he released mink from fur farms... We brought Rod to come and tell his life story and that's what it was about. Anyone who was there will tell you that by the end of the speech they wanted to go out and tear everything down... Capitalism is killing our people but its also killing the life support system that people depend on. And if we spend all this time fighting the struggle to stop them from killing us in the streets while they are tearing down our forests, well its not going to matter because we're not going to have anything to breathe... Well, the night before i guess the earth liberation front wanted to give Rod a little gift and they burned down an apartment complex that was part of urban sprawl up in la jolla before he even showed up in town. It did 60 million dollars of damage. This company is no company to feel sorry for them losing 60 million dollars, they've been tearing down homeless shelters downtown to put up condiminiums and lots of over things. They're scumbags.
Because of Rod's lecture close proximity to the fire, it wasnt two weeks before the fbi raided our house, because we were the organizers. They stole our van and they stole our computer. We got the van back because the engine was blown, they only made it a couple of blocks... They ended up raiding another activist's house just to get videotape of the lecture.
Part of this whole investigation is that they are trying to indict Rod Coronado for teaching people how to make a bomb.
Two years later all these activists end up with supeanas. And we found out what the grand jury was asking people, it was "Who else was there? Who was sitting next to you? Did someone tell you not to talk to us?" .. You cant say I dont feel like answering that one... When i go in there i dont believe in their secret tribunals and i dont believe in their system, so i'm not going to tell them anything...
The fbi has already said... we mean to disrupt and dismantle the environmental and animal rights movements. They want to destroy our movements... I am not going to go in there and tell them anything... Every time they brought me up on the floor there was a least one person who yelled that's the guy who told the grand jury to fuck off, hell yeah...
I spent all of september, the first part of october, and the end of august in mcc. 75 of the 100 people on my floor were mexicans in there for illegal entry, some who were facing 8-10 years just for being mexican and crossing a line on a map.
I met a guy who doesnt even know spanish. He's lived here since he was eight months old and he's about to get deported after eight years in prison because his parents didnt go through the trouble of getting citizenship. He's going to a country he's never lived in that speaks a language he doesnt even know.
When you look out the windows you can see luxury condominiums, swimming pools and the mall and you're sitting in there in this parallel dimension where being mexican is a crime...
This is about the first amendment... I refused to answer questions based on the grounds that it violates my first amendment right to free association and belief. You had the right to be at that lecture. You had the right to listen to Rod Coronado without fear of being under investigation...
One of the books i read was Asatta Shakur's biography... What i realized most when i was reading her book, yes there is police brutality in the streets, when they beat people and shoot people, but the brutality doesnt end there, it continues in court. If you read Asatta's story, every step of the way, it's all brutality...
Q/A 1:06:00-1:37:40
E-mail
Link
sandiego.indymedia.org