The Black Scare in Santa Cruz
Here's a pretty old post from the blog archives of Geekery Today; it was written about 14 years ago, in 2010, on the World Wide Web.
From Vandals Strike Downtown Santa Cruz, City on a Hill Press (2010-05-06):
Emily Bernard, a manager at Dell Williams Jewelers, was shocked by the event.
. . . While the police department has not publicly verified individuals or groups that are involved except the two transients arrested . . ., it is investigating the group of vandals as a possible anarchist organization.
Business owners and Santa Cruz community members alike [1] are focusing their blame on SubRosa, an anarchist café, partly because one of the men arrested admitted picking up fliers for the event there.
We can't let [an] anarchist café exist now that we know the potential of what they can do and publicize,Bernard said.— Jenny Cain & Julia Reis, City on a Hill Press (2010-05-06): Vandals Strike Downtown Santa Cruz
I don’t know why Emily Bernard thinks that the existence of an anarchist café should be subject to her personal sufferance. She manages a business, but she doesn’t own downtown Santa Cruz. SubRosa pays their rent to a landowner who is willing to have them, and they have as much of a right to be there as anybody else. But in any case, the SubRosa community space is being scapegoated, harassed, and targeted by other business owners for eradication, for no other reason than the fact that they are Anarchists.
See also:
- [1]Sic —
The article is operating on a rather selective notion of who counts as a
Santa Cruz community member
(apparently Johanna Isaacson, Simone Chandler, and other Santa Cruz residents who support, or are part of, the SubRosa collective, don’t count).↩
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The sequence of events is hard to piece together from the article, but presumably she thinks the purpose of the Subrosa Cafe is to plan mass riots. It sounds more like a bunch of people picked up some of the anti-capitalist literature, got drunk at the huge dance party and then decided to smash the downtown businesses Greek/Exarchia style. I’m not sure about the ones in Santa Cruz, but I do have some sympathy for the shopowners and street vendors in Greece who fear their businesses will be burned down every time police shoot a teenager.