Police Harass Ceres Food Not Bombs

Soon after the formation of Ceres Food Not Bombs, part of the DAAA Collective, collective members decided that the parks in Ceres needed to be reclaimed from police that have continually harassed homeless and poor people in Whitmore park where Ceres FNB feeds. Ceres Food Not Bombs made the decision to have a Reclaim the Parks demonstration after hearing stories from local park goers about harassment from the police, and being kicked out of public parks after just hanging out in the park for a little over an hour. After putting out a flyer to local homeless people two weeks ago, Ceres FNB hoped for a large collection of homeless people to protest against police abuse this Saturday.

I arrived in Ceres at about 1pm. The large mass of homeless people did not materialize, (possibly scared by heavily police presence), but I did see about 10 or so young Food Not Bombs, and street kids. Upon getting to the table where the food was being handed out, I turned around to see a large man walking towards me. He had on a Ceres Sheriffs Defective shirt, and approached me. Are you, “My-Name”? He asked me. Taken aback by a police officer from another town knowing my name, I looked calming at him, and said yes. “You’re the organizer, right?”, he asked. I said that I wasn’t the organizer, but that I was here to help out the Ceres group and what they were doing. “But you made the flyer right?”, he asked me. He then stated another name of another collective member, and asked if that person was there at the park. I told him that I didn’t make the flyer. I then turned to my left, and another cop from another car across the park approached me. This police officer had on semi-riot gear, with full outside bulletproof vests, equipment, and the whole deal. “Is this “My-Name”?”, he asked the other cop, who replied, “Yeah”. I just laughed. I asked them how they knew who I was, to which the larger one replied that, “Cops know everything”, and that the flyer had gotten around the school and local community. Although the police may have gotten some info from a flyer that they might have gotten a hold off, or seen pasted up somewhere, they probably were alerted to the event via the DAAA Collective website, which we know is under FBI and local police watch, at least since the scare over an eco-terrorist threat on the June 12th day of solidarity with Jeff “Free” Luers.

The police officer then talked to us, and discussed how he hoped that the event today would go peacefully and without incident. He then asked if we were going to march, and told us that we had better stay on the sidewalks and not march in the street. At this point the one cop with heavy gear had left, and returned to his car, and now watched us from across the street. The larger cop went back to us own car, and then proceeded to take lots of pictures of us, and videotape. After talking to one of the kids that was already there, I learned that at 10am, they had been approached in the park, and were asked if “My-Name” was in the park or coming. The police then proceeded to take pictures of us for a short amount of time. Several of us then left to get a soccer ball, and a camera to take pictures of the police. When we came back, we took pictures of the police in a parking lot across of us with a K-9 unit watching us. One would almost have to be there to understand the huge irony of the whole day. With extreme amount of police everywhere, the main question was "where was the threat?"

After making signs and talking about what to do, two police officers came up to the group of mostly young people, and asked them what was going on. They looked at the sings that people had made, and were angry at the signs many of the people had created. Many of the signs said things like, “Keep the Pigs Out of Parks”, “Pigs out, Homeless In”, etc. First the cops asked why we were out in the park in the first place. We explained about how we were out their in response to the continued police harassment of homeless, and also activists that chose to stand up to them. The police then argued over our use of the term “pig”. We basically explained that it was against the abusive police that were harassing people. They then asked us what our solution to the homeless problem was, and we explained that the city should easily be able to keep open shelters, either from vacant buildings our otherwise, for homeless people so they have places to go. This would stop people from having to sleep in the parks, and thus coming in contact with the police. We cited the recent success of the emergency shelter, kept open all by volunteers and donations, and was run out of an abandoned building, and the fact that 50% of people using it had jobs. After some more exchange, the two officers left, and around this time a large police SUV car drove through the park.

After the friendly visit, we decided that it was time to take off from the park. Only about 12 strong, but with lots of energy, we headed out of the park. Staying mostly on the sidewalk, we marched to the police headquarters (only a block away!), and chanted, “Who’s Park? Our Park!”, “Shelters, not Prisons! Food Not Bombs”. We stayed in front of the police station for a couple minutes, until we moved to a more high traffic street. We then marched around the neighborhood to largely supportive honks and passerby. The large Ceres Sheriff, who stopped often to shoot video of us as we marched on the sidewalk in his car, then followed us.

We returned to the park without much incident, although the police continued to drive by us, take video, and follow us. We made sure each person had a way to get home without putting themselves in harms way, and called it a day. Many of the youth there were energized at the days events, and had a very positive outlook on the days action. All were very angry about the actions of the police and authorities over the presence of non-violent homeless activists.

For me the day only resolved my feelings about homeless issues, and the continued harassment of anarchists and anti-authoritarian activists by FBI, police, and law enforcement is going to affect us as a movement. They’re watching, are you prepared?

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