A DEATH… OR A LIFE

October-November of 2011.

“He who names, calls. And someone responds, without prior notice, without explanation,

to the place where their name, spoken or thought, is calling them,

When this happens one has the right to believe that nobody leaves for good

as long as the word that calls, flaming, brings them.”
Eduardo Galeano.
“Ventana sobre la Memoria”, in Las Palabras Andantes. Ed. Siglo XXI.

For: Luis Villoro Toranzo.
From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.

Don Luis:

Health and greetings to you.

First of all, congratulations on your birthday November 3rd. We hope that with these letters you also receive the affectionate hug that, although from a distance, we give you.

So let’s continue this interchange of ideas and reflections. Though it will now be more solitary because of the media din around the definition of the names of the 3 rogues that will compete for rule over the bloody soils of Mexico.

With the same frenzy that they issue receipts for “expenses in image promotion,” the media align themselves with one side or the other. They all concur that the shameless blundering displayed by each of their respective aspirants can only be covered up by making even more noise over those of their competitors. The season of Christmas shopping fury now coincides with the sale of electoral proposals. Of course, like the majority of items sold in this season of the year, there is no warranty and no possibility of return.

After the burial of his now ex-secretary of government, Felipe Calderón Hinojosa ran joyfully to the “happy ending” to demonstrate that what is important is to consume, no matter that the Secretaries of State are perishable and carry an unadvertised expiration date.

But even in the middle of the noise there are sounds that pulse for those who know how to look for them and have the daring and patience to do so.

And in these lines that I send you now, Don Luis, palpitate deaths that are lives.

I.- The power of Power.

“The freedom of election lets you choose the salsa with which you will be eaten.”
Eduardo Galeano.
“Ventana sobre las Dictaduras Invisibles” Ibid.

“Let the whores govern, judge, and take care of us, since their sons have failed to do so. ”
Taken from the blog laputarealidad.org

I must have read it or heard it somewhere. It was something like, “power is not having a lot of money, but rather lying and having many people believe you, having everybody believe you, or at least those that matter.”

To lie greatly and do so with impunity, that is Power.

Gigantic lies that include acolytes and disciples and that give them validity, certainty, status.

Lies made electoral campaigns, government programs, alternative projects of the nation, party platforms, newspaper and magazine articles, radio or television commentaries, slogans, creeds.

And the lie can be so big that it is not static. It changes, not to make itself more effective, but to test the loyalty of its followers. The bad guys of yesterday will be the blessed with a few page turns of the calendar.

Is Power—or its proximity—the great corruptor?

Do men and women come to power with great ideals and it is the perverse and perverting action of Power that obliges them to betray those ideals to the extent that they act contrary to and in conflict with them?

From full employment to the bloody (and lost) war…

From the “mafia of power” to the “loving republic”…

From the “six thousand pesos monthly will cover everything” to “not even in the happy ending can I find a poll that favors me…”

From “My god make me a widow” to “Lupita D´Alessio, make me a lion in front of the lamb…”

From the San Angel group to the palatial Yunque

From the…from the…the… sorry, but I can’t find anything significant that Enrique Peña Nieto has said…

What’s more, I can’t find anything he has said at all, as if he was a bad B actor, the type that appear on soap operas and blabber some speech that no one even corrects.

What’s more, given the obvious, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for him to register himself in the CEA of Televisa (according to the curriculum, as of the first year they teach “verbal expression”).

I know very well that the media have “read” Peña Nieto’s photograph of registry as the only precandidate of the PRI (where the principal characters of that party appear) as a sign that this man has party support.

Hmm… at first glance it looks to me like a photo accompanying a newspaper article about a new blow to organized crime. That they had dismantled another band of thieves, but that the bullet-proof vest with which they usually like to display the guilty had been replaced by the red shirt.

Later I looked more carefully at the photo. Look my dear, they are not making a show of support. This is a group of vultures that have realized that Peña Nieto is no more than a puppet orphan and that they need to get a hand in the mix because upon arriving at the presidency, it isn’t him that will matter but rather the ventriloquist that manages him.

His designation as presidential candidate will be one more demonstration of the decomposition of the Institutional Revolutionary, and the dispute over who will manage him will be a fight to the death (and for priistas this is not rhetorical).

How pathetic the situation must be that even Héctor Aguilar Camín offers himself up for adoption… and for the urgent need to make literate the poor man.

Thus, we continue to ask:

Is it Power that corrupts or does one have to be already greatly corrupted to take Power, to maintain oneself in Power, or to aspire to get there in the first place?

In one of the long drives of the Other Campaign, passing through the capital of Chiapas, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, I commented that the Chiapan governor’s chair must have something that converts averagely intelligent people into stupid bosses with the posture of tyrants. Julio was driving, Roger was the copilot. One of them asserted, “or they were already that way and that’s why they came to be governors.”

And later added the following anecdote, something like this: “A woman was passing by the building where congress was in session and heard yells: “Stupid! Idiot! Whore! Thief! Criminal! Killer! Fraud!” and other even ruder expressions. The woman, horrified, turned to a man outside the office reading a book. “This is a scandal,” she said, “we maintain them with our taxes and these representatives don’t do anything but fight and insult each other.” The man looked at her, then at the legislative chambers, and turning back to his book, said: “they aren’t fighting or insulting each other, they’re calling roll.”

-*-

II.- Power and Reflection on Resistance .

The Left is the Voice of the Dead.
Tomás Segovia. 1994.

Hmm… Power… the evidence is unquestionable, the wet dream of the intellectuals from above, the reason for being of the political parties…

Now, with the death of the master Tomás Segovia, we name him, we call him, and we bring him to sit at our side in order to, together, reread some of his texts.

Not his poems, but rather his critical reflections on and in front of Power.

Few, very few, are those intellectuals who have tried to understand, not judge, this turbulent walk that is ours and that we call “zapatismo” (or “neozapatismo” for some). In this sparse list appear, among others, Don Pablo González Casanova, Adolfo Gilly, Tomás Segovia and you, Don Luis.

We embrace all of them, and you, as only the dead embrace, that is, to life.

And those who remember Tomás Segovia only as a poet do so in order to extract this man from his liberatory being. Since Don Tomás can’t do anything now to defend himself or his word, those homages of the “cut and paste” type circulate, editing and arranging the friendly pieces, leaving the uncomfortable ones to oblivion… until other uncomfortable ones remember them and name them.

And in order not to interpret his words (which could be seen as a friendly form of usurpation) I transcribe here parts of some of his writings.

In 1994, at the height of the punishing euphoria of the right, and this is indeed a cultured right because it was headed by Octavio Paz (with businessman Enrique Krauze as one of his courtiers—oh don’t get worked up don Krauze, one can’t scold intellectuals for being of the right or left; rather, as is your case, only for using, in order to stand out, not intellect but rather adulation of the kind of gangsters that now form the government), Tomás Segovia wrote the following (emphasis mine):

Whenever one or another form of fascism prevails, truth and justice take the shape of Resistance.

But one could also say that the left is constitutively resistance. Without doubt, the left fell in our century into an unsalvageable historical error, but this error consists very obviously in the belief that the left could take power. The left in power is a contradiction, as the history of this century has clearly shown us (…)

Today it is clear, I believe, that the left is not the other of the right, with both situated in a relation of symmetric opposites with respect to power. The left is above all the other of power, the other sphere and the other meaning of social life, what was buried and forgotten in constituted power, the return of the oppressed, the voice of the dispossessed before it became that of the poor (and that of the poor only because they are by majority, but not exclusively, the dispossessed)—the left is the Voice of the Dead.

One of the most damaging ideas was that of the “reactionary” that let us think that the right was opposed to progress, that the right is resistance and that it speaks for the past, for the roots, for that which has been overcome. In that sense, the left became convinced that resistance was power in the sense that it was of the right and that it opposed the progressiveness of the left in its tentative desperation to conserve its privileges and its domination, without seeing that power, the same from the right or from the left, is only resistance in a different and much simpler sense: it is resistance to being substituted by another power, whether from the right or the left; but with regard to history power is always progressive.

In Mexico, as is custom, this is seen with particular acuity given the crudity of the relations of power in this country: today we know for sure that no government was more decided and actively progressive than that of Porfirio Díaz, and that today it is the PRI that monopolizes and exploits the rhetoric of progress, of change, of modernization, of the overcoming of nostalgias and the “emissaries of the past,” and even of democracy.

(This makes me think also that democracy in power of power is a contradiction: democracy is not “demoarchy”—the people in power is a utopia or metaphor, dangerous to take seriously because “the people,” if we imagine this exists or even that it exists only as entelechy, it is by definition what is not in power, the other of power).

But, my enchanting colleagues, when they give themselves up to government knowing that their promises are false, is that because they are seduced? Impossible: seduction is desire in its pure state, it implies the brilliant vision that your joy is my joy. No vision is possible in which the joy of Power is the joy of the “people.”

And in 1996 he stated:

In parallel, in a country that no longer practices the violent prohibition of direct expressions of primary social life, it is the ideology of power that blackmails us, calling us whores—that is, destructive, negative, resentful, morose—or, they will try to persuade us, as the pundits and intellectuals tried to persuade the Zapatistas, as my colleagues (starting with Octavio Paz) try to persuade me, that the “true” form of self-expression and influence in social life is to enter the institutions, or whatever is instituted in general.

-*-

Don Luis, I believe you would agree with me in that, responding to these provocative texts of Tomás Segovia, this reflection on Ethics and Politics should touch on the question of Power.

Perhaps on another occasion, and calling upon others, we could exchange ideas and feelings (that are the deeds that animate these reflections) on this question.

For now, we send this call out to Don Tomás Segovia, who declared that he didn’t have time not to be free and without shame confessed: “almost all of my life I have earned an honest living, that is, not as a writer.”

This is not just to bring to this page his unredeemed word, because it is relevant to the moment or question.

It is also, and above all, because more than a poet of both sides, he is a thinker that opened a third door to the Zapatista indigenous movement. Looking, seeing, hearing, and listening, Don Tomás Segovia walked through that door.

That is to say, he understood.

III.- Power and the Practice of Resistance.

Zapatista Autonomous Municipality in Rebellion, San Andrés Sacamchen de Los Pobres, Highlands of Chiapas. The morning of September 26, 2011, Comandante Moisés left to work in his coffee field. Like all of the ELZN leaders, he did not receive any salary or stipend. Like all of the EZLN leaders, he had to work to maintain his family. His sons were with him that day.

The vehicle in which they were traveling went off the road. All were injured, but the injuries that Moisés suffered were mortal. By the time they arrived at the clinic at Oventik he had died.

In the afternoon, as it is custom in San Cristóbal de Las Casas to cultivate rumors, the death of Moisés had attracted scavenger journalists who thought that it was Lieutenant Colonel Insurgente Moisés who had died. When they found out that it wasn’t him, but rather the other Moisés (Commander Moisés), they lost interest completely. None of them could be interested someone who hadn’t appeared publicly as a leader, someone who had simply been in the shadows, someone who was apparently one more indigenous Zapatista…

The calendar was at about 1985-1986. Moisés heard about the EZLN and decided to join the organizational effort when in the Chiapas highlands you could count the Zapatista on two hands, and you’d have extra fingers.

With other compañeros (including Ramona), he began to walk the mountains of the Mexican southeast, but now with the idea of organization. His small figure would walk out of the clouds and into the small tzotzil hamlets in the Highlands. And his unhurried words would outline the long history of offenses against those who are the color of the earth.

“We must struggle,” he would conclude.

In the early hours of the first day of January of 1994, as one combatant among many, he came down from the mountains to the haughty city of San Cristóbal de Las Casas. He was part of the column that took the municipal presidency, forcing the surrender of the government force that guarded it. Along with other tzotzil members of the CCRI-CG, he leaned over the balcony of the building that looked out on the main plaza. In the back, in the shadows, he heard one of his compañeros reading the “Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle” to a multitude of incredulous and skeptical mestizos and hopeful indigenous. Along with his troop, he retreated to the mountains during the first hours of the January 2, 1994.

After resisting the bombings and incursions waged by governmental forces, he returned to San Cristóbal de las Casas as part of the Zapatista delegation that participated in what were called the Cathedral Dialogues with representatives of the supreme government.

He came back and kept walking among the towns to explain, and above all, to listen.

“The government does not have the answer,” he concluded.

Along with thousands of indigenous, he built the Aguascalientes II, in Oventik, when the EZLN was still suffering persecution under Zedillo.

He was one of the thousands of indigenous Zapatistas that, with bare hands, faced off against the column of federal tanks that wanted to position themselves in Oventik in those fateful days of 1995.

In 1996, in the dialogues of San Andrés he was one of the many who kept vigil over the Zapatista delegation, surrounded as it was by hundreds of soldiers.

On foot, in the icy dawns of the Chiapas Highlands, he bore the rain that made the solders run for cover. He didn’t move.

“Power is a traitor,” he said, as if apologizing.

In 1997, with his compañeros, he organized the tzotzil Zapatista column that participated in the “March of the 1,111,” and collected vital information in clarifying the Acteal Massacre that occurred on December 22 of that year, perpetrated by paramilitaries under the direction of Mario Renán Castillo, general for the federal army, and with Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Emilio Chuayfett, and Julio César Ruiz Ferro as intellectual authors.

In 1998 he organized and coordinated the support and defense provided in the Chiapas Highlands to the compañeros displaced by the attacks on the autonomous municipalities by “Croquetas” Albores Guillén and Francisco Labastida Ochoa.

In 1999 he participated in the organization and coordination of the tzotzil Zapatista indigenous delegation that participated in the national referendum, when five thousand Zapatistas (2500 women and 2500 men) traversed every state of the Mexican Republic.

In 2001, after the betrayal of the entire Mexican political class of the San Andres Accords (the PRI, PAN, and PRD allied themselves to block constitutional recognition of the rights and culture of the original peoples of Mexico), he continued his work in the tzotzil villages of the Highlands, talking and listening.

But then, after listening, he would say, “we must resist.”

Moisés was born April 2, 1956, in Oventik.

Without intention and, most importantly, without any pay or profit, he became one of the most respected indigenous leaders of the EZLN.

Just a few days before his death, I saw him in a meeting of the Revolutionary Indigenous Clandestine Committee-General Command of the EZLN, where we analyzed the local, national, and international situation, and debated and decided on the steps to take.

We explained that a new generation of Zapatistas was coming into leadership positions. Young people, men and women, that were born after the uprising and that grew up in resistance, who were educated in the autonomous schools and are now chosen as autonomous authorities and become members of the Good Government Councils.

We discussed and agreed on how to support them in their work, accompany them. How to build the bridge of history between they and the veteran Zapatistas. How we inherit commitments from our dead, and memory, and the duty to go on, to not lose heart, to not sell out, to not give up, to not surrender.

There was no nostalgia in any of my bosses.

No nostalgia for the days and the nights that, in silence, they built the force that would become known worldwide as the “Zapatista Army for National Liberation.”

No nostalgia for the journeys in which our word was heard in many corners of the planet.

There was no laughter either, true. There were serious faces, concerned with finding together a common path.

There was, this yes, what Don Tomás Segovia once called “nostalgia for the future.”

“We have to tell the story,” said Comandante Moisés, as a form of conclusion, at the end of the meeting. And the Comandante left for his hut in Oventik.

That morning September 26 of 2011, he left his house saying, “I’ll be back later,” and went to his field to draw from the earth sustenance and more tomorrows.

-*-

Writing about him, my hands hurt, Don Luis.

Not only because we were together at the beginning of the uprising and later in the bright days and cold dawns. Also, and above all, because in making this rapid outline of his history, I realize I am talking about the history of any of my bosses, men and women, of this collective of shadows that marks our way, our path, our step.

Of those who give us identity and inheritance.

Maybe the coleto rumorologists and their kind are not interested in the death of Comandante Moisés because he was just one shadow more among thousands of Zapatistas. But for us, we are left with a great debt, as great as the meaning of the words that he left me with, smiling, as he departed from that meeting: “The struggle doesn’t end,” he said, grabbing his bag.

-*-

IV.- A death, a life

One could ponder why my words attempt to stretch this complicated and multiple bridge between

Don Tomás Segovia and Comandante Moisés, between the critical intellectual and one of the highest indigenous Zapatista leaders.

One could think that it is death, that in naming them we bring them back to us, so much the same because they were, and are, different.

But no, it is their lives that are relevant here.

Because their absences do not produce in us frivolous homages or sterile statues.

Because they leave in us something pending, a duty, an inheritance.

Because in the face of the most fashionable temptations (media, electoral, political, intellectual), there are those who affirm that they will not surrender, will not sell out, will not give up.

And they do it with a word that is only pronounced with authenticity when it lives: “Resistance.”

There above, death is exorcized with homages, sometimes monuments, street names, museums, or festivals, awards with which Power celebrates capitulation, a name in gold letters on some wall to be torn down.

Death is thus affirmed. Homage, heartfelt words, and turn the page to what follows.

But…

Eduardo Galeano says that nobody leaves for good as long as someone still names them.

And Old Antonio used to say that life was a long and complicated jigsaw puzzle that one could only put together when the inheritors named the dead.

And Elías Contreras says that death needs to have its size, and that it only has it when it is put alongside a life. And he adds that we must remember, when we lose a piece of the collective heart that we are, that death was and is a life.

Just that.

Naming Moisés and Don Tomás, we bring them here again, making a jigsaw puzzle of their lives of struggle, and we reaffirm that, here below, a death is above all a life.

-*-

V.- Until later

Don Luis:

I think that with this missive we should end our participation in this useful (it was for us) interchange of ideas. At least for now.

The pertinence of the windows and doors that were opened with the coming and going of your ideas and ours is something that, like everything here, will go about accommodating itself in geographies and calendars that are still to be defined.

We thank with all our heart the accompaniment of the pens of Marcos Roitman, Carlos Aguirre Rojas, Raúl Zibechi, Arturo Anguiano, Gustavo Esteva and Sergio Rodríguez Lazcano, as well as the magazine Rebeldía, which served as our host.

With these texts, neither they, nor you, nor us, seek votes, followers, or disciples.

We seek (and I think we have found) critical, alert, and open minds.

Above they will continue the din, the schizophrenia, the fanaticism, the intolerance, the capitulations disguised as political tactics.

Later will come the hangover: surrender, cynicism, defeat.

Below, the silence and the resistance continue.

Always the resistance…

Alright Don Luis. Health, and let it be lives that the deaths bestow upon us.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.
Mexico, October-November of 2011.

VI. The P.S. ATTACKS AGAIN. – We weren’t going to say anything. Not because we didn’t have anything to say, but because those who are now rightly indignant about the illiterate slander, also slandered us to the point of burning our bridges to other hearts. Now, small that we are, with our small word, just a few of us, of the persistent kind that tend to be the ones who get the historical wheel rolling, they seek out our opinion, seek us out, name us, call us.

We weren’t going to say anything, but…

One of the three rogues that will fight for the throne to rule over the rubble of Mexico has come to our lands and demanded our silence. He is that same person that never matured and never recognized his errors and faults. The same person that heads a group lusting for power, full of intolerance, which sought, seeks, and will seek to blame their own faults and schizophrenias on others. With a discourse closer to Gaby Vargas and Cuauhtémoc Sánchez then to Alfonso Reyes, now he preaches and founds his ambitions on love… for the right.

Those who criticized Javier Sicilia for his show of affection for the political class, will they now criticize the “Loving Republic?”

Those that agreed and preached that Televisa was the evil to defeat, will they now criticize the loving handshake with its primetime lackey?

Will Octavio Rodríguez Araujo now write an article demanding “consistency, leader, consistency”? Will John Ackerman demand of him radicality, arguing that this is what the people want and wait for? Will the ciro-gómez-leyva of La Jornada, Jaime Avilés, denounce him for negotiating with the dogs, the businessmen, his hated López Dóriga? ¿Will the laura-bozzo of La Jornada, Guillermo Almeyra, judge and condemn him as a collaborator (informant), singing his chorus of “let the wretch move on!”

No. They will look the other way. They will say that it is a question of tactics, that he is using this to earn votes with the middle class. Alright, so nothing is what it seems: the encampment on Reforma was not to demand the recount of votes that would have been clear evidence of the fraud, but rather so people would not become radicalized; the critiques of Televisa were not to denounce the power of the media monopolies, bur rather so that they could have access to that company’s spaces (and become once again its client in the electoral spots). What’s next? The brigades collecting donations for the telethon?

We could understand that he was just employing a tactic (clumsy and naïve, we think, but a tactic). That he doesn’t seriously believe the businessmen are going to support him, that the dogs are not going to betray him, that the PT and the Movimiento Ciudadano are parties of the left, that Televisa is changing, that his privileged interlocutor in Chiapas should be priismo (as before it was sabinismo). We could even believe that he is more intelligent then all of them and that he is tricking them by simulating his alliance, or exchanging uses and customs in the impossible political game of “everybody wins” and “love and peace.”

Okay, it’s a tactic… or a strategy (in any case they don’t understand the difference between the two). What is verifiable is that he keeps adding to his right (deserters of the PAN included) and nothing appears on his left. He follows the same steps as his predecessor, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, who ingratiated himself with the powerful, betting that the left would have no choice but to support him because “there isn’t anything else.” Okay again, strategy or tactic, it will be explained by the cartoonists. We only ask: when, in Mexico, has it benefited the left to run to the right? When has being servile with the powerful done anything other than entertain them? True, the “dogs” could realize the success of the political tactic (or strategy?), but it’s not about taking that same road again… or is it?

Meanwhile, the cultured attack squads that promote him will continue their juggling acts to justify the change in path… or they will gamble on lack of memory.

In any case, there won’t be a lack of people to blame for finishing third, right?

Alright then.

El Sup, smoking and waiting for the avalanche of lies that, in the name of “freedom of expression” and under copyright, the opposition prepares from above.

The November 16, 2011 meeting about OND Park saw another wonderful show of support for Resolution #9281 passed by City Council in September 2005 (you can see video of this event and our vibrant community in action here). Around two dozen speakers eloquently expressed, with documentation in hand, full support for Resolution #9281, and condemned the mockery of public process displayed in the multiple attempts to subvert the city council directive. The diversity and size of the group supporting the Coalition—well over 150 people whose presence at these meetings has gone completely unreported in the press—was accompanied by a petition with some 350 signatures and 12 letters of support from organizations across Durham including:

The Durham Chapter of the NAACP ¬ Durham Committee on the Affairs of Black People ¬ The CC Spaulding Neighborhood Association ¬ Unity for Progress in the Community (UCP) ¬ Terreiro de Arte e Cultura ¬ Spirit House ¬ North Durham Community Association ¬ El Kilombo Community Center ¬ Team Soccer ¬ People’s Durham ¬ Occupy Durham General Assembly ¬ The Unified Communities of the Occupy Durham Movement

Brief Background

Since Resolution #9281 was passed by City Council in 2005, it has been obstructed by board members of the charter Central Park School for Children (CPSC) who own at least 4 properties adjacent to or in the immediate vicinity to the park. CPSC board members have tried relentlessly to subvert #9281, including an attempt to privately lease the park from the city which would have given them full control over, and profitable revenue from, public use of the park It is important to note that this lease would be in force and this public resource lost had it not been for the efforts of the organizations and community members that today form DCUJ.

CPSC board members and their associates again attempted to subvert Resolution #9281 with the creation of “Friends of Old North Durham Park” (FONDP), privately contracting a park plan that eliminated the full-size athletic field. When CPSC/FONDP attempted to push the plan through City Council without any public consultation, our neighborhood again objected. In response, instead of holding public meetings that would allow for substantive input regarding our park, city staff from Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) attempted to bypass public opposition by allowing FONDP to organize and cosponsor three meetings about the park, which were carefully designed to suppress community support for a full-sized athletic field. See documentation here of CPSC explicitly stating to DPR staff that these meetings were merely a formality in pushing through its own pre-existing plan.

The recent November 16, 2011 meeting was really the culmination of efforts to push through a park plan that would subvert the City’s Resolution #9281. Throughout this process, CPSC, now with the backing of DPR staff, has manufactured a series of pretexts and excuses as to why a full-size field is either undoable or undesirable. You can see documents disproving these pretexts, line by line, here (Common Myths about OND Park).  In sum, there has yet to be a single public meeting open to substantive public input on the future of OND Park. Consequently, Resolution #9281 for the upgrade of the OND Park is the only plan that has originated from a legitimate public process; all other plans thus far have been privately developed attempts to subvert the City Council resolution in the service of private interests and investors.

If DPR’s current claim that they intend to preserve a “full-size field” in a new plan is accurate, there would be absolutely no need to override Resolution #9281; their openly expressed resolve to override that Resolution highlights a duplicitous intent and attempts to create confusion.

The question at this point must be: given the dire lack of athletic fields in our city, City Council’s mandate for the full-size athletic field in Resolution #9281, explicit budget appropriations for that Resolution, as well as massive public and community support for its implementation, what is the extraordinary need to obstruct or eliminate #9281?

What’s at stake in OND Park?

We can see how those who have not been involved in this issue so far might ask what is so important about the struggle at OND Park?

The reason it has been so difficult to have our full-size athletic field despite overwhelming public support for its preservation and upgrade is because there is much more at stake in our park for real estate investors and developers than the size of the field.

1. There is a systematic removal or reduction of athletic courts and fields in the park system, which has a disparate impact on the low-income Black and Latino communities that use those spaces primarily for exercise. We can see this in other parts of the city as well where basketball courts were reduced or removed, greatly reducing or totally eliminating athletic activity in those areas, particularly affecting the African American and Latino community. In areas targeted for real estate speculation where property values begin to trump all other values, we see the “redesign” of park spaces away from athletic courts/fields. This shift has a direct connection to the populations the park is intended to serve. The de-prioritizing of the park needs and uses of low-income communities of color who are already subject to the effects of displacement and dispossession created by real estate speculation is irresponsible and indefensible as public policy. Our Coalition welcomes businesses in all of our neighborhoods, but what we cannot allow is that public resources be repurposed as a public subsidy for private gain.
2. As this struggle has unfolded, we have realized the extent to which collusion between our public officials and real estate developers has subverted the democratic public process. Despite what the media portrays, this not a struggle between “two sides.” This is a question of how public money (our tax dollars) and public officials (our representatives) are being used not just to grant favors to private individuals, but to use public resources to subsidize private endeavors that provide exceptional profit for a few individuals but exacerbate inequality in our city. This might explain why active members of Occupy Durham saw our park situation as emblematic of the struggles of the 99% and approached us to offer their support.
   

What does the DCUJ want?

1. First, implementation of City Council Resolution #9281 that explicitly allows for a year-round multi-use athletic field at OND Park, the advantages of which are well summarized here by none other than Director of Durham Parks and Recreation, Rhonda Parker.
2. Second, we would like to see those city staff and officials who have been involved in subverting the public process held accountable, and the integrity of our democratic public process re-established.
3. Thirdly, we want to see our public resources used for the benefit and progress of the city as a whole and all of its residents. As a city and a community we need to come together to establish a development model for our city that places the value of our residents above the value of real estate.

Finally, we encourage everyone to get informed. If you too see the importance of this struggle over the use of public resources, please feel free to contact us and join our growing Coalition: Durhamcuj@gmail.com. Visit: http://durhamcoalitionurbanjustice.wordpress.com/

Informational Resource:

• Video of Nov. 16, 2011 DPR meeting about OND Park
• Common Myths about OND Park
• Durham Coalition for Urban Justice presentation about OND Park

In the spring of 2011, the existing park users and the surrounding neighborhood voiced its resounding opposition to a new, privately-developed master plan that notably eliminated the full-size field. The neighborhood demanded the implementation of the City Council’s 2005 directive.

Despite this, we were recently notified by Durham Parks and Recreation of its intention to cede to demands made by these developers and apply for NC state grant money to implement the privately-designed, CPSC-endorsed master plan.

In other words, public officials and public money continue to be used as tools by private developers in our neighborhood for a development plan that undermines the decisions already made by our elected officials, and which does not have the support, nor does it serve the interests of, existing neighborhood residents.

Due to the repeated obstruction of City Council directive #9281 by these developers, our city and neighborhood residents have been effectively denied full use and enjoyment of a valuable public resource.

With the well-known and dire shortage of full-sized athletic fields in our city and the readily accessible multipurpose amenities in parks within walking distance, we would like to see Old North Durham Park as a quality full-sized athletic field that can be used for both youth and adult athletic games, practice, open play, and general community use.

Given the $222,879 appropriated specifically for OND Park, the $38 million bond money allocated to DPR in 2005, the $800,000 paid to the City from the sale of Erwin Field Park to Duke University in 2008 (earmarked for the upgrade of other athletic fields), and a $1.1. million DPR budget surplus for 2010-11, besides the wishes of a few developers, there is absolutely no reason why the City’s 2005 directive has not been implemented [3] [4].

Note: The statement above was sent by El Kilombo on November 11, 2011 to Virginia Bridges (The Durham News/ The N&O) in response to a request for comment about Old North Durham Park.

“[Old North Durham Park]is for the whole city, not just the CPSC [Central Park School for Children] and the whole city desperately needs more athletic fields, the butterfly garden the walking trail, the picnic spaces that the school parents say they want exist right now in Central Park – 1 block away – isn’t that the point of having this school in an urban environment? And a soccer field and kids playing are not mutually exclusive – won’t a big green playing field be good for the kids to use for their games during the day.”

-Email comments by Durham Department of Parks and Recreation Assistant Director Beth Timson, Jan. 11, 2005.

Defending Democratic Process and Old North Durham Park, or What’s at Stake in the Struggle over OND Park?

The effort by Central Park School for Children and its associates to change Old North Durham Park according to private plans and with private funds is a danger to the democratic process and the neighborhood’s low-income, primarily Latino and Black neighborhood residents. CPSC’s use of private resources to impose the modification of a public space to suit particular interests effectively privatizes public land, and orients the time and energy of our public officials toward private gain. At stake is not simply our neighborhood’s park, but rather the dangerous precedent that only those who can mobilize vast sums of money have voice in the future of our city’s public spaces. This effectively disenfranchises lower income residents (most of our neighbors) and makes government the conduit of private wealth rather than fair administrator. This distortion is what has allowed the displacement of low-income Black and Latino residents from the city center and its public resources (replaced with middle class businesses, leisure spaces, and owner-occupied homes) to stand in for the common good. Gentrification in the guise of “revitalization” is not new in our neighborhood. OND Park is one of the few remaining downtown public spaces primarily used by Black and Latino residents, and its conversion into a space designed by and for others will no doubt further marginalize this community. El Kilombo community center urges the city to reaffirm its prior commitment to maintain and upgrade the park, including its full-size athletic field, as a public park under direct city management.

QUICK BACKGROUND:

Since moving to its current building in 2003, the board of Central Park School for Children, a charter school adjacent to the Old North Durham park, has derailed the park’s improvement, especially the park’s much-needed full-size athletic field.  In 2005, the City Council passed a resolution reaffirming its earlier decisions and funding commitments for the upgrade of OND Park’s full-size athletic field among other improvements, emphasizing the dire lack of such fields in the city, especially the downtown area.  City council, in November 2007 rejected an attempt by CPSC to lease OND Park for $10/year for ten years in order to develop it for the school’s purposes.  Since 2008, the City and the Durham Department of Parks and Recreations, has not sponsored any public meetings for local residents to discuss the park’s development. Instead, CPSC has held private meetings attended by Durham Parks and Recreation employees with other private entities to finalize a Master Plan that doesn’t include a full-size athletic field.  Under the organization “Friends of Old North Durham Park,” CPSC expects to privately finance, manage and develop OND Park in a way that continues to marginalize and displace low-income residents in our neighborhood.

Background Information:

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Timeline
• Visual Evidence Illustrating OND Park Situation
• Old North Durham Park Public Record Documents

Past Kilombo Memos Regarding Old North Durham Park

• November 8, 2007: Memo from Concerned Citizens of Old North Durham to City Council contesting private leasing of OND Park to Central Park School for Children Foundation (with all referenced documents).
• November 8, 2007: (above memo without referenced documents).
• December 10, 2007:  Follow up Memo to City Council from Concerned Citizens of Durham
• October 21, 2010: Memo from El Kilombo to City Council, presented at Oct. 21 Work Session

Download a letter to City Council to send via email to City Manager Tom Bonfield, tom.bonfield@durhamnc.gov and the City Council Council@DurhamNC.Gov, Bill.Bell@durhamnc.gov,farad.ali@durhamnc.gov, Cora.Cole-McFadden@durhamnc.gov, Eugene.Brown@durhamnc.gov, diane.catotti@durhamnc.gov, Howard.Clement@durhamnc.gov, mike.woodard@durhamnc.gov

Dear Members of Durham City Council, City Manager, Parks and Recreation staff, and fellow Durham residents:

We strongly urge the City to cancel the next two Friends of Old North Durham Park-sponsored meetings about the future of Old North Durham Park and to hold a truly public meeting organized by the City alone.  A majority of neighborhood residents oppose the FONDP’s plans and its directing of the park development process, as evidenced by over 300 petition signatures, over 100 residents who attended the March 15 meeting to oppose the FONDP plans (despite less than five days notice), and the innumerable letters the City has received in opposition to FONDP. The expression of this consensus against private development of the park has occurred despite the FONDP’s refusal to even follow basic city guidelines to adequately publicize the meetings to community residents living in the park’s vicinity (as mandated by City Council and outlined by Parks and Recreation Director Rhonda Parker on November 3, 2010).  We suggest that public meetings resume with FONDP as one equal participant among all others.

We believe any legitimate public process must begin with the following premises as the foundation:

1. That the city hold a truly public meeting about the future of the park where all residents have an opportunity to participate AS EQUALS –  with the FONDP eliminated as a co-sponsor of the meeting and invited to participate as one actor among others.
2. Transparency and accountability in the public process – both an acknowledgement of bad faith initiatives enacted by these private entities in the past, as evidenced in city documents themselves, and full transparency in the future.
3. The upgrading of the full-sized athletic field in the park that serves all of the people of the North Durham community and the larger city.

We look forward to participating in an open process and we hope that the city will move forward establishing one.

–Durham Coalition for Urban Justice (El Kilombo Intergaláctico, Team Soccer youth soccer group, North Durham Community Association, Park Justice, and concerned neighbors of North Durham)

Park FAQs | Timeline | Photos | Documents | 11/9/07 Memo | 12/10/07 Memo | 10/21/10 Memo

The DCUJ proposed three conditions to the city for the process to move forward:

1. That the city hold a truly public meeting about the future of the park where all residents have an opportunity to participate AS EQUALS –  with the FONDP eliminated as a co-sponsor of the meeting and invited to participate as one actor on the same level as all others.

2. Transparency and accountability in the public process – both an acknowledgement of bad faith initiatives enacted by these private entities in the past as evidenced in city documents themselves, and full transparency in the future.

3. The upgrading of the full-sized athletic field in the park that serves all of the people of the North Durham community and the larger city.

HISTORY

For an American city of its size, according to national standards, Durham should have at least 40 full-sized athletic fields; it has 11. In an effort to address this problem, Durham City Council passed proposition 9281 in 2005 to affirm its prior commitment to upgrade the field in Old North Durham Park. Funding was raised for this upgrade on multiple occasions – in 1996 and 2005 through city bond measures, and in 2009 through the sale of Erwin field. City documents indicate that since opening Central Park School for Children members of its board have been  to stop the city from upgrading the field. Once the CPSC board became involved, the city put its own plans for the park on hold; the public money raised for park upgrading is unaccounted for. In 2007, CPSC tried to lease the park from the city for $10/year for 10 years. Community residents protested this action at a City Council Meeting and the city dismissed the proposal. The CPSC then privately contracted a landscape architect to design a new plan for the park who, according to this architect, suggested that they form another entity, the FONDP, to push the private park plan through a Public Private Partnership. Neighborhood residents again objected to the non-public proceedings and the nature of the proposed changes at a City Council work session in October 2010. The City Council again did not pass the plan and mandated a series of public meetings to discuss park development with specific instructions for how Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) must engage the public. In what can only be considered a show of bad faith, FONDP/DPR did not publicize these meetings to the surrounding community in accordance with the city council mandate, although it was well publicized to the neighborhood associations, which have little or no involvement by low income Black and Latino people. The March 15 meeting marked the third time that the broader community has intervened in the private initiative to develop Old North Durham Park to demand transparent public process. Those demands have still not been met.

The DCUJ stated that they believe most residents of North Durham want the park to be upgraded in a way that serves all members of the community and they invite North Durham residents to join the coalition. They urge the city to cancel the FONDP-sponsored meetings and instead to hold truly public meetings to discuss these issues.

For more information on the history of park development, including city documents, please go to http://www.elkilombo.org/

FAQs | Timeline | Photos | Documents | 11/9/07 Memo | 12/10/07 Memo | 10/21/10 Memo

Below are photos from the Tuesday, March 15, 2011 public meeting about the Park, showing residents who are part of a broad coalition called the Durham Coalition for Urban Justice (of which El Kilombo is a participating organization).  The Durham Coalition for Urban Justice insists that the Old North Durham Park be improved as a full-sized public athletic field, which can continue to be used for recreation by the neighborhood’s community residents, who are primarily low-income Black and Latino residents.  The Durham Coalition for Urban Justice further insist that the future of our public parks, public resources, and public spaces cannot be determined through the private processes and private funding of those who can mobilize large sums of money for narrow private interest.

Signage at Old North Durham Park provided by Durham Parks and Recreation during 2010.

Old North Durham Park Signage: The city signage at Old North Durham Park (above) shows that one of the official entrances to the park (marked by the two arrows in the bottom-right-hand corner) and the only entrance next to designated public parking for the park (clearly indicated with a “P”) is located off of West Geer Street, next to TROSA. One would expect the parking lot and entrance indicated on the map to be available and open.

City-owned Parking Lot at Old North Durham Park, Chain-Locked

However, this entrance (at W. Geer St.) to Old North Durham Park’s listed public parking and to the park itself is frequently locked. This parking lot was leased by the City of Durham to TROSA for 20 years, as approved by City Council on December 5, 2005.  Why would the city agree to lease the only public parking at OND Park to a private entity for its use and allow both the lot and the entrance to be locked? Also troubling is the fact that the city agreed to lease this lot for a total of $1 per year, despite the assessment of Judy Simuel of Durham’s General Services Dept., indicating the lot’s fair market lease value as $28,800 for twenty years or $1440 per year.

Contrary to the Herald Sun article by Mr. Ray Gronberg on October 27th, 2010, the locked entrance to the parking lot and main entrance to the OND Park is not a one-time mishap or simple misunderstanding. Any resident who lives in the area surrounding Geer St. can report that the gate is locked often and with little relation with park hours. On November 8, 2007, El Kilombo went on record at City Council inquiring about those locks and requesting that they be removed immediately. Why did city council and Durham Parks and Recreation wait three years to follow up on that request, and only after residents brought it to the city’s attention yet again? Mr. Gronberg’s treatment of the locked gates as a new, trivial issue, and of a neighbor’s requests to remove them as an attack on TROSA itself, is poorly researched and mischaracterizes the facts as well as our intentions.

Private Parking Lot Owned by Real Estate Developer Bob Chapman next to Central Park School for Children and Old North Durham Park's western entrance

Deterred by the locked gates blocking the main entrance to the park off of W. Geer St., one might think the parking lot adjoining the park off of Foster Street is an alternate option. In fact, during a city council work session held regarding the future of Old North Durham Park on Thursday October 21st, 2010, City Councilwoman Diane Catotti can be heard on record claiming that there is parking available for the park at this lot, which also adjoins Central Park School For Children. However the lot next to CPSC is not public; it is a private lot, sold to TND Capital Management LLC (owned by Bob Chapman) for $375,000 on August 1, 2006.

Western entrance to Old North Durham Park

Central Park School for Children (CPSC) has symbolically claimed the western entrance to Old North Durham Park as its own, with a contiguous wooden fence along the front of the school extending to the private parking lot owned by real estate developer and owner of TND Capital Management LLC, Bob Chapman, who is also a founding member of the CPSC board. Only a narrow footpath between the school building and the school’s rows of raised garden beds provide public access to the park.

.

Private Patio Addition to Trotter Building Owned by Developer Bob Chapman's TND Capital Management, LLC in Old North Durham Park.

Pictured above, the presence of the Trotter Building “patio” on public park property raises several questions. Did the owner of the Trotter Building (CPSC Board member Bob Chapman) receive approval for this patio? How was the approval for building this patio acquired? Why weren’t residents informed that permission for construction would be granted to this private owner? Is it now possible for private entities to build on public park property? We are disturbed by the sense of propriety that the owner of the Trotter Building seems to hold over our neighborhood public park. The patio on the park is just one preliminary demonstration of this; the CPSC “master plan” promoted by the CPSC board would be a much more extensive ceding of public space to private and personal interest.

The only ground-level, vehicle-accessible entrance into Old North Durham Park, on the northern side of Central Park School for Children

CPSC has reduced public access to OND Park in multiple ways, thereby discouraging park use by the general public. The consistency of their efforts make it difficult to believe these would be a series of random instances, but rather seem to point to a systematic attempt to create a sense of proprietorship to this space. Reduction of public access began with CPSC’s purchase of the two-story, city-owned building and plot on Foster St. (PIN 0822-10-90-2692), which included the only ground-level vehicle-access entrance to the park, and which served as an important public entrance to the park. Upon purchasing the building, CPSC prevented public access through that entrance and demanded that city staff give CPSC at least 10 minutes notice every time city staff desired to use that entrance for park maintenance.  This entrance is open today thanks in part to the work of a few concerned citizens (with the assistance of various city departments) who found the request by Central Park School for Children (CPSC) that this access point remained locked to be unacceptable, and spoke up to assure that park access remained open to all. Again, had CPSC’s attempts not been realized and resisted, another point of access to the city’s public park would have been effectively denied.

Despite reduced public access (and lack of visible park signage until this past year), OND Park nevertheless has been and continues to be a vibrant and vital space for community gathering and recreation, used mostly by the long-standing low-income black and Latino communities adjacent to the park, as well as other low-income residents of Durham. OND Park’s full-size soccer field is the only field of its kind in the downtown area, and it is only one of a few remaining publicly-owned and -managed fields available for soccer or other sports. Durham sorely needs more full-size soccer fields accessible to low-income residents. OND Park has been well-utilized by residents for community-organized after-school soccer programs, adult and youth pick-up games, festivals, hanging out, and other sports-play.

On Sept 6, 2005, City Council passed resolution #9281, reaffirming its earlier commitment to upgrading the full-size athletic field at OND Park.  The resolution stated, among other improvements for OND Park: “The athletic field in the park (330 ft by 180 ft) will be renovated with grading, sod, and irrigation. This field will serve tournament level and adult soccer as well as junior-level games, several of which can be played simultaneously across the width of the field…With the current shortage of athletic fields in Durham, DPR staff feels that we cannot afford to reduce or lose one of the existing fields.”  We feel similarly and believe the city can and should ensure that we have a quality full-size soccer field at OND Park for all to enjoy.

Below are photos from the Tuesday, March 15, 2011 public meeting about the Park, showing residents who are part of a broad coalition called the Durham Coalition for Urban Justice (of which El Kilombo is a participating organization).  The Durham Coalition for Urban Justice insists that the Old North Durham Park be improved as a full-sized public athletic field, which can continue to be used for recreation by the neighborhood’s community residents, who are primarily low-income Black and Latino residents.  The Durham Coalition for Urban Justice further insist that the future of our public parks, public resources, and public spaces cannot be determined through the private processes and private funding of those who can mobilize large sums of money for narrow private interest.

]]> http://www.elkilombo.org/old-north-durham-park-visual-documentation/feed/ 0 http://www.elkilombo.org/el-kilombo-supports-public-plan-for-public-full-size-athletic-field/ http://www.elkilombo.org/el-kilombo-supports-public-plan-for-public-full-size-athletic-field/#comments Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:01:12 +0000 El Kilombo http://www.elkilombo.org/?p=1408 FAQs | Timeline | Photos | Documents | 11/9/07 Memo | 12/10/07 Memo | 10/21/10 Memo

(Memo originally submitted to the public record and read at the Oct. 21, 2010 City Council Meeting, during which the board of charter school Central Park School for Children (CPSC), through its recently formed partner organization, Friends of Old North Durham Park (FONDP), attempted to get city council to pass their privately-paid-for and privately-developed “Master Plan” for the park, when that “Master Plan” had never been shown and discussed by Durham residents in any city-sponsored public meeting.  The city did not inform any residents living adjacent to the park that this particular “Master Plan” was even being put on the City Council agenda).

Date:   October 21, 2010

To:       Members of the Durham City Council

From: El Kilombo Intergaláctico

Re:      The proposed master plan for Old North Durham Park

El Kilombo community center urges the city to reject the current proposal for the new master plan for Old North Durham Park and instead to reaffirm its prior commitment to maintain and upgrade the park, including its full-size soccer field, as a public park under direct city management. The effort by the Central Park School for Children (CPSC) and its associates (including its self created private entity Friends of Old North Durham Park) to change Old North Durham Park according to private plans and with private funds is a danger to the democratic process and to the low income, primarily Latino and Black neighborhood residents. At stake is not simply our neighborhood’s park, but rather the dangerous precedent that only those who can mobilize vast sums of money have voice in the future of our city’s public spaces.

In 2007, City Council blocked Central Park School for Children’s attempt to lease the Old North Durham Park for $10/year for 10 years and modify it according its own needs. The council’s decision was based on the concern that leasing the park to the school would set a bad precedent for shifting control of public spaces to private interests. In response CPSC has rallied more private investors and more resources to bring more pressure to bear on the city council again.  In other words, in order to challenge the council’s decision that public goods should be controlled by and work for the public interest, the CPSC and its allies have strengthened themselves by rallying further private resources.  Knowing that their plans to lease the park were not publically acceptable, they changed their strategy to bankrolling and thereby controlling city-implemented modifications. CPSC’s use of private resources to impose the modification of a public space to suit very particular interests effectively privatizes public land, and orients the time and energy of our public officials toward private gain.

Durham residents and city officials have long recognized the need to improve the field at Old North Durham Park, and the city budgeted at least $222,879 for this purpose in 2005. Despite the City’s commitment to renovate the park, the meeting minutes of Old North Durham Neighborhood Association (ONDNA) and the Central Park School’s Parents and Partners Organization show that as early as 2003, the School has been actively planning to undermine the City’s decisions regarding the park, raising monies to support their own intentions for the park, none of which had yet been approved by the City Council. To give just a few examples of these efforts– in their own words, in 2005 the Central Park School “requested… that ONDNA support a motion to stop the [then] current plans for the park. On January 5 2005, Vicky Patton, CPSC board member and wife of Developer Bob Chapman, who owns at least three investment properties adjacent to the park and is one of Durham’s largest private developers, sent an email to the Central Park School for Children “community” urging them to come to a meeting to specifically challenge the presence of the soccer field in the park. Criticizing Patton’s position in an email on January 11, 2005 DPR’s very own Beth Timson told her staff that CPSC’s proposal was problematic because, “the park is for the whole city, not just the CPSC and the whole city desperately needs more athletic fields, the butterfly garden the walking trail, the picnic spaces that the school parents say they want exist right now in Central Park – 1 block away – isn’t that the point of having this school in an urban environment?”  Timson writes, “And a soccer field and kids playing are not mutually exclusive – won’t a big green playing field be good for the kids to use for their games during the day.”

The coalition that CPSC and FONDP have amassed is not representative of most neighborhood residents. Rather, it is composed of developers, business owners (many of whom do not even live in the neighborhood) and Neighborhood Associations that include primarily homeowners. In 2001, UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Public Health completed a study of Old North Durham, and found that renters, low-income community members and Spanish-speakers in Old North Durham are hesitant to join with their new neighbors “for fear that they will end up advocating for their own displacement as improvements cause property values to rise.”

El Kilombo is not a part of this coalition and is a community organization composed of primarily low income black, latino, student, and other residents of Old North Durham. On several occasions, members of the development coalition have arrived at our events, entered our space, or loitered outside of our front door intimidating our constituency. We have not attended private meetings regarding this plan because we do not deem private meetings appropriate spaces for debating public development.

The democratic planning process has further been undermined by the fact that there have been no public meetings about this new plan. Rather, there have been private meetings among the plan’s proponents and Durham Parks and Recreation employees. The park master plan agenda item was added very late to the work session agenda, and worse, no residents around the park were directly informed of this meeting by the city.

Allowing private interests to control public development effectively disenfranchises lower income residents and makes government the conduit of private wealth rather than fair administrator. The result is the displacement of low-income Black and Latino residents from the city center and its public resources and their replacement with middle class businesses, leisure spaces, and owner-occupied homes. This displacement and replacement has come to stand in as a measure for the common good. Gentrification in the guise of “revitalization” is not new in our neighborhood. ONDPark is a one of the few remaining public spaces primarily used by Black and Latino residents and its conversion into a space designed by and for others will no doubt further marginalize this community.

El Kilombo community center urges the city to reaffirm its prior commitment to maintain and upgrade the park, including its full-size athletic field, as a public park under direct city management. In addition, in the midst of the real-estate debacle and the consequent financial crisis, it is long past time for our city to develop its planning centered around the well being of our existing residents and not on speculative investment.

OND Park Home | FAQs | Timeline | Documents | 11/9/07 Memo | 12/10/07 Memo | 10/21/10 Memo

FAQs | Timeline | Photos | Documents | 11/9/07 Memo | 12/10/07 Memo | 10/21/10 Memo

[Please note that this interview had been published in the January 2011 issue of the Triangle Free Press with some misprints.  The correct, original version is published here.]

Interview by Lamont Lilly

Could you start by telling me a little about El Kilombo?  What does Kilombo mean?  And what exactly is the center’s purpose?

El Kilombo Intergalactico is an organization in North Central Durham that brings together communities of color, migrants, students, and workers of various backgrounds to identify and cultivate alternatives to the core sources of marginalization in Durham. Through community programming, we work to meet the immediate needs of our neighborhood, while simultaneously providing tools to strengthen a self-determining, self-sustaining community—developing a living model for resident-controlled non-gentrified urban life.

Kilombo is a Bantu word borrowed by the Portuguese to describe escaped slave communities in what is today Brazil. These communities included runaway slaves, native or indigenous Americans, Jews and others.   They proliferated throughout the Americas, and have many different names. But Kilombos weren’t simply communities of escaped slaves fighting against slavery; they were groups of people who were struggling to build another life. We chose this name for our organization, because we thought it emphasized the community-creating aim of our work.

I see.  Well, what activities and services does El Kilombo provide?

Our organization is run through a community assembly where our members indicate their needs and plan the future of our collective work. Through this process, Kilombo has established ESL classes, a child enrichment program, computer literacy classes, after school tutoring, community dinners, a speaker series, health screenings, as well as an annual neighborhood festival. In addition, our members have deemed it necessary for us to establish a small worker’s cooperative, an affordable housing commission, and a now vibrant community garden. To answer your question then, El Kilombo is a place where our community comes together to provide itself with thousands of hours of free instruction and services without any paid staff.

I’ve recently caught a brief street-buzz on El Kilombo’s park controversy?  Where is Old North Durham and why such fuss over a local park?

Old North Durham Park actually sits in north-central Durham, off Foster and Geer St, housing one of the city’s few full-sized athletic fields and the only full-sized field in downtown Durham. This park in particular has been a vibrant recreation site for the surrounding primarily low-income African-American and Latino community for years. Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) had created a plan and raised funds through the sale of city bonds to upgrade the athletic field there.  However, when Central Park School for Children (CPSC), a charter school whose board is composed of some of Durham’s biggest developers, purchased a building bordering the park and opened the school there, they initiated a plan to privatize the park for the school’s use.  The city basically put its plans to improve the park on hold. In 2007, CPSC tried to lease the park from the city, but the city halted this plan when neighborhood residents turned out at a city council meeting to protest such privatization. The terms of CPSC’s proposed lease are truly telling of their desires.  It would have granted the park to the school at a rate of $10/year and would have given the school complete control over who stepped onto park grounds. In other words, it would have completely eliminated this park as a neighborhood resource.

Having failed in their effort to privatize the park through a lease, CPSC developed a new plan. They created an organization called the “Friends of Old North Durham Park” (FONDP) who privately developed park renovation plans and offered to pay for the renovations using private funds. Their new plan hinges on the reduction of the soccer field to a small “practice field” explicitly unable to accommodate league play or multiple simultaneous youth games. It seems apparent to us and others in the community that CPSC’s proposed project fits into a downtown development plan that will ultimately displace Black and Latino communities from the neighborhood.

Their plan also puts their desires ahead of the Durham community at-large.  According to national averages, Durham lacks nearly 40 full-sized athletic fields.  Many of the city’s thousands of soccer players have to travel great distances for league play. Eliminating one of the only athletic fields in the city center only exacerbates this problem.

We at El Kilombo, believe the City should use a portion of the $700,000 that it earmarked for park improvement, to upgrade Old North Durham Park—serving the needs of the neighborhood and city, rather than those of real estate speculators.

You spoke lightly on the fact that Central Park School for Children and its Friends of Old North Durham look to privatize the park.  What exactly do you mean by that?  How does one privatize a public park?

Using private resources to impose the modification of a public space to suit particular interests is privatization because it modifies public land for private use. It orients the time and energy of our publicly paid officials toward private gain. Perhaps even more importantly, it sets the dangerous precedent, across the entire city, that only those who can mobilize vast sums of money have voice in the future of our city’s public spaces. In other words, if you can’t mobilize hundreds of thousands of dollars, you can’t enter a “Public-Private Partnership” with the city and therefore, can no longer expect that the city will work for you. These kinds of arrangements change the people that the city serves from all citizens to only “stakeholders” who are defined by their financial standings. This effectively disenfranchises lower income residents (most of our neighbors) and makes government the conduit of private wealth, rather than fair administrator.

It is exactly this distortion that has allowed the displacement of low-income Black and Latino residents from the city’s center its public resources. It is exactly this distortion that has allowed the replacement of residents who currently reside here with middle class businesses and leisure spaces—a stand-in for the common good of all. Gentrification in the guise of “revitalization” is not new in our neighborhood. This park is one of the few remaining downtown public spaces primarily used by Black, Latino and poor residents.  Its conversion into a space designed by and for others will no doubt further marginalize this community.

What has been the position of the city regarding the park’s development?  Have you received much assistance from the Mayor, City Manager, or Durham City Council?  And what does the office of Durham Parks and Recreation (DPR) have to say about this?

Durham Parks and Recreation’s flip-flopping position on the park has been quite disconcerting to us. It is indicative of the undue influence of CPSC and their financial interests. In multiple city documents over the past several years, including DPR’s own master plan, the need for more full-sized athletic fields is repeatedly emphasized. Hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised to improve three city fields, including OND Park. The city council even passed an official resolution in 2005 to upgrade the field, with implementation set to begin in 2006. Additionally, in internal emails DPR directors indicated specifically that they found CPSC’s plan unacceptable and counter to the city’s needs. However, city documents reveal that between 2003 and 2007, CPCS consistently pressed the city to abandon its commitment to upgrading the field. This pressure eventually caused DPR to alter its position. Though neighborhood residents halted the school’s plan to lease the park in 2007, city documents have shown that the school’s board has worked with DPR through a series of private meetings to get the city to adopt its “Master Plan” for the park without any public participation.

A strong showing by concerned residents at the City Council’s work session in October induced the council to reject the plan until a more public process has been implemented. DPR’s response has been to mandate that FONDP include El Kilombo in its meetings. However, we understand quite clearly that including our organization in private meetings does not make the process public. This isn’t about El Kilombo.  This is about assuring public process and participation. FONDP’s attempt to include us is simply an attempt to neutralize opposition, not to create a space for public deliberation.

While attempting to cover other stories and local personalities, your center’s perspectives haven’t always been placed in such high esteem. Why do you think there’s such misconception of El Kilombo’s work—of the effort El Kilombo exudes in trying to better the lives of the marginalized in Old North Durham?

Well, it seems to us that after the defeat of the social movements of the late 1960s and early 70s community organizations all across the U.S. were strongly encouraged to limit their work to “assistance” of the less well off. That is, these organizations have been channeled into providing services that will help mitigate the effects of marginalization. Yet, this emphasis on assistance has some rather dangerous effects for the communities these organizations claim to serve. Firstly, this focus on mitigating effects tends to naturalize inequality, such that today it has become a taboo—a bit of a scandal to speak about the causes of marginalization. However, there are no “marginal” communities per se, only processes of marginalization that must be ended in order for our communities to flourish. When one loses sight of this fact, the next logical step is to replace inequality as the problem with our communities as the problem. Take for example, the radically consistent way in which youth who live in the immediate vicinity of the park are characterized as “delinquents” and potential criminals. Well, we who live and work in this community have refused to accept this narrative about our kids—about our neighborhood.  They are not “problems” even if they may have problems..This has meant taking a serious look at those problems and finding that at their center has been the persistent denial of certain resources to these communities—the persistent incapacity to see these children and these communities as potential. After years of research, it is clear to us that this process of marginalization centers around gentrification, in which our communities are deemed “dead” and in need of “revitalization.” Pointing this out places a lot of in uncomfortable positions—certainly large real estate speculators who consciously live off of this process, but also many people who do not consciously mean others any harm. It is not easy to hear this; it is easier to ignore or lash out at us or others who have pointed this out and to continue playing the role of sleeping beauty,than to live up to the responsibility we all have of creating viable communities along with all of our neighbors. We still believe that this is in fact what most of our neighbors and Durham residents want. ■