Holding a Back the Blue rally outside of Salinas City Hall on the one-year anniversary of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin seemed like a weird flex. Holding it at the same time and place a group of social justice organizations planned a memorial for Floyd and three others who died after encounters with police seemed like an exercise in cruelty – and an invitation to a confrontation.
But the public square and the First Amendment are for all, and so on May 25, that one-year anniversary and the day Salinas City Council met for a study session on the city’s proposed $200 million operating budget, the groups shared the same space at cross purposes. About two dozen Back the Blue advocates, which included mothers who had lost children to violent crimes, were there to support the police – and to send a message to City Council that the police budget should be considered untouchable. The social justice groups were there to send the message that the police budget, which was $53.2 million this year and pegged at $53 million for next year, should be considered eminently touchable and funding should be diverted to community programs.
Calling it unpleasant and awful would be an understatement. About three dozen members from the social justice groups marched down Gabilan Street, carrying four small handmade coffins bearing the names of Floyd; Breonna Taylor (killed by police in her own home in Louisville in March 2020); Carlos Mejia (killed by Salinas police in 2014 after a woman reported he had broken into her East Salinas home and menaced her with garden shears); and Brenda Mendoza (killed by Salinas police in 2019 while barricaded in her vehicle and in the throes of a postpartum psychotic episode and holding what appeared to be a real handgun). They circled up outside the City Hall rotunda to speak and sing. A man from the arts collective Baktun12 said, “Clearly we are surrounded by loss… you know the pain. You know the chaos it causes. It shouldn’t be at the hands of police. We’re here commemorating the loss of our brother George Floyd… ”
And that’s when a woman on the pro-police side shouted out, “Are you kidding? He’s a criminal. This is ridiculous.”
Things didn’t improve from there. The social justice side seemed to have agreed not to engage with or confront the pro-police side and during the hour-plus I was there to watch and speak to people on both sides, I didn’t see them return cruel language with cruel language. The pro-police side, though, seemed to have brokered no such agreement, as I heard shouts about getting off of welfare and of illegal immigration ruining the city, state and country.
“We want to honor the people we lost,” the Baktun12 speaker continued. “That we lost too!” the woman yelled back.
“Yes,” he said, pretty gently. “We’ve all lost.”
Before the rally devolved into the shouting match, I spoke to a pro-police backer named Vince Chabarria, who lives outside the city but owns a janitorial business with an office in Salinas. He’s a former “knucklehead” who grew up in East Salinas and said he used to revel in violence.
He was there, he said, to educate himself.
“Had you told me that when I was a young knucklehead that you wanted to take away money from the police, I would have applauded that,” he said. “Less officers, less enforcement, less police on the street? As someone who lived that life, I’m here because I want to find out, why do they want to shift money somewhere else.”
Cesar Lara, a longtime union representative who is now the policy director at the social justice organization MILPA, says his group sent a letter to City Council asking they prioritize people over status quo budgeting. They want the Alisal Vibrancy Plan, a roadmap to equity and enhanced services and housing for East Salinas, enacted. They want more money for libraries and rec centers.
And they want the council to know, they’re watching.
“Too much of the council is new,” Lara said, referencing Orlando Osornio, Anthony Rocha and Carla Gonzalez, all elected last year. “They say the right things but are they doing the right things?”
Right appears to be a matter of perspective.