FUCK THIS
06/07/20
By Nicole Marroquin
The Chicago police officer who murdered Fred Hampton in 1969 was a “school resource officer” at Carter H. Harrison High School in Chicago in 1968. His name was James “Gloves” Davis, and I was told in an interview with a witness that he threw a girl down a flight of stairs to intimidate her, because her sister was organizing protests.
When people argue for police in schools, I think of the students at Harrison who had Gloves, the West Side cop so violent it earned him a nickname. Then I picture the hundreds of stomach-turning videos of cops violently abusing Black and brown young people in the schools where they are required to be under compulsory schooling laws. I remember being a new teacher, and the way our school resource officer would stare and make comments about 7th and 8th grade girls’ bodies, and how I became frozen with fear from my own trauma, and said nothing. The separation between schools and police is as crystal clear to me as the rationale for the separation between church and state.
Image courtesy of Nicole Marroquin.
In January 2020, my friends Liz and Gabe, at Hoofprint Studio, and I got together to print a varied edition of 200 prints of pissed off femmes. At the time I thought I was pretty mad and that we’d hit some sort of rock bottom. Many people have noted that the days immediately before the quarantine seem especially memorable, and my last day was a regret. Liz and Gabe had installed an entire wall of the posters at the Chicago Art Department, but I got freaked out about the virus and did not go to the opening. In my head it looked like what Blue Cheer first sounded like: simultaneously repellant and excellent, intense but confusing and possibly drug induced. This is my ode to youth and femme fury! Rage can manifest like a super power, and I imagine it like a renewable resource that has the potential to energize people to innovate and imagine new ways of doing things. I research moments and eras when young people, women, and queers have said, you know what? FUCK THIS. And shut shit down.
Images courtesy of Nicole Marroquin.
George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police in the early evening on May 25th. Like a tsunami following an earthquake, the rage came. Time after felt blurred, and I remember not taking my eyes off of the news for what felt like one long day, and I did not realize how little sleep I’d gotten in 3 days until I saw my face on Zoom in a work meeting. Of all the terror, violence, and righteous rage unfolding before my eyes, I read of mounting concerns for the safety of the protesters who were being arrested and put in jails without concern for social distancing. For months, there were reports that Cook County Jail had one of the highest transmission rates in the country, making jail a de facto death sentence for people inside, and suddenly thousands and thousands of people were being arrested.
On May 30th, at 3pm, Liz told me via text that we should do a fundraiser, and by 7pm we’d raised over 1k. In 5 days, we had sold 180 prints to 150 people, and we have raised over 4k. 100% of the profits went to bail people out of jail in Chicago and Minneapolis. It worked because Liz was production boss, kept spreadsheets, and Gabe cut 150 shipping tubes from old boxes, so this is as much their donation as it is mine. Since people are still being arrested, we are talking about what to do next.
Image courtesy of Nicole Marroquin.
To know me is to know my obsession with the work of the Black and brown student organizers at Harrison High School who, in 1968, stood up to the cops and the racist Chicago Board of Education to demand community control of schools, ethnic studies curriculum, and more. I spoke with people who were part of the movement, most notably Sharron Matthews and Smiley Rojas, and these young organizers were focused, imaginative, and deeply networked throughout the city and beyond. The tremendous labor of organizing and movement-building was done in person and on foot; while their bodies were also on the line during a time when it was not unreasonable to think that you could die at the hands of the police. Black Power organizing was the curriculum that guided these young leaders in their work, and they began the weekly walkouts in September. Latinx students at Harrison eventually joined the coalition with their own distinct demands, and since the tracks had already been laid, the walkouts grew and went all-city and beyond.
Image courtesy of Nicole Marroquin.
I’m telling you this because we have been here before, Chicago! We have marched together for Black Power before—Mexicanos too.
It is on my mind because on June 1st I started to hear that people in Pilsen and La Villita were attacking Black people in the name of protecting small businesses. I followed the news with horror, but in the first few hours I replayed an old narrative, distancing myself by saying that those colonized people are so easily manipulated by the masters. But as more reports and videos emerged suggesting that some attacks were in cooperation with police, I fell into a doom cycle. See, in my exhaustion I let cynicism cut a hole in me. I forgot that white supremacists are like rats (no offense to rats!) always searching for the tiniest crack to squeeze through so they can reproduce and turn your house into their house. The next day I found out that while I was indulging in despair, protesters were just a block away chanting down the police and doing the work. But for one moment, I forgot what I know about the powerful, brilliant organizers on the streets of Chicago, and the long, rich history of coalitions fighting for Black Power. Now I am sure it is the curriculum that we need to fortify us in the fight, and I am committing to work on it.
New Breed Black Manifesto of Harrison High School (1968)
1. Recognition of the student group New Breed as a bargaining agent.
2. Recognition of the Concerned People of Lawndale as a community bargaining agent.
3. Addition of the contribution of Black people in all courses.
4. More Black teachers and a Black Assistant Principal at the school.
5. One-year requirement for Afro-American history courses.
6. Repairs to the school building.
7. Better food in the cafeteria.
8. More homework for students.
9. Insurance for school athletes.
10. The resignation of the principal Alexander Burke.
11. Improvement of present educational programs.
12. Improvement of community resources to develop each Harrison student to their highest potential.
13. The establishment of language laboratories to develop each Harrison student to their highest potential.
from Dionne Danns, Something Better for Our Children: Black Organizing in Chicago Public Schools 1963-1971. (New York, Routledge 2003)
LATIN AMERICAN MANIFESTO OF HARRISON HIGH SCHOOL (1968)
We demand:
1. Three qualified bilingual Spanish American counselors to be assigned by November 1, 1968. (We demand counselors, not disciplinarians).
2. Two required years of Latin-American culture and history taught by qualified bilingual Latin-American teachers. We further demand that books will be used which have an open point of view of history that will contribute to the dignity and respect of Latin American People.
3. Special TESL classes be instituted for the non-English speaking students and that these classes become an integral part of the school curriculum.
4. At least eight qualified, bilingual TESL teachers be assigned to Harrison High School by October 21, 1968.
5. Special programs be developed by local universities to meet the special needs of Spanish-speaking students problems.
6. A Spanish-American assistant principal
.7. Two bilingual persons to be assigned as clerks to the office staff and that five bilingual persons be assigned as teachers aids and two bilingual school community representatives.
8. Monthly Spanish meetings of the PTA be conducted by a community authorized Spanish-speaking person.
9. The administration recognizes the soccer team and provide a qualified instructor and necessary equipment for the team’s participation in city-wide competition.
10. This organization of Latin-American Students of Harrison be recognized by the school administration as an official mediator and bargaining agent for the Latin-American students and their problems. (1.)
11. No reprisals.
(1.) Intelligence Division, Chicago Police Department, “Latin American Manifesto of Harrison High School Presented by the Students,” Red Squad Records, Box 211, Chicago Historical Society.
I want to contextualize this article, but I also want to hurry and get this out into the world before the ground shifts again. I am writing this from stolen land. I’m in a house that before me belonged to Josepina Mokorel, who moved here from Eastern Europe after fleeing fascists in World War II. I’m sitting on a couch I got from the now-defunct Casa Aztlan, which had once been a center of Chicago’s own Chicano movement, which was small but significant. It’s not very comfortable, this couch, but I prefer used things that have some kind of provenance. I am an artist and public scholar with a background in social practice and education. My creative practice is research-based, decolonial and social, and I am concerned with microhistorical narratives within contexts of dominance. Through teaching and studio artwork, my work asks questions that are intended to engage the public through discourse and dynamic participation. I am most excited by what awaits knowing, and what cannot be known is my provocation. I am motivated by opportunities to decenter authority and the possibilities of time travel. nicolemarroquin.com
Nicole Marroquin worked on this piece with Stella Brown, the Quarantine Times Sunday editor. Each week, Stella selects a member of the Co-Prosperity Sphere Programming Council to share a commissioned response to the pandemic.