A communique from comrades in Santa Cruz. Spread widely to comrades in the area!
Three people recently entered some radical spaces in Santa Cruz and behaved in ways that led many people who encountered them to conclude that they were police agents. What follows is a description of these individuals and a summary of the sequence of events that led people to draw these conclusions. Although it may seem at first glance that they might just be some stupid naive kids eager to impress, read the whole story first because it does look really bad. In fact, the best thing that could be said of them is that they're dangerously stupid and would therefore also be very unsafe people for that reason. Unfortunately no pictures were obtained.
THE CHARACTERS
Identifying themselves as "anarchist travelers", all of these people look like they're around 18-20, white, average height and size, wear alternative/"punk"-looking but strangely very clean clothes, and are very clean overall.
- "Kao" is male, cleanshaven, shoulder-length brown hair (often in a camo
headband), "conventionally attractive" features, anarchy-sign "tattoo" (?) on the side of his neck. Claims to be from Louisiana.
- "Carrie", "Casey" or possibly "Cammie": female, with braces, blond "fauxhawk" with sides shaves and some kind of rat tail or dread in the back, juggles a little, carries a ukulele around with her. From Laguna Beach, supposedly.
- Another male who didn't really say anything to anyone, no one seems to have caught his name, bearded, wearing a plaid shirt and carhartts.
THE STORY
The trio arrived late in the evening to the occupied Grad Student Commons at UCSC (see http://occupycalifornia.wordpress.com). They were mistakenly let in even though the informal policy was to only let in people who were known and trusted by someone inside. They were really vague about how they wound up there, where they were coming from or how they had heard about the occupation, but were interested very specifically in checking out the space and inquiring about future plans. Kao, who has a very macho "militant" demeanor, seemed to be in charge and doing most of the talking. They immediately wanted to inspect the barricades, "to see if they could be put together better"; Kao said he had military training and wanted to know about future plans such as other buildings to occupy. Kao was talking about organizing the takeover of another building himself and asked questions like "Do you have blueprints?" After making everyone extremely uncomfortable within about 5 minutes, and after a conversation in which Kao gave a lot of really vague and weird answers about what they were doing there, they were asked politely to leave on the grounds that they weren't known or trusted by anyone inside and people were going to sleep soon. During this conversation Kao also said that if anyone thought he was an informant, they should check out the anarchy sign tattoo on his neck.
Carrie came back the next day. Without asking anyone if it was ok, without anyone telling them they'd be allowed in the space again, she had left her phone plugged in in the main room, on and open. She asked for it back; it was returned to her (some people feel this was also a mistake (ED NOTE: It was.)). She was not allowed inside and a friend of ours had a long conversation with her. She expressed eagerness to do anything possible to support the occupation and reiterated that she and Kao were ready and willing to assume major roles in any future occupation or escalation of tactics, mentioning some buildings downtown and on campus that she thought could be taken over and/or destroyed. This is where it gets really fucked: She said that last night, after they were asked to leave, they got a ride downtown with a cop - as if in case we had followed them and watched them get into a cop car (no one actually saw where they went). She said the cop was really chill and they talked about the occupation. She said the cop told him they weren't "scared" of the occupiers and they should do something more intense and dramatic (like occupying a store downtown or blowing up a science building on campus). It is apparent to us that anyone who gets into a police car and chats about illegal activities is as good as a snitch whether that is actually their job or not.
Kao and Carrie also showed up at Sub Rosa infoshop and Chavez co-op and were asked to leave both places because people were uncomfortable with their behavior in those spaces, and because of what people had heard about them. They told people they were headed to Portland next.
STAY SAFE, FUCK THE POLICE
in solidarity,
your friends in santa cruz
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