San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
They’re young and they seek change
Demonstrators, often by the thousands, have flocked to downtown San Antonio for 14 days straight, undeterred by warnings of harsh weather or the possibility of tear gas and wooden bullets fired by police.
They have held up signs with the names of local men who were shot and killed by police officers. They have voiced their fervor with chants of “Black Lives Matter” and “Police are violent — we will not be silent.”
Central to the protests is George Floyd, an unarmed black man who repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe as several Minneapolis police officers held him down. His death May 25 let loose a new wave of activism in the Black Lives Matter movement. It had emerged in 2012 after the killing of Trayvon Martin, also an unarmed black man, by a neighborhood-watch volunteer in Florida.
In San Antonio, where the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day march draws one of the biggest crowds in the country, various groups have stepped up to organize marches and push for change. For some of
the leaders, their activism about police misconduct and racial bias arises from years of feeling that their voices — their very lives — didn’t matter.
Each group, and each leader, have varying views about what needs to change and how. But they all agree that something must be done — soon.
Here are their stories.
Pharaoh Clark
Pharaoh Clark attributes his activism to advice his father gave him eight years ago when Martin was shot and killed.
“I was so upset I didn’t know how to handle it, and he was the one that said ‘Don’t go out there and do it the wrong way, go out there and use your mind,’” said Clark, 32. “He passed away, but those words stayed in my ears and resonated with me.”
Eight years later, after seeing the video of Floyd, on the ground, his neck pinned under an officer’s knee, Clark sprung into action, taking his father’s words to heart. By the first protest in San Antonio on May 30, he had a list of 10 demands for change within the Police Department. After that, he began attending City Council sessions and had one-on-one meetings with the mayor.
“I didn’t ask to be a part of this, I just saw things and said, ‘No, this has to stop.’ And then as I did that, it morphed into being a leader, and I ran with it. But that wasn’t my intention when I got in, I just thought somebody needs to do something,” Clark said.
Among his demands: Limiting the no-knock warrants that allow police to enter people’s homes without warning; increasing access to public data about police officers on the city’s website; and reallocating $200 million from the police budget to coronavirus relief funds or educational programs.
He said he wants to raise awareness about the police union’s contract and strengthen the role of the Police Department’s civilian review board.
A personal chef who skipped college, he now spends his nights educating himself on the criminal justice system and policing in America, he said. He was raised on the East Side before moving to the Northeast Side and graduating from Judson High School. He said he loves making Mexican food.
Clark first became involved with social justice issues about three years ago, when conflict arose over a Confederate statue in Travis Park. He was one of many organizers who worked on getting it removed.
This month, Clark started a group, the Reliable Revolutionaries, to coordinate with other local activists. These issues are urgent to him. He has a 4month-old daughter.
“If I do my job now, and if the people that are fighting alongside me are doing their job, I hope we can create world where I can explain to her not about racism existing, but about how racism was,” he said. “And the fight we had to change the world for her.”
Kimiya Factory
Last year, following criticism that the University of
Texas at San Antonio was not properly responding to allegations of sexual assault on campus, Kimiya Factory and her friend, Taylor Waits, helped found a movement to advocate for victims.
Called #ChangeRapeCulture, it led to some changes in how the university handles allegations of sexual assault on campus. It also helped Factory, who majored in political science with a minor in legal studies, connect with some local activists.
After seeing the video of Floyd calling out for his dead mother, Factory, 21, got more involved in the local Black Lives Matter movement — an issue she had long been passionate about.
At first, Factory had a hard time coping. She screamed at her phone as she watched the video. She couldn’t sleep. She barely ate anything. She got nervous leaving her house to get groceries.
“I really did mourn his death,” Factory said. “His death was an example of how indispensable black lives are to society. It was sickening. But then I got pissed off. I began asking myself, ‘Why should we wait? Why should we allow a pandemic to override justice?’”
Factory reached out to a handful of the activists she had met earlier. Together, she helped coordinate the first peaceful march May 30 that drew thousands downtown.
Last week, she helped organize the rally in front of the Bexar County district attorney’s office to demand justice for the families of Charles Roundtree, Antronie Scott and Marquise Jones, all black men killed by San Antonio police officers.
Factory has been involved in a handful of other efforts, too. She is working with local artists to create public art pieces to memorialize Floyd.
She also is working with other black activist to create a one-stop shop, called the Black Freedom Factory, where people can learn how to get involved in the local movement.
“I think everyone needs to come together,” Factory said. “I think the grassroots activists on the ground need to be involved. We need to go back to the same drawing board and get things done.”
Antonio Lee
Another activist, who goes by the name Antonio Lee, always has had a calling for community work.
As a boy, he regularly attended Oak Hills Church in San Antonio with his family, and during his teenage years, he went on mission trips to Mexico. He dreamed of going to college, becoming a high school teacher and coaching youth sports.
Instead, Lee, 29, bounced from job to job, doing whatever he could to pay the bills, before joining an oil field crew.
The pay was good — at one point, $2,500 a week, he said — but he missed his family and friends. He felt lost and self-centered. He wanted change.
About a month ago, he quit his job and moved back to San Antonio.
Then, the video of Floyd’s death emerged.
As a young black man, Lee said he always was keenly aware of issues related to racism, police brutality and police misconduct. He’s had his fair share of bad interactions with police officers, he said. But he had pushed those interactions aside, never getting involved in advocacy work.
This time, it was different.
Lee started attending some of the demonstrations downtown. His posts online gained traction. After several downtown businesses were vandalized during a protest, he urged people to help with the cleanup. Hundreds turned out.
“This isn’t about me,” Lee said. “These people are the voice. They want to be heard. They trust me and my organization because it will allow them to be heard.”
About two weeks ago, he formed a Facebook group, Young Ambitious Activists, that has helped lead many of the downtown marches. With assistance from another organizer, Brandon Mowles, Lee is applying for nonprofit status for the group.
His goal is two-fold: Host public forums with city leaders to hash out specific policies and outreach programs that will better police-community relations and bridge the gap between law enforcement and communities of color.
He also wants to partner with other like-minded organizations to volunteer in historically neglected neighborhoods.
“This has been going on for decades,” Lee said. “My people, my community, they need change. Our community needs change. If not now, then when?”
Recently, Lee has faced criticism for shaking the hands of several police officers who were stationed along a protest route and allowing a police spokesman to speak at a rally.
Some activists called out Lee on social media, accusing him of working with the police and suppressing the voices of other black activists.
Lee addressed those claims on social media Friday, saying he communicated with police only to inform them of the march routes. He apologized, saying he didn’t mean to disrespect anyone who thought his actions were inappropriate.
“We are learning from our mistakes and we promise to be better for everyone in our community,” Lee said. “We will do better.”
Marz
Two years ago, after a student from Mexico with temporary immigration status was arrested while protesting outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on the North Side, Marz was moved to action.
A Latina and a mother, Marz was heartbroken and infuriated about the 18year-old’s arrest, which some suspected was in retaliation for his advocacy work.
Marz, who declined to provide her last name, fearing backlash for her activism, attended a local rally organized by the Autonomous Brown Berets de San Antonio.
“I really liked what they were doing,” Marz recalled. “I decided to get involved.”
Over the years, the group — similar to the one born out of the Chicano Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 1970s — has been involved in various social justice issues, police brutality being one.
After Floyd’s death, the group organized two rallies to honor Floyd’s memory. Its new online campaign urges people to contact District Attorney Joe Gonzales and persuade him to reopen cases of San Antonio police use of force.
Like other protesters, Marz hopes the movement will spark a public conversation about police training, use of force, no-knock warrants and the Police Department’s policy on chokeholds and neck restraints.
She said it’s also important to have a conversation on reform within other law enforcement agencies — including ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Moving forward, Marz said it’s crucial for leaders to look at the system as a whole — the interconnected ways black and brown residents experience oppression and racism.
“There are a variety of social justice issues that affect people of color aside from police brutality,” Marz said. “The whole way the system was set up, it wasn’t set up for us. We also need to talk about the health care system, voting rights, segregation and gentrification.”
Eduardo Torres
When Eduardo Torres, 20, thinks back on his public school education, one memory sticks out: How his middle school in the San Pedro Place neighborhood hired three police officers to patrol the campus.
He wonders now whether the officers created a safe space for students to learn, or if they did anything to deter students from crime and other problematic behavior.
Over the years, he’s gotten involved in various forms of advocacy. He founded a nonprofit focused on restorative justice, made an unsuccessful bid for the San Antonio Independent School District board and helped organize a local March for Our Lives demonstration in the wake of the 2018 shooting in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead.
After Floyd’s death, Torres again was moved to action.
Torres, a double major in public administration and political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, couldn’t risk joining the demonstrations downtown, as he has two family members who are immuo-compromised.
He brainstormed with his friend, Michael Caballero, who had graduated from Edison High School about the same time he did.
Torres created a Venmo account to collect donations for bail for demonstrators who are arrested. They figured they would raise about $500.
The fund went live on May 29. Within a day, it had $3,000, and at last count, it was above $19,000.
Torres said they have dispersed $3,911 so far to post bail for four people. In two weeks, if any money remains, Torres plans to donate it to the Texas Organizing Project, an advocacy group that has posted bail for people arrested at other protests statewide.
In recent weeks, Torres has turned his attention to the Police Department’s budget — researching how the department spends about $375 million each year and how funds could be reallocated for social services, including resources to address homelessness, domestic violence and mental health.
“We definitely need a Police Department,” Torres said. “We have to have peacekeepers who carry guns. But we should implement better community policing practices, and we should use that money in a way that is more constructive and has a greater im