I, like many Denverites, just recently noticed viral video coverage of a woman being detained for smudging at an anti-Trump rally on July 1, 2016. Josie Valadez Fraire, the woman who was later cited (for allegedly disobeying a lawful order to put out an active fire), has received an outpouring of support, both locally and far beyond.
To be clear: when a smudge stick is burning, there is no active fire...you extinguish the active fire for the smoking/smudging to happen (comparable to the burning of a lit cigarette).
As we so often do when we see injustices broadcasted online, most will observe the wrongful actions of the police, exhale a few words of passive protest and continue to scroll through their newsfeed. They’ll maybe feel a moment of rage or upset which will likely dissolve into apathy. The issue with this is that these very reactions have become so common, so ingrained in our culture and our conditioned collective worldview, that we now roll with inaction more often than not.
People need to get mad and stay mad. Turn up the volume, turn up the heat. It’s not enough to be temporarily enraged just long enough until you're distracted by another meme or gif. The scales of justice will never stop being weighted against us until we forcibly push back. Blatant, blaring injustices occur every moment of every day; what are you doing about it?
This is an excellent opportunity to really get educated on what it means to be a human in existence today on the land of our ancestors, the land that once loudly breathed the songs of our people, the land that now holds the spilled blood of our bloodlines after lies and deceit led to the slaughtering of millions. A land built on the backs of people of color...genocide, slavery, the present continuation of social oppression, of institutional racism, of imperialism and white supremacy.
They’ve colonized our bodies, they’ve colonized our minds, but they cannot colonize our hearts.
This government, and those in power, do not and have not ever had our best interests in mind. They are not kind, they are not compassionate, they do not love as deeply as we know how. Peaceful protesters are, after wrongful initiation of criminal proceedings, being detained and prosecuted all across the nation. This is nothing new. It is, however, something that needs to end in our time, with us.
"When we are truly united, the oppressors cannot oppress us because we refuse to be oppressed." -Josie Valdez Fraire in SAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE interview with Iris Rodriguez.
From Overcoming Oppression with Power:
I would hypothesize that nonviolent actions are most effective:
-when they are contesting clear and gross injustices;
-when they are well-publicized;
-when they are successful in recruiting others who are oppressed
as well as allies among those who are not; and
-when they occur in a state that is reluctant to employ overwhelming force to repress the nonviolent actions.
In Josie's case, the state was not reluctant to employ force to repress nonviolent actions. In fact, what they did was unlawful and the Denver police involved are the ones who should be held accountable for encroaching on her First Amendment rights... and maybe they should finally attend a basic cultural competency course...because that should be required during training for a law enforcement position anyway, right? Absolutely absurd.
This story is not just about a simple act of crushing a bundle of sage. This is a complex issue and it cannot be analyzed or concluded within the hour I have to write this. I will leave you with this: I smudge often, and I have since I was a child when my grandmother taught me the ways of her world. I sit here now with the purifying smoke of white sage rolling up and up into curling wisps of our outward exhalation, of a prayer to breathe life into a new Ghost Dance. May the people awaken again. I imagine it rising from the strong fist of Josie Valadez Fraire... standing against the swine of fascism, of xenophobia, of racist rhetoric. The image of a woman whose fist was forcibly unclenched to relinquish a powerful symbol to a white man in uniform is one of the more profound and deeply thought-provoking signs of our time: Colonial terrorism is still very much alive.
If you’d like to support Josie, you can start by attending Justice for Josie on Monday, August 1st from 8am-11am at Lindsey-Flanagan Courthouse - 520 W Colfax Ave, Denver, Colorado 80205 - courtroom 160.
