San Diego Free Press

Grassroots News & Progressive Views

UPDATED: Chicano Park Murals Targeted as Revenge for Confederate Statue Removals

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A Chicano Park mural

A screenshot from a nativist video that makes all kinds of absurd claims.

Local right wingers, calling San Diego’s Chicano Park a “huge monument honoring Communism and La Raza ultra nationalism,” are campaigning to “take down” the site and its associated murals as a payback for the Confederate monuments being removed around the nation.

FINAL UPDATE: Here’s my account of how the community responded. It was a proud moment in the fight against racism.

UPDATE: To be clear, there is no right wing protest scheduled for Chicano Park on Sunday or any other time at this point. (The article doesn’t say there is; try reading it before declaring you’re willing to shed blood.)

What is happening is that a campaign is being organized by the fright right to make the murals a toxic issue, get funding cut, slander the history of Chicano/Latinx resistance.

Mr. Ogden and a small number of his fellow cockroaches WILL likely show up at the park, armed with cameras, hoping to get footage for a YouTube video they can shop to various reactionary media organizations.

There is currently a community solidarity event organized for Sunday, September 3 at Noon at the park. The original organizers have agreed to follow the guidance of the Chicano Park Steering Committee, to wit: NO ACTION WILL BE TAKEN without the express request of the CPSC. They, the brown berets, and others will handle any interaction needed.   –dp

City Councilman David Alvarez’s office has received “many racist emails” calling for the park’s destruction after an extremist site called for readers “to make them more nervous to know that the effort is spreading nationwide.”

It all started with an interview with “local patriot activist” Jeff Schwilk on Carl Demaio’s radio talk show.  The former Minuteman leader commiserated with the host about the indignity of removing a plaque from the Daughters of the Confederacy honoring Jefferson Davis from Horton Plaza, moving on to complain about “Nazi symbols**” and “Communists” in the murals at Chicano Park.

At Roger Ogden’s Patriot Fire, formerly known as Impeach Obama Now, the plea to contact city officials followed the admonition “Chicano Park is also a monument to the Aztecs, who performed mass human sacrifice and took part in ritualistic cannibalism. ”

The San Diego Free Press has obtained copies of correspondence discussing what appears to be a scouting expedition by the rightists, who are planning to visit the park on Sunday, September 3rd at 1pm.

Schwilk and Ogden have a storied history of “we’re-not-racist” nativist activism in San Diego.

Schwilk’s leadership role in the post-2000 re-incarnation of the Minutemen was documented at length by the Southern Poverty Law Center a decade ago.

On Saturday mornings, when they travel to the sleepy suburban gas stations where immigrant day laborers go to find work, they create scenes that would play well in a show called “Nativists Gone Wild.” They call immigrants “wetbacks” and “Julios.” They pull out Mace and threaten passing motorists who disagree with them. Calling those who hire day laborers “slave masters,” they’ve been known to slap flashing amber police lights on their SUVs and chase the would-be employers down. When they’re not busy physically intimidating migrants, they take to the airwaves and the Internet to accuse them, without a shred of evidence, of running child prostitution rings and practicing “voodoo Santeria rituals.“

In 2009, Schwilk was ordered to pay $135,000 to a Korean-American ACLU activist who filed a defamation lawsuit after the SDMM circulated photos of her and referred to her in derogatory and racist terms.

Schwilk reappeared in 2013 as one of the founders of the San Diegans for Secure Borders Coalition. A Doug Manchester era Union-Tribune profile of the group neglected to mention his past associations.

Roger Ogden, via Facebook

Roger Ogden has become one of San Diego’s foremost purveyors of right wing fright. He runs a YouTube channel (in addition to Patriot Fire) responsible for whipping local nativists into a frenzy when Imperial Beach considered a Welcoming City resolution in 2016.

A video titled: Imperial Beach Council Welcomes Terror / Drug ‘Refugees’ combined with a World Net Daily article was responsible for one of the more lamentable scenes ever to take place at a city council meeting. (And that’s saying something!)

Here’s a snip from the Reader article giving the flavor of the occasion:

The channel’s website, run by Roger Ogden of San Diego, features articles such as “Obama’s Tax on White People” and “Satanism 101 — Obama’s Luciferian Belief System.” Ogden organized an “Impeach Obama” protest in 2013 that caused a ten-mile traffic jam on Interstate 5.

Ogden alleges in the video that “Leftist groups” are “pushing for cities like this all around the U.S. to promote unvetted Muslim refugees from areas dominated by terrorist groups and to promote illegal immigration in general.” He also said “subversive groups” are behind the resolutions with “the left-leaning city council approving it on the sly without any input from the opposition at all.”

Ogden’s video includes John Loudon’s comments to the city council on September 7th, when Loudon proposed that the Welcoming Cities Proclamation was part of a “hidden political agenda” to bring refugees “from Africa” into the city.

Most recently Ogden’s leading the opposition to the San Diego Unified School District’s anti-bullying program created in the wake of increasing reports of anti-Muslim incidents.

Here’s a snip from Conservative Base coverage:

U.S. citizens, led by a group called Citizens for Quality Education, spoke out on Tuesday before the San Diego Unified School Board against the progressive/Marxist plan to force acceptance of Islam on students under the guise of an anti-bullying program, according to political activist Roger Ogden. 

Regardless of what the right wing plan for “taking down” Chicano Park includes, activists in Barrio Logan are ready to oppose them.

SDFP editor and activist Brent Beltran put it this way:

“It doesn’t surprise me that white nationalist types would attempt to make Chicano Park an issue in their hateful propaganda. But the community is already mobilizing like they’ve done in the past. Chicano Park is sacred space and its caretakers don’t take too kindly to those attempting to disrespect it.” 

**Ogden’s propaganda spews lies faster than Donald Trump, but I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t point out the Nazi image fallacy.  For the Mayans the Swastika stood for the creation and for the Incas and Aztecs it represented the four seasons due to its four arms, the center symbolizing the sun. It is a symbol found in various cultures dating back to a 10,000-year-old Stone-Age cave. 

Looking for some action? Check out the Weekly Progressive Calendar, published every Friday in this space, featuring Demonstrations, Rallies, Teach-ins, Meet Ups and other opportunities to get your activism on.

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I read the Daily Fishwrap(s) so you don’t have to… Catch “the Starting Line” Monday thru Friday right here at San Diego Free Press (dot) org. Send your hate mail and ideas to DougPorter@SanDiegoFreePress.Org Check us out on Facebook and Twitter.

Doug Porter

Doug Porter

Doug Porter was active in the early days of the alternative press in San Diego, contributing to the OB Liberator, the print version of the OB Rag, the San Diego Door, and the San Diego Street Journal. He went on to have a 35-year career in the Hospitality business and decided to go back into raising hell when he retired. He won numerous awards for his columns from the Society of Professional Journalists in 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. Doug is a cancer survivor (sans vocal chords) and lives in North Park.

Comments

    • Thanks for this link, thoughtful bear! I was not aware of the history behind the sign that has always stood for fear ! Knowledge is truth and the more this can be shared the better.

      • You’re welcome! It’s one of the best stories I’ve seen on the subject…

        As part of the first generation born after WWII, I knew only one meaning for that symbol. So I was baffled when, some years ago – while researching old local newspapers on microfilm at the Old Central Library – I came across it being used in (of all things) some business advertising!

        There was no Nazi Party, back around the turn of the 20th century – was there? Wouldn’t Hitler have been a youngster, back then?

        So, just what was this symbol doing there? That’s what first put me on to learning more about the history of the swastika…

  2. Looking for any and all organizers and activists in San Diego. I’m with the DEFEND Movement in Los Angeles and we are ready to stand side by side with San Diego to drive these racists out. Check out DEFEND Movement on Facebook.

  3. It’s easy to understand the desire to defend the murals and protect the park.

    However, please be aware that this is the alt-right’s media strategy: they incite violence with provocative acts they know will attract a response and generate news coverage.

    Otherwise- nothing they do or say creates any media interest or has any public value.

    As white supremacist and “crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell (now under arrest) recently explained in an interview on HBO’s “Vice” program about Charlottesville – they operate under these strategies:

    Announce a march/rally that will generate a response from local activists
    If they are attacked and fight back: they are protecting themselves.
    If they are attacked and are injured: they are warriors standing up to AntiFa etc.

    They know they have no public support, and rely on violence to get their message out.

    Please don’t play into their game.

    • Fascists will not go away if we ignore them. Only by acting can we stop them. Look at all the rallies they canceled after Charlottesville and Boston.

      • But nonviolence must be the response, murals can be sheilded from these idiots without facemasks or clubs….

        • Completely agree. I’m with you all in peaceful protest. I lived in barrio for 8 years and the park was the soul of the neighborhood. I’ll happily make the hour drive to come support.

        • Self defense by whatever means it takes. If people are attacked by fascists we have to fight back. Not seeing “our” fascists as a real threat to our freedoms is a mistake.

    • words of wisdom. you can’t advocate understanding with hate and violence. you have to accept your message will be the one that is seen without audio and out of context. Any effective action is based on strategy. No strategy is like playing basketball blind.

    • Nowhere in the email shown does it say they will be here on Sunday! Why are you not demanding proof they will be??? I’m far from a alt right supporter but there are illogical posts being made without evidence!
      I’m more than happy to counter protest if thhere is an actual protest happening!!!!

      • We opted not to publish all the correspondence b/c there was personally identifiable info. So I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. IMO Chances are now greatly reduced they’ll follow through… When you shine a light on cockroaches in a corner, they tend to scatter.

        • Thank you Doug. Wouldn’t have learned about this any other way. Strength is demonstrated by numbers not by violence. Will be there to be counted.

    • You obviously don’t understand on how we protect our hood… The same hood we ,I fought for in 1970 I was born here in Logan hts and still live here and will fight for it as long as my body will let me… Chicano park P/V

  4. The alt-Reich doesn’t worry me until they go underground, which is probably going to happen soon. They’ll have to go radical and cellular, just like jihadists seem to have done, to avoid police and courts. If they do disappear into their ratholes, there’ll be fewer busts and many more isolated bombing incidents. Who can really understand the depths of these … people?

  5. historical revision, such as is happening in the south today, is always a slippery slope, as this threatened backlash demonstrates. it is what religions did when occupying lands of other faiths, the soviets used to do to people who were no longer politically correct, and what the taliban does to Buddhist shrines. it has happened many times in the past and is usually decried by generations who come after the revisionists.

  6. Just stop. There is no revising going on in the South. None!!! Racist monuments put up way after the civil war are getting torn down for good reason! They should have been in civil war museums not as tools to scare the descendants of oppressed peoples!!!

  7. We must take the higher ground and depict the sound values that are part of our indigenous heritage. Rather than have a knee-jerk reaction we can pull our collective minds & find paths that will only enliven our spirit rather than just react to racism with thoughtless behavior.

  8. I fully understand all of these viewpoints even the revisionists. At some point in time we will find a balance. But for now we must stand for what we believe in. But we must not be silent. Violence should not be allowed but is an unfortunate side product of hate rhetoric. This is why we must stand against it united as one. Peace out people.

  9. Should’ve known or seen this coming. The arguement is a valid one. If offends someone or some group lets take it down. Good or bad. We’ll see how this ends up. Spent many of weekends there.

    • No! The argument is not valid! The issue is not whether there is someone somewhere who has been “offended” by a particular monument. If someone is offended by a monument to the abolition of slavery because they believe that slavery is condoned by the Bible, that is not a reason to remove the monument. Now I get that it’s not always easy to identify a reason that a particular monument or statue is erected, but when the conditions surrounding the erection of the Confederate monuments is examined, it becomes pretty clear that the reason is that they represent an “FU” to the principle that all citizens are equal.

  10. 40% Lincoln
    KY and MO

    A nation that holds men in slavery
    cannot claim to fight for freedom

    STOOR
    Take their idols and music
    their ideas and identity

    Take their freedom

  13. People. Chicano Park was named a national historical landmark by the secretary of the interior on January 12, this year.

  14. Very important to ALSO note about the so-called swastika!!! The Nazi symbol’s “arms” move to the right…not to the left as does the Hindu creative swastika. Google images: Nazi symbols

    • Hi, Molly – You’ve made good points there. The word itself isn’t even German! (Also: If you haven’t already, do take a look at my story-link above…)

    • i read once that Hitler originally wanted the Nazi swastika left-facing but accidentally got it wrong. some folks actually blame this mistake for the Third Reich’s evil. as if…

  15. It’s very important to begin educating the public and media including social media about the history and symbols of these murals before the bigots spread their inflammatory lies and distortions about them. College students can play an important role by creating videos and posting the true stories behind these beautiful murals on the web.

  16. UPDATE: Sunday Sept. 3, 1 PM- 5 “Proud Boy”-type white nationalists showed up to protest and were promptly “escorted” out of the park by 200 police officers.

    Kudos to Mark Lane for live streaming the events. Good to see Doug Porter as well.

    • correction- they showed up to eat pizza.

      when they were noticed, the SDPD surrounded their table and they were escorted away from the park.

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