Synthesis Weekly – December 15, 2014

DECEMBER 15

W H AT H A P P E N E D T O

MARC THOMPSON? A FRIEND GOES SEARCHING FOR ANSWERS

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Volume 21 Issue 17 December 15, 2014

For 20 years The Synthesis’ goal has remained to provide a forum for entertainment, music, humor, community awareness, opinions, and change.

Amy Sandoval amy@synthesis.net

Creative Director

Columns

This Week...

Publisher/Managing Editor

A Season of Homocide

PAGE 8

Tanner Ulsh graphics@synthesis.net

Letter From the Editor

by Amy Olson

Entertainment Editor

amy@synthesis.net

Arielle Mullen arielle@synthesis.net SynthesisWeekly.com/submit-yourevent/

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Grave Concerns

Associate Editor

By Sean Galloway

Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff emilianogs@gmail.com

PAGE 5

Designers

Liz Watters, Mike Valdez graphics@synthesis.net

Productivity Wasted

by Eli Schwartz

Deliveries

pwasted@synthesis.net

Jennifer Foti

PAGE 6

Contributing Writers

Zooey Mae, Bob Howard, Howl, Koz McKev, Tommy Diestel, Eli Schwartz, Mona Treme, Emiliano GarciaSarnoff, Jon Williams, Sean Galloway Alex O’Brien

Immaculate Infection

by Bob Howard

Madbob@madbob.com

PAGE 7

Photography Jessica Sid Vincent Latham

Supertime!

Nerd

by Logan Kruidenier

Dain Sandoval dain@synthesis.net

Accounting Ben Kirby

Director of Operations Karen Potter

Owner

Bill Fishkin bill@synthesis.net The Synthesis is both owned and published

by Apartment 8 Productions. All things published in these pages are the property of Apartment 8 Productions and may not be reproduced, copied or used in any other way, shape or form without the written consent of Apartment 8 Productions. One copy (maybe two) of the Synthesis is available free to residents in Butte, Tehama and Shasta counties. Anyone caught removing papers will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. All opinions expressed throughout the Synthesis are those of the author and are not necessarily the same opinions as Apartment 8 Productions and the Synthesis.

The Synthesis welcomes, wants, and will even desperately beg for letters because we care what you think. We can be reached via snail mail at the Synthesis, 210 W. 6th St., Chico, California, 95928. Email letters@ synthesis.net. Please sign all of your letters with your real name, address and preferably a phone number. We may also edit your submission for content and space.

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a shapeless thief part 2

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Kozmik Debris

by Koz McKev

kozmckev@sunset.net

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From The Edge

by Anthony Peyton Porter

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210 West 6th Street Chico Ca 95928 530.899.7708 editorial@synthesis.net

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Now Hear This SYNTHESIS WEEKLY PLAYLIST Danny Brown

Tanner Danny Brown - “Torture” Liz Daughter - “Landfill” Tara Chef Faker - “No Diggity” Haley Melanie Martinez - “Dollhouse” Dinah The Butterbeer Experience - “Accio Hot Guy” Stephen Turisas - “Rasputin” Matt Led Zeppelin - “Good Times, Bad Times” Mike The Game - “Or NAH” 4

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

Once upon a time I thought it would be super cool to join Earth First! and be on the front lines protecting the redwoods. I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but I was feeling really passionate and somewhat aimless. The idea of showing the world how beautiful and important these forests were through (my romantic fantasy of ‘60s-style) activism was very appealing to me. Camaraderie! Purpose!

Changing the World!

I was 18, in Arcata on my first traveling adventure, and my friends and I were invited/ recruited by some kids who were on a supply run for the nearby base camp. We followed them down the highway to the campground where the group had set up a small tent village. They went over the ground rules with us: no drugs of any kind (there were often raids with drug dogs, looking for a reason to break up the camp), no real names (the less anyone knew about everyone else the less they could give up under interrogation), and no freeloading (if you were there, you had to participate in actions). Also, don’t drink the water—not a rule, just a warning (they should’ve also warned us not to wash our hands with it, anyone with cuts or scrapes got painful staph infections). About an hour after we arrived and set up our tents and such we were called to the evening circle. New people like us were identified, and instructed to take part in several training workshops the next day.

I was disappointed that our training was solely in the art of getting arrested during protests—resisting for as long as possible first, of course—but ultimately with the goal of clogging the jail, where we were to continue protesting by holding hunger strikes and seeking maximum press for the cause.

It was a good way to test our loyalty and commitment, a tactic probably related to the

fact that nobody trusted anybody there—the assumption was that you were a plant sent in to spy or sabotage actions or go rogue as a way of undermining the message. If you were willing to become jail-fodder it didn’t matter whether you were a plant or not, you’d still be useful.

I considered it. It had a certain smack of martyrdom that appealed to me. But then I got to thinking about the effectiveness... Our ultimate goal was twofold: slow down (or ideally stop) the evil logging operation, and sway public opinion and awareness until there was a wholesale commitment to preserving old growth forests. A steady stream of us getting arrested for blocking the logging road would slow down operations (though it would also prevent people from earning a paycheck, pissing them off pretty thoroughly and putting their families in a bad situation), and it would consume a lot of small-town police resources, possibly overwhelming their ability to keep arresting us (or anyone else who might be committing crimes and causing problems).

Public opinion in the area was strongly against the movement; those aggressive tactics only served to polarize people away from considering preservation at all. It just seemed pointless at best, and counterproductive at worst. We opted out, our fickle young hearts swayed by new causes that we felt more capable of effecting.

I still struggle with the same questions that arose for me during that time—how can we make direct action more than an expression of upset? How can we best accomplish our ultimate goals?

Letter From the Editor

by Amy Sandoval amy@synthesis.net

What Idiot Called it ‘Staying Awake’ Instead of ‘Resisting a Rest’ “You better find another way, my man. You better git out!”

The flames arched skullward from the brim of his baseball cap, encircling the thick red embroidery of the “3” emblazoned on the face of the hat. His voice carried the long peculiar drawl of Appalachia in the vowels; the words seemed to fall longways out of his chapped mouth, as he earnestly continued. “They’re calling it ‘Carmageddon’!” he warned. “You couldn’t pay me to drive in LA this weekend.”

We stood a few feet apart, under the grim pallor of the gas station fluorescents, the dark wall of the Grapevine looming behind us. I tried to hand him the wad of money again.

“I’m telling you man, you guys picked the wrong weekend to play Los Angeles. You’re gonna be sorry if you go down there!”

I was already sorry. This exchange had started the second I walked inside the station to pay for the tank of gas, and had continued unabated, even as I desperately tried to hand him the crumpled fistful of cash and leave, so that we could drive through the Tehachapis to meet our imminent doom in the fiery Gehenna of Carmageddon. Or just lurch over the Grapevine so we could all get some sleep before the sun came all the way above the horizon, and reminded us that we should probably leave Chico for L.A. before 9pm someday. I backed slowly out the pair of glass doors, nodding in thanks for the avalanche of admonishments that continued to rain down.

“You better git out!”

I had ignored a lot of advice up to this point in my life, so I decided, as we arched the Toyota 4Runner out of the lot and up the steep incline of I-5, to keep the streak alive by ignoring the shit out of this Gas Station Doomsayer of the Grapevine Chevron. We did not git out. We got, in fact, further in.

We made it into Los Angeles with the sun fully above the horizon. The last show of that tour took place in our friend’s garage in Silver Lake.

Perhaps due to the carnage caused by the Dreaded Carmageddon (the closing of the 405 freeway for bridge repair), around 200 people came to the show, including a platoon of LAPD officers, who, over-excited to be a part of the

festivities, asked us brusquely to turn our amps up as loud as they could go. “WE LOVE YOUR MUSIC,” they glowered at us, “AND WE WANT IT TO BE LOUDER.” “They’re up as loud as they go!” we informed them politely. They left, somewhat chagrined that we couldn’t crank the volume knobs any farther to the right. “WE’LL BE BACK,” they shouted over their uniformed shoulders, “WE’RE JUST GOING TO GO GRAB SOME MORE OF OUR FRIENDS, SO THEY CAN ENJOY YOUR MUSIC TOO!” Farther along in our set, they came back, indeed. This time, there were a handful more in their number, who were perhaps even more enthusiastic. “WE LOVE THIS MUSIC SO MUCH!” they bellowed. “PLEASE CONTINUE TO PLAY IT THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT.” We humbly acquiesced, but they began to fidget as they looked on.

“WE HAVE TO LEAVE AGAIN. NEED TO GET MORE OF OUR DUDES OUT. THEY CANNOT MISS THIS!” they shouted as they sped off in their multiple squad cars.

They returned one final time. They brought more of their dudes. Some of them even dressed up in full body armor, so they could rock out that much harder (I assume). They streamed through the party, knocking the other revelers out of their way as they excitedly surged toward the front of the crowd. Some of their guys even flew in to see the show; hovering 100 feet above the party in a helicopter, shining a bright white spotlight down on us and creating the coolest lighting effects we’ve ever had on stage. “PLEASE LEAVE IMMEDIATELY!”, they requested of the other attendees, from a bullhorn that emerged from the helicopter, “WE WOULD LIKE TO ENJOY THIS SHOW PRIVATELY NOW.” We finished our set to much acclaim from our newfound friends. The Boys in Blue even went so far as to write a big yellow letter to the occupants of the house. “THANKS FOR A GREAT SHOW,” it read. “XOXO, the LAPD.” The next day, we cruised unscathed out of Los Angeles, on the clearest freeways I’ve ever seen down there.

I puked out the window onto the trailer on the Grapevine though, so I guess that gas station guy was kind of on the right track.

Grave Concerns

By Sean Galloway

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 5

Contemplating the Classics: Doom 3 THE JOURNEY SHOOTER Apropos of absolutely nothing, I’ve been thinking about Doom 3. Although there are much older and more venerated games, it is, to me anyway, a classic in its own right. In 2004, Doom 3 was a hit, scaring the hell out of many and garnering respect for its state of the art visuals. The nightmarish, gore-smeared shooter was a twisted shoot-’em-up literally descending into the bowels of hell, streaked through with a cold, science fiction vibe. In terms of story, it was hardly special. It was hardly a story. Gunplay was solid, yet you had to wonder if there was anything terribly special about firing rockets off at skeletal space marines and floating, beholder-esque gas bags. Two enormous aspects of any game seem easily discarded from Doom 3, which leaves one to wonder: What did it do right?

On The Town 6

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM

PHOTOS BY VINCE LATHAM FACEBOOK.COM/VANGUARD.PHOTOGRAPHY

DECEMBER 15 2014

Similarities can be drawn between Doom 3 and one of its contemporarie, another FPS of somewhat greater legend: Half-Life 2.

Although Half-Life 2 was and (I maintain) is an exceptionally well rounded game, it, like Doom 3, was a long and winding journey, at times sickeningly constricting, and at times dizzyingly open. In maintaining the player in one long, continuous journey up and down an established world, these “journey shooters” gave a sense of progress and distance to the player, not unlike what many RPGs can make a player feel about character progression. They also are both sparse on interruptions. The Half-Life series is famous for its lack of cutscenes (even if it does find ways to simulate them) and Doom 3, although it featured cutscenes set in a jarring third person, preferred to let scripted events happen in front of an active player. In both games, the objectives often reflect changing the environment (often the removal of an

obstacle on their journey), and don’t bother shoehorning in a cutscene to show it.

Creating a proper sense of length and progression, as well as giving the player adequate reaction and immersion into a situation, can go miles in making a player’s journey seem more real, and it is this steadfast progression that allows us to form attachments and imprint upon these journeys.

Fragmenting the narrative by means of cutscenes, levels, sudden shifts in location and perspective; these often take away as much attachment to any sort of gameplay as any freedom they might add for the creator.

Sometimes all you really want is a neat little scenario for you to jump in and play with, and there are games for that. Most modern shooters are completely pre-constructed for the player, infamous for their linearity.

They’re also disjointed, almost schizophrenic experiences that glaze over getting from point A to point B, instead cherry-picking the most interesting scenarios. Linearity is really not a bad thing, done correctly. For that matter, greater dependence on separate levels, compartmentalized play, and schizophrenic narrative are not, I think, a positive trend.

They may let us cram in a hell of a lot more polygons and be easier on the render, but there’s a power in the seamless experience, and any game pining to be more open, immersive, or engaging ignores it at its own risk.

Productivity Wasted

by Eli Schwartz pwasted@synthesis.net

If We Can Make it Through December...

THE ONLY THING GOOD ABOUT THIS TIME OF YEAR IS FASHION SENSE AND EGGNOG. I’m not down with the holiday season. It is not my game, my thing, or my jam. There isn’t much I like about it. The cold weather doesn’t bother me—we finally get to dress like grown-up people—but the over the top consumerism and weird religious garbage can all take a flying leap. It’s a nutty idea—to take the month wherein most businesses and individuals are at their very worst financially, and implant and promote the idea that we all need to spend disproportionate and irresponsible amounts of money in order to demonstrate to people—people who already ought to know by now—that we “love” them.

It’s manure, it’s piss, it’s an egregious attack on anything and everything moral, ethical, or otherwise worthwhile; yet I am drawn into it, year after year, forever, until I die.

When I die, I hope and I pray that I die three weeks before Christmas: before I’ve done an iota of goddamn shopping, before any holiday parties, before any of this bullshit and nonsense has had a chance to happen.

I don’t hate, because hate is a strong word, and hatred affects those who hate in far worse ways than it affects those who are hated, but I hate Christmas. As I get older it isn’t getting any better; it’s getting worse.

My Annual Ode to Eggnog The only thing that gets me through this hellish season in the abyss is eggnog.

Goddammit and thank God for eggnog.

Eggnog makes me think there might actually be a God: an understanding and sympathetic God who watches, concerned, as Satan plays his games—with the Black Friday and the Cyber Monday, and the horrific music and the godawful decorations (and the fucking Yule Logs—acting like this clogged toilet of a season is something to rejoice upon and capitalize upon)—and He looks down in His benevolence and His wisdom and He grants us the beautiful, healing and wondrous elixir that is eggnog.

There are pills on the desk here and I’m thinking about eating them, except I think they might be some sort of medication that maybe somebody here needs, and so I will leave them. I don’t “need” anything, necessarily.

Trish tells me not to eat the pills—says they are some name I don’t understand, but it doesn’t sound like they will get me high.

Never mind, I have eggnog, and gin. I am thankful, I am grateful. It is calm right now but some other storm of the century is approaching, and if all goes well it will wipe us all out before another Christmas has a chance to finish us off. I am the Grinch, the Scrooge—I don’t give a shit. I am remorseless and heartless and if you try to take my eggnog I will stab you in the neck with a goddamn turkey bone.

Immaculate Infection

by Bob Howard Madbob@madbob.com

PHOTOS BY VINCE LATHAM FACEBOOK.COM/VANGUARD.PHOTOGRAPHY

On The Town

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BY JULIE WITHERS

THE BOONDOCKS Mountain House and Brush Creek are part of an unincorporated area 25 miles or so east of Oroville, California. They are tiny burgs off the old Oroville-Quincy Highway, on the way to Buck’s Lake Wilderness, Quincy, and countless outdoor opportunities in Plumas County.

These areas, steeped in mining and logging history, are rural and quiet, known for marijuana grows and conservative politics. It is a lonely wooded place. But on September 3, 2014, a burning car was found there. The car was a Ford, described as either gold or tan, and it was registered to Marc Thompson of Oroville. Marc was my student, friend, and was featured in a movie I helped make that was directed by Lee Mun Wah titled If These Halls Could Talk. But for seven days, he was simply missing—and possibly the body that was found in a burning car.

Cal Fire extinguished the fire by 7:30 pm, and at the time, the local sheriff only knew that it was Marc’s car with a body inside. They were also aware that the fire was surrounded by dry grass at the end of a hot, late-summer day. Marc wasn’t “circumstantially identified” as the body in the car for a week, not until 8

a September 10th press release from the Butte County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO). It took until early October for the coroner’s office to confirm through DNA testing that it was him.

I didn’t know about the car fire that night. I found out that something was wrong only on September 6th, three days after the body in his burning car was found. I woke up from a Saturday afternoon nap and hopped on Facebook to post a video clip from the movie Thank You for Smoking on Marc’s wall. My husband Larry and I watched it the week before and I knew that it was one of Marc’s favorite movies. When I got to his Facebook page I saw that one of his sisters posted this: From April Nicole-Drakes, September 6, 2014 Friends of Marc Thompson please keep your eyes and ears open!! Marc has been missing for days & no one seems to know anything. Chico & Oroville California be alert! If you know anything please inform me or the police! Please read!!!!!!!

I met Marc in the spring of 2009 when I was teaching sociology at Butte Community College. Marc wasn’t a student in any of my classes that semester; he was

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

enrolled in a sociology course that began ten minutes after my intro sociology course ended, so we briefly crossed paths every Tuesday and Thursday. But Marc showed up early and I took a long time packing up my teaching materials. I can’t remember the moment we started talking, just that we did. Marc was a talker same as me, someone who liked words and conversation; it was an easy and fast friendship.

That friendship led Marc to Stirfry Seminars & Consulting, a company I worked for beginning in 2010 when I was recruited to help cast the documentary film If These Halls Could Talk. The film—about the state of race relations on campus and in the U.S. through the eyes of college students—was a volunteer gig for me, something I did because I wanted the public to hear the comments and conversations I heard in the classroom. Students were having honest conversations about race, class, gender, and sexuality; daring to go places I wasn’t always certain about. Marc was part of that conversation, an outspoken member of a larger group of student leaders in the Black Student Union (BSU) and Associated Students (A.S.) who were making change on campus before they transferred to four-year

schools. It was dazzling to be part of it, both the film and the activism with the students.

He would go on and transfer from Butte College to Chico State, where he hoped to become a sociology professor someday. Already an activist, Marc was soon elected Commissioner of Multi-Cultural Affairs for the Associated Students.

He became well-known at Chico State—a vocal student in his classes, familiar to the school President and other campus leaders, and through his early morning job on the grounds crew where he would cheerfully wave to the many people he knew from the back of a riding mower.

WHAT HAPPENED TO MARC? If you knew Marc you knew that he did not like the woods or rural places—he liked to be among people. It was something we joked about sometimes because I’m a bit of a hermit and live in a small rural town, off a dirt road, in a house in the middle of the woods. We said that my people were “fishing and camping people” and that his people were “tropical people.” I grew up in a rural place, raised in a white, predominantly working class Christian community in

Southern California—like Paradise, CA but close to the desert. I am comfortable in rural spaces and feel a cultural connection. But I understand why Marc did not. We joked about it but the woods and rural areas are not historically safe places for Black people. Nefarious crimes happen to Black people in the woods; for African-Americans the echo of lynching and burnings often stir a feeling of being suspect and not belonging. The laws have changed, but attitudes, behavior, and laws don’t necessarily progress in sync. In places like where I live and where Marc was found, attitudes and behavior sometimes take the shape of exclusionary, racetroubled Tea Party politics.

I’m writing about Marc’s murder because it seems he disappeared to the woods without a trace.

Why was there so little notice in the local papers of someone so well-known and well-liked? Why was there no clamoring public need for an investigation of his murder? Indeed, we only know that he was murdered. Was he shot or bludgeoned? Who poured the accelerant around his car so it would burn? Why did they burn the car when it was still daylight, at around 6:30pm?

Marc at Table Mountain.

Despite the peculiar circumstances, there are still no leads in the investigation three months later, and I’m afraid there won’t be unless we keep Marc’s name and story in the press so that it stays part of the “running conversation.” This sociological idea suggests that it’s valuable to keep the public excited and interested in the case through everyday conversation such as gossip, street talk, community organizing, and brief articles in local newspapers like you might have read in the Chico Enterprise Record and here in the Synthesis. Keeping a “running conversation” going is essential in cases like Marc’s when the victim is young and Black, a person who was seen and then dead in a short span of hours. Our culture has a short attention span and makes its collective mind up quickly; stereotypical assumptions are made and then the public moves on to the next exciting tragedy.

But, homicides are unusual events in Butte County. Sheriff’s detective D’Amato, the lead investigator on Marc’s case, told me that by his estimate there are about 6-10 a year. I sat down with detective D’Amato and learned that there wasn’t much he could share about

Marc’s death because of the ongoing investigation, but also that it’s been a “Season of homicides” in Butte County—whatever that means in a county with so few homicides and, as the detective said, “the largest department in northern California.”

From my perspective as a sociologist, the running conversation about race, murder, and institutional discrimination are all part of this “Season of homicides.” Without intending to, detective D’Amato provided me with a metaphor. It is an analogy that illuminates the larger social issue around Black men and women who have died as a result of interactions with law enforcement and guntoting, frightened White people, sometimes in rural places.

In June 2014, an area man was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of three African American people he shot and burned up in a car on a ridge in Paradise, CA. This means that in 2013—a year with 13 homicides— African Americans burning in cars made up 23% of Butte County’s murders (the national average for African American homicides is 6.3 times higher than for Whites).

To be clear, there is no evidence

that Marc’s murder was racially motivated but the lackluster response from the community and the way that the case has been handled by the BCSO is indicative of the institutional racism that has made possible this particular “season” in the U.S. As Marc himself wrote a month before he died: “On a daily basis I fear for my culture, my future, and at times my very life.

So I then began to ask the question ‘if I fear them, and they fear me, how will we ever come together to understand each other,’ a question it seems that would haunt me even to this day. The results of this fear are plain as day, people of color are dying at the hands of those who swore to protect us, and the mainstream media must twist these stories so we don’t lose faith in our protectors.”

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014 One of the last people to see Marc alive was his older brother, L.T. At around 2:30 Marc stopped by their mom’s house in Oroville to pick up his mail. Marc had recently moved back to Chico to finish his Sociology degree at Chico State and was living with his Dad there.

L.T. says he recalls him opening a package with a textbook in it. He

describes Marc standing in the living room and ripping the clear plastic off the book. He didn’t stay at the house long. L.T. says that he “took it [the textbook] and left to go to the casino.” Four hours later, Marc’s car was on fire in the boondocks.

Marc was a poker player, and from what he told me and some of his other friends, he was a good one. There isn’t much known about Marc’s trip to the casino.

Who did he play poker with? Who saw him there? When I spoke with L.T. and detective D’Amato back in September, there was no forthcoming information about that visit. I did hear through street talk that Marc was seen on the casino’s many cameras but that there was nothing conclusive to be learned. His car was seen leaving the casino parking lot, but which way he turned is unknown. Nor is it known if he was by himself, or with someone else. This is the car that would be burning by 7:12 pm, 25 miles away in the foothills—with a body in it.

At around 11pm that night, L.T. received a phone call from his next-door neighbor telling him that the police were out in front of the house. L.T. greeted the sheriff at the

gate. The officer began by asking L.T. if he knew of Marc’s whereabouts.

L.T. did not and said that Marc lived in Chico. They spoke for ten minutes. From L.T.’s perspective the sheriff was acting like Marc was “accused of a crime” and was trying to “get information” from him; that something serious was up but that L.T. didn’t know what it was.

And then the sheriff told L.T. about Marc’s car being found on fire.

He produced a black vinyl zip-up binder. Inside was Marc’s DMV info, a copy of his driver’s license picture, and information on the make and model of his car that was found burning. The sheriff asked L.T. for their dad’s phone number and, 15 minutes into the conversation, he told L.T. that there was a dead body in the car. That didn’t sit well with L.T. and felt insensitive; it was as if “Marc was a suspect in his own murder.”

According to the BCSO call log, a call came in at 19:12 on the night of September 3rd stating that there was a car on fire. The reporting party is not named on the log, nor is the location of the burning car noted. Another call came at 19:50 identifying Marc’s father Lawrence Thompson as the reporting party and giving the precise location of FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 9

The remains of Marc’s car.

the car in Mountain House. This is one of the more confusing details to come forth after Marc was killed.

Marc’s father never called 911 or the main sheriff’s office numbers that night, yet his name is there, creating unproductive gossip and street talk. Marc’s sisters, his brother, his mother, and his father expressed frustration over this SNAFU. Marc’s dad Lawrence said this: “I feel as crucial and sensitive as this information was that horrid night, it was imperative to get all calling parties names, times, and facts correct from the moment they found a car on fire!” With a body!

There are only 6-10 murders in all of Butte County each year, less than 1 per month. When I asked, Detective D’Amato told me that it was a “clerical error” on the sheriff department’s Computer Assisted Documentation (CAD) program. So, did someone call at 7:50pm? Who was it? Was there a 911 recording?

If it wasn’t someone you love, you may not notice such a detail, but I did and so did Marc’s family. One of the things about keeping stories like Marc’s murder in the “running conversation” is that the “prestige holders” (people with privilege and power such as sheriffs, reporters, writers and activists) must present a unified, factual story. Without it, 10

the public will make its assumptions and disregard the story. I don’t want you to disregard the story, this is my friend and when I saw those details on the sheriff’s log about a “car on fire” it sucked the breath out of my body and made my ears ring: Marc.

Marc was not just another body in the car, he was my friend—his story needs to remain alive, even if he isn’t.

WHEN SOMEONE YOU LOVE IS MURDERED Marc’s funeral was in Chico on Monday, October 6th, another scorching hot day. His friends and family collected together in small circles, everybody sweating and crying and waiting for the service to begin. His casket was centered at the front of the church when we walked inside, a shiny silver metallic box topped with bunches of purple flowers, and surrounded by enlarged photos of him on easels, he filled the room and he would’ve loved that.

Marc’s close friend Foxie Brown delivered his eulogy. She spoke of his hugs, his honesty, his intelligence, and his sense of humor. On a day when we were often reminded of his activism, she showed how it came from his kind,

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

considerate, and thoughtful nature; because of this, she complimented his parents on his “home training.” I sat between my husband and Marc’s girlfriend Jay, my arm tight around her shoulder and my heart feeling for the room.

Marc was buried in Oroville that day, next to his maternal grandmother Edna Taylor. Marc’s mom wanted them buried together, the grandson being a true reflection of his grandmother’s legacy of fighting for social justice and equity. Edna Taylor was “very active” in the Oroville community including work with the NAACP, which Marc’s mom LaWanda says resulted in rocks being thrown at their house and a cross being burned on the lawn of their Oroville home. She says that the “amazing amount of racism” they experienced influenced Marc’s passion for fighting for social justice and for people from all walks of life; LaWanda says, “He was a visionary.”

THE VALUE OF CATHARSIS AND OUTRAGE What keeps the public excited about a story in the news? Sometimes it’s the actions on the part of the prestige holders. Two years ago, a young student visiting Chico from San Luis Obispo went missing

during the annual Labor Day float on the Sacramento River. The BCSO participated in searches with a large team of bureaucrats including the Glenn County Sheriff Department, aerial units, CA Department of Fish & Game, CA State Parks, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and local search and rescue volunteers. There was a “Let’s Bring Brett Home” Facebook page (I joined it) and flyer’s posted in Glenn and Butte County. Sadly, fisherman at the Sacramento River discovered Brett’s body a little more than a week later. What is most impressive about this however, was the immediate (sheriff search party the morning after) and widespread community response. The interest of the public directly influenced the “running conversation” and thus, the actions of the local bureaucrats.

But why isn’t the public and local sheriff department excited about the murder of a young Black man who disappeared without a trace? A 25-year old college senior in whose burning car a body was found that was not clearly identifiable as him?

There were no sheriff search parties for Marc Thompson. No public outcry. According to Sheriff Sgt. Jason Hail, Marc was not “officially reported missing with any law enforcement agency.”

In the immediate days following Marc’s murder there wasn’t much press, only a short blurb in the Chico Enterprise Record highlighting the suspicious nature of the fire. Using facebook and Gmail, a whole bunch of Marc’s friends joined his family in calling the sheriff to demand more public attention to his death. Marc’s mom said she called the sheriff but it was three days before they even returned her calls.

Because of the efforts of Marc’s family and friends (across the state and throughout the U.S.) enough excitement was briefly generated to make Marc’s story part of the “running conversation.”

Nevertheless, the reporting in the press and on the BCSO website identified the incorrect lead investigator in Marc’s case since the day he was murdered. Detective D’Amato explained to me that it is not Sheriff investigator Matt Calkins’ error—and I’m sure it’s not—but let me be clear: if you know anything about what happened to my friend Marc at that dusty turnout off the Oro-Quincy Highway, please contact BCSO Detective Chris D’Amato at 530-538-7544 or 530-538-7671.

SATURDAY

49ERS VS CHARGERS | 5:25 PM

$5.50 DBL BACARDI

$1 OFF PITCHERS DOMESTIC & SIERRA NEVADA NOON - 6PM

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344 west 8th St | chico, ca | 530-343-2790

Food & Drink MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY FRIDAY

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Mon-Fri Happy Hour 12-4pm $3 Sierra & Domestic Pints 6PM - close $1 Off Pitchers $5 Sailor Jerry DBLs All Day Every Day

Daily Happy Hour from 4-7pm PBR $2.25 Everyday!

Open Mic Comedy Night Every Other Week!

Happy Hour 2-6pm M-F $1.00 off Sierra and Dom Pitchers $1.00 off PBR & Olympia Pool Rates Cut in 1/2!

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Happy Hour 2-6pm M-F $1.00 off Sierra and Dom Pitchers $1.00 off PBR and Olympia Cans Pool Rates Cut in 1/2!

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Baby Back Ribs $11.99 Philly Cheesesteak $7.99

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6pm-Close $4.50 Grad teas $3.50 All beer pints FREE Pool after 10PM Coors Light Promo 6-8PM

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Open 9PM Bartender Specials $3 14oz. Slushies $4 20oz. Slushies

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8-close $6 Dom Draft & Jack or Jack Honey Shot

Daily Happy Hour from 4-7PM

Rock Out at The DL! Enjoy Live Music, Great Grub, and 10 9' foot tables Open @11am All ages untill 10pm

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DEC 31:

We open at 12:00pm.

SATURDAY SUNDAY

Tacotruck.biz and Beers on the Patio!

WE OPEN AT 12:00PM MIMOSAS WITH FRESH SQUEEZED OJ FOR $5 UNTIL 5PM.

Full Bar in Back Room Weds, Fri & Sat Nights!

PBR $2.25 Everyday!

HAPPY HOUR 4-7PM Beer Week Guinness cocktail specials Beer coozie giveaway at back bar

Open 9pm Bartender Specials $3 14oz. Slushies $4 20oz. Slushies

Open at 11am $4.50 Bloody Mary $5.50 Absolut Peppar Bloody Marys Noon - 6PM $1 OFF SN & Dom Pitcher $5.50 DBL Bacardi Cocktails

Daily Happy Hour from 4-7pm Full Bar in Back Room Weds, Fri & Sat Nights!

PBR $2.25 Everyday!

Rock Out at The DL! Enjoy Live Music, Great Grub, and 10 9' foot tables Open @11am All ages untill 10pm

Baby Back Ribs w/Salad, Fries & garlic bread $11.99 8pm-Close $4 Single/$6 Double Jack or Captain $3 Sierra Nevada Pints FREE Pool after 10pm

CLOSED

10am -2pm $5 Bottles of Champagne with entree $4.50 Bloody Mary $5.50 Absolut Peppar Bloody Marys

Daily Happy Hour from 4-7pm PBR $2.25 Everyday!

Free Pool with Purchase!

1.00 off Sierra and Dom Pitchers $1.00 off PBR and Olympia Cans

$5.49 Grad/Garden/ Turkey Burger w/fries or salad Bloodies $3 Well, $4 Call, $5 Top, $6 Goose Mimosas $2/flute, $5/pint $6 CHEAP Beer Pitchers FREE Pool after 10pm

Electrified Redemption Project

F r i d ay 4 - 7 p m

Wednesday 9pm

HAPPY HOUR!

DANCE NIGHT DJ SPENNY & JEFF HOWSE 319 Main Street (530) 892-2473

12

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

PLEASE DRINK RESPONSIBLY

8pm-Close Pitcher Specials $6.50/$9.50/$13 FREE Pool after 10PM

THE PUB SCOUTS shirts 2 for $20 while supplies last

(530) 343-7718 337 Main St

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BEAR-E-OKE BURGER MADNESS! Bear Burger with fries or salad for $5.49.

11am-10pm.

Happy Hour 11-6pm select bottles & drafts $3

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$2.50 Select Sierra Nevada or Dom Drafts $2 Kamis -any flavor All Day

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Closed

$1.50 sliders and other cheap eats!

8 - 10pm $1 Dom, Wells & Sierra Nevada Pale Ale 10pm - Close: Up $0.25 per hour til closing

All 16 oz Teas or AMF $3 All Day

$3.50 Skyyy Vodka Cocktails $3.50 Tea of the Day Bartender Specials Happy Hour 4-8pm

1/2 OFF EVERYTHING!!!

4-6pm $1 Dom Drafts $2 SN Drafts & Wells $5 DBL Captain Buck Night 8-Close $1 wells, SN Pale Ale, Rolling Rock, Dom Draft $3 Black Butte $4 Vodka Redbull

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Happy Hour 11-6pm $3 select bottles & drafts

9pm - Close $2 12oz Teas $3 20oz Teas $2 Well, Dom Bottles & bartender Specials $5 Vodka Red Bull

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4-6pm $1 Dom Drafts $2 SN Drafts & Wells $5 DBL Captain 8pm - Close $4 151 Party punch 22oz.

8 - 9pm $1 Pale Ale & Dom.Draft Up $0.25/ hr until close

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$3.50 Tea of the Day Bartender Specials Happy Hour 4-8pm

Happy Hour- 4-7pm $5 Fridays 4-8pm Most food items and pitchers of beer are $5

Power Hour 8 - 9pm 1/2 Off Liquor & Drafts (excludes pitchers) 9PM - Close $3 Domestic Drafts $9.75 Pitchers $5 Dbl Sugar Island Rum NO COVER

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WACKY WEDNESDAYS (8pm - close ) DJ Party 4 different DJ’s $1 wells $2 calls $2 domestic bottles $6 pitchers of well drinks

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Happy Hour 4 - 8pm Ladies Night!

8pm - CLOSE $5 Pabst pitchers $2 shot board $4 Moscow Mules $3 Jamo and Ginger Buck Hour 10:30 - 11:30

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FIREBALL FRIDAYS!!!

8pm - Close $3 Fireball Shots $4 Big Teas $3 Coronas

TRIKE RACES! Post time @ 10pm.

Win T-shirts and Bear Bucks.

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Select Pints $3

LATE NIGHT EATS! kitchen open until 1 AM

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Opening at 8pm for 80's NIGHT!!

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191 E. 2ND ST • 898-0630

NEW THIS WEEK...

BURGER MADNESS! Bear Burger with fries or salad for $5.49.

11am-10pm.

$1.50 sliders and other cheap eats!!

Champagne Brunch and SPORTS!

FOOTBALL 3 WINGS FOR $2 4:00 - 5:30 PM

134 Broadway St, Chico, CA | 530.893.5253

BOTTLE SERVICE Now Available!

Call for reservation 898-9898 Large selection of wines, sangrias and Martinis.

Open at 9pm Large selection of wines, sangrias and Martinis.

LATE NIGHT EATS! kitchen open until 1am

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

NO COVER

$1 WELLS, DRAFTS, DOM. & SIERRA NEVADA 8-10PM PROGRESSIVE 10-2AM

$1 WELLS/ROLLING ROCK, PALE ALE & DOM.

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UP 25¢ PER HR. UNTIL CLOSE

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This Week Only...

Fine Dining in the Tradition of Southern Italy

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SICILIAN CAFÉ

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1020 Main Street Chico 530.345.2233 14

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

Friday, December 19th

Friday, December 19th

BOGG & HANNAH JANE PRESENT: BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

A VINTAGE NIGHT AT THE MOVIES: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE

CAFE CODA

EL REY THEATER

Saturday, December 20th

Sunday, December 21st

Be honest. The idea of spending Christmas with your family fills you with a quiet dread and a strong desire for booze. But it’s ok! Bogg and Hannah Jane are playing a special breakfast presentation at everyone’s favorite breakfast spot. Come soak some up some jazzy covers and prolong the agony that is convening with your nightmare of an extended family. 11am, all ages, free.

Who doesn’t love a classic tale about holiday suicide? Heck bring the whole dang family down for a Christmas treat! Best part is, you can take in the glorious atmosphere of the El Rey Theater and this quintessential Festivus film all for the low, low price of FREE! Grab the kids and get down to the El Rey at 6pm.

LAST CHANCE HOLIDAY CRAFT SALE

AMY SANDOVAL’S BIRTHDAY!

601 ORANGE ST.

AMYTOWN, USA

Still have some folks on your X-Mas list that you have yet to purchase a gift for?!

Don’t you fret, because the Last Chance Holiday Craft Sale have you covered with an array of crafty gifts from Indra Clark, Claire Fong, and more. Come soak up some music and pick up some gifts for all your favorite weirdos! 2pm, all ages, $5.

This week at...

On

Main

QUICK & EASY BOYS WITH GROOVESTRUCK DEC

19

I bet you dummies thought these Best Bets were all going to have the same strong current of anti-family, Christmas-ness to them. Wrong! Your Best Bet for December 21st is to crack a bottle of champagne and raise a glass to everyone’s favorite red-headed fox, our fearless editorial leader, Amy Sandoval. All ages, no cover, celebrate all day, ya loons! [editor’s note: send gifts to 210 W 6th St]

DOWN NORTH

Upcoming shows...

DEC

20

DEC 27

ACHILLES WHEEL & GRAVY BRAIN DEC 29

ORGONE DEC 31

FUNK INTO ‘15 NYE W/ MOKSHA, MOJO GREEN & SOFA KING DOORS OPEN AT 9PM | HALF OFF DRINKS BEFORE 10PM

New & Exciting:

15 Monday

GRUB Cooperative: Winter Solstice Celebration, Dena & Adam Moes, Destiny Love, Fire Dancers.

6:45pm - 8:45pm. Organic treats for sale. Families welcome. $7-$14

16 Tuesday

City Plaza: Chanuka Celebration & Menorah Lighting/ music, crafts for kids, holiday treats. 6pm-7:30pm, free LaSalles: Happy Hour + Live Music with Bull Moose Party, Benchmaster Ruckus, 4pm-8pm, then Tuesday Metal Show at 9pm, 21+

18 Thursday

Blue Room: A Christmas Carol, 7:30pm, all ages Chico Hillel: Cocktail Attire Hanukkah Celebration. 7pm, all ages Chico Theater Company: White Christmas, 7:30pm, all ages DownLo: Electrified Redemption Project pre-Christmas Party. 8pm11pm, 21+ LaSalles: Happy Hour + Live Music with LTD, 4pm-8pm, 21+ Lost On Main: Shook Twins// Marty O’Reilly & The Old School Orchestra.

9pm, 21+

19 Friday

1078 Gallery: Artist’s Reception for Stories Three. 6-8pm, all ages, free Blue Room: A Christmas Carol, 7:30pm, all ages. Followed by The Bare Bones Theatre Project Presents “Season’s Greetings” by David Sedaris, 10:30pm-midnight, 18+, $10 Cafe Coda: Bogg & Hannah Jane present: A Breakfast of Champions.

11am-1:30pm, all ages, free.

Chico Theater Company: White Christmas, 7:30pm, all ages El Rey Theater: A Vintage Night At The Movies: It’s A Wonderful Life.

6pm, all ages, free LaSalles: Happy Hour + Live Music with Mike Russell, 4pm-8pm, then Santa’s Semester Send Off at 10pm.

Ongoing Events:

Lost On Main: Quick & Easy Boys w/ Groovestruck. 9pm, 21+ Maltese: Chris Schadt Band. 9pm, 21+ Monstros: Aberrance Tour Kickoff: Aberrance, Epitaph of Atlas, Chemical Burn, Blood Cabana. 8pm, all ages, $5 Women’s Club: Big Mo and Bahapki. 7pm-11pm, all ages, $15, advance tickets available at Lyon Books.

20 Saturday

601 Orange St: Last Chance Holiday Craft Sale w/ featured artists Indra Clark, Claire Fong, Earth Momma Originals, music at 6pm by Pat Hull, Don Parrish & more! 2pm-9pm, all ages, $5 Blue Room: A Christmas Carol, 7:30pm, all ages. Followed by The Bare Bones Theatre Project Presents “Season’s Greetings” by David Sedaris, 10:30pm-midnight, 18+, $10 Chico Theater Company: White Christmas, 7:30pm, all ages King’s Tavern (Paradise): Get Foxy, Sofa King. 9pm-1:30, 21+, free.

LaSalles: Happy Hour + Live Music with Stunt Double, 4pm-8pm, 21+ Lost On Main: Down North. 9pm, 21+ Maltese: Dragopolis! 9pm, 21+, $3 before 10pm, $5 after Wine Time: Painted Cellars—Where Art and Entertainment Collide.

3:30pm-5:30pm, 18+, $40

21 Sunday

Blue Room: A Christmas Carol, 2pm, all ages.

Chico Theater Company: White Christmas, 2pm, all ages

15 Monday

100th Monkey: Healing Light Meditation, 7pm-8:15pm The Bear: Bear-E-oke! 9pm Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm Chico Womens Club: Prenatal Yoga.

5:30-6:30pm DownLo: Open Mic Comedy Night. Free.

Pool League. 3 player teams, signup with bartender. 7pm. All ages until 10pm Maltese: Open Mic Comedy, Signups at 8pm, starts at 9pm. Mug Night 7-11:30pm The Tackle Box: Latin Dance Classes.

Free, 7-9pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Yoga Center Of Chico: Sound Healing w. Emiliano (no relation). Breathwork, Meditation, Healing.

16 Tuesday

100th Monkey: Fusion Belly Dance mixed-level class, with BellySutra. $8/ class or $32/month. 6pm The Bear: Open Jam Night, featuring a different live band opening each week.

Bring instruments, 9pm-1:30am Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm Chico Women’s Club: Yoga. 9-10am. Afro Carribean Dance. $10/class or $35/mo.

5:50-7pm.

Crazy Horse Saloon: All Request Karaoke. 21+ DownLo: Game night. All ages until 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: Salsa Lessons, 7-10pm LaSalles: ’90s night. 21+ Panama Bar: Tropical Tuesdays ft. Mack Morris & DJ2K. 10pm Studio Inn Lounge: Karaoke. 8:30pm1am The Tackle Box: Karaoke, 9pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Woodstocks: Trivia Challenge. Call at 4pm to reserve a table. Starts 6:30pm

17 Wednesday

The Bear: Trike Races. Post time 10pm Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm Chico Women’s Club: Afro Brazilian

Dance. 5:30-7pm DownLo: Wednesday night jazz. 8 Ball Tournament, signups 6pm, starts 7pm Duffys: Dance Night! DJ Spenny, Lois, and Jeff Howse. $1, 9pm Farm Star Pizza: Live Jazz with Carey Robinson and Friends. 6pm-8pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm The Maltese: Friends With Vinyl! Bring your vinyl and share up to 3 songs/12 minutes on the turntable. 9pm-1am The Tackle Box: Line Dance classes. Free, 5:30-7:30pm. Swing Dance classes. Free, 7:30-9:30pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Woodstocks: Trivia Night plus Happy Hour. call at 4pm to reserve a table.

Starts at 8pm

18 Thursday

The Beach: Live DJ, no cover, 9pm Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm DownLo: Live Jazz. 8-11pm. All ages until 10pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Has Beans Downtown: Open Mic Night.

7-10pm. Signups start at 6pm Holiday Inn Bar: Karaoke. 8pm-midnight LaSalles: Free live music on the patio.

6-9pm Maltese: Karaoke. 9pm-close Panama Bar: Buck night and DJ Eclectic & guests on the patio. 9pm Pleasant Valley Rec Center: CARD World Dance Classes. 6-7pm/youth 10-17, 7-8:30pm/adults. $20/4classes Quackers: Karaoke night with Andy.

9pm-1am Tackle Box: Karaoke. 9pm-1am, 21+ University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm Woodstocks: Open Mic Night Yoga Center Of Chico: Ecstatic Dance with Clay Olson. 7:30-9:30pm

19 Friday

The Beach: Live DJ, 9pm Cafe Coda: Friday Morning Jazz with Bogg, happy hour. 10am-2pm Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm

Chico Creek Dance Center: Chico international folk dance club. 7:30pm, $2 DownLo: ½ off pool. All ages until 10pm.

Live Music, 8pm Duffys: Pub Scouts - Happy Hour. 4-7pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: DJ Dance Party. 8pmmidnight LaSalles: Open Mic night on the patio.

6-9pm Maltese: Happy hour with live jazz by Bogg. 5-7pm. LGBTQ+ Dance Party. 9pm Panama Bar: Jigga Julee, DJ Mah on the patio. 9pm Peeking: BassMint. Weekly electronic dance party. $1-$5. 9:30pm Quackers: Live DJ. 9pm Sultan’s Bistro: Bellydance Performance.

6:30-7:30pm University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm

20 Saturday

The Beach: Live DJ, 9pm Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm DownLo: 9 Ball tournament. Signups at noon, starts at 1pm. All ages until 10pm The Graduate: Free Pool after 10pm Holiday Inn Bar: DJ Dancing. 70s and 80s music. The Molly Gunn’s Revival!

8pm-midnight LaSalles: 80’s Night. 8pm-close Panama Bar: DJ Eclectic on the patio.

9pm Tackle Box: Karaoke. 8:30pm-midnight, 21+ University Bar: Free Pool 6-8pm

21 Sunday

Chico Art Center: Salon d’Art, a holiday sale by local artists. 10am-4pm Dorothy Johnson Center: Soul Shake Dance Church. Free-style dance wave, $8$15 sliding scale. 10am-12:30pm DownLo: Free Pool, 1 hour with every $8 purchase. All ages until 10pm LaSalles: Karaoke. 9pm Maltese: Live Jazz 4-7pm.

Tackle Box: Karaoke, 8pm

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 15

On The Town 16

PHOTOS BY JESSICA SID

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

Were Chico’s two anti-racism protests this past weekend ‘separate but equal?’

(Begin this story here, but finish it at synthesisweekly.com) 1.

This past weekend, barring any major breakdowns of organization, two Chico protests will have happened (we go to press on Fridays, so I can’t say how they actually went down) in solidarity with the protests happening around the nation following the killing of Mike Brown and the subsequent non-indictment of the police officer, Darren Wilson, who killed him. These protests are partially about police tactics, but they’re especially about what seems to many to be institutionalized racism that leads to virtual impunity when police officers hurt and kill people of color, especially black men. Think of Rodney King. Think of Eric Garner. Think of all the times there weren’t video cameras filming what happened.

The two protests were initiated by two very different people, with two very different lived experiences, who had two very different visions for how their protests would go. One is a bubbly 19-year-old white “Sellebrity” at Old Navy, who describes herself as “highly empathic” and whose only personal experience with the police is when, once, back in Jr High, a police officer drove by and shouted “wear a helmet!” when she was riding her bike. The other is a 22-year-old black man, an activist, who told me he’s been stopped and questioned thirteen times by the police in the seven years he’s lived in Chico—on his bike, on foot, driving—often for “fitting the

description,” or for what seemed like nothing at all. The former has organized a permitted rally in the plaza; the latter an “impromptu” march down the Esplanade, with plans to stop traffic.

2.

When Mandi Ranalla sat on the sofa at her parents’ house, where she lives, watching the news on TV as the events unfolded in Ferguson, she was filled with anger and emotion. “I was really upset at everything going on,” Mandi told me. “I was mad at the looting and the burning of buildings. I was upset with the verdict and how it came out.

The fact that there wasn’t enough evidence to indict this cop, simply because he was a cop. And I was just so mad! And I didn’t see anything going on in Chico. And I was like ‘you know what? I’m just going to do it and see what happens.’”

So she chose a date and created the “Mike Brown Protest and Demonstration” Facebook page that very night. “When I set it up I only invited sixty of my friends and it just went insane and I was like ‘Oh! That’s so cool!’”

Mandi says. Soon, the Chico Peace and Justice Center contacted her and were helping her organize it.

Mandi spent most of her childhood in Montana, but has lived in Chico for almost ten years.

“I was raised to always be a very compassionate person,” she told me. “That’s

just part of who I am. And being raised by an empathetic family and being empathetic myself it’s easy for me to kinda put myself in their shoes with out actually having to be in their shoes.” Mandi also went on an organized trip her junior year of highschool called “Sojourn to the Past,” where her group travelled to the South and traced major events of the Civil Rights Movement, including meeting two of the Little Rock Nine. “It was a very, very emotional trip for everybody,” she said. “Someone was always crying.”

“To be able to do something important and beautiful is something that everyone needs to know about and to hear about because we do, as younger people, have a voice, and we can change the world and what’s around us, just by speaking up,” she adds.

3.

Jaquan Sayres was excited when he first learned about Mandi’s event. The 22-yearold activist has been dealing with deep and institutional racism of the sort that the protests are directed at all of his life. Besides being stopped thirteen times, he recounted how a close friend of his was recently tackled off of his bike by the Chico Police, winding up in the hospital, in a case of mistaken identity, i.e. “fitting the description.”

“A lot of it is...you know... ‘fitting the description.’ So my question is: what is the description?” Jaquan asks.

“I’m a peaceful guy,” he continues. “I don’t go

out and rob houses and shoot people—but I’m seen as someone who robs houses and shoots people.”

“We need to bring forth a lot more energy to these issues: It’s not just the black community.

I’m just a black man speaking from my experience.

Though he was enthusiastic about the rally at first, Jaquan and some others began to have some reservations about decisions Mandi was making and, in some ways, about who was making them. First it was pushing the date back in order to obtain a permit. Then it was changing the name to “Rally For Justice (Equality Under the Law).” Then it was her decision to invite the Police Chief to speak.

But also, Mandi and her supporters at the Chico Peace and Justice Center are white.

“She has a great idea,” Jaquan says. “I will not discredit the idea. A lot of people felt really empowered to be a part of it. The issue at hand is when you’re making decisions about a rally based off of equality and police injustice and about people of color without people of color present.”

(This story is continued online at synthesisweekly.com)

Exotic Adventures in Smalltown, USA

by Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 17

a shapeless thief.

PART 2

BY MARIN SARDY

Author’s Note: “A Shapeless Thief” was originally published in July 2014 in The Missouri Review, just days before my brother, Tom, committed suicide. His death followed many years of painful struggles with schizophrenia. This printing in Synthesis is dedicated to his life and memory.

Didn’t catch the first half? Read part one on synthesisweekly.com.

When people first meet my mother, she peers up at them expectantly, immediately asks how their day has been, and often says something disarmingly cute. She’s fond of giving gifts, doling them out almost as offerings to the gods: a coupon for a latte at Starbucks, a brochure for a luxury cruise in the Caribbean.

“Look at this,” she’ll tell my friends, holding up the photo of a jewel-blue seascape. “You may be interested in doing something like this in the future. Maybe this will give you ideas.”

She may or may not decide to say something a little bit risky. And if she does, it may or may not be apparent that it’s a delusion. Often it’s necessary to know the people she mentions in order to know whether what she’s saying is true. Relating to my mother involves a delicate interplay between realities, one that few people are prepared to learn. So my role is to be her translator. When she speaks to friends of mine, I try to stand slightly behind her so I can signal—a sharp nod or a quick shake of the head—to indicate whether they should interpret a given story as fact or fantasy.

When my mother first met my husband (then a new boyfriend) in 18

a Santa Fe bookstore, she pulled a book on Italian cooking off the nearest shelf and asked if he liked Italian food. She concentrated hard for a moment, and as she continued I could see her working her way toward a thought. It was clear from her manner that she was seeking, not scheming—listening, perhaps, to some member of her strange, secret world. Then she announced that T.J., my father, is a friend of the book’s celebrity-chef author, Giada De Laurentiis. My father makes great Italian food, but it was only after we left that I could tell Will that my dad had never met Giada De Laurentiis— though my father does make great Italian food. The delusion apparently sprang up as my mother was speaking.

Other things my father has done, according to my mother, include being swept away in a tsunami in Hawaii, in the mid-’80s. As she tells it, he drowned, and in the confusion, another man appeared and took his place. This man was very helpful and began taking care of us, and after a while nobody noticed anymore that he wasn’t T.J. He let everyone call him by that name, and for a while my mother believed that he was the real T.J. But a few years later she caught on, and when I was about twelve she explained to me that the man I called Dad was not actually my

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014

father but a replacement. “I call him Mr. Ree,” she said. I didn’t catch the significance of the name until my older sister, Alicia, sardonically spelled it out for me: “Myster-ry.”

As the rest of us experienced it,

at her house. “Are things okay over there at his house?”

At some point in my teens, I dryly asked her if it bothered her that her children were being raised by a stranger.

As she tells it, he drowned, and in the confusion, another man appeared and took his place. my mother divorced my father in 1984, when I was ten, in a period of sustained and probably paranoiabased rage, after nearly a dozen years of marriage and the birth of four children. My dad, still largely in denial of her descent into madness, moved into the house next door, and we settled into a joint custody arrangement just as the true extent of her illness became clear. Years later, when I asked him why he hadn’t fought for sole custody, he said, “I just couldn’t do that to your mother.” For the rest of my childhood, my father was in that same house and my mother stayed within the neighborhood.

For years my mother would refer to my father only as “Ree.” “How is Ree?” she would say when I was

“Well,” she said, “he seems to be a nice enough man and he has really, truly accepted this work of taking care of you kids. So I guess it’s worked out okay.”

Her mind is forever another country, a long-lost homeland that only she has seen. And I am her bridge, even when I can’t see one side from the other.

Nowadays my mother’s delusions fade in and out, and with these shifts her memory changes.

Sometimes she still calls my dad Ree, and other times by his real name. He first became Mr. Ree not long after their divorce—after he, in a last-ditch effort to get help for her, had her briefly committed at the state psychiatric hospital. During

the next two or three years, her rage and paranoia toward him were so thick that she couldn’t speak to him without shouting, and for a while she wouldn’t allow him to see her face. She kept her head shrouded in a scarf when she drove up his driveway to drop us off. Now, when her stolen-house delusions turn toward a cabin he owns and when she tells me why it rightfully belongs to her, he is Ree. But when, maybe, she hasn’t thought about him for a while and isn’t upset about anything relating to him, Ree slips away and he is T.J. once again.

The hardest losses for me to witness are this kind—not of home or fortune but of the relationships her illness has made so difficult.

Or impossible, as for anyone she comes to fear through her paranoid beliefs. I know she feels these losses as much as any. The inevitable byproduct is her own loneliness.

Even for my sisters and me, loving our mother is never simple. My younger sister, Adrienne, is an ongoing point of confusion, because she usually goes by her nickname, Sadie. My mother seems to assume that Adrienne and Sadie are different people, but she doesn’t take issue with it. I didn’t even realize that this was the case until one of my aunts mentioned a conversation she had with my

“I can’t call Tom because I don’t know where he is, Mom,” I said. I took a breath.

“He’s homeless. He lives on the street.”

mother while Adrienne was traveling in Asia.

“Is Adrienne still in India?” my aunt asked.

“Yes,” my mother answered, “and I think Sadie is, too.”

For a few years she also thought there were two of my older sister. I may be the only one who remains singular, and I admit this has always been a little bit of a relief for me— although I know my doppelganger could emerge at any time.

“Mom,” I once asked her, “don’t you think it’s strange that I’m the only one there has never been two of?”

“Oh, I know!” she said. “Isn’t that remarkable?

It’s just amazing how things can happen sometimes. Everyone but you!”

For many years, my mother was sure that my brother had, like my father, been swept away in a tidal wave in Hawaii and that this little boy who called her Mom was another child.

This boy, this false Tom, was just as sweet as her Tom, however, so she embraced him as her own. But she worried that the real Tom was still out there, lost and alone. She only hoped someone kind and loving had taken him in.

She finds lost children everywhere she goes.

They’re always young people, often travelers, and when she speaks of them to me, it is to ask for my help in keeping an eye out in case they might need shelter or a surrogate family. “You can adopt each other!” she says sometimes. One of her more elaborate delusions involves an actual organization, the

Arc of Anchorage, which in reality provides support for people with disabilities but which she says offers the service of facilitating the process by which people can adopt each other. Because there are so many of these orphans wandering around, she explained to me, somebody decided to help them take care of each other.

She has often suggested that I adopt my brother, whom she hasn’t seen in about ten years. She knows, because I have told her, that he is in Anchorage but that on any given day I don’t know where he was. I don’t know what she makes of that. But I can tell she knows, from her own observations and intuition, that her son was struggling and isolated.

“Any news from up north?” she asked me every time we talked. This was her way of saying, “Have you heard from your brother?”

“Not lately,” I almost always answered.

“Why don’t you give the house a call?” she suggested next.

“You mean Dad’s house?”

“Yes.” “I can’t reach Tom by calling Dad’s house, Mom. He doesn’t like to go to Dad’s house.”

For a long time I used this reply to evade what I never had the heart, or the guts, to truly explain. But when Adrienne told me she had already tried to explain that Tom was mentally ill, with unclear results, I thought I should give it a try too. During a visit to Santa Fe, my

mother asked for news from Alaska. I looked at her squarely.

“I can’t call Tom because I don’t know where he is, Mom,” I said. I took a breath. “He’s homeless. He lives on the street.”

She looked down, her face furrowed in annoyance, and began picking a cuticle.

“Tom has schizophrenia, Mom,” I said.

“Oh, don’t say that!” she said, pulling her hands back close to her body, still looking down and picking at her fingers.

“Mom, that’s why I can’t call him.” She wouldn’t look at me.

“Come on, now, Marin! Let’s not talk about that today.”

My words sounded cruel in my ears as they grated across her. But I hate to hide the truth from her. Her mind does that so brutally well already.

“Tom is going to deal with his life,” she said sternly, “the way he decides to. Now let’s not talk about this.” I realized she had already thought this through. And she got it right— for years my brother has refused help from anyone, even help to get off the street. She understands, perhaps better than anyone, that his struggles are ultimately his to overcome.

small moments with my mother, the easy ones. Moments when nothing can be gained or lost, when one of us notices something lovely in the world: She sees a bird outside the window, and remarks at the brilliance of its red wing. She bends to pet my dog, and comments on how daintily she lifts her paw.

For all the confusion and fear induced by her ever-reconfiguring world, it also grants her the full richness of its magic.

Driving down the road in Santa Fe one spring morning, when a gust of wind picked up a spray of fallen pink petals and swirled them over the road in front of my car, I wished she were there to see it. I knew she would feel its beauty and for a moment be filled by it.

I miss her whenever I have these moments alone. One day in Central Park, I walked past a shadowy grove of leafless trees after a morning rain had left their branches laden with drops of water, clinging so densely that they seemed like pearls strung along the undersides of the limbs. “Mom!” I wanted to say. “Look at the droplets of water shining on the trees!”

“Oh!” she would reply, “isn’t that lovely!”

Her voice would be high, captivated. She would pause. Her bubble in space-time would encompass us both, and for a moment I would feel as if the entire world began and ended there.

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GREAT SHORT STORIES Lotus Land, written by local writer William Wong Foey Local writer William Wong Foey author of best selling novel: Winter Melon releases his new book Lotus Land, a short story collection of bold and amazing stories of desire, despair, courage, and redemption. Available at Lyon’s Book Store at 135 Main (Chico) and in paperback & e-book at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, & Direct Music Cafe.

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SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM

DECEMBER 15 2014

by logan kruidenier logankruidenier.tumblr.com

December 15, 2014

By Koz McKev Aries

Taurus

Gemini

Cancer

Leo

Virgo

This week begins with a focus on romance and partnerships. Can we move together when we live in an environment that encourages separation? The new moon winter solstice on Sunday gives us the opportunity to lead in a new direction. You become more concerned with what the public thinks. You could feel a little more restless toward the middle of the week. Be grateful for your lessons. This weekend is dedicated to letting go of what is no longer useful to you. Be careful to keep to a budget, as money has a way of getting lost over the holidays.

Venus transiting your ninth house has you seeking a higher love. One of the latest discoveries involving the male human and his sense of direction is that he was genetically programmed to find an appropriate mate from a distance, and thus help diversify genetic strength and have more possibilities of mating. Regardless of your gender there is a message in this for you: Reach for far off places.

Spiritual goals like happiness and forgiveness will more easily be made manifest. The new moon encourages education, distant travel and exotic experiences.

Mercury moves into your eighth house Tuesday night joining Venus and Pluto. The sexual tension is so thick you can cut it with a knife. Your desire for amour is expanding in many ways. Monday and Tuesday is both creative and flirtatious.

Wednesday and Thursday are good for bringing a sense of order. The weekend is great for romance and partnerships. The new moon brings an awareness of vulnerability, raw emotions and the willingness to transform that which is no longer working.

Let go of unhealthy attachments and ask for help when needed.

We begin the week with the moon in the fourth house.

You feel a little more sensitive and withdrawn toward the beginning of the week. Come Wednesday and Thursday creativity, playfulness, and doing what the heart desires rules.

You may find yourself working to help or serve others come the weekend. Sunday’s new moon brings major changes in relationship, contracts, marriage and love affairs. Your desire to merge will be stronger. Good fortune in the world of finances comes together for you. Be the person you want to attract.

The happiness and joy that you radiate inspires others to be in their hearts as well. This is the time of year where you have the most fun. Children, playfulness, and love affairs are part of the mix. Start the week by making a list of all you need to do and accomplish. Mars in your seventh house can make you want to control your mate’s every move. Family issues are best dealt with on Wednesday and Thursday because by Friday afternoon you’ll be ready for a little fun. The new moon puts a focus on health issues, charitable causes, and the people you work with.

Your family, your parents and grandparents in particular, left you with a certain amount of karma to fulfill. You are trying to be conscious of how you relate to others. Your feelings and intuition matter. Mercury moves into your fifth house this week, inspiring love, creativity, and playfulness. Pay attention to your relationship with money and food during the start of the week. Community and peer issues are best worked out on Wednesday and Thursday. The weekend looks good for staying at home and relaxing. The new moon Sunday will bring an artistic revival to your soul.

Libra

Scorpio

Sagittarius

Capricorn

Aquarius

Pisces

Be the kind of neighbor that you would like to have. Pay attention to what you’re saying as well as what is being said by others.

The week begins strong with the moon in Libra on Monday and Tuesday. Venus, Mercury, and Pluto in your fourth house bring changes in the way you look at family. Wednesday and Thursday can be good for finances. The weekend is good for getting together with old friends, siblings and neighbors.

The new moon on Sunday will inspire changes domestically, psychically, and personally.

You begin by taking note of any unfinished business. You may want to take your finances to the next level. The moon will be in Scorpio on Wednesday through early Friday afternoon.

Try to be in harmony with your personal desires. A big focus is on being a better communicator, and being a better neighbor. The new moon on Sunday will inspire travel, education, and appreciating your local environment. Stay brave and courageous. Deal with any household hazards, as Mars is transiting your fourth house.

Power, wealth, and influence are yours. Being responsible with what you’ve got is your new challenge. Once you have the position, how do you assert your values? Once you know your direction, by what means will you travel to your destination​​? Do you have the funds?

Can you walk or ride your bike?

The moon will be in Sagittarius Friday afternoon beginning at 1:55pm PST through Sunday at 5:25pm, when the moon begins transiting your second house.

Eat good food and cut cookies in half rather than indulge too much on sweets.

This will be the last full week of Saturn in your eleventh house.

Good friends come and go, yet there’s a time when one must work on their personal karma.

We’re talking about the darkness of feeling isolated. Put a good finish on what you began.

Learn from past mistakes and resolve to do better. This week represents the karma that you created during the past year.

The new moon along with the sun moving into Capricorn will join with Mercury, Venus, and Pluto. We learn, we love, and then we change. Your life is about to be renewed.

The month long party is about to end. The time to pay the piper draws close. Your good friends are all around you and they have your back. You feel a little more confident and perhaps a wee bit restless. The week feels lucky with the moon in your ninth house Monday and Tuesday. Take care of business on Wednesday and Thursday.

Friday night and Saturday night will be great for your social life.

The new moon in your twelfth house will put you in a place where your spiritual life is way more important. Practice compassion.

Love what you do and do what you love. Work needs to be performed in terms of spiritual service. Sometimes being loving is a thankless job; be loving anyway, you’re doing this for yourself and to edify your spirit.

Wednesday and Thursday are your luckiest days this week where good fortune is helping you succeed. Your responsibilities at work are eventually going to yield to you doing things you’ve been waiting to do. The new moon on Sunday should be a party and a celebration. Be open to meeting new people and opening up your circle of friends.

Koz McKev is on YouTube, on cable 11 BCTV and is heard on 90.1FM KZFR Chico. Also available by appointment for personal horoscopes call (530)891-5147 or e-mail kozmickev@sunset.net

FACEBOOK.COM/SYNTHESISCHICO 21

Necessaries At first, I thought the “basic necessities” of Copiosis were a little goofy, and not just because of the redundancy. As far as I was concerned, food was the only universal necessity on the list—food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and education. The rest were optional, depending on where you happen to be. As practical promises, clothing, healthcare, and shelter make sense for a reasonable quality of life in most places, but guaranteeing education struck me as going too far, especially if “education” turned out to be anything like public schools, whose primary aim is docile sameness.

must be had (as for the preservation and reasonable enjoyment of life).” For me, “... the preservation and reasonable enjoyment of life” is interchangeable with “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” which pleases me because I’ve had a soft spot for “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” since I memorized that bit in grammar school, and the Third New International is the Bible.

For me, education is pretty much anything other than public schools and I hope somebody in a Copiosis society will agree with me and make sure that education includes all sorts of learning and development, especially in areas currently poo-poohed by capitalists.

We’ve given enough attention to exploitation to last us a while. It’s time for chakras and qi.

A Copiosis society seems to me to be based essentially on the values mentioned in the Declaration of Independence of the United States: “We hold these truths to be selfevident, that all... are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The way I think of it, to secure Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, Copiosis assumes five necessaries—shelter, food, healthcare (including clean water), clothing, and education.

About food, it’s obviously required for life, and still some food is clearly not necessary.

Caviar or truffles, say, seem like they ought to be considered luxuries and needn’t be provided at no cost to everybody, like grace or consciousness. Potatoes and broccoli, fine; Kobe beef and saffron, probably not. That’s how I thought. Now I don’t know.

If I’ve got a thing for organic shiitake mushrooms it’s up to me to figure out how to satisfy that yen. Since people in a Copiosis society are free to participate or not, no particular food could be guaranteed, just like it is now. We don’t run out of stuff here because we can buy whatever we want, and there’s always somebody around willing to sell it to us. For instance, I think that to be eligible for government assistance food has to be unheated and unserved. No hot meals and no servers, but cold lobster on a bun would be fine. I like that.

Copiosis is a long way from having to deal with practical issues like those, and they’re still what most attract me to the discussion. I love ideas.

Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary says necessaries are “things that

From The Edge

by Anthony Peyton Porter A@anthonypeytonporter.com

22

SYNTHESISWEEKLY.COM DECEMBER 15 2014