Mothers Reclaiming Our Children
May 12, 1993, Organizing Agenda
The Southern California Library
Mothers Reclaiming Our Children (Mothers ROC) began organizing in South Central Los Angeles in November 1992 in response to the increasing police violence and incarceration targeting their children. As described in an April 29, 1993, broadcast on KPFK Pacifica Radio marking the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles Rebellion, the organization began as “a grassroots effort composed of women whose sons have been arrested, jailed, or killed by law enforcement. They receive no outside money and have little in the way of resources. The women are mostly poor and people of color. They are headquartered in a small, refurbished garage just a few blocks from last year’s epicenter on Normandie and Florence.”
As a Mothers ROC member stated about the organization during that radio program:
It was formed because we’ve been getting calls over the years from parents that are frantic. . . . They’re just pleading for help and there are no answers. Every one of these have gone through the list of politicians, of clergy people, of civil rights organizations, and I’m telling you, as small as this organization is, they refer the calls here because no one’s about to help. I mean they’ve [the politicians, clergy, civil rights organizations] kind of bought into this thing “Ah, they’re criminals.” Well, you know my feeling is that the criminals run the country and they’re putting the people that they should be employing and giving decent jobs in jail. They make sure there’s plenty of drugs, so people don’t complain and don’t think about the fact that they don’t have jobs.
So, it [Mothers ROC] was formed because there’s a crying need. It was formed because mothers are alone and they are vulnerable, and since it’s been formed we’ve grown in leaps and bounds because it is an idea whose time has come. And there’s a desperate need for mothers and others to organize and to be there and to expose this rotten system that would dare incarcerate young people they never give an opportunity to.
Some questions for reflection using these documents:
- What historical forces do you think led to the formation of Mothers ROC? How did these factors, along with geographic location, shape the demographics and identities of the group’s participants?
- What do you imagine were some of the material and affective challenges they faced in trying to accomplish their goals? What contradictions do you think they struggled through?
- How did their lived experiences—mediated through gendered and racialized class relations, as well as their own sense of becoming—provide for different ways of knowing, resisting, and ultimately reimagining the world?
- Why do you think they approached engagement with state violence through notions of motherhood? How do you think this affected their methods of struggle?
- How would you go about assessing the success and impact of this group?
For further reading:
- Afary, Kamran. Performance and Activism: Grassroots Discourse after the Los Angeles Rebellion of 1992 (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2009).
- Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007).
Figure 1. Photograph of Mothers ROC organizers
Figure 2. Mothers ROC meeting agenda, May 12, 1993
Image Description
The full text of the printed portion of meeting agenda reads as follows:
Mothers ROC Agenda
5-12-93
- Prayer/Introductions
- Cancellation of demo - proposal for next demo [This item is annotated in pen, indicating that the cancellation of the demo was “due to appeal of DeWayne Holmes Case, Compton Courthouse.”]
- Proposed way to get more done at our meetings [This point is also annotated, relabelling it as item five and a half. Below the typed line there is a note reading “new case 5 mins - then go to committee,” and then a note beside reading “Donna - suggested.”]
- Pending cases - review calendar - 15 min [Beside this item there is a written annotation reading “Everyone call (illegible) Dana”.]
- Bowie case [A written annotation beside this point read “Thurs. 20th at 1:30”.]
- Birty
- Review calendar
- Others
- New cases
- Fundraising
- Announcements
- PT - MORC Speakers bureau - Clyde (discussion at last mting)
- Midnight Special proposal for classes
- Thursday evening - 108th
- Tues - City Council - Park Ordinance
- Other
Below the agenda and flowing onto the next page are a number of handwritten notes:
- Donna—
- Letters w/dates, grievances, interests, outline specific details
- Bring drafts to next meeting
The second page begins with a header and attribution, “Mothers Roc Paulette Oliver,” and is followed by a list of different items:
- Ms. Abdida
- Children taken out of beds at 5:00 in morning
- Peter Degree - Dir. of Children’s Services
- Yvonne children now 9 & 7
- Phyllis Turner & Warner (husband)
- Oct. 3rd USC Medical
- Nurse took her 3 children
- Put in Children’s Institute
- Children’s Legal Defense Fund
- Edelma
- Genolia’s son supposed to get out of YA in May
- Got in trouble 6 mos. ago. - wrote grievances
- Now they’re trying to keep him in -
- In Chino -
- Dir. Mr. Frasier
- Pomona Mtgs. at 5:00
- Donna’s son being kept longer also
- Darryl Harts Execution - Paulette Harts brother-in-law show & killed by LAPD.
- Scheduled to testify against police.
- Unmarked police car - 63% of police cars in LAPD unmarked
- been harassed since 1991
Figure 3. Mothers ROC flyer, “Our Children Are Not Criminals,” 1993
Image Description
The full text of the flyer reads as follows:
OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT CRIMINALS, RATHER IT IS THE SYSTEM THAT DENIES THEM A PRESENT & A FUTURE, THAT IS CRIMINAL
WHY WAS MOTHERS ROC FORMED??
- Because the police, the laws and the courts (the system and all its representatives) criminalize our young. This is especially the case with Black and Latino males. Our children do not have a chance.
- As individuals, we are vulnerable and lack the power (and in many cases, the information) necessary to fight to free our young.
- Selective prosecution of people of color.
- Because mothers feels a special pain when their young are taken from them and fight, out of necessity, for their freedom.
WHAT DOES MOTHERS ROC DO??
- Hold weekly meetings that build the collective strength of our mothers.
- Attend court hearings and trials as a group.
- D.A. and Judge react to our presence. Inhibits misconduct
- Provides moral support for mother and defendant.
- Educate our mothers and our children regarding our rights and the workings of the legal system.
- Attorney referrals.
- Meet w/ attorneys to let them know we are on the case, we can help and we are watching.
- We will investigate and work to defeat all laws that adversely affect our young. A good example are the Federal drug laws. Pre probation reports.
- We respond whenever the media, politicians, clergy, "leaders" criminalize our youth.
- Take notes during trial to insure we are on top of information that might be helpful in the development of the case.
- Intervene on behalf of prisoners who have special needs (brutalized, harassed, need to be transferred).
- Demonstrate in front of court houses and police stations at least once per month or as necessary
- Correspond with prisoners who have no one.
- Develop local support for Federal prisoners who are located out of state.
- Develop chapters
- Unite Blacks and Latinos
WHAT WE NEED??
- Help distributing fliers
- People to attend court hearings.
- People to make phone calls
- Help raising money for organization.
- ATTORNEYS AND INVESTIGATORS PRO BONO
- Help Mothers ROC outreach to others grouns
Author Profile
The Southern California Library is an archive and library that documents and cares for historical material related to the impacts of, and collective resistance to, racial capitalism. Located in South Central Los Angeles, a geography that continues to suffer the material and affective violence of dispossession and repression, our work to provide access and a relatively safe space for these histories is inseparable from our commitment to the people who are still suffering them.