Chicanx histories of the present: a praxis against gang injunctions in Orange County, California, 2008–2016

Abstract

Chicanxs Unidxs de Orange County (CU) is a community organisation in Southern California. Founded in 2006, CU is small, multigenerational and multi-ethnic. Its organising has focused predominantly on building community power by focusing on local politics, abusive policing and the gentrification of Chicanx neighbourhoods. This article presents an evidence-based narrative of several CU campaigns (primarily between 2008 and 2016). CU’s tactical aggressiveness and strategic pragmatism forced significant changes to ‘civil gang injunctions’ in California. For decades, California law enforcement has used such injunctions to suppress a generation of young people of colour as ‘gang members’. Minors and adults have been prohibited indefinitely from engaging in otherwise legal activities without due process. CU’s emphasis on the longevity of institutionalised and societal racism, rooted in the colonial conquest, resembles arguments associated with critical race theory (CRT) – though CU was not inspired by CRT. CU’s praxis resembles practices of critical pedagogy – though it was not directly modelled on it either. Rather, we argue that CU’s praxis is embedded in the members’ lived experience and study of the local history of racism, community and social movements. All five of this article’s authors were members of CU and were involved in the organising described in this article. The authors wrote this at the request of the CU membership, and it has been discussed and revised by the full membership.

Threat, Latinx Racialization, and Grassroots Leadership: Understanding Mobilization in Southern California’s Anti-Gang Injunction Movement

“…Since 1992, more than 150 civil gang injunctions have been filed in civil courts in the state of California and nearly all of them have been placed in poor Chicanx, Latinx, and Black neighborhoods (Muñiz 2015;O'Deane 2012;Spady et al 2021). Contrary to dominant law enforcement narratives, studies conducted on how civil gang injunctions affect crime rates have produced mixed findings and do not clearly support arguments that they are universally effective (Grogger 2002;Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury 2004;Scott and Spady 2015).…”

“…Contrary to dominant law enforcement narratives, studies conducted on how civil gang injunctions affect crime rates have produced mixed findings and do not clearly support arguments that they are universally effective (Grogger 2002;Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury 2004;Scott and Spady 2015). There is, however, considerable legal and social science scholarship arguing civil gang injunctions violate basic civil liberties, disproportionately target poor communities of color, and reinforce systemic racism (Barajas 2007;Crawford 2009;Muñiz 2015;Smith 2000;Spady et al 2021;Stewart 1998). Social scientists and community organizations have also documented how civil gang injunctions, among other anticrime law enforcement initiatives, emerged in the context of a dramatic shifts in the global political economy and reorganization of state institutions of incarceration and violence in the late twentieth century (Camp 2016;Gascon and Roussell 2019;Gilmore 2007;Murch 2015;Oliver 2008;Schrader 2019).…”