After public self-immolation, activist’s friends demand transparency
Hundreds gathered Sunday evening for a march to Santa Cruz City Hall and a candlelight vigil for local activist Thairie Ritchie, who set himself on fire outside city hall on Jan. 20, a date that marked the confluence of President Donald Trump’s second inauguration and Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
Beneath the remembrances and grieving for Ritchie, who remains in the hospital with third-degree burns, was a not-so-subtle undercurrent of frustration and confusion toward some community leaders who worked to keep the story silent, and city and police officials who have so far refused to offer any details about the incident, or help the public understand what happened. Lookout faced a mounting pressure campaign to kill the story ahead of publishing our original report on the self-immolation. Our attempts to gather information have continued to meet mostly silence from the city and police chief.
During Sunday’s vigil, several people talked about the importance of Ritchie’s message being heard. Ayo Banjo, a local community activist who is friends with Ritchie, said he learned Ritchie had written letters explaining his motives and left them in his car, which the police towed from the scene on Jan. 20. Banjo and others have continued to call on the city and police department to release whatever information they are holding onto.
The apparent gatekeeping of information surrounding Ritchie and his public act has led Banjo to reconsider “the culture of this community.”
“The way certain people have responded and reacted has made me question the intention of certain leaders who claim to be about the lives of all people, of all communities. Actions speak way louder than words,” Banjo told me. “Part of me wonders whether this is what Thairie wanted, for us to really see the actual truth about how divided the community is.”
Ritchie’s motivations remain the divisive detail. Those who have wanted to silence the story have said Ritchie suffered a mental health break. Those who want his message to be heard view the act as a defiant protest, and that the community should have an answer to the question of why. No one I spoke with at the vigil has spoken to Ritchie since Jan. 20, and as of Friday, there was no indication that the city or police department will release any additional information at this point.
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OF NOTE
“Everyone’s scared”: My colleague Tania Ortiz has been doing fantastic reporting out of South County on the fallout from Trump’s executive orders on illegal immigration. Last week, she spoke with business owners in Watsonville — home to a large immigrant population — who noted a significant drop in downtown activity since Trump took office. “People are very scared,” Maria Flores, owner of Maria’s Dulceria and Party Supply, told Ortiz. “They don’t even want to go to the supermarket.”
Cannabis lounges get a narrow nod from county lawmakers: The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors last Tuesday told staff to go draft an ordinance to allow existing retail cannabis shops to open consumption lounges — essentially bars for pot users. The decision showed initial support for a proposal that could spawn an entirely new business model in the local cannabis industry, which has found itself in increasingly dire financial straits over the past few years. The first inkling of legalizing cannabis smoking lounges in Santa Cruz County dates back to 2020, but the idea picked up momentum only after County Supervisors Manu Koenig (District 1) and Felipe Hernandez (D4) proposed it in November 2023. The county’s cannabis licensing officer, Sam LoForti, said he did not have a timeline for when the ordinance, which needs two approving votes, will return to the supervisors.
Margaux redux in Capitola: Margaux Morgan’s past three months have been a roller coaster of political fortune. After one term on the Capitola City Council and one year as mayor, she lost her November bid for reelection. In December, she officially stepped off the dais with the end of her term. Now, she’s back. Morgan was sworn in on Thursday to fill the interim, 22-month vacancy left by Yvette Brooks, who stepped down last month to take the CEO job at United Way of Santa Cruz County. Morgan told Lookout she’s excited to rejoin the dais, but not everyone is as enthusiastic for her return.
POINTS FOR PARTICIPATION
Scotts Valley to begin environmental analysis for long-sought Town Center development: The Scotts Valley City Council is slated to vote Wednesday on whether to hire San Jose-based David J. Powers & Associates for the $240,000 job of conducting the environmental impact report for the proposed Town Center development. For three decades, local leaders have promoted the Town Center as the vision for Scotts Valley’s very own downtown but have struggled to create much momentum around redeveloping the largely vacant 14-acre lot at the heart of the city. If the city council votes to hire David J. Powers & Associates on Wednesday, the city expects the environmental impact report to be completed and approved by the end of the year. After that, the city will need only to agree on a design and developer for the project before permitting construction to begin.
ONE GREAT READ
Fredric Jameson, the Art of Criticism: A Paris Review interview
Marxist literary, film and political critic Fredric Jameson died in September at the age of 90. Between stops at Yale University and Duke University — the latter is where he’d spent nearly four decades — Jameson was a professor at UC Santa Cruz from 1983 to 1985.
Jameson was known not only for his incisive critiques of capitalism and how systems affect cultural trends, but also for being a reluctant interviewee, which makes this lengthy Paris Review conversation all the more special. Initially, I thought it would be difficult to sort through the academic-speak that might be typical of intellectuals such as Jameson, but the late professor was clear-minded, even as he blatantly ducked certain questions.
One of my biggest qualms with art criticism is that it trades in categories and genres and “isms” that, if internalized by the artist, can muddy organic creative expression and, in a way, work against art. I was happy to read that Jameson himself was wary of this. He cautions artists to not to get too intellectual, lest they lose that natural creative signal.
“I think one has to be very careful not to allow all this theory to make one overly intellectualistic or self-conscious about what one does. There are examples where, clearly, that self-consciousness has produced all kinds of interesting expressions, but I feel it’s dangerous. You can become hyperintellectual — unable to follow what’s going on inside yourself, your unconscious and your fantasies, in a naive way. On the whole, it’s better that the theory sink down into the unconscious and express itself in other ways.”