Investigators from the DA’s office raided the SubRosa Café, alleged to be a center of local anarchist activity in the county. Officers said that they were looking for workers’ comp documents forms for the café’s staff, but the café’s founders explained that the staff is entirely volunteer, and as such, they have no comp documents for them. Jimi Haynes, who was arrested during the May 1 incident downtown in which 18 businesses were vandalized by alleged anarchists, claims to have volunteered at the café, but the site’s blog states emphatically, “Jimi Haynes is not and has never been a volunteer at SubRosa.”
The raid followed the shutting down of another popular anarchist venue, the Guerilla Drive-In, on Saturday night. The Guerilla Drive-In is a popular screening of films against the walls of unoccupied buildings. At the time of the crackdown, they were screening a film under the Soquel Bridge.
In response to the police raid, Guerilla Drive-In spokesperson Elizabeth Burchfield said, “You’d think that getting members of the community together to clean up public space and hold family-friendly events for free would be the kind of thing the city would support.” The SCPD responded that it was simply reacting to complaints about noise from neighbors of the event’s venue. Read more at Santa Cruz Sentinel.
