Lansing center of progressive activism broken into

LANSING — A Lansing office space shared by a host of progressive activist groups was broken into sometime between 8 p.m. Monday night and 1:30 p.m. Tuesday. The window in the front door of the office was smashed out, officials say.

The only thing taken from the office space, which is shared by the Xicano Development Center, Northstar Center, the Lansing Worker’s Council and others were three computers, says Louie Moreno, media specialist and board member for the Xicano Center. The computers were unplugged, and disconnected from printers, and thick cables holding the computers in place were cut with what appears to bolt cutters. A flat screen television was left hanging on the wall — police say it appeared the thieves may have attempted to steal it — and an older computer and all the printers in the office were left untouched.

“They held things like organizing strategies and guidelines for organizing,” Moreno said of the computers’ contents. The computers also contained an estimated 15 years worth of Xicano community archives as well as databases from the greater Lansing area.

“It could have been a political act,” Moreno said.

The office space has played host to a series of controversial groups and activities over the years. Most notably, the office space served as a launching pad for activists from the group Bash Back! Lansing. The group staged a protest in which they unfurled a banner, tossed around fliers and kissed each other to protest what they said was the anti-gay attitude of Lansing’s Mount Hope Church. The church, known as “the church with all the flags,” is a fundamentalist church which says homosexuality is sinful.

Earlier this year, the space played host to immigration reform advocates pushing for passage of the DREAM Act. That law would allow undocumented youth, brought into the United States by their parents before they were 15, to develop a path to citizenship. Only those youth with no criminal background would be allowed to enter that path, which would also include a mandatory two years of higher education at a college or university or two years of service in the military. The DREAM Act activism is in part spurred by the activism of Mohammad Abdollahi, an Ann Arbor area youth who is undocumented.

On Thursday Nov. 11, the office space played host to two Arizona teachers — Sean Arce and Rene Martinez — who discussed the move by Arizona lawmakers to attempt to eliminate the Mexican American studies programs in Arizona schools. Those programs have been widely credited with keeping Latino students in school, as well as increasing a variety of educational success measures.

The offices also share space with a worker’s organizing group and the Northstar Center itself has been working with homeless people through the office space.

Ernesto Todd Mireles, director of the Xicano Development Center, said Tuesday night that the computers contained all his research and papers related to his Ph.D. studies. His particular area of study is reviewing models of insurgency and guerrilla warfare and applying those organizing techniques to community organizing.

Mireles says the group’s political enemies have ample motivation to want to sabotage them.

“We create programs at the Xicano Development Center and take stands that a lot of people would consider controversial,” he said. “There are some groups of people in this community, and the country, that might feel that they are in contention with what we do, or what they perceive we do.”

He said it was too early to rule out any possibility in the break in, but said a political motivation, particularly after the high profile visit from the Arizona activists, raised concern that this was a political issue.

Lansing Police confirm there was a break-in at the offices, and that the investigation has been turned over to detectives.

Lt. Noel Garcia, spokesman of the LPD, said police did not have an initial indication of a political motive in the case, but it would certainly be reviewed as part of the detectives’ investigation.