Three Years Since Jumpolin’s Demolition - Keep the Fires of Resistance Burning

Defend Our Hoodz delivered this speech at an action at Blue Cat Cafe on Saturday, February 10, 2018, to mark three years since the Demolition of Jumpolin.

Que viva Jumpolin! Que viva East Austin! Que viva the working class!

We have kept the fire of resistance burning for three years against gentrification, displacement, and white supremacy. And we will never let it go out!



It’s been three years since the Lejarazu family arrived to their place of business to see that, they no longer had a place of business. It was being torn up by a bulldozer before the store’s opening hours, their merchandise still inside, and the indifferent demolition crew handing out their colorful piñatas to passersby. The iconic bright orange building, with bubble lettering and hand drawn cartoon characters, had been wiped away from East Cesar Chavez in an instant.

And then we learned the details. Two wealthy, white, techie brat landlords, making their moves in Austin, tore it down to meet parking requirements for a SXSW party. While many Austinites, especially Chicanos, Mexican immigrants, and other oppressed groups were up in arms seeing such an icon of our culture violently destroyed, others in Austin once again showed their racist liberal hypocrisy and claimed they deserved it because they were drug-dealers or bike thieves, one of the oldest tricks in the white supremacy handbook. Ivy league tool Jordan French echoed this response, saying that tearing it down was like ‘clearing out a house infested with roaches.’

The demolition of Jumpolin is Austin in a nutshell - mostly white, wealthy privileged landlords, developers, the tech industry, politicos vendidos, and all others who profit from exploitation are doing everything they can to turn the city into their luxury wasteland and bury the working class under the rubble. And then paint those who oppose it or are destroyed by it as the roaches that have to be cleared out.

And it’s also the typical Austin response to say, well that’s how it is and we can’t change it. And while we can’t claim that simply remembering what happened here is an act of revolution, we can say that by refusing to forget the crime of F&F and Blue Cat’s complicity, we are showing defiance. In our defiance and call to hurt the profits of landlords and gentrifiers, we forced our enemies to come out from behind the curtain they can normally hide behind undisturbed.

While capitalism and private property are the foundation of gentrification, in the settler-colonial United States, it is also directly tied to white supremacy. Blue Cat Cafe has made that undeniably clear after relying on the support of Infowars, Trump supporters, confederates, and of course, literal neo-nazis, including Rebecca Gray’s brother, Paul Gray to keep her business afloat. But Despite their violent racist threats, we have bravely returned today because we can not live in fear.

The forces of white supremacy and capitalism will continue to try to silence us and shut us down, with violence if necessary. They will produce fake news about us, paint us as animal haters. But the truth is: we love cats! We just really hate gentrification and nazis! Especially the nazi brother of Blue Cat Cafe owner Rebecca Gray, who she invited to come to this very spot where he and his nazi friends attacked our picket in June of last year.

But we will fight back and challenge their genocidal politics in every arena, whether online, or in the streets. We uphold the defense of our ideas and our people by any means necessary!



We have power because we do not back down. We will continue to organize and build power across the city. We will go out into the hoods and barrios and talk to the masses who are tired of being afraid and inspire them to fight, and show them that we can do this together.

We have no more time to waste on the failed politics of compromise, respectability and fake ideas of representation for oppressed peoples within the capitalist-imperialist system.



They demolish - we build. They destroy - we create.They practice self-interest - we practice solidarity and come together, unified with the force to take away their power..

We will never again be discouraged or silenced by those who tell us to ‘let it go’ and accept things the way they are. Their time is growing short. Their loyalty is to a dying system, built on profit and individualism. Our growing collective power will bury them in the discarded rubble of history.

Our demand has not changed since 3 years ago. Jordan French and Darius Fisher, you are not welcome in Austin. Blue Cat Cafe, your complicity in gentrification and your white supremacist backing are no less welcome. We demand you pack it up, and don’t come back! And for every gentrifying force wondering when we’ll focus on them with the same determination, don’t worry, the people’s fire will come for you soon!