SLO protester accused of kicking cop in the groin speaks on arrest, experience with racism
Those who know Elias Bautista say the 23-year-old University of California Santa Cruz student is quiet and reserved.
Bautista, who goes by the pronouns they/them, is someone who doesn’t typically make their presence known.
That is, until you get the Santa Maria resident talking about something they’re passionate about.
“Soon as you get them going about some music they really enjoy, like the new Roddy Ricch album that had come out recently, they just light up like a Christmas tree,” said Bautista’s friend, Joshua Powell, who goes by J.P.
“And they also do that when you talk to them about folks like Angela Davis and other organizers that they study,” J.P. said. “They just light up and just start talking and spitting facts and spitting quotes. It’s just their language.”
Bautista has been forced into spotlight in recent weeks after the events of July 21, when they allegedly kicked a San Luis Obispo police officer in the groin following a Black Lives Matter protest. Bautista, along with local organizer Tianna Arata, were both arrested by the police that night.
Both had their arraignment hearing on Thursday. Bautista pleaded not guilty to one felony count of resisting a peace officer and two misdemeanor counts of resisting, obstructing or delaying a peace officer. Arata delayed entering a plea on 13 misdemeanors.
Bautista typically avoids the spotlight and can almost always be found in a hat or a sweatshirt with the hood up, they said.
Hiding behind clothes or a hand in front of the camera isn’t just an aesthetic for Bautista, but a way to feel guarded.
Growing up, Bautista was followed by taunts, slurs and fast-flying punches directed at tearing them down simply because of the color of their skin.
“It forced me into the outfit that you see me in today,” Bautista said. “It forced me to think: Why do they hate me so much? What did I do? At first, it left me with a lot of confusion.”
Playing soccer in Santa Maria
That confusion didn’t even leave Bautista when they stepped onto the soccer field.
There, they were able to find a community and play on a team, the Crusaders, that eventually won the state championship in 2013. Bautista played with many of the same teammates over 10 years as a member of the team.
But when the team played kids from San Luis Obispo, or Santa Barbara, or in other states, Bautista wasn’t always lauded for their skills.
“They were just really good at playing soccer, they would kick your butt,” Bautista’s mom, Patricia Solorio, said of the team. “And when kids would get upset, it wasn’t because (the Crusaders) were better than them, it was because they were — in their minds — dirty Mexicans.”
Bautista loved the sport, however, and said it was just something they were drawn to.
“Soccer’s an elegant sport,” Bautista said. “You can watch people play and just see it, like wow, that play was just really beautiful; that just was like a dance move.”
Learning to fight back
Outside of soccer, Bautista mostly kept to themselves growing up.
In school, Bautista was bullied daily on the basis that they were lesser simply because of the color of their skin — and the language others with their skin color spoke.
Bautista was reminded everyday of the now-repealed English-only requirement of Proposition 227 — the initiative approved by voters in 1998 that effectively eliminated bilingual classes from schools in many cases.
By fourth grade, Bautista got tired of the taunts and racial slurs shouted by the bullies in school.
“Everybody else would just have a joke back, and I have more than just jokes,” Bautista said. As a result, Bautista would get beat up at and outside of school.
By the end of middle school, Bautista started to read books such as Malcolm X’s autobiography, while researching civil rights activist Angela Davis, among others. Organizing and protesting became a focus of their life, Bautista said.
Finding roots in organizing
A card with the Mexican proverb “They tried to bury us, they didn’t know we were seeds” sits on Bautista’s fridge in their house, a constant reminder of who they are and the power they hold, Bautista said.
Bautista aspires to be an organizer — not an activist.
“Activism is just one person going out to these different things not really being held accountable to anybody else,” Bautista said. “Organizing is a little bit different in the sense that I’m accountable to folks that I organize with or that I organize on behalf of.”
Recently, Bautista helped establish the Santa Maria Youth Abolitionist, a group that “has a clear-cut goal of abolishing all systems of violence,” Bautista said. Systems of violence, Bautista said, include anything from racism to sexism, elitism to ageism.
“We understand that this system is not a system of welfare,” Bautista explained. “We understand that we live in a police state and a carceral state.”
Through that group, Bautista has been able to organize several protests and community events catered toward that goal. The group also advocates for racial equality with the Black Lives Matter movement.
At UC Santa Cruz, Bautista studies critical race and ethnic studies, a program that dives into “how race and other modalities of power have structured human life in the past and the present,” according to the university’s website.
“We study these ideas, but we also develop a community that allows us to have that impeccability where we can say, ‘yeah, I’m against the police.’ Like, I believe the police can have a better job,” Bautista said.
What happened on July 21?
On July 21, Bautista joined hundreds of others to advocate for anti-racism and advocate for the Black Lives Matter movement. After the march, police arrested Arata and immediately took her into custody.
In a video of the event, Bautista can be seen in a struggling throng of individuals surrounding Arata and the arresting officers. Bautista is then thrown to the ground by a San Luis Obispo police officer.
Bautista can then be seen getting up, kicking the officer in the groin and sprinting off, chased by several officers. Bautista was later apprehended and taken into custody.
What happened was “I think a response to trauma,” Bautista said. “I had been beat up by white people for a very long time.”
Bautista said the arrest left him with several bruises on his body, and the possibility of having a felony charge on their permanent record.
“What does having a felony record look like after prison?” Bautista asked. “That looks like having to pay fees for probation, through jobs that you can’t get because of your felony record. That looks like having to show up and walk on eggshells every minute of your life.”
Now, Bautista worries about the future, that becoming a teacher — their dream job — is going to be impossible now. The 23-year-old has heightened anxiety and depression that took root when they were a little kid getting bullied in school.
Beneath the fear, though, Bautista knows that these days of organizing and protesting against systems of violence are not over.
“I’ve been up against the state for a very long time to prepare for things like this to happen,” Bautista said. “They cannot kill my hope. And that’s just something that’s a principle of mine — that I will not let them kill my hope.”
This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
