A rather small but engaged audience attended the Irvin Landrum, Jr. Memorial Concert and Social Justice Teach-In this past Sunday at Little Bridges Auditorium. The event, co-sponsored by the Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies of the Claremont Colleges and The Irvin Landrum, Jr. Justice Organizing Committee, featured Claremont and area musicians, poets, and speakers. All involved in the event, including performers, volunteered their time.

The event was intended to celebrate the life of Irvin Landrum and the Claremont community’s spirit, while the tragic and controversial circumstances of Landrum’s death, shot by the Claremont police in a traffic stop gone wrong last January, added a strong dimension of social protest to the event.

The comedian George Loving Jackson MC’ed the event, which started a bit late due to the low turnout. After some time, the crowd grew from a very small group of less than twenty people to a slightly more substantial count of about 25 audience members. Family members of Landrum and other youths slain by police, Claremont residents, social activists and Claremont Colleges students composed the audience.

At one point, the guitarist of the Claremont blues band The Holics, also the event stage manager, reminded the audience that it was "Okay to laugh, to have a good time," but overall, the mood of the event remained quite tense and politically charged.

The opening band, a jazz trio called Dark Matter, started the event’s line-up of very professional musical acts. The band was energetic, but also melancholy, and the sound was often akin to a New Orleans jazz funeral. The Holics followed with a solid blues sound and a more festive tone.

The musical high point of the concert was the successive solos of Dark Matter’s guitarist, drummer, alto and soprano saxophonist, highlighting the great improvisational skills of each. The numerous musical triumphs of the show moved the small audience to sporadic cheering and enthusiastic applause, but the rows of empty seats and the large photo portrait of Irvin Landrum on the right side of the stage kept the crowd quite sober and subdued.

Pitzer Psychology and Black Studies Professor Halford Fairchild spoke early on in the event to the doubts many Claremont residents had as to the justification of Landrum’s shooting and articulated the political message of the event’s organizers. Specifically picking apart the credibility of the City of Claremont’s ‘Fact Sheet’ on the Irvin Landrum shooting, Fairchild succinctly voiced the position of the Justice Organizing Committee on the incident. He accused the police of unjust brutality and unprofconduct in their treatment of Landrum, and of criminal obstruction of efforts to uncover the truth about the incident. His main points on this subject were drawn from a pamphlet distributed to the audience by the JOC entitled "Debunking the City of Claremont Fact Sheet." A web version of both the Fact Sheet and the JOC’s criticism can be obtained on the JOC’s website.

A student from Pitzer read a poem about the shooting, as did a local Claremont writer. Another community speaker addressed issues of police brutality and government injustice more broadly,and also more radically. He warned that the United States was slipping towards fascist attitudes in its law enforcement policies, and urged the audience to register and vote for more democratic candidates.

Radical political groups, such as the Communist Party USA, distributed literature at the event, but the focus of the event was on Claremont’s commemoration and understanding of the Irvin Landrum shooting. Not that there were no outbursts of more virulent anger. The mother of another youth killed by police voiced her outrage at police brutality nationwide and widespread social injustice in the prison system and in law enforcement.

Although future JOC events have not been announced at present, demonstrations in front of Claremont City Hall will continue every Wednesday morning from 10:00 AM to noon.