By: Tony Waters
To provide some broader context about Marc Thompson’s murder…Julie and I talked on the phone last night about two different cases that have been in the newspapers of Butte County, California, recently, where we live. Two years ago, a young man was tragically lost during the annual Labor Day river float–a fun-filled day of drinking and floating by privileged students and their friends from out-of-town, who celebrate the beginning of the school year in Chico. The story made local headlines for days. Attention from the Sheriff’s Department, and local press was abundant. Several days later, the body of the young man was found, a victim of drowning. Julie and I discussed the contrast with how local powers responded to Marc’s murder last night on the phone.
Anyway, the quick story behind Marc’s death was that he left a local casino where he enjoyed playing poker. His burning car, and his body inside it, was found just a few hours later in a remote area. Instead of the massive attention from the press and Sheriff’s Department, the story was quickly swept under the rug, except from notice by alternative newspapers like a local paper called The Synthesis, which is where UC Berkeley grad Emiliano Garcia-Sarnoff writes and edits.
I hope that Julie and Emiliano pursue this story. As Julie notes, Marc was an African-American man from a poor area of Butte County (i.e. Oroville). But, he was also well-known in the community for both his activism, and cheerful curious nature (I knew him mainly for his cheerful curious nature, even though he was not in any of my classes!). Because he was in Lee Mun Wah’s movie, he was also a local celebrity!
I have no idea why anyone would want to kill Marc. I don’t know if the motivation was robbery, racial, personal, or anything else, and the police are not telling us yet. I do know that every time I Google for more information about his death, the websites at the local newspapers and sheriff’s office come up blank, though. I conclude that the police just do not seem to care enough about Marc’s death, the extremely odd circumstances, the lack of “closure” for Marc’s family and friends, or that there are very strange murderers running around Butte County. Given such circumstances, I cannot fathom why the murder of such a well-liked young man has so rapidly disappeared from the “running conversation,” to borrow a term from the Blumer article Julie cites.
Julie Garza-Withers, former award-winning community college Sociology instructor who’s currently using Sociology to organize and research for racial justice in rural northern California. She was a facilitator in the film “If These Halls Could Talk” with Director Lee Mun Wah, and has published at Working Class Studies, and elsewhere.
Julie has a particular interest in class and classism as a form of social stratification, and the role of cussing and anti-intellectualism in stratifying society. A fan of cussing herself, she says she only “Cusses when necessary,” which is often. She considers herself a working class academic because she is a first generation college grad who grew up in rural southern California where her options post-high school included getting married or working at Del Taco and selling tacos to fast food customers until she got married.
Julie has an M.A. from California State University, Chico, where she studied how social class and gender impact work-place conflict between women. She lives in rural northern California with her husband Larry where they enjoy the forest, their dogs, and gardening.
You can follow Julie on twitter where she posts as WorkingClassTeacher, and also check out Julie’s anti-racism work at Rural SURJ of NorCal-Showing Up for Racial Justice. Currently an inactive author, awaiting a poke with a sharp stick.