The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 9:15 AM.
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THIS IS A REMIX of La Secta Allstar's song "La Locura Automatica" by DJ Andres. I actually very much enjoy the slower version and it's a regular on my playlist, but they won't let me embed it. So here's a Reggaeton remix of the track, still with horns that drift and keep you buoyed with strains of brass, but with less of the lead singer's dramatic video mic-stand posturing, and I think it balances out.

It's friday vat@s! whatchoo got planned?


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 6:28 AM.
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BLOGMIGO (and wicked-good writer) Kai Chang tackles the recent occurrences of white racist attacks against Asians in the Canadian fishing industry, and tells us what the Ontario Human Rights Commission is doing about it, as well as how this must serve as a model for our own work right at home.

Which brings me to a new category here at UMX. Path to the Oasis.

Path to the Oasis will be a regular feature where I point to diaries at The Sanctuary. Concretely, this is a new community and blog for those who dig immigration issues, activis, anti-racist-related, human rights-based, and truly progressive content in a space that is created and maintained primarily by the Brown™/by people who are strongly in touch with immigration, be it by their own family or their own work or their own lives/by people making a space online where they won't need to explain a certain humane view of any "Other" over and over again because that is the norm/by people dedicated to fighting the anti-human, anti-migrant hate that festers in too many of today's immigration conversations. It is called the "Sanctuary" perhaps for a few reasons, but one reason is that on the Internet, to we who are involved with creating this site, there is way too much of this out there. And related sentiment, even if not spoken so plainly.

Racism is like a hellish mosaic whose imagery and meaning can only be seen from a certain distance and with a certain developed ability to discern the patterns at multiple levels of abstraction.

—Kai Chang of Zuky.net, human rights report on anti-asian racism

Leer más de "Path to the Oasis" »


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 7:47 AM.
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THE SKY is beautiful right now. Usually I try to photograph it, usually I send photographs to Facebook via my Mobile Uploads, which I really enjoy. But this sky is too fragile for my iPhone...and for once I'll refrain from turning Mother's morning poem into digital bricks.

The sunrise blends upward from a hot pink grapefruit hue to a gold that mellowly greens into blue and in the blue above, delicate pink swirls and threads and streaks reach to meet and touch.

A layer of dark gray tufts—moving as one like a lowflying school of cumulus clouds on patrol—floats by. Almost touching the telephone wires, they drift rightward, moving between that majestic canvas and my own windows.

It's going to be a fantastic day. Already, it is.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 5:26 AM.
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The recent AFL-CIO annual study: Death on the Job: The Toll of Neglect recently reported workplace fatalities as having increased sharply for Latino and immigrant workers. In 2006, fatal injuries among Latino workers increased by seven percent over 2005, with 990 fatalities among this group of workers, the highest number ever reported. [...]

“It’s clear that the workplace safety net has more holes than fabric, and it is costing too many American workers their lives,” said John Sweeney, President of AFL-CIO. “Our nation’s workplaces have gotten more dangerous, not safer, under President Bush.” [...]

The report also examined OSHA staffing levels, finding that to inspect each workplace once, it would take federal OSHA 133 years with its current number of inspectors. The current level of federal and state OSHA inspectors provides one inspector for every 63,913 workers. This compares to a benchmark of one labor inspector for every 10,000 workers recommended by the International Labor Organization for industrialized countries.

“Congress and the next President must take real action by strengthening the OSHA Act with tougher civil and criminal penalties, addressing increasing risks for Hispanic and immigrant workers, increasing funding for OSHA, and fully implementing the provisions of the MINER Act,” Sweeney added.

—La Voz


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 5:21 AM.
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IF I GET FRUSTRATED by anything lately, it's that I can't do everything at once. Music, sculpture, video, writing, painting. It's not a complaint I make too often, only a sense I experience and privately note, because it's a hard thing to talk about with other people, I have found. It too easily sounds to them like some Lord of the Manor despairing because he simply cannot ride every prize horse in the stable at one time. Which makes people laugh. Which makes me begin wondering "Should I go into comedy?" But of course, that would only add one more thing that I couldn't do at once. Although I've yet to see a stand-up sculptor. So maybe I'll develop that.

Anyway, just honing my well-tuned ability to turn everything out there into something about me. What I really got into this posting box to type was that digging Xavier's exhibit makes me think "Oooh. I miss art, the freedom of art, the inner connection to the matter around me, the furious and silent and nimble language of the hands. I've got to get back into that."

Title of this post from linked exhibit.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 4:18 AM.
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NOTE TO SELF: Must blog soon on important social justice issue or risk losing that "feeling good and helping the world" sensation I've come to love from my computer tappings. Sometimes I feel like a football fan out here.

But...I am! I've said it before. Politics seem to be my sports. So my "season" now comes once every four years. The rest of the time I don't really watch much but boxing, if anything, and sometimes football because I like watching big bulky men run full speed and then smash into each other and then I like to see it five times in slow motion from different cameras. So politics are my football, and football is my Indy 500.

I should go to the Indy 500 and see what happens. Whoa. Maybe I'll find government!


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 3:39 AM.
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NOW we can say it for sure.

So, as suspected, it wasn't a slip the other day when, as reported in the Ticket, [also snatched up by the mighty ears of UMX!] former Sen. John Edwards said he was going to endorse the Democratic presidential candidate he had just voted for in the North Carolina primary and then referred to that person as "him."

Tonight, according to sources in the Obama campaign, Edwards will endorse Sen. Barack Obama at a rally in Michigan, a crucial state for Democratic plans to recapture the White House Nov. 4.

—Confirmed: John Edwards to endorse Barack Obama tonight

Can I get a booyah up in here?


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 4:38 PM.
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OBAMA IN OREGON (PT. 3) concludes our trilogy featuring Obama's rousing event that energized the town of Eugene, Oregon as well as the University of Oregon, and packed McArthur Court to overflowing on March 21, 2008.

• Part One here.
• Part Two
• The Making Of narrative

The latest video by Oregon's Official MTV Choose or Lose Street Team 08 Citizen Journalist, Nezua.

Clicking the picture above will take you to the video page.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 9:35 AM.
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BOY did I pick the wrong gig if I wanted not to be immersed in politics all the time. Whew. There's one giant politician here after another, every other day. When I'm not eating, I'm editing. When I'm not editing, I'm asleep. I hear Hillary is coming back and so is Obama, before the Oregon primary ends. Bill said the drawn out primary here wreaks havoc on the candidates. (Oh what, I'm on a first-name basis with him now?) I'm feeling your pain, dawg. I dream about my little benzene climate changing martin luther king taser school closing video days every once in a while....DONT LOOK BACK MAN!!

It was very chilly last night, as I filmed Señor Clinton. I didn't bring a sweatshirt because the venue was an indoor spot. Or so went the plan. The weather is predicted to hit 90 this week. Perhaps the planets will align. Or break in half. It seems anything is possible lately.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 6:21 PM.
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BILL CLINTON spoke last night at the University of Oregon in Eugene in behalf of his wife's candidacy, and of course, your trusty citizen journalist Nezua was on the scene.

The speech was attended by about 800 - 1000 people. I didn't count, but the venue was switched at the last moment from a ballroom at the EMU that had a capacity of 700, I believe, to an outside courtyard which wasn't quite full. [update: Local papers are putting the EMU ballroom at 1,100 or so, so I'd guess the crowd outside must have been slightly more than that.] I asked Hillary's press liaison what necessitated the change, and she told me that there were more people in line than would fit in the rather small ballroom. The switch was after the security sweep was done and everyone's credentials checked and everything locked down. Because of the last minute move, the lighting and sound and security went from controlled and having a feeling of being well-organized to an "on-the-fly" and very thrown together situation, in some ways quite lacking. But nothing that prevented us from doing our jobs.

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The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 9:35 AM.
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I'VE WRITTEN a few times of why the Warsaw Poles (and all the related horror) are personally important to me. But one need not have a story of their own ancestry tied to such horrific events to admire and be in awe of the young social worker and activist in the anti-Nazi resistance named Irena Sendler who was personally responsible for fighting the tide of hate and murder that haunted and swallowed so many of our people. Irena was a spirit and a model of living and seeing things that people of all ethnicities can benefit by celebrating and emulating. Her story should be told to our children forever.

Irena Sendler — credited with saving some 2,500 Jewish children from the Nazi Holocaust by smuggling them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, some of them in baskets — died Monday, her family said. She was 98. [...]

Sendler was a 29-year-old social worker with the city's welfare department when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, launching World War II. Warsaw's Jews were forced into a walled-off ghetto.

Seeking to save the ghetto's children, Sendler masterminded risky rescue operations. Under the pretext of inspecting sanitary conditions during a typhoid outbreak, she and her assistants ventured inside the ghetto — and smuggled out babies and small children in ambulances and in trams, sometimes wrapped up as packages.

Teenagers escaped by joining teams of workers forced to labor outside the ghetto. They were placed in families, orphanages, hospitals or convents.

Records show that Sendler's team of about 20 people saved nearly 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto between October 1940 and its final liquidation in April 1943, when the Nazis burned the ghetto, shooting the residents or sending them to death camps.

"Every child saved with my help and the help of all the wonderful secret messengers, who today are no longer living, is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory," Sendler said in 2007 in a letter to the Polish Senate after lawmakers honored her efforts in 2007.

—Irena Sendler, social worker who saved 2,500 Jewish children from Holocaust, dies at age 98

This is a hero. This is a human at her best. Gracias, Irena. Dziękuję. And Salud!


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 10:44 AM.
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IT IS GETTING HARD not to mention dispiriting to keep track of the horrific natural disasters unfolding around the world. Over 900 students buried alive in China, at last estimate. Updates are claiming 9000 dead. 7.8 earthquake.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 7:34 AM.
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THIS IS THE STORY of a straight-A student who might still be alive if one of her achievements had not been being dark of hue...or if she lived in world where police didn't find that a trait marking her as worth less love and care.

Leer más de "Shut Softly Your Watery Eyes" »


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 5:51 AM.
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THE ULTIMATE CONCERN TROLL. The dough-headed criminal slimes his way out in front of the bright TV lights because he's lonely left to his own meaningless existence, and so dares to hope he can remain relevant in a world that hisses upon even hearing the name "Bush."

And the MSM has the nerve to prop his lowlife pasty ass up simply because it gambles that enough people will leave the station on when his thin voice begins drooling out of the speakers. Stankstick Rove. Hungry for a beatdown, and just plain lucky so far.


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 8:27 PM.
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HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

I don't know about you, but my mother was the constant in my life. She wasn't perfect, isn't perfect, but without her love and her help, and without her own mothers' help—my nana put us up for a while when my own mother was divorced and with two children—I don't know where I'd be. No doubt, twice as crazy and causing you all twice as much hassle! So you should thank her too.

Feliz dia de las madres, enjoy!


The Unapologetic Mexican has been known to scribble a few things besides meandering, verbose, self-congratulatory blog posts. However, they are rarely as fun. Finally, let it be known that Nezua first dared bust out this Habanero of Truth at exactly 8:06 AM.
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