WE BEGIN, but do not end, with the sensational incident where the Obama White House, under Trumpian pressure, produced for public inspection the President’s “long form” birth certificate. I do not know how successful I will be in my attempts to navigate the journey, but I think it’s important to move from an immediate feeling [...]
DOES THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON MIRANDA really matter, in the street? Do cops actually stop questioning you once you invoke your “right to remain silent”?
IN POLITICS, PHRASES ARE HURLED ABOUT with a repetition that becomes a song; a pattern of mouthsounds spelling out a sonic shape with a predictable, recurrent, and lulling rhythm. Mind, you, the message is a lie, but the beat is so on time, that we find our feet stepping along in a shuffling, delusional line.
A LAWBREAKING, RACIST POLICE OFFICER sheds tears of humiliation at being exposed. Serendipitously caught on video stomping an innocent man and threatening to “beat the fucking Mexican piss out of him,” he is temporarily suspended from the force until the public looks elsewhere, at which point he will be reinstated and treated to fresh Starbucks.
WALLS IN THE MIND, WALLS IN THE DESERT. Ritual and roles. Bodies and souls. You can contain another’s with a show of force, but it will be at the cost of imprisoning your own.
ARIZONA, the State of Denial, has spun into a legislative carnival of lunacy with the latest ethnic cleansing maneuver. Teachers with accents will be barred from teaching English, and Chicano Studies linked to terrorism/revolution and banned from schools.
AN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO from Cuéntame featuring the recently freed Alex Sanchez, of Homies Unidos.
CRIMES IN LINE WITH THE DOMINANT PARADIGM are not seen as criminal. Others rouse fury and command milkbox galore. As Noam Chomsky said about terrorism being a simple distinction on which direction the guns were pointed in, so goes the justice system and media in the USA when it comes to people of color and whites.
COURAGE COMES IN MANY DIFFERENT FORMS. For Esmeralda, a transgender asylum seeker from Mexico, who faced horrific circumstances in immigration detention, it came in the form of seeking justice.
YOU CAN TELL THE DINOSAURS of our culture. They are the ones who continue to try and act out decrepit cultural values the rest of us banished long ago. Joe Arpaio is one.
IF THE POLICE are out to alienate themselves entirely from the people of the US, they should continue Tasering people in a sadistic manner.
IF YOU’VE NOT SEEN IT around yet, I suggest you check out the new series by Colorlines called “Torn Apart.” Investigating the effects of deportation on families of color, their reporters travel to Jamaica and connect stories that span two countries and illustrate why keeping a national soul means swiftly enacting reform.
IT’S ALWAYS NICE, when you’ve been following an issue for a while—the twists and turns of its conception and effect leading a good portion of your news day by the nose—to sniff changes in the wind that you perceive as positive.
THERE IS AN AMBER ALERT for Yair Anthony Carillo, one sweet baby boy snatched in Nashville on Tuesday by a woman who entered the Carillo home pretending to be an Immigration authority demanding papers proving citizenship and left after stabbing the mother nine times.
EVERY DAY IT BECOMES CLEARER that the current form of “Enforcement First” immigration tactics boil down to a War on Latinos with all the measures in place lending themselves enabling, requiring, or encouraging the illegal practice of racial profiling. The data and evidence grows, and here is another addition.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
