A SPIRIT THAT MOVES AMONG OUR PEOPLE and means to do great harm to many of us cloaks itself in many shapes. An extreme aversion to what is perceived as cultural shifts in the USA hides behind ideas of patriotism or English-fetish and manifests as cruelty.
THIS MARCH, I’ll be presenting at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity’s Transforming Race Conference. This article provides the backstory for why I began the Unapologetic Mexican blog as well as prefaces my talk at the conference.
IN WHICH NEZUA IS TURNED AWAY from the Canadian border after a long anticipatory bus ride to visit a friend in Vancouver.
THE ECONOMY FALTERS and desperate denizens of a sizable nation tack to the right, back away from the light, throw coins at half-crock cops to purchase stronger locks, to erect more dank dim holes in which to imprison the vulnerable soul….
As we usher the last decade into the realm of memory, it’s time to stop viewing immigration reform as an Us vs. Them issue.
JUAN FELIPE HERRERA, celebrated and prolific Chicano poet, has been awarded the PEN/Beyond Margins award for his latest work, Half of the World in Light.
THE NATION’S 10% UNEMPLOYMENT RATE is feeding anti-immigrant sentiment. Laws aimed at immigrants are ultimately divisive, and giving in to a fear that expresses itself as punishment of the vulnerable is a weak and poor human response to stress.
THE ‘BORDERLANDS’ is not a dead place. Nature thrives in the areas some are quick to intrude upon and wreak havoc in the form of fear-fashioned fences.
ULTIMATELY, who benefits from these well-practiced fables? Who makes gain from the false lessons instilled? Who are the myths of Thanksgiving designed to benefit? What are the truths they are meant to obscure?
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.
ART, ACTIVISM, AND TECHNOLOGY MAESTROS will wield the paintbrushes that splash a poetic hue of dawn over the cracking and flaking façades of injustice that today, stand, smoking, hulking, and hovering over la tierra y nuestra primavera!
AN ACTIVIST SEEKING TO BRING a little balance to the Tea Party conversation infiltrates an event, gets the podium and enlists the utterly clueless crowd in a chant to send European immigrants back to where they came from.
IT IS A POSITIVE SIGN FOR U.S. SOCIETY when the White House moves to address the needs of the exploited, and the dreaming, and the hungry. It is a negative sign for our society when we are not allowed to approach such actions without assuring everyone that someone’s gonna have to pay—and it will be the least powerful or culpable.
VETERAN’S DAY. It means many things to many people, and all that can shift in a minute depending on which side of the sand you are on. But the quality in a human that causes them to sacrifice for other humans is an enduring, memorable, and crucial one.
MEXICO is instituting an “Open Arms” policy; if you want to be there and be part of things, then they want you, too.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
