A lot of people in the USA these days are going broke. It hardly matters if you have a G.E.D. or a Master’s degree. Unemployment is creeping through the populace like a billion-fingered thief. The number of people on food stamps in the USA today is unprecedented, and what’s left of our national safety net after Clinton and Bush took their turns hacking it apart is a threadbare mess with holes in it the size an entire city block can fit through without sucking in its belly.

More people were living in poverty in 2010, according to the census, than in all the time the census has been collecting data. People are dying from untreated dental problems, laws are appearing left and right that penalize the homeless and the poor, prisons are profiting, a dull rage is building, and the bottom line is a lot of people—far too many—are poor and getting poorer.

The kicker is that it won’t be getting better any time soon. The unemployment rate is predicted to continue to grow, well into 2014.

All of this is very bad news, indeed.

THE LAND OF HAND TO MOUTH

It’s an unhappy scene, poverty. And we’re not talking about the presence or absence of one or two niceties. The low, low place that living hand to mouth can bring you is much more complex and all-encompassing than not being able to afford one or two top shelf amenities that might make life a bit more enjoyable when you’re out there grinding away.

For most of my life I’ve been like most of the world, I guess—getting by without a whole lot of money. Sometimes it’s been real bad. Sometimes it’s been average. And sometimes, for a minute, life’s been pretty comfortable. The truth is, though, that those comfortable times have been pretty short lived. And even then, my standard of comparison is one you’d find in a person who grew up in a poor family.

What do I mean by “poor”? I mean at our worst we were homeless and cooking food in a campfire, or living in a house with buckets for toilets. And at our best, we were trying hard to fit into the suburban middle class, but still accepting bags of hand me downs from other families. By poor, I mean the regular presence of bargain brands; I mean the type of life where you grow up always thinking about how much things cost, and how you don’t have enough to do A, B, or C; and mostly, I mean the type of deeply-seeded awareness where poverty is a way of your thinking and acting. I’m not proud of this, and I don’t think it necessarily makes a person deep or interesting. It’s just how I grew up.

Even through all of that, there was the sense that you could escape it. Maybe. One day. Going to bed hungry means you and your little brother would meet up and sneak food from the fridge after everyone else was asleep. But even on nights you couldn’t quell the hunger that was so much deeper than stomach pangs, you imagined that if you were talented enough and motivated enough, you would be plucked out of such fates and arrive in the Land of Where You Have Always Belonged; that there was a golden cot with your name on it, just waiting for you to show your mettle. After all, woven deeply into the American consciousness are a few narratives. One of them is the Rags to Riches myth; essentially the Conservative notion of Bootstrap. The myth that we live in a land of abundant opportunity, and in which no matter what your meager beginnings, if you stick it out, there is gold enough to go around.

I guess we all buy into that in this place. But recent times have put a harsh dent into those kinds of ideas.

THE VERY AVERAGE AND SUDDENLY ELUSIVE LIFE

For a short time in Manhattan, when I was 30 and working in publishing, I was bringing home a very, very average paycheck, but it was a salary. It was not minimum wage. It was not Freelance. It was pretty okay. What helped a lot was that I was living with a woman who was also making a modest salary. Those days of combining our paychecks were the most comfortable of my life. I actually had money every check that I could do something with. Go out, buy clothes, buy gifts, save…live. Absent, finally, was the constant fear and shame and worry and self-loathing that can potentially accompany a lower income lifestyle in such a nation as the USA.

Again, mind you—in the scheme of things, our income was pretty average. A cousin of mine (our families went quite different directions) was making more all by herself and living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan before she was out of her 20s. Yet, that kind of “pretty average” to a lot of people out there is the Good Life. And the number of those people is growing every day.

That’s an important part of what I’m writing here. That must always be considered: the context of our culture. After all, poverty is a relative standard. Relative to what others have, to what is required to do or acquire certain things; relative to how others see poverty; relative to what means there are to live and survive without having lots of currency. And in a nation like the USA—where (increasingly) the rhetoric and value system is one that demonizes the poor; worships the affluent and the always-in-style; and penalizes with a severity that increases directly inversely proportionate to the wealth one commands—it is very hard to be poor.

For the past few years it’s been hard for a lot of people. I’ve been one of them. It’s been hard not only because, well, it’s hard to live in the emotional and practical reality of poverty, but because the idea that you can lift yourself out of it is in danger of extinction. That notion that if you get a degree, or work hard (or both); that if you are talented and ambitious, then it’s only a matter of time before you are  living comfortably—is suffering some heavy blows. When you are a child, you vow to “make it,” and you hold on because you know anything is possible. And then you get into your 20s, or 30s, you rack up some serious student loan debt—if you are lucky enough to go to college—and you work toward that dream.

Time stretches on….and on….and on….and nothing gets better. And what if things get worse?

I’m taking the time to write this post because I think it’s important to keep track of the experience I’ve been having. Not because I think it makes me very special to have been here. It’s just the opposite. It’s an important story because so many of us are living it right now. And the truth is, it’s an uncomfortable piece of writing that’s taken a handful of sittings over the course of a week. It’s a story I’d rather put behind me (but of course!), full of experiences I’d rather forget. (Wouldn’t we all!) It’s a reality you don’t want to sit in a second longer than you are forced to. But we need to be aware of where our fellow human beings are, and what they are feeling. Even if we are lucky enough to be living a different fate. Because our individual moments of good fortune do nothing to affect the fate of millions, or create big enough shifts to change systemic wrongs.

And when you are beset by these wrongs…well, you barely admit to yourself, let alone anyone else. When you’re in the thick of it, you don’t stop too long to marvel at the misery of it. That’s not sensible. You do what you have to do. From moment to moment, and from day to day. That’s what we do, right? That’s all there is to do. You try not to become so weary that you think of giving up as more comfortable than continuing to fight. But mostly, you keep your eyes focused on the next step, and you don’t give yourself time to wallow. You’d become mired.

I feel like I’m at a place where I can take a breath. After a long, thin, period, I’ve found a way to bring income home again. I dare to hope things might change, finally. And yet, I hesitate to tell this tale; to spin out all the moments and feelings and thoughts, and the reality of poverty. Why? Why is that?

THE WORST KEPT SECRET

Because you want to keep poverty a secret. as glaring and obvious is the global wreckage and domestic corrosion of economic inequality and violence, we still want to keep it quiet when it affects us. Which is, of course, very convenient to those who benefit the most from the (global) fallout. When what needs to happen is a great anger arise from the realities of injustice and imbalance so many are living, instead we hush up.

And we hush up for myriad reasons. Men are told that women will write us off if we don’t have cash at the ready. And many will. But that is not limited to women. Sure, there are engrained ideas about what MEN and WOMEN need to bring to the party to be viable mates. And many buy into those. But not all.

No, I think the factors are bigger than that in a capitalist system. Here, poverty feels like a rot. You can see and smell it from down the block. In a capitalist system, we perceive poverty as if infectious. Poverty pulses with a neediness that threatens to absorb your own power. When you are not poor, you will very probably feel confronted by it. Threatened by it. Powerless in the face of it. Without thinking, you back away. And in backing away, further isolate people who are extremely isolated already. All around them is a bustling, shouting, barking, neon cash machine that spins some people in big circles and drives them around like a roller-coaster, while for others, the machine does nothing but pollute the air and water and food supply; keep them up all night; and steal their friends, peace of mind, and children.

So, as much as possible, you  keep your troubles to yourself when you are suffering with lack. They are your troubles, after all! You eat bitter, as the Chinese say. No need to advertise your struggle. You tell yourself you are building character. Or…whatever you have to tell yourself to keep going.

Artists, entrepreneurs, and the self-promoting learn in many places that success! breeds! success! and it’s best not to disclose anything but the good news about your product and your company or your practice. Feed that positive buzz. I have spent a lot of time as a freelance artist, and this was one I grappled with. Social media circles make the conflict clear. These are both your friends and clients (and potential clients). I needed to tell the truth of my situation, but at almost every turn, I was pressured to keep quiet about it. Not by people saying hush…but by my own feelings, and the realities of living in this culture, and the realities of being a self-employed artist. Why would people bring their projects to me if I am going broke? They will look at one artist who is not broke and then, they will look at me, and then, they will think what capitalism has taught them to think: He clearly is no good at what he is doing. They will invest poverty (or wealth) with a moral value. As we all do. There will be no time to consider other factors that might be in play. They will simply walk their business over to the happy, bustling joint. And thus, the problem compounds.

In one of the more revealing moments I had with an artist friend who constantly preached authenticity and never editing who you were as an artist and person when you present yourself to the audience, I was told that this was the reason they never spoke about their own looming and constant money worries: It just wasn’t smart as a business consideration. Which makes sense! A practical sense. I can’t blame them for that, in the end. I personally couldn’t keep so quiet about things so pressing in my life, but then again, I’m a different sort of artist. I happen to be better at telling or showing you what I see and how I feel, than I am at running a storefront.

But that’s how strongly we are indoctrinated with this social rule. We are taught that be you woman or man, businessperson or otherwise, you just don’t let it be known too much when you are struggling with money. It doesn’t make you look able, strong, or cool. It makes you look like a failure (nevermind that at least 15% of the nation is “failing” as well!) You will make others uncomfortable. There’s that sense of jinx or magical vibes to the admonition: By concentrating and admitting the desperateness of the situation, you will perpetuate the momentum of your bad luck, and so shhhhh Fake it Til Ya Make It!

And again, in a nation like the USA, the fault lines and division are very clear. And not much room for gray.

The isolation this pushes you into is painful. When you are down and out, the last thing you need is isolation. You need community. You need help. You need a shoulder, an ear, another human to remind you that you are not contagious, or catastrophic. And that your problems don’t make you a bad person, but that they are part of a larger network of faultlines. And that you are not alone.

A GROWING LACK OF POWER

The notion that you don’t have enough, that you cannot do this or that—whether it is wash the clothes, buy the children new shoes, replace a candle, replace clothes, replace the batteries in a TV remote, or come along when friends go out to the bar or the bowling alley—is a disempowering one. And all in all, that is what being poor equals. A lack of power. A lack of power needed to affect your own destiny.

Sure, the lack is not absolute. You are a human being, even in the USA! You can still wield power. You can fight against the imbalance and the obstacles. You can be ingenious, and motivated, and entrepreneurial. You don’t have to let the baby stick paperclips or her fingers into electric outlets, you can whittle plugs from wood, if you can’t afford to buy them. You can wash clothes by hand with dish detergent. You can substitute water for milk in a recipe, or grow as much of your own food as  you can manage. And you do do many of these things.

What’s harder to do is stop the triggered thoughts that rise in your mind every where you look in your home. Each unpainted patch, each glued cup, every taped up wire or dark lamp whispers to your unconscious mind: broken…no good…expired. And the thoughts accumulate, and become a clamor.

wish i had a…. i can’t fix it…. useless…. this doesn’t work…. used up… insufficient… dying… corroded… waste

CAUGHT IN A GROWING WEB OF ENTROPY

The thorny patch of emotions grows thicker. The feelings and thoughts that are a result of this life situation grow entangled with each other, and in time, you can no longer tell where they end and you begin. You actually forget that they are attached to circumstance; that misery is not, necessarily, life. You forget that these thoughts are not you. Because they do not stay contained, these seedlings of hardship. Insecurity caused by finances bleeds over to the rest of your self-image and emotional experience of life. You are insecure about your cash, and so you are insecure about your ability to keep up your house, or keep the refrigerator full; insecure about your ability to parent your children properly, or about your appearance, or about your ability to respond to any given event that might not be foreseen. This insecurity becomes part of your wardrobe, your eye contact, your body posture, your walk.

An insecurity that persists long enough becomes dread. And dread, anxiety, depression, shame, hopelessness, and anger are lively spirits in the land of Hand To Mouth.

These feelings are often touched on when people write about poverty, or unemployment. Rarely is the aura of entropy discussed. And to be poor means to be run through with the energy of entropy. All around you, everything is fading, failing, breaking, and turning to dust. Entropy is a fact of life, and this is the case always…but when you have disposable cash, you buy off that reality. You replace batteries. You buy a new toothbrush when the old one becomes smushed and worn out. When you break a tooth, you get a crown. You buy new lightbulbs when you need them, instead of juggling lights from room to room. You don’t wrap food in Rite-Aid bags to store them in the fridge, you use plastic wrap so you can see the food. You don’t keep using the same nasty old sponge in the sink; you buy a new one! Your shoes are clean and sharp and stylish, not worn out and floppy and faded. Your clothes, too. When you have regular income, and enough to pay more than rent, every day you put forth energy in the form of physical effort as well as currency and you rejuvenate your environment and you refresh your ability to operate and be mobile and effective in the material world.

But without that money, you see things breaking down right and left. You squeeze remote controls that don’t work. Pull doorknobs that don’t properly turn. Reappearing: a singing toy that sings too low, slow and draggy before stopping altogether. The ever present hand of entropy colors your overall perception of life and self.

Many of these things—utilities shut off, toys that can’t be used anymore, non-working lights—will lead to a discussion with your children that may be painful to you. A conversation that costs yet more energy because of how much effort it takes to repeat it over and over. A conversation that exacts an energetic toll because of how it breaks your heart each time. Maybe you lie to them about what the situation is at one time or another during the day because you don’t want them to also obsess about money or attribute everything painful in life to poverty. On one hand, you are glad that they will not take things for granted and understand that there is a cost to the comforts of life, but you don’t want them to be one like you: A child of lack who grew up with that all-pervading reality. Cheap brands. Knock-offs. Humiliation in school. Bag lunches. Inability to stay quiet on what something cost. Tendency to brag about how much your shoes cost. We can recognize each other, children of poverty. We know the signs. The desperation, the overvaluation of luxury, the ambition to never Be There Again. The ease with which we discuss money, crassly. The anxiety, the inability to save. Mostly, you don’t want your children to grow into adults who are invested with a powerless self-image.

Because no matter what you do, or how you decide to think of it, every way you turn, poverty is not just a lack of power, but a growing lack of power. And it is hard to fight because the power needed to counter poverty is basically an energy exchange in which the rate keeps you at a loss. That is, the time and energy you invest in whittling those socket plugs is going to cost you more than the investment you would have made simply by dropping 1.99 into a cashier’s hand. The wear on your body and peace of mind are not negligible as you scramble to bridge another gap, or pop a finger in a dam, or hold two ends together, or in some other way interject your body into an equation that is constantly crumbling.

A CHAIN REACTION OF LOSS

Poverty is alive, as if a virus. It grows exponentially. Poverty is a chain reaction of loss. There are so many ways to illustrate this. Here’s an obvious one: You don’t have money for a dental checkup, or cleaning. Your dental problems get worse. One day, when chewing, a filling falls out. The last thing you can afford is a trip to the dentist’s, so you do your best to brush that tooth a little more carefully. But of course, decay begins. And spreads. What would have been an easy filling when caught in time, soon turns into a black hole in your tooth that eats away more tooth the longer you don’t get it filled. You avoid it until a pain festers there, and grows more every day until it wracks your brain constantly, and soon you can’t sleep. Now, you either do a root canal with crown ($2000, roughly), or you have the tooth pulled (about $120). The tooth gets pulled, of course. You probably borrowed or hocked something to get even that $120, so there’s a little more debt and stress. And there goes the Kool Aid Smile you’ve been famous for since you were a child. There goes your self image. You smile less, embarrassed of the gaps in your smile. This affects how you interact with others. Which affects all those dealings and their outcome in some way. This little hole that crept into your tooth, too, creeps into your life. And grows.

Your glasses are broken. You don’t replace them. You can’t! You tape them together. You avoid wearing them. You can’t see. You stop talking to people who pass by on the street because you cannot see them without your glasses. Or your wear your contacts for far too long and cause irritation and infection to your eyes. You run out of saline too fast, so you store two contact lenses on one side of the holder, decreasing the effectiveness of the sterilizing solution. Sometimes you can’t afford saline/sterilizer at all, and you won’t wear the geeked out glasses with the tape on one side so you stroll down the street, nearly blind, keeping your eyes to the ground. Not smiling too wide, either! Remember.

Like bubbles of mercury on the ground—like that clamor of thoughts that your home life sends to you every day—these conditions begin to cluster and add to one another.

You wear things as many times as you can before they smell to cut down on costs of washing the clothes. You no longer buy the brands that are the most environmentally sound, or non-toxic. You do your best, but inevitably, your shampoos and soaps and deodorants simply become what you can afford. So your conscious will and personality and desires are less and less motivating your actions and you are becoming One Who Survives. Gone are the days of the shampoo in the cool bottle that smells so heavenly you feel better just putting in your hair. Gone is that little good feeling that you walked around with for hours simply for using something that made you feel good. Gone are the sharp razors; hello store brand. Gone is the full fridge, gone are the desserts.

And, unbidden—even if not in your own home—the day becomes, yet, a thread of thoughts and instances in which you Don’t Have Enough. Those thoughts drag behind them bags weighted with shame; with fear; with worry and insecurity; with anger. Being full of those feelings all the time erodes your health. (Which costs more money.) And being full of those thoughts and feelings take up your time, too. Those take energy. This week, two tall cups of coffee are needed each morning, instead of the one!

And what about something as simple and reliable as coffee in the morning? Even coffee is a luxury, despite your addiction. It’s actually very expensive. Of course you buy the cheap stuff. And in a rare pinch, maybe you use grounds twice. Maybe you cover up your cup when it grows cold and put it in the fridge for tomorrow. Maybe you run out of sugar and just drink it black, no sugar. Maybe you do all those things. The days when you could saunter over to the bakery and buy an Americano with two extra shots for a $3.00 coffee seems very distant. And extravagant as hell!

All these subtractions and detours build on themselves. You feel out of breath with the hustle, because when you are poor, the hustle never ends. The need to be creative and enterprising never ends. The need to Make Do never ends. The feelings that you are a loser are ever-present. You know it’s a losing game, and you know it’s a crooked one. But who wants to lose, even at a crooked game?

PERVERSE PENALTIES…AND ANGER

It’s no wonder you end up feeling so exhausted. Perversely, a life of poverty is a life in which you need to run even faster. Because being low on cash marks you. It marks you like a tiny rodent scrambling under the hot desert sun, and the birds of prey sure do come. Late fees, disconnection fees, early cancellation fees, overdraft fees, bounced checks, low balance fees, higher interest rates, poorer terms for the poor…there is a network of vampiric thorns in place designed to trip up, puncture, and suck the life from those who cannot afford to stay sufficiently solvent. You know it. You are very aware of it. You grew resentful. You grow afraid of what the next penalty will be. It’s only a matter of time. You grow afraid, even, of the mail. You avoid it. You don’t empty the mailbox for a week straight. What do you care? There will only be more news about how much you owe. A recipe of penalty. Another mouthful of dread.

There is always this pushing upon you. This force pushing down upon  you. It is entropy. Resisting it is painful, and gets harder the less money you have. Somehow, you believe in yourself. It’s a rough patch. the whole nation is suffering. And then you think Well…most of us. There are those who are not.

Some may handle poverty better than I describe it here. Poverty will not feel the same in different cultures, perhaps. And there is a difference between living on a meager income, and being both broke and unemployed. So there is a continuum, no doubt. I am not pretending to know the minds of millions of people, and ultimately, I speak only from my own experience.

In my experience, it is inevitable that living in these conditions long enough, an anger will grow in you. An anger that in this whole dumb lottery of power and chance, you drew the bad card. Not because you deserve it, but because that’s the luck of the damn draw. The well-coiffed sons of privilege laughing as they duck to get into their Porsches or slide into their Senatorial seats are not inherently more worthy souls, or righteous beings. No matter what the movies and advertisements try to tell us. At best, they got lucky by birth or other circumstance. At worst, they were blessed by an institutional corruption that favors them. In any case, why should they get top notch dental care, a car at 16, and a full, nutritious menu every day of the week? Why should they never know a night in jail? Why should they get bailed out of every scrape and set back on the path of good fortune, while you end up running yourself ragged and broke over ten bucks? Why should there be such different worlds, and some born to hardship from the start? What makes them so special as to be given such carefree lives? Why shouldn’t your worries also be theirs?

The anger pervades, pollutes, poisons you. Poisons your heart. You push it away and try to talk yourself back to the generous soul that you know yourself to be. You are careful not to cultivate self-pity. You read your books that help breathe spirituality back into your life. You meditate. You focus on the good. But…you still live in the U.S.A. And you’re not 22 anymore, where it’s easy to frame things romantically. You “should” have it all figured out by now. You “should” be comfortable. You “should” have an IRA and savings, and a new-ish car, and be spending money. You should have some security for tomorrow.

And despite your best efforts, the bitterness grows. The Mr. Hyde within grows. He is, in fact, fed by hunger. And before long, you have a hard time feeling good for other peoples’ good fortune. You live in a vicious competitive environment, and you are losing out. Each tip or wobble of the personal coffers signifies your own moral worth and competence as a human being. It’s no wonder your emotions run high; it’s no wonder you feel worn out. And you feel disappointed in yourself, as well. Even for having such thoughts and feelings. You know you are kinder than your emotions are revealing. But maybe you are not. And you wonder. It’s very easy to call yourself kind when you have a full belly. Let the resources run dry for too long and you may find yourself to be quite another sort of person. Either way, you can’t help it. You feel cornered by circumstance and you snarl like an animal with its leg in a trap. You need out, that’s all. You can’t think and you just need a goddamn break, already.

Sometimes the only break you will get comes in the form of escape. Liquor is a handy one. After all, liquor can be the poor man’s friend, deity, and medicine all in one. A reliable tonic for when you can’t afford to treat physical ailments, or when your mind grows weary from racing, fretting, or fearing. Just wash the worry away at the end of a day. Get back to a simple, relaxed state where you don’t care about money, and where you feel no pain. Of course, you are lucky if you can afford the bottom shelf stuff. It’s about $10. It bites a little harder and is a bit rougher on the body than the good stuff. But you get used to it pretty fast.

I AM VITAL, STRONG, AND REEK OF POTENTIAL. I AM THE CAPTAIN OF TIME.

The flip side to that feeling of entropy that surrounds you when you don’t have money to throw around at even the essentials, is a feeling of power and vitality and possibility when you have reliable and disposable income. Yup, when you have a pocketful of plastic or cash, and a good amount more in the bank, the horizon lays out before you like she’s your starry-eyed bride. You can be part of society at any juncture you desire. You might glide over here and buy a new shirt. (They’ll let you handle them because you look well-dressed already.) You might stop at the corner and scoop up some Shwarma. You might have a laugh with the flower vendor as you choose an arrangement with which to surprise a friend—all on the spur of the moment. You might see a movie. You might buy a slice. Who knows what you’ll decide to do! At any node in this culture you can plug in. You have that power. You can collect. You can browse. You can nibble. You can gift. You can fund. You can donate. You can bargain. You can walk away. You don’t need to rush. Time moves slower for you when you are solvent.

It’s true! When you are always lacking cash, you end up stressed out. About deadlines, schedules, closing times, bank holidays, end of the month, first of the month, bus schedules. You are very aware of time. And it is not your friend. Penalties await. Last chances await. Bounced checks await. Overdrafted accounts await. Shutoff notices await. And you better stay sharp on all of it.

When money is not a worry, it’s as if the whole world slows down. It literally feels that way—that the world is turning slower. You don’t need to try and drink the milk before it goes bad…or to make it last longer than natural. Because buying a new container is not an issue. You don’t need to run like mad for the bus stop. You can call a cab. You don’t need to beg a friend for a ride to the electric company before five p.m. because you’ve already paid your bill! In fact, you paid it as soon as it arrived instead of racing against a shut-off notice. You don’t need to rush for much of anything. You can wander and muse. Because your life is not a constant battle to stay alive. Because having money means having leisure time.

And just as with cash you feel empowered, belonging, and able to tap into the society machine at will; when you are broke you feel like an outcast. You don’t belong. You are a criminal. A potential drain. At no point in the chain of societal nodes can you take command. At no point can you enter. At no point can you negotiate anything, unless it is by the good graces of another. You best not loiter. You will be okay if your clothes are new, and the lighter skinned you are, generally. But if you are walking in a circle at the mall, but not holding a Subway sandwich bag or a Pizza Hut cup, and are wearing ragged clothes, and especially if you are brown—then you are an arrest or police harassment waiting to happen.

TWISTED OUT OF SHAPE

Do you note the narrow focus of this writing? How it all becomes about your own self, your own mind, your own body, your own future? Even reading through it feels like being stuffed into a hole all alone with your rancid mind. And that’s what these situations do to a person. That’s part of that isolation. And the survival instinct, which is running on overdrive. There’s nothing more selfish than the instinct to survive, after all. And living in that place for too long can make you grabby, and make you mean. And it can make you ugly. These fears and feelings distort a person. I’ve seen it up close in the faces of people in my life; people stressed out about gas every day, or about their kids’ clothes. People who are living with all the feelings and stressors that I’ve written about here. People who are kind and beautiful souls, but after years of living this way, those qualities become harder to see…because poverty can twist you out of shape like that.

It needn’t be that way, of course. There are  many shapes a culture can take. And a wiser society would be built more compassionately. A wiser nation would not view poverty or unemployment as a personal failure, but as a societal one. A kinder nation would have, as a reflex, a more communal spirit in which we looked out for each other. In the USA it is very hard to be poor and/or unemployed. How do you get your food if you do not buy it from the store? In some cases, people have tried gardening as a solution, and the city turns around and outlaws yard gardens. A city often will outlaw panhandling, or giving food away, or paying other peoples’ parking tickets. Our culture is not arranged in a way that people can easily help each other, or provide for themselves outside of the rigid, narrow, selfish, and tyrannical capitalist path. There is a sick and ugly network of mechanisms in place in this country to both shame you for being poor, as well as to keep you from escaping your situation. This is why going broke in a place like the USA can lead an otherwise rational and balanced soul to such desperation.

A HUNGRY MAN IS AN ANGRY MAN

Poverty engenders a feeling of powerlessness in you beyond what some might imagine. It’s like that insecurity I wrote about earlier. That feeling of powerlessness doesn’t stay contained to one area. It grows in you when you are not earning enough money, or can’t find employment and can easily metastasize into you feeling and acting generally powerless, and thinking of yourself as powerless. You don’t even see it happening. And one day you look at your thinking or actions and say “How did this happen? I am not this person. I don’t think of myself as ineffectual and unable to change things!” But it sneaks up on you, living in that mental and physical aura and environment every day.

And all the emotions that poverty breeds do this; carry over into areas where they are destructive and possibly consuming. And you forget what it is like to view things differently. And you feel there is no salvation for you. You can easily begin to burn inside with the injustice that is all around you, the injustice that is reaching into your home and snatching teeth from your head; the injustice that is mocking your manhood, and degrading your personhood, and is causing your children pain. And it doesn’t take too much of this, or too long of this, to bring you to the point where you feel you are ready to blow. Because being poor doesn’t mean you are stupid. And it doesn’t mean you can’t see what’s going on. And what’s going on is that everything is failing, divided unfairly, and for you and yours is pain—while for others, its pure pleasure.

It’s important to remember that when we are talking about a “divide,” we are not talking about how one person has a BMW with leather interior and the next person has a beat up 1990 Chevy. The divide is much more meaningful and dangerous than that. We are talking about a divide in overall peace of mind. A divide in the feelings of self-worth that some have and some lack. A divide between ideas like “I belong here and there is hope and good times ahead for me” versus “I am tolled and harrassed at every turn and I can’t rest and there is no way out for me.” A divide between “I want this society and system to work out and I’ll do what I can to perpetuate its success” and “It will be best for everyone if this thing topples and all those who benefit from its standing scream on the way down.” We should not underestimate the volatile nature of a public—or even one person—who feels s/he has nothing left to lose; that the deck is stacked beyond righting; that nobody is listening, and nothing will change. In fact, the roots of enmity against the United States from abroad, I would venture, is in large part caused by this dynamic. Many who suffer outside our borders and live in squalor and in pain see so many Americans living obliviously in great comfort and know it to be unfair, and further, know the situation to be exploitive. I do not see the terrorism this breeds as so very different than other violent domestic reactions to economic violence. I’ve lived for a while now at what felt like the edge of everything. It’s a maddening place.

I think it was about two years ago when I heard of a man in a city nearby (Portland?) who went on a violent rampage that was explained by his losing his job, and by the pressures of the economy. At the time, I responded in a way that I see now as disappointingly smug, and not just a little nâïve: I wrote that he obviously had other issues if losing his job caused him to become violent in such a jarring way. Now, that may be true. But on the other hand, as I hope this writing has helped illustrate, in my opinion and experience, prolonged poverty and unemployment are big enough factors in and of themselves to destabilize a person. You don’t really need much more than that to send you off the edge. And the fact that despite my upbringing, I could have been oblivious to that simply because I had regular income at the time is just as worrisome as the idea that the conditions that pushed that man toward destruction are common today, and only growing more ubiquitous.

Take a society; blend ignorance of the comfortable with desperation of the poor, and you have a dangerous mix. And in times like this, ignorance thrives. I’ve not even touched on other important factors related to this recession/depression. For example, the fact that if you’re not white, you are being hit even harder by this economic downturn. Or what it feels like to have a name that you know will decrease your chances of getting an interview just by the nature of your ethnicity, all while hearing increasingly more scapegoating by other destitute people who are blaming their troubles on people with names or skin like you. In a time when those of us struggling ought be united in our plight, wizened demons of racism and division rear their ugly heads and keep us squabbling and at each others’ throats.

NO MORE WAR ON THE POOR

A photo of the Wall Street protests going on right now.

It is very much in the interest of society that we not let economic inequality continue as it has. The momentum of today’s class war on the poor has accelerated to a dangerous fervor. This war, and all the forms it takes, is, of course, an accepted part of the American Dream; it’s values seeded deeply in all of our ideas of what wealth means and what poverty means. It is a long-running war. But any student of history knows that the pitch of a war can pivot on the smallest happening. Winter might strike early. The crops might rot. The supply lines might be interrupted. The troops might get dysentery. The villagers might have more to fight for than a worn out cadre of mercenary soldiers. An unforeseen geographical or meteorological aberration can upset everything. And then, the tide shifts with barely a moment’s notice, and woe to those caught unprepared.

Warren Buffet has a sense of this, and that is why he is one of the rich people in this nation who has spoken up about the inequality. That is why he has recently advocated for people in his income bracket to pay a fair share in taxes. I doubt very much that this statement is purely motivated by altruism. Not to be ungenerous to him; I still very much appreciate and credit him for saying what is true and obvious, and what is easier to forget when you are very comfortable. I do think he comes from a good place, too.

But I have no doubt that he sees the writing on the wall. It’s there for anyone who cares to look around today. The proles will put up with a whole lot. A whole hell of a lot. But they have limits, make no mistake. If you leave people with no way out of Hell, they will tunnel. Even if all they have are their own fingers. Put everything beautiful on one side of a wall, and they will tunnel. Lock up all the resources in one building and reinforce the walls with steel that reached fifty feet underground—but don’t forget that you have to pay someone to make the key to lock it, pay someone to empty the garbages, and pay someone to come read your meter. Those people will not be in your income bracket. And the tricks of division will not work forever, or on all people. Warren Buffet has made a simple calculation and would rather pay some more taxes than fear his janitor, his maid, his mailman, his lawnboy, his locksmith, his pizza delivery person, and every other blue collar or unemployed person in his path.

The real people who are scared are the power elite. Of course, they’re trying to make you scared and us scared. But I can tell you, having been a reporter for the New York Times, that on the inside they’re very, very frightened. They do not want movements like this to grow, and they understand on some level — whether it’s subconscious or, in other cases, even overt — that the criminal class in this country has seized power.”

—Journalist Chris Hedges

But he should fear them. And all those who would run an endless array of tricks to keep the poor from escaping their lot should fear us. And all those who would enact laws to further game this crooked system should fear us. And the politicians who collude with their wealthy benefactors should fear us. And all those who would make the mistake of thinking the poor are their own private milk sack to be forever squashed and kneaded should fear us. And all those who would stay quiet and inactive in the face of this class war, believing they can drop enough coin into security systems and gates and guard dogs to keep us at bay will come to regret such errors of judgment.

They keep us as far away as they can, don’t they?  They do it with high rents, and loitering laws, and unwritten dress codes, and police, and expensive price tags on meals that cost a week’s pay for most of us. It’s easy for them to keep squeezing the yoke around the necks of people who never can answer back; people who are too busy trying to make rent to be effective activists or in some other way address the injustice that is crushing them. It presents no moral quandary to kill people slowly and by degrees when they are an abstract concept to you. And the poor remain abstract to rich because the media refuses to tell the truth of things, as the media exists as fairy-tales for the rich. And they don’t want to bother their beautiful minds with such icky details. The news blackout of the recent protests at Wall Street insure they won’t have to.

But what if the poor and exploited were to begin showing up everywhere? What if there were no place an Uppercrustian could go without seeing signs of our anger? What if we began leaving our mark…and with it, a strong phrase adopted as our calling card? Something like No More War on the Poor? What if the 1-Percenters began seeing this phrase everywhere they turned? What if it were spraypainted on every Mercedes? What if this phrase were spray-painted on the pretty black asphalt driveways of every congress member’s driveway? What if cards with No More War on the Poor scrawled on them turned up in the dry-cleaning of every Senator? What if that dry-cleaning had poison ivy in it, too? Or bleach? What if their Mercedes began coming back with scratches down the side instead of a wax job? What if their landscaper watered their prize rose bushes with weedkiller instead of water? What if  they could never pinpoint where the ongoing action was coming from…because it was coming from everywhere?

Nobody in the world, nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them.”

—Assata Shakur

It would be a voice they could not escape. There would not need to be any organization or central group. It would be a project that millions could undertake. People wouldn’t need to devote ten hours a week in a week already jam packed with duties and exhaustion. A note here, an action there. Wait for opportunity to show itself and then speak in that voice that speaks for us all. And what if a million people were spreading this message? What if ten million were? What if the newspapers had no choice, eventually, but to begin covering the strange flurry of messaging that was showing up on napkins in restaurants, and car doors, and driveways, and in flower deliveries and grocery bags? What if the right people began seeing the many, many disaffected and suffering humans they previously never had to stare at? What if they began feeling cornered and surrounded? What if we remembered that we do surround them?

Perhaps bit by bit, changes would happen. Think of it as a haunting. Or think of it as advertising! Advertising works, you know. If there is no way to turn away from the Coca Cola ad, you will eventually come to memorize it. And whether you like it or not, it will work on you. What if the rich and the crooked were to be haunted by the anger of millions? There would be no formal advocacy group or official that politicians or billionaires could bury under or buy off with good PR, or kickback. There would be no weaseling away from action. Action is all that would alleviate the million-pronged assault. Better conditions for people. Change angry, hungry people who need a way to vent against the injustice into people happy with life because justice is alive and well and affecting them for the better.

It would be one thing if the poorest of us could leave it all up to those who benefit from ignoring their plight. But that would make no sense. Collective anger needs to give voice to the conscience that too many powerful people lack today. Perhaps this particular imagining of a nationwide project—a faceless but inescapable voice—is not the answer. I don’t claim to have an answer. But I know one needs to be found. I know today’s so-called solutions are getting us nowhere. After all, this is not really about an acute crisis, but a long-term pattern and a systemic imbalance. And this systemic imbalance will remain, even after the last of the protestors on Wall Street have gone home.

There is a power differential in play in our nation that is killing most of us. And we need to take some of that power back. It is not only possible for us to do that, it is the only way out.

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 of hurt or anger to a broader view of the very thing that moves behind this event and is so upsetting about it. This is what I will try to do.

__

Why can’t we roam this open country?
Oh, why can’t we be what we wanna be?
We want to be free.

–Bob Marley, 3 o’Clock Roadblock

ROADBLOCK

What a frenzy.

What a storm of feelings, thoughts, tweets, and emotions were exploded into view with that one event, where the President of the United States of America—a man of color—answered the insincere jeering of a single white citizen by producing his identity papers for inspection. As if our duly elected President was but a teen at a police checkpoint, wearing baggy pants and with his hands up against the hood. As if he were a young man standing on a corner looking Mexicano, immediately suspect and thus beholden to the law man to prove he was not up to criminal acts. What a shaking of the timbers of racial history were felt up and down the blogosphere in this one simple happening.

And rightly so. What a harsh reality we trade in; that it will take far more time than our grandparents’, parents’, or our own lifetimes to evolve past the sickly, sadistic, inhuman history we Americans share on matters of race. In matters of history—look to Mexico, or China, or Egypt—this country is in an infantile stage. And the things that were done to African Americans, and Indians (indigenous peoples from el Norte as well as from south of the “border”); to Chinese and Japanese and Chileans and so on…. these ghosts will not fade fast.

Donald Trump is one of those ghosts, his ailing caricature of a human form cavorting to and fro, swaying recklessly but cleverly. Almost as if animated by an actual soul, he bellows nearly-intelligible sounds, and the media flocks to absorb the spittle. His expression remains forever puckered like a lemon-shocked anus-mouth, his mind alight with tired stereotypes and bursts of fart-static. A clown who doesn’t have the decency to laugh at himself.

And Donald is so easy to hate, isn’t he? Because he is a hateful man. And because he enlists the powers of hate, hate long rooted in American soil. Hate that long ago drew blood and tossed ropes and smiled for the picture as the body cooled to a dusk-like temperature. Hate that raided Native American villages to murder sleeping children. Hate that buffed its boots before demanding that black men duck their eyes, and go drink from some other fountain. Hate that considers women, and Blacks and Cubans and Haitians and Iraqis and Afghanis and Mexican and Chinese and Vietnamese and Puerto Rican as less than human. Hate today that spends Joe Arpaio’s paycheck, props up his decaying frame, and parades his prisoners in pink. Hate yesterday that reneged on treaties, and swallowed up gold, and burned codices.

Donald Trump is animated by the very same hate that is used to divide so many people today, and strives to obscure the roots of our liberation as it obscures the hands that lock the cuffs on us. It is a disease of the mind and soul called White Supremacy. And in the land wherein this virus thrives, certain kinds of men, with their ballooned minds and feverish egos, get to demand certain concessions from other people: that you surrender your papers; that you not harbor anger in your eye or your tone lest it be beaten out of you; that law shall endorse such beatings; that you prone out on the ground with a gun in your back at a moment’s notice; that you swallow a bullet if the bully feels sexy while perched up there and straddled around your spine. It is a land where you apologize for a role you never asked for but is ascribed to you by thieves and liars; where They will always have the right to tell you to pull over and prove yourself, and where You will always comply and perhaps be allowed to live with just humiliation if you are lucky enough to walk away with your life.

And so the target of so much history, for a day, becomes Donald “I am the Patriarchy” Trump. And many hearts seethe for his being so cruel as to remind us of our history, and to imply that even when you gain The Most Powerful Office In The World, it means nothing next to the anger of a White Man. It was the same reminder Republican Senator Joe “YOU LIE” Wilson gave us when he shouted down the President of the United States in the middle of an address that was adorned with all the pomp and decorum as we see fit to afford our nation’s executive leader. That shout, that demand to show papers, that insistence that you duck your eyes, it hisses You can even become President, but you still are not White. Which means you are not really the President. Don’t go dreaming that somehow you are now more powerful than me, darkie.

And as an immediate and visceral (and predictable) reaction, what did so many of us people of color need to see the President do? We needed him to scoff at the implication that such assertions could be true. We needed him to refute that reality. To deny it exists. To stand up and stand proud. To destroy that reality with a new action.

Was coughing up the papers but then roasting Trump at a gala dinner in front of the Press enough? Was ordering the home invasion and murder of a wanted man of color in Pakistan enough to erase that reality? Perhaps for our empathy with Obama being humiliated, it was. Perhaps now the unpleasant memory of watching the national daddy figure bow to a carnival barker has been mitigated for most. Maybe now that feeling, as if we watched the POTUS hand over his lunch money to bullies, has been nullified, gunsmoke wafting about our heads like purifying incense smoke.

And I suppose it is best to take the man at his word: he saw the Birtherism (also known as “Racism”) wasn’t going to go away and wanted to squash it and force the GOP ravers into a corner by removing what he saw as their last leg in what was left of the Birther argument.

But I do not think it does the larger issue any service to forget it when the feelings fade, or to imagine it resolved because the President has shown his papers, is in the clear, and we are feeling tough again because, damn son—he’s got that killer instinct. Just as Rosa Parks’ challenge was not to one bus driver, but to an entire system of inequality, this matter is much broader and deeper than the pageantry that recently unfolded between two rich men on TV.

Yes, the dynamic where we identify culturally or ethnically in some way with President Obama (and as a man of color, I do) leads us to watch the disgusting Trump claim victory for making the President skip on command, and we fume with empathy. We gnash our teeth and swear our allegiance all over again to Barack, this poor besieged man who has to endure the barbs and slings of Age Old Racism. This intelligent, thoughtful scholar, statesman, gentleman, father and husband. This President who bears up nobly in conditions potentially humiliating, conditions asked of no other President has been before him. We spit on the ground and growl Trump’s name. We swear to show up in the voting booth for the Democrats…as if that in any measurable way addresses the larger issue of Them Who Shall Be Asked For Papers.

CONQUER AND DIVIDE

I should probably clearly state the obvious in case it is not as obvious as I’d hope: the American Black experience is deep, unique, and I highly respect it. I would never claim to see it in all its parts or stand within it. I am not pretending to have any stake or voice therein. At the same time, I have my own experiences as a Xicano, and there is some degree of overlap between the experiences of all people of color in this nation. This I know from years of activism and friendships and conversations with people of different ethnicities.

Also—quite important to suss out and account for—there are (exploitable) gaps between our experiences. It is in those gaps that divide and conquer wedges are introduced by the ruling class.

Strategically, it is in marginalized peoples’ great interest to discover these gaps ourselves so they cannot be exploited casually. It is in our great interest to find them, examine them, and prepare for the attacks that will be launched; attacks that would seek to exploit the latent weaknesses that could threaten our unity as people marginalized and exploited by the oppressive, racist hand of law. Black and Brown alike suffer behind the racist criminal justice system, for starters. Statistics for both Latinos as well as Blacks are disproportionately high for the actual number of crimes that run rampant through all communities, when compared. This is so because the law continues old power differentials and is implemented by human beings who have been conditioned by the same society .

And because law begins as idea, and only becomes strapped with force when enough people agree on that idea.

One of the ways that unfortunate ideas become commonly accepted is by the use of emotional triggers to mislead thought and obscure the true machinations of state or corporate power.

It is necessary to deny the apparent binaries here.

This is not just a black/white issue. Take it from Chuck D. And for all of us who care, there is a way to channel the need to see justice done in the wake of this ugly moment. There are other peoples and communities who would greatly benefit from our consideration in the current context. People who would suffer in continued indignities and abuse were we to avoid using that lens in a broader sense. Other communities that are having their own dignity denied, with not just social pressure demanding they suborn themselves and produce papers for how they look (not white), but laws. Laws and actions, I’m sorry to say, that are supported very much by President Obama. Laws being snuck under the radar that increase the reach of the surveillance state. as well as that feed into the growing prison and detention industry in the U.S. Like the actions of the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

I will be more specific on these both in a moment. But I wanted to prepare the soil of your imagination for this turn of thought. I invite you to explore these ideas:

• The President, seemingly the unwilling subject of this degrading and dehumanizing shape of act before our eyes—being forced to show papers in the course of his day, with no reason but for the fact that he is not a pale man called Smith—supports that very idea being implemented for others who Appear Foreign, and is directly involved with making this a reality across America.

• If it bothers me that he, as one person (and a very powerful one on the continuum considered) is subject to this, how can I engage the larger fight where millions are subjected to this? Millions of very vulnerable people. Not graduates of Ivy League schools; not powerful politicians with millions of dollars at their disposal, and millions of people clamoring to back them up.

2. This is not a struggle between Barack H. Obama and Donald Whatever Trump. Nor one between their persons or personalities. Sure, let us consider their power and from where their power derives, and what they use it for. Let us give context to the scene and the players. But we really don’t need to make either of them a demon or a hero for us to successfully engage this important fight. In fact, doing so will dilute our powers of observation and thought.

3. The battle is not between the Evil, Rich, Racist Ole GOP and the Beleaguered, Liberal, Bullied, Righteous Democrats. If I may presume to know and say so, the battle at the heart of this outrage and hurt here, is for principles. For human dignity, and human rights. The battle is for integrity. The battle is against racist hate shaped into popular opinion and finally, given the force of the masses’ will—be it in the shape of social pressure, law, violence, or all three.

Going forward, we must recognize the possible faultline that divides certain viewpoints rooted in the Black American experience from certain viewpoints in the Mexican American community, as well as in the Pro-Migrant community. Especially when exploited by the powers that be. We must dwell in our connectedness. It’s not hard. I know I don’t just care for Mexicanos. I care for all people who suffer behind the racist machinations afoot in the nation today.

4. It’s not citizens vs. immigrants. Human rights, dignity, fairness: these are not things we should let legal terms determine. These are things we want human beings to have. Don’t let the squirming exploiters and vampires at the top whisper to us the nightmarish myth of scarcity. Things only seem scarce when a small group of people need to capitalize on many people’s energies and resources, and this profit-making pyramid shape enforces an artificial scarcity.

When we feel we cannot even take care of “our own,” it’s easy to let a feeling of solidarity slip away. It makes me sad when I see people of color who should understand and join in the struggle that Mexicanos and other immigrants face today, but who veer away from that struggle imagining that immigrants represent a threat to their own community. This is the voice of White Supremacy, and it’s a bullhorn turned on all day and night in this land, so I understand. But when in all important ways our struggle is the same, “our own” can be an expansive thing—and these larger numbers will render us more powerful to fight those exploiters at the top, already unfairly given advantage.

Many of today’s most important issues deal with power differentials between the very rich, and the rest of us. Immigration is one of the most important area for us to mind. Many issues come together here. Drug war. Commerce, and the Economy. Lines of ownership; lines that signify an US and THEM, borders that we end up believing need small army units and millions of dollars of technology in guns, drones, and surveillance equipment to maintain their reality; their solidity.

In the issue of immigration and corporate abuse of borders and employees is revealed the secret of how towns and communities become economically destroyed by corporate powers being above the law, and exploiting the worker. In the selling of the idea that the only people affected are Criminal Illegal Alien Invader Types, the elite continue to exploit our vulnerable brothers and sisters.

In Immigration politics, we see the manipulative hand of Economics, and the fallout of Capitalism and Neoliberalism. Domestically as well as Internationally. Within this struggle are handholds to engage the struggle for working class rights, women’s rights, family rights, culture, reproduction, human rights, our national ethics.

As more and more strife becomes about resources and mobility, more conquer and divide tactics will be put to work in this area of Immigration.

We must remember first and foremost (and again at the end), that the forces that benefit from our being divided will seek to exploit all these key areas. A simple lens adjustment would make that impossible. We must come to realize how many of us share this same struggle; fighting that power that reared it’s ugly naked head recently under the glow of sunlight bouncing off skyscraper windows, and hissed at the President with breath as old and rancid as years of gallows sweat.

TO PUT IT ANOTHER WAY

There are so many discussions about the Arc of Obama in the eye of popular opinion as of yet. We’ve all had an intense experience of some sort from election day until now, though our specific experiences may vary, and our current feelings vary just as much. Some have offered arguable reasons for becoming disenchanted with his administration. I will avoid the political laundry list, some or all of with which you may or may not agree with. That’s not the conversation(s) I am here for. I don’t want to get sidetracked. I don’t want to exploit or even risk the potential differences and faultlines in our unity just for a moment. And when I say “our unity,” I mean working class people. I mean the 99% of income earners in the nation. I mean many many Black, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican, Guatemalan, Dominican, Chinese, Korean or otherwise golden brown beautiful red black people. I mean white people. Here, I talk to all those people marginalized in some way by the powers and status quo that men like Donald Trump act in the service of.

I propose that what we have in common here is the idea of how wrong it is to deny the full dignity and rights to the Other in the name of safety and legal procedure. I suggest that this fight and furious sense of injustice cannot and should not end with the humiliating press conference, nor with the empowering roast of Trump at a dinner you and I had no means nor invitation to attend.

PROMISES, PROMISES

Candidate and President Barack Obama made some very specific promises to crowds of Latinos, in speeches to NCLR and to the immigrant community. He decried the ICE raids that tore parents away from their children, he called the system broken. In passioned speech, he told desperate immigrant families that he had their back. That he understood their pain. That he was determined to make a difference for them. He said he was an ally to Latinos and to Immigrants and that we could count on him.

He then turns around and continues the raids, but in other shapes. He deports more people than George W. Bush does, insuring that many, many children are torn from their parents, after all. He does this in the name of Papers, not in the name of human rights or dignity.

President Obama and Janet Napolitano brag to the Republicans that they are deporting record numbers of undocumented immigrants. He turns his back on his own disabled aunt when the cold eye of ICE falls upon her. He sends troops to the US’ Southern border, when the economic refugees flee conditions in Mexico that have been greatly caused by NAFTA policies (A Democratic accomplishment under Bill Clinton). Those people risking rape, murder, starvation, and poverty to cross the border to find a chance at life don’t need bullets in their heads, they need help accessing resources so they don’t need to flee their homes and families.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security offers a program called “Secure Communities” (S-Comm) that ties in the FBI and ICE to local police so that anyone apprehended by local police has all their info shared with these other agencies, even if a person is not convicted of anything. We’ve seen how successful Arizona’s SB 1070 has been in disrupting society, and at driving a wedge between local police and many communities where people fear either being detained or simply being hassled based on ethnic signifiers. Many police have protested the implementation of S-Comm, understanding right away how it would harm their relationship with the immediate community and lend a hand to the proliferation of many crimes that would exploit this wedge. A few cities attempted to opt out of S-Comm, but voila! The cloak came off and Obama’s DHS suddenly informed these cities that the program was not, after all, voluntary. Whoops.

Immigrant communities understand that they are being targeted when they are just trying to feed their kids and make a living, often exploited by workplaces that know they live without protection from law or society. But to console the rest who don’t know this, Obama’s White House claims it is only deporting serious criminals. The most cursory examination of reality shows this to be a complete falsehood.

One easy example of this is shown quite blatantly by how the White House is going after activist, friend, and law school student Prerna Lal. Prerna is a positive role model, an engaged, passionate person and organizer. Hardly a serious criminal. (Please sign the petition to help Prerna fight deportation. Her crime? The creation and success of DreamActivist.org. Prerna was simply too successful in organizing students behind the DREAM Act, which—unlike these sly and disingenuous actions by the Department of Homeland Security—does exist in the service of human rights. We don’t need to be frozen in the sixties to aid those fighting for communities before it becomes common sense to do so. We can look Prerna’s way.

The stats tell the same story. The Obama administration is not deporting scores of dangerous criminals but people who have an old offense, or minor offenses, or who get caught up in the widening and growing web of “immigration enforcement,” or who are simply students and children of immigrants and dared to make a valedictorian speech at their school, or reach out to help other people in the same plight. Sometimes they are simply driving home from work, and get pulled over by an old, white, sheriff who might as well be Donald Trump. They get asked for their birth certificate because their name sounds…un-American.

COME TOGETHER

It’s so easy for us to stay firm in our personal experience and all the ways it feeds our own heart. One of the major premises in this article (or ramble depending on how you look at it) is that we proceed deeper and deeper into times when it will be important to not let ourselves be divided in the wrong ways. The Earth, mother of all, is increasingly poisoned and robbed…and those plunderers conspire to keep us misinformed about her condition. As she sickens in different ways; as our reckless, imbalanced, capitalist society veers drunkenly to and fro; as the divides grow starker and the ultra rich more intoxicated by desperation, the powers that be will work harder and harder to keep us at each other’s throats; to offer us others who we can throw to the curb in order to keep our own apparently threatened freedom.

We can feel empathy, kinship, or even an affection for the person named Barack Obama; for the challenges he faces navigating a system so strongly interwoven with racist currents, yet simultaneously see how today’s policies enacted by the creepily-named Department of Homeland Security exist to grow the racist prison syste<[/a>, and aid racist behaviors and values through the normalization of certain laws.

Final notes: Thanks to friend (and immigration lawyer) Dave Bennion for help with resources.

Crossposted at Shakesville

CHE GUEVARA IS A HERO not only to many Cubanos, but to all people who understand and fight for autonomy from oppressive forces and human rights for all.

Why do I write of this now? Recently a question was posed as to if he deserved his place as a Chicano icon and legend; after all, went the argument, why should we revere this Argentinian who fought for Cuba’s independence? After all, it went on, he did nothing for México. He never once uttered the word “Chicano.”

But posing this division—that Cuban icons (or Argentinians) ought not be embraced by Mexicanos, or Mexican Americans—is not only ignorant of Che’s legacy, but at heart yet another symptom of the colonized mind. And I should make clear that my reply here—and any hints of ire you may pick up in putting down my thoughts—are not directed to the online friend who inspired this post. I think it was a good set of questions. And I’m glad I have the chance to answer it. Any intensity I employ here is aimed at the matrix of obfuscation and lies that demonize gente in our ancestral lands and attempt to keep us mental and physical captives of a corrupt system. If I wanted to play snarky, I’d simply reply that much-revered Chican@ (and Mexican@) icon Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe certainly never uttered the word “Chicano,” either. But I think the question deserves some thought, not a cheap semantics volley. Which is why I brought it here.

What is it that Latin America has in common? Why would México understand revolution? What unites the movements in Latin America—from México to Venezuela—so often? What oppression is it that has spread throughout all of Latin America and does to this day? What shadow covers one and all, despite their other struggles? It is the same shadow that has fallen on Haiti, on Iraq, on Afghanistan, on India, and on México. It is greed and white supremacy. It is non-concern for human rights. It is a loathing of the poor. It is a yearning to be of the elites at the expense of all else. It is the audacity of hypocrisy—such as President Obama’s criticizing China’s Hu Jintao on human rights while the USA maintains torture sites on foreign soil, the right to assassinate US citizens without due process, and drone attacks that slaughter countless innocents in illegal and undeclared wars abroad.

This shadow that unites Latin America specifically is cast by the imperialist exploitive forces of Europe and North America who time and time again install occupational forces throughout so much of the world, steal resources, undermine populist efforts, and then, propagandize the media with tales of Latin America’s deviance; their criminality; their weakness. Do we, as Chican@s, suffer here in the USA from the echoes of this propaganda? You better believe it.

This is why the politically involved Chicano understands Che’s fight. Che ought only be a Cuban icon? Perhaps. Many Cubanos do not embrace Che for where some of Fidel Castro’s choices, or for the same reasons as posed at the link above. Che was not Cuban, but an Argentinian whose family lived in Mexico while he fought in Cuba. He was a doctor in el D.F! But what took him away from his familia? Corazón did. Concern for imbalance and human suffering. Che Guevara was horrified by poverty and by peoples’ inability to be treated for sickness. He was not someone who wrote in a blog every day thinking that was somehow going to attain this goal. He was a man of action. Is that something a Chican@ ought to get behind? Yes, he was extreme, and willing to bring violence behind such goals. Only unlike powerful nations in that they bring violence to continue an unfair imbalance of wealth and hegemony in the name of fossil fuels. Just as Batista’s military brought violence on his own citizens, torturing adults and executing even children attempting to squeeze them for information on the rebel forces in Cuba. Che’s violence was meted out in the name of human rights. Much as the mythical character Robin Hood. But instead of wearing tights, he brought a rifle and machete. Che’s vision was for global revolution to attain justice. Not just for Cuba. After Cuba, he wanted to take his fight first to the rest of Latin America. Which is why he died in captivity in Bolivia, after all.

Why did so many campesinos in Cuba accept him, ultimately, and support the revolution? Why did he win the support of not only the poor but the middle classes eventually? Do not the divisions that cause this question about whether us Xican@s should celebrate his life and efforts exist, too, between all Latin Americans? They do. And as you know, there is no common and all enduring bond between “Latin@s” within the US. The USA holds a microcosm of those divisions. Cubanos, Mexicanos, Puerto Ricans, Chileans, Argentinians, Venezuelans, and so on—you don’t need me to tell you that we struggle within the hierarchies and divisions sown between our peoples by the government that rules this very nation. Despite our being lumped together as Hispanics, or Latin@s—or Spics. These divisions, even while we all live here, are a product of colonization themselves and too often, prove stronger than the bonds that ought unite us.

Why was Che able to bridge the differences in ideology and methods that created various rebel factions in Cuba when he brought Fidel’s war to Santa Clara, closer and closer to Havana, and united them under his command? Why did Che speak (in the UN, no less) about blacks and Latinos and other minorities in the US living in “invisible cages”? What did he mean, referencing a sleep that we would (and should) wake from? He was reminding us, in public, in the full glare of cameras and history, standing in the belly of the beast that these cages—oppressive containers created by corrupt systems we cannot see—determine so much of our fate. And they keep us fighting amongst each other. They pose divisions between peoples who ought to band together to fight the real oppression. He warned us not to buy into the “Self Made Man” myth.

The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.”

- Che Guevara

Che’s philosophies and speeches and diaries reflect ideas much larger than an effort to oust Batista from Cuba. When he talked of love in the revolutionary’s heart; a love that enables her to fight for justice, her family, and her puebla, he talks of ideas that unite all people. (Or should.) When he speaks of the Imperialist US forces that divide and suck blood from Latin America, he speaks of ideas that affect not just Latin America, but you and me—we “Chicanos.” Us, the hybrid results of that colonization meeting the indigenous with a sprinkle of distance and comfortable living thrown in the mix.

Some of us, far too many of us, who are descended from Latin America (often with family there even now), fight to defend those very divisions and that exploitation, because we benefit from it or because we have been brainwashed by the ocean of propaganda that informs the mainstream of literature and film and television, all intended to continue the influence and inertia of anti-populist reign. Imperialist nations punish severely any of their intended subjects for remembering the truth, for having heart, or worse—throwing off the chains that bind. Haiti, Cuba, and México are all nations that pay this toll to various extents. It was the USA that sent weapons into Bolivia and trained their soldiers, aiding and abetting in the capture and murder of Che Guevara. Just as it is the USA today who sends weapons into México to aid the corrupt and installed Felipe Calderón as he slaughters the citizens of México. You see what the USA’s vision of human rights and health care is. It certainly isn’t to treat all and any whenever they suffer. It certainly isn’t to educate any and all, despite what nation they came from. Look to Arizona.

Where ought the Xican@ stand in this continuum?

Here the US government is occupying Guantánamo as we speak! The USA’s military forces reside on Cuban land and have constructed a torture and prison facility that the government stocks with individuals from Afghanistan in a perverse retaliation for an attack on Wall Street that was (ostensibly) perpetrated by Saudi Arabians. And all the while, we well-to-do, well-educated, well-fed offspring of both the oppressor and the oppressed who ought to be using all our power to help our disempowered brethren in Latin America are instead, arguing against a liberator and rebel worthy of lionizing, if any ever were.

Those who criticize youth for wearing Che's image would much rather you be too embarrassed to continue than actually inform yourself.

When Che was able to recruit so many peasants and townspeople to his cause, his ability and methods echo the dynamics that allowed the people in México to defeat the imperialist French at the Battle of Puebla, using ordinary objects. Rakes, sticks, stones, stampeding cattle. Like the mythologized early American patriots who attacked the Imperialist British scattershot and hiding out in the woods; like the Han warriors in China who defended against Cao Cao’s superior forces in the Battle of Chibi (Red Cliffs), Che fought off larger numbers and more powerful weapons, and eventually gave his life, for the Peoples’ right to be free from tyranny. How involved in la lucha today are you to believe that changing avatars on a social media application is resistance to government oppression?How revolutionary is it to sit in a well-cooled theater, chewing red licorice and cheering for the rebel alliance to defeat George Lucas’ imagined Empire, but then return to the bosom of the actual Empire and condemn true rebel forces?

Does Che deserve to be an icon for Xicanos, Xicanas, Latinas, Latinos? Only if we remember where the struggle lies and what it is about, at heart. Only if we believe that truth and autonomy and human rights are worth dying for. Only if we truly believe that those with the truth, and the welfare of the People, on their agenda are in the moral right, despite how many guns, tanks, or hypocritical speeches about Democracy and Justice are on the other side.

YESTERDAY’S SICK WARMONGERING SCION OF AMERICA, George W. Bush, once appeared on television and sternly scolded the People for taking television too seriously.

That is, this pampered rich boy who had every thing stolen for him in his life, swaggered up on his pulpit and berated the entire nation, warning us not to have too many emotions and thoughts due to all the televised news about death in Iraq; about suicide bombings in Iraq; about the Empire spasms that lashed out taking lives, maiming babies, weeping spent uranium. “The explosions on your TV.”

And I think that little irony there says it all about today’s media, about today’s “News” channels. We are supposed to take them seriously, even as they tell us not to do so. An inverted knot of suppressed and sublimated emotion and mangled thought process is how they’d have us. A busted open container they can pour poison into. But before that, like a vampire, suck up the energies and spirit of so many, and from all sides of the political spectrum. Inside this beast’s festering jaws are clenched a fabricated world brightly and wretchedly illuminated as if by 100,000 limbs set alight by white phosphorus.

Inside that box, the Iraq disaster is done with. Inside that box, it makes sense to keep bleeding billions into the Afghanistan sands. Inside that box, no important questions matter. Inside that box, your own heart and mind can’t fit. What would (does) our world look like outside of that box?

Today’s Right wing is not worth listening to any more than it makes sense to stick your arm into a spinning garbage disposal. What of those those who watch these hell-hearted plasticmen and seethe? Or mock them on a blog? Or debunk TV arguments every day of the year? A massive amount of energy and time is spent doing this. It’s sort of weird. Who do they watch for? Not for me. Some will claim it is a service. Do they do it for you? They deplete their own energies, and accomplish what? What is accomplished each day by doing this?

In truth, I’m sure it is a service for a few. Is it the most valuable service? Perhaps not. What of pooling all that time, pooling any monies, and creating a new station. Or perhaps a new network via radios. Yes, radio. This tool that many more people can use, and even carry mobile. A tool that many of lesser means can broadcast with, no less.

And to do what? Simply reporting the state of the world as it truly is. Sowing the airwaves with hope, with positivity, with history lessons. With plans, with campaigns, with community. Completely tuning out the false narrative as you would tune out  a sick individual on a corner, ranting about death, devils, and disaster. Would you follow that person around, reinterpreting all their madness for the crowd? Would you shout side by side and call it a service?

This motion is not so much popular, though. The shape of thought that would completely swerve away and build something new in the place of something unsightly, unsafe, or unsound. Is that a revolutionary act? It is, by definition. Reform seeks to take something broken and reshape it. Redundancy says do it over and over even when it does nothing much. Revolution says that Thing is not worth reshaping, nor is it worth your energies and time. Revolutionary thought says you have the power and means and ability to make something new, in place of the old. But today’s Left is not revolutionary, of course.

Lately I hear a lot about how while so many are misguidedly blaming ALL muslims for 9/11, it was only a small cadre of radical extremist muslims who attacked us on 9/11.

Is that true?

Do you even know–as a person–who attacked us on 9/11? I don’t. How am I to know? How are we to know? I still have the newspaper where some foggy screen caps of a Fake Osama Bin Laden were shown supposedly crowing about the WTC attacks. For a tape that would be the hardest evidence in USA possession of who made the biggest hit on our country in its entire history, it faded out of existence very fast, eh? But then, I already said it’s fake.

Do you know it was the Taliban? Really? Why? Because your TV told you? Because the lying, corrupt government told you? That same government that was making deals with the Taliban in August of 2001? The same government that has been trying to sink its derricks into Central Asian oil fields for years? Why? Because they claimed 19 passports floated out of the completely exploded plane down onto the street and somehow stuck out in all that clutter, debris, ash, and litter?

What evidence do we have that the WTC were taken down by the people our government claims? What evidence personally? What trials brought to light the guilty? What process made this clear? What oracle pronounced this truth? The very same TV that our own government’s head of state told us not to take seriously? What forces forbade you to question this? The Right, and yes, the Left, too. From Bill Maher to DailyKos—earnest questions about this catastrophe that changed everything in our nation, from law to war to monies spent in congress, to school lessons—were verboten. Despite the shabbiest case ever built against any major crime. And those who insisted we examine it were demonized by those same Liberal forces, as we are today. Just as it has been the Liberals overwhelmingly leading the charge to sneer at those of us who still believe in protest, rallies, and boycotts.

That is your (Professional) Left.

Obviously, in 2010, what is ancient is again new. The empire is well into its recycling phase. We see conquer and divide. Hucksters and snake oil salesmen. Blatant class war. PSYOPS and a host of control mechanisms to provide a manufactured reality that keeps the People scattered, confused, scared, angry, and mostly, full of fake information. We were attacked and traumatized a decade ago, lied to about it by those who are supposed to protect us and be of us, and this rending of the truth helped destroy us as a confident and sane people.

We tried again to hope and believe in truth when Obama was elected, but as much as some “progressives” still cling to their ideology and party, it’s clear on a gut level that we were had and that the strongest forces in our nation today are those of war, greed, and deception.

And now, nobody believes in much of anything anymore as a result. And we are fast unraveling. Truth means nothing and TV pays it not even the tribute of a gesture. Racism is part of everyday speech, political campaigns, and dialogue. Hate groups are hand in hand with government. White supremacists roam the border and carry badges and guns, too. Laws that let police be even more racist in their operations than before are being launched left and right.

Even those who fight every day to maintain belief know, in their belly, that the game is rotten to the core. This is driving us mad, it is wrecking national sanity. Or causing people to simply turn away.

It’s not just because Obama is black that the nation is flipping out. It’s also because all the illusions of national identity and ideology that we were given as children have fallen apart. Now naked power rules, and shows itself in gross class war and cooked up news shows, court rulings, and police actions that make clear who will be okay tomorrow, and who will not. Those of us with little money or position understand we will soon be living in mildewed tents on the outskirts, while those with money or power will continue to enjoy tax breaks, ballrooms, and well-buttered toast smothered with imported jams.

Dreams of justice and fairness have been toppled.

Once that sinks in fully, things will become very ugly indeed. But many of us are in denial, in shock, or yet to see the final foundation buckling. Still listening to the siren song of TV.

Were there someone or some ones capable of organizing even a fraction of us—they’d need lots of money, and yet not to be beholden to the ideology of the Right—we might have a chance against our enemies. Our enemies are greed and disinformation. And a state out of control. It is those same illusions given us as children. It is the inertia that shoves us cliffward. It is the voice of the Television. It is today’s Liberal brain, brain like a slave, stooped over with the load of delusion, but weary and with no place to go to get away from it. The Left is a zombie holding a flag, with all its sly use of the Right’s most drastic weapons, with its reinforcing at key moments, what harms the People, with no real plan or courage to enact something better, something revolutionary. At every juncture where the Left might make a real stand and make a difference, it suddenly caves in. Just when the People might again hope or benefit. But it must. Because, you see, even the “left” politicians on the national stage know the deal. They hold no hope for justice or truth, either. But LIBERAL is their brand and they are stuck with it.

The GOP? The GOP is but the blood-flecked ID expanding like a rogue universe of wicked cells, the diseased and disintegrating lobe of the human condition. The freaked out, frantic, midnight acid-head mind that whips and coils like a half-smashed snake in the sand.

I’m not better than anyone else in all of this. I soothe myself with TV, too. I dive deeply into illusion. I simply happen to turn to it for storytelling, for movies. Otherwise, I’ll be out in nature. Give me the sun, the wind, the water, and the touch of someone close to me. And give me stories. Stories of clear-eyed humans, of paths lined with golden wheat that sways in the sun, trod by brave souls undertaking important journeys. Give me stories of unpolluted hearts, and simple, wise, and humble humans. Give me stories of the past, of over there, of a day faraway. A day when this looming tower of babbling bullshit has finally collapsed and lain itself upon the ground to bake and bleach under an aging sun, before long to be but a skeleton for tomorrow’s mountains.

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Detail from Page 71 of the Codex Borgia

RECENTLY, I wrote about Arizona tipping its hand as to what its cultural and legal agenda is about—and it ain’t making sure people have VISAs or green cards. It’s about minimizing if not wholly eradicating the power and presence and legacy of the people and culture of Mexico—a legacy and culture that are integral elements of Arizona. Arizona’s flurry of laws over time (not just the  last month) spell this agenda out pretty clearly.

Recently I wrote to a list-serv what these moves conjure up in my mind…a deranged soul clawing at their own face, trying to tear away the mask that obscures their purity…all the while not seeing that they are destroying themselves in the process. Arizona separated from Mexican culture and people is…nothing but a hot spread of sand treaded by delusional white power-grabbers. A haunted land, indeed.

While there are, indeed, a few ways to look at this latest move, none of them are pretty.

Firstly, we really have to pause to appreciate the snug fit of the White Lens that clouds out the big picture so vehemently and with an assumed air of righteousness that is born of nothing more than a slurry-slush of ignorance, violence, and fear. We simply MUST giggle a bit at the notion of white lawmakers being outraged that Latinos dare to think “the white man is oppressing them” and then, to prove how wrong we are…those white lawmakers summarily outlaw us from telling our histories.

+/-»

Wow! That’ll teach you to think you’re being singled out as a group and oppressed!

Tom Horne is happy!

If such a contradiction escapes their reasoning, their is no intellectual meat to be had in that stew.

Montenegro—who admits the target is Chicano Studies specifically—and others, are putting the legal torch to the spinning of time-honored stories. This is what conquerors do when they fear the people maintaining their own legacy, their own gods, their own allegiances, and patching up, decorating, and honoring the fabric that has kept them together and which threatens to dull the blade of the new reign. Yup, even in a land of Free Speech™.

There are few extant Aztec codices created before the conquest and these are largely ritual texts. Post-conquest codices, like Codex Mendoza or Codex Ríos, were painted by Aztec tlacuilos (codex creators), but under the control of Spanish authorities. The possibility of Spanish influence poses potential problems for those studying the post-conquest codices. Itzcoatl had the oldest hieroglyphics destroyed for political-religious reasons and Bishop Zumarraga of Mexico (1528–48) had all available texts burned for missionary reasons.^[29]

Joe Arpaio, a big respecter of other races and classes of people

But I guess this current attempt to quash the teachings of those descended from the indigenous of the continent is easy to understand.

The heavy and incessant indoctrination of White Ethnic Studies is, truth be told, still not very strong. Even while taught in every school in the nation while simultaneously reinforced on our televisions and movie screens, the illusion of white and European supremacy over all things indigenous or otherwise Brown™ is a fragile one and must be protected from even the challenge of one single schoolroom; is under dire threat from the possession of even one book that argues to the contrary.

Montenegro (R-Ariz) feels that banning Mexican American studies is righteous, because “[p]arents send their children, students, to public schools to learn reading, writing and arithmetic skills, not to be taught to, you know, hate or have resentment toward other races, not to be taught that they are victims or educated to be victims.”

Which of course is what Arizona authorities like Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Governor Jan Brewer are all about! Not resenting or hating other races or classes of people.

Dios mio. The depth of their delusion is impressive.

Jan Brewer Signs SB 1070

But do parents send their children to school to be taught to view foreign invaders and greed-inspired killers from another continent (Europeans of yesteryear) as benign “settlers”? Do all parents of all color and background pay taxes so that the public school can teach us lies about our own backgrounds and beginnings? Or separate our history from how it affects today’s reality?

Montenegro would say yes. Montenegro would say just as Dubya is a hero and savior of America, so was the greedy President James Polk. And yet we pay taxes so our kids can learn those “truths.”

Montenegro would prefer that people of color are the ones with self-loathing in our bellies. Anything that avoids the old white folks feeling any discomfort in their own!

Montenegro and Brewer, no doubt, would prefer us not to learn about and apply the lessons from our nation’s living through the Chinese Exclusion Act; the raping and killing of indigenous families justified by divine white right; the endless exploitation of Mexican labor, the dehumanization and continued oppression of our black brothers and sisters, or how the legal burning of books that tell our tales in Arizona today are but an extension of the Spanish conquistadores torching the idols and codices of the Maya. Most of all, those connections to today must be severed.

Above all, oppressors need you to have no memory, no books, no lessons, no language—no power.

Make no mistake—those who aren’t in the position to know different—this tripe offered by Montegnegro to justify this law is not about what is said in Chicano Studies classes. It’s not about anyone being told to “kill the white man” as Montenegro ridiculously asserts. (What is this, 1969?) We need no new law to prevent lessons about professors advocating murder. I’m pretttttty sure the standing laws cover that!

These claims on what is going on behind sneaky Chican@ doors are but projections of white fear. And it’s that white fear that is powering these moves; moves to prevent us from being self-educated, to stop us from being Uppity. These moves are about us daring to think we can rearrange or even simply augment the many lied-up lessons that are ubiquitous in US nationalistic messaging.

I mean, one thing we can be sure of is that Arizona’s new law is not about avoiding positive depictions or messaging about violent overthrow (as they claim). After all, our very first lessons on US patriotism revere terrorism! They celebrate a violence completely unrelated to Mexicans. What else was the Boston Tea Party? What message is sent there but that violent overthrow of the standing government is, or at least can be, righteous!

Yup. This is taught and nobody flinches. Those merry bands of brothers are “patriots,” like the violent “patriots” of today: Joe Stack. Oathkeepers. Tim McVeigh. Those white boys all learned their lessons well. And even the MSM of today vibes with them, understanding that the True Enemy is always darker in hue, despite the acts or ideology eschewed.

People of color have to sit in school for years upon years and hear a carefully arranged platter of propaganda that is designed to disempower us, confuse us, derail our strength, confuse our arc, and once we are grown, befuddle our children. This is today’s schooling, this is today’s White Ethnic Studies that dominate the land and the mind. People of color have to sit through countless movies where our people are painted as fools, criminals, the rot of society, the dregs of US culture, the despoilers, the thieves, the ruiners, the background to all your shining glorious heroic and imaginative deeds. This is today’s widespread White Ethnic Studies assault upon our minds and hearts and souls.

Rituals and Roles. Bodies and Souls. Possession or Negation, your choice. Their goal.

But Arizona, in its anti-brown panic, fumbles again.

Nobody need teach anyone to be “a victim.” That’s not what we do! Poor confused minds.

No. All that needs be told is the truth. After all, reality tends to have a radical bias. And all that needs be told about yesterday (as well as today) is the truth of goldthirst. The truth of divinely-rationalized mass murder. The holocaust of the indigenous. Legal papers that pretend to justify unwarranted invasion. Lessons about theft. Lessons about imperialism. Instances—like today—of attempted culture-murder. After all, Montenegro, you hardly prove such charges false! You actually reinforce those lessons and make our point for us.

Further, we do not need your school to tell our tales. Look at me. I never took a single Chicano Studies class. No, what I know has been passed down in my family or gleaned by me from reading books and knowing other Xican@s. This is what we do, you do know that? And here I am today, still telling our stories.

And we have been telling our stories from before the first stone was set in Tenochtitlán. We will tell them long after you are dead and gone, Montenegro. Brewer. Arpaio. You age and in your age, you fear.

We, on the other hand are only growing in number and political power. And we are hardly simply dishwashers, gardeners, and meatpackers. We are poets. We are teachers. We are artists. We are journalists. We are taxpayers. We are drivers. We are software designers. We are tech entrepreneurs. We are musicians. We are actors. We are legislators.

And have many, many young ones. And more each day. You can fear…but that is an imposition you insist on. We are not here to fear or cause fear. Only to say, no, you won’t shove us backward on this last tiny piece of dirt. No, you won’t make us eat your sugared, high-priced dirt. To say, yes, you can try. And you will try, you’ll try.

But like piñata confetti, or the sand on temple stone, we rise.

We rise.

WE RISE.

Though, apparently, you don’t need to be Xican@ to access a larger picture on these issues:

Short of an all-out fascist state, the flow of Latinos into the country will not ebb. And frankly, I’m not sure what we expected, given decades of imperialism and interference throughout Central and South America. We crushed regional social movements and turned vast areas into low-wage zones for global capital, a bi-partisan production of our ruling parties. Turn the region into an economic basket-case, create conditions that fuel the drug trade (while supplying countless consumers north of the border), and you better fucking believe that people are going to migrate, “legality” be damned.

But then, our invasions of their native turf are not seen as a problem. As with so much else, we tend to rail against the ends while overlooking or justifying the means. [...]

In a sense, we’re all migrants renting our daily lives from private power. To them, we’re no more citizens than those crossing the southern border. I don’t know what Arizona thinks it’s protecting, but it sure as hell isn’t democracy. You needn’t wander the desert to see that.

—Keep Moving, dennisperrin.blogspot.com

Montenegro, Brewer, Pearce, Arpaio: You have burned no book, you have stopped no truth today. You have only written a note in the margin that says “We grasp, we gasp, we fear, we fail.”

Truth, as in the past, shall tomorrow still prevail.

Axé.

—

update friday 1:27 pm PST: notes on montenegro added.

"Little Haiti," Miami, Florida. ©theunapologeticmexican.org

THE REPORTING OPPORTUNITY AND IMMIGRATION CONFERENCE I attended May 7-9 was quite an amazing experience. There was so much information and energy and ideas and new reality crammed into such a small time and space that there is no doubt I will be mulling it over and brewing on it and coming to a full understanding of it all over the next week, at least. Within a week or two, I’ll release a special NWN video where I hope to express cinematically what I will communicate here now with images and fotos.

Without a doubt, I am extremely grateful for the chance to have attended the May 7-9 French American Foundation’s Covering Immigration: An International Media Dialogue in Miami, Florida.

I am grateful to the French-American Foundation, to the Knight Foundation, to New America Media, to La Opiñión, to Sandy Close, Claudia Nuñez, and to all the journalists and scholars who shared their wealth of expertise and experience with all of us. I am also grateful to the Miami Workers Center and the African Heritage Cultural Center in “Little Haiti” for being so welcoming to the lot of us, dropping into their midst as if tourists starving for information about their lives. I am grateful to all the service workers at the EPIC hotel (especially my own housekeeper, Helen) for being so helpful and professional at their jobs. Finally, I am happy to have made some new friends at the conference—intelligent, energetic, good-hearted, and ambitious human beings.

As usual—and this really shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with my work at this point in the game—the influence and mechanisms of race and class stood out to me and were worth noting. As I was representing both New Media and Ethnic Media (as it is called in the US…for now) I consider those elements part of my work, important parts of my observations. (Or essential parts of my milieu, I might word it, after so much company with so many very French-speaking people.)

The view from my hotel balcony

3…2…1…boom.

As you can imagine, Nezua did once again drop down some…controversial statements into the midst of the well-catered and arranged event. (Mmmmm! So well catered.) Not intending to, only speaking from my heart, and again—it ought to be clear by now to anyone with any familiarity with my subject matter that this is to be expected if you are going to ask me to observe and report on any event. Just as I did when flown to the last (as named) YearlyKos Convention in 2007. Just as I did in my doc on the DNC08 convention, the trip I took sponsored by Kenneth Cole Productions in 2008. In the case of the YearlyKos event, as this time, there were a few moments perhaps, of misunderstanding. Maybe there were a few people taking it personally as well as wondering why on earth I might head out on such a course…as if I am disappointing the Hand That Feeds.

It’s powerful, touchy stuff to talk about race and class. I also am convinced these are the conversations we absolutely need to have in this society. The pretense that these differences are not everywhere and that they do not affect everything and can be cordoned off for special conversations that don’t intrude or provoke is a dangerous one to maintain.

This doesn’t mean bringing up such topics is easy. As usual, it can be a terrifying and nearly nauseating task to take on. Because the messaging we absorb all our lives is one that screams never to bring these up in such ways. And pushing back on that inner indoctrination is not effortless.

I want to be careful not to make too big a deal out of the few arguably negative reactions that inevitably follow in these cases. Because while those seem to hit the belly harder than the positive, the truth is those are far fewer. In this case, numerous people came to me—I should note they were overwhelmingly (though not in every instance) people of color themselves—and showed me great support and thanks for bringing up the topics I did. In fact, overall, I’d say the reactions were 90% positive and unwavering in their stance on the matter.

"The Brown Contingent" is what the very fabulous Mona (Eltahawy) named us here in the hall. As such we decided it was best if we photographed ourselves stacking and otherwise doing brownish things. This moment was after my presentation and they found me, or we found each other, and talked more on the things I discussed. They were very supportive and it meant a lot.

There is no feeling quite like taking that risk, taking that leap, feeling shameful and as if in danger for doing so (a result of flouting the indoctrination and social pressure that guards against these conversations happening)—and then being immediately surrounded by people who understand exactly what you mean and give you love for taking that risk. If that were not always the case when I do these things? I imagine I couldn’t keep doing them, wouldn’t keep taking those risks. Because the nervous system usually takes a big hit when “cracking the bubble” as Sandy worded such dialogues on Sunday.

Stylish French Cat, Mona Eltahawy, Damaso Reyes, and Mizanur Rahman. This is, unfortunately, one of the worse pictures (focus-wise) I've taken in a while. Yet, the joy cannot be obscured.

Sandy Close wrote to me, in an email after the conference:

Nezua,
You added a great deal to the conference through your honesty and humility.
Thank you.

Sandy Close, Executive Director of New America Media

This brought tears to my eyes. Because in such events and speaking opportunities, I am trying my best to present these issues without aggression, but instead with a calm and centered front, and a more receptive energy. Which is a very difficult line to walk at times. For me. It is no easy feat to move surely and strongly on unsure ground, and yet remain unguarded and ready to respond with sensitivity to any lashback.

But if I can do that? It means I am growing in my craft as well as in my own skin. And that means I can be more effective in the world doing the things I do.

Of course there will also always be those who hear words on race and class as not only an affront to, but practically violent toward polite society. And if you think about it, they are right. Even when you speak those words calmly. Because polite society is another way of saying status quo. And today’s status quo is one that crushes people of color on the regular. And thus, it deserves a sort of violence. Not necessarily physical, but ideological. At least initially, to break the inertia and confidence of its arc.

So we cannot get hung up on supportive energy from all, or if everyone likes what we say. Though these affirmations from like-minded community help center my mind and push back on the inevitable doubt that tries to insert itself when you attempt to upset a standing order, destructive or otherwise.

But there is a creation happening in the midst of that destruction, as well. One of the most rewarding results of invoking these conversations, I’ve found is that it can spur further revelation or sharing of thoughts that might otherwise remain cloaked in caution. Such as after my presentation amidst the Q&A and back and forth. What a great feeling, to see that perhaps you have helped start or enable a conversation wherein people feel comfortable discussing something so important to them…and thus to the larger society and its method of informing itself in all quadrants about all quadrants.

I know I learn and feel inspired from those talks. Such as when Professor Kwong (for example) spoke of how “objective” lens shuts out many ideas, like his writing about Chinatown in ANY way that isn’t about the Chinese New Year. How he has an extremely difficult time getting any articles published if they present Chinese American culture or Chinese Americans in a way that the dominant culture (my phrase, not his) doesn’t desire to reinforce. And then Demaso jumped in and spoke about how a newsroom will miss stories and angles if “we all look the same.” And how today’s emerging Ethnic Media or the appearance of changes that facilitated the rise of Ethnic Media present a challenge to journalism. And an important one.

I think those are powerful things to be saying and discussing in such a setting as we were in. They are a boon to the future of journalism and social cohesion—not racial division as some might think. After all, as I said in my presentation, as I see it “Ethnic Media” arose because various communities felt we were not represented in the fake objectivity of the dominant culture’s media. If the larger view and conversation expands to represent all of us, that draws us back together, doesn’t it?

I like mine pulpy

I know by some reactions, as well as the fact that many whom were there will be reading my reporting on this to see both how they are portrayed and how I saw things overall that I need to clearly state a couple things.

1. I am not a traditional journalist.

Roles like mine are something new. Organically made possible and necessary by cultural realities and technological advances that won’t go away. You cannot align this image over the old blueprint. Attempting to do so will yield a distorted result.

I do not need to be warned about getting emotional or remaining Objective™ or being too “passionate.” What I do relies on my feelings and third eye and heart and all those other things that are not to be found in the AP Stylebook. I am a new media journalist. Or a writer/activist/artist/reporter who began as a counselor and filmmaker and melds it all together. Find a word or phrase that works. The exact title doesn’t matter to me right now. What I do know is that I have a function and I know my path by feeling it out intuitively. While I was trained minimally by MTV in NYC as prep for my year-long gig repping Oregon, I did not go to J-School. I don’t need to for what I do. I do need to honestly report what I see, not try to hoodwink anyone, do my very best to be right on any numbers or facts that I can. But also to employ other senses…ones I think as a human society (in the USA) we are long taught are ephemeral, unimportant, unreliable, and dangerous. I happen to feel that this overall judgment on the less tangible senses of the human creature is extremely dangerous to our existence. At least if it is the only approach it sure is.

So. That’s what I do. Please frame all I offer you in that light. Don’t try to evaluate it by an old filter. Through that mesh, what I do will seem all wrong. As if you drank a cup of orange juice but were expecting to feel milk run over your tongue.

2. It’s not about you.

This one I offer to those who feel hurt by anything I say on race and class and culture. It’s not about you! In fact, I only ran into one person whose energy I found rather disturbing, as he raised his voice talking about how it was appalling and wrong to “smear” FAIR and CIS; that younger reporters are fine, but they should be “trained” (do you see a leash in your mind?); that we ought take sympathy on Arizona for passing SB 1070 and not boycott, and so on. He was an older gentleman and I understand that he comes from a completely different world, or uses a wholly different lens that I do. I disagree entirely with him. But feel no need to demonize him. I feel he simply doesn’t understand certain currents or angles or viewpoints that are alien to his experience.

My larger point is that my comments on systemic patterns that happen to be symbolized and manifested at any given moment by concrete happenings are still not about individuals. Or their hearts. Or their intentions. Or their goodness. I know it can be possible to mix critique of systems up with criticism of a person. We are all capable of making that mistake from time to time.

I just think we need to talk about these things. I must trust each human can deal with hurt feelings in the end. I know I’ve had to. It’s up to me to grow past that. That’s life, eh? Just as I would have to respond to those who have said at various times that “being called racist is the most damaging thing that can happen to a writer/journalist/pol/person” with “No, the damages of racism upon communities and souls and bodies….that is the most damaging thing. Please don’t redirect the camera in that way…that angle misses the big picture.”

Rolling into Miami!

Before you go shipping that nitro…

I am aware that I am potentially annoying you by talking all around the event at this point, while not yet having talked about it but bear with me if you will—even though my regular readers are probably saying “Why is he re-explaining all this? We know his take on it, we won’t misinterpret! Enough disclaimers!” But there will be people reading this post who are not used to the way we discuss these things. And in this case, I’d do all I can do avoid misunderstandings.

Outside the Hotel

Here’s another surprise for ya: I agreed to not post my video on the event until I showed it to the organizers. This is something I never do. I figure if you have me appear to speak and know what my work is about (and if you don’t, then you really should have researched), then it is my right to tell truthfully what I saw.

But I did agree to having the video pre-approved anyway. I was approached before I left by two very cool gents and had no real issue with agreeing to that. Honestly, I think I am partially at fault for perhaps inspiring some anxiety about how I was going to present my findings. But I would make clear that by saying repeatedly on Saturday “Just wait til you see the footage,” it was only my way of pushing back on the couple voices that insisted my views were off/inappropriate. It wasn’t “Oh wait til I drop this bomb on you,” it was simply me saying “I cannot argue this point here and now. I’d much rather express what I experienced with cinema. It will simply make things clearer to you.” But I think perhaps the “just wait til you see the footage, then you’ll get it” was misread as something more threatening. Again, given the view that some have that being called racist is something terribly damaging, I can understand anxiety around this. But the truth is, I received different responses in some cases than some others did. This only reinforces the things I am saying. So my point was, “you won’t understand the full truth of what I am clumsily saying here until you can view for yourself those responses.”

Dinner on Friday

The Two Gents said no, they didn’t think I would mischaracterize people’s comments; they trusted the “professionalism of my approach.” And I sure appreciate that.

Because yes, I know these journalists are all professionals with careers and I am not out to harm any person. I know aside from my repeating “Just wait, then, until you see the video,” I—as THE BLOGGER—am simply not predictable, am not bound to conventions in place, am my own editor, and so it is easy for people to feel threatened by what I might write or create.

But while I certainly am a small fish in the scheme of things, I take the power that my words and film might have seriously. I do feel a certain responsibility. I do not believe in hurricaning through lives and saying anything you want in the service of a personal mission…actions involving messaging and communications and film (as they have the potential to impact society exponentially) must be weighed carefully.

Also, the practical reality is even if you are telling truths the world needs, a career or opportunities can be destroyed (mine) or at least greatly harmed if powerful or well-monied people who have reached out a hand to you feel they were burned.

These are tricky things to weigh. But in the end of course I always value my responsibility to the human race to be truthful about what I see and feel. Because my eyes, heart, and belly and mind were given to me by the highest authority. And nobody here on earth supersedes that imperative. And if my career in some way needs to take a hit in that service, okay. I am calm about that. [Update: Some wording strikes me reading back and I know why, and I know why it is not so hard for me to prioritize telling my own truth...it's because my blog is not my career. It is what I do because I must! My career is art.)

However, I'm not worried about the approval. Because as I said...this is not about individuals. And to make my points I need single out nobody. And surely they are not interested in censoring my discussing race and class and cultural divides entirely! And certainly not when it comes to immigration! These things are definitely all interwoven.

And if they don't want me to discuss even that much, well. I'll peel that orange when I come to it.

©theunapologeticmexican.org

Gaze of the Other

One thing that strikes me in these situations when you drop into a setting to connect with the reality of those who live there, is the differences in class and positioning in the world. Maybe that is because you approach attempting to connect. This is what makes me videotape the lavish buffets that always appear at conventions and such (or often do.) That’s what made me feel more at home with the (latina and latino) NYU janitors and cleaning ladies than almost all of my peers there. I simply cannot be unaware of different racial, cultural, or socioeconomic signifiers and positions.

The Stylish French Cat (on left in the “brown contingent” photo) spoke to me about his similar sensation when sitting in Starbucks with his interviewees. There was “something off” about that particular setting and situation and contrast to him.

Another tall, well-spoken intelligent seeming white cat (forgive me, bro, I forgot your name) spoke to me in the lobby of the hotel on our way to dinner, as well. He mentioned my words the day before on our walking into these settings in such a way—a way where class privilege and signifiers shriek out of a gap. “It’s not the ideal situation,” he admitted.

First Course at Gabbiolo

What to do? I certainly am not saying reporters should get blisters in the sun and arrive with dusty hair and hungry! Nor that these conventions that are purposely comfortable in order to buffet the human spirit a bit from the weariness of the travel we make (many from out of the country) and the long, busy days should be held at motels or in tents, or anything. I know I sure wasn’t lamenting, refusing, or feeling shame over the five course meal at Gabbiolo’s, complete with fantastic wine and dessert! In fact, I’m still salivating over it.

I am simply pointing out that the disparity in watcher and watched distorts the information gathered. And this mostly becomes dangerous when that is not acknowledged in the reportage itself, in some way. And thus the danger of false “objectivity” which never says “Here I am, with my particular lens, at this particular time, and thus am seeing this particular angle.” The Objective™ voice pretends to be the godvoice, to be neutral and not situated on any particular piece of land or from any particular era and thus lacking a viewpoint that can be evaluated and separated from the text itself.

Stylish French Cat’s example was “Africa Experts” who were there one time, “or who have a neighbor who was in Africa once.” The Objective Façade (damn, I am hitting all the French words today, yeah!) brings a bias, erases the serial number, and calls it Truth.

Ethnic Media in Europe and the United States

The conference documents themselves stated that the US is “further ahead” in terms of “Ethnic Media.” It is taken more seriously, more widely supported, and  is more legitimized. The Europeans themselves are aware of this. On the other hand, one or two seemed to yet grapple with the very voice/tone/angle/”passion” that has led this to be so! At moments, it may be a hard bridge to gap, in such a short time. The one between the US and the UK, or France, for example. But I think we did pretty well, anyway. I can only imagine how, for example, my voice—already considered confrontational in the USA!—comes across to them, if Ethnic Media is much less part of the conversation where they normally operate. So in that sense, I appreciate that we did as well as we did.

I really enjoyed the French people I spoke to. There’s always been something about their way of avoiding as many hard divisions that we have in the US that really appeals to me. Their newspaper front pages are, apparently, often a melange (ooh, “melange”!) of departments all weighing in on one topic. (Possibly where Huffpost got their “Big News Page” idea for various hot topics.) Rather than walled off, isolated columns appearing in the same area. In my very limited experience of their literature (translated to English), the “French” way of writing and thinking on page often wanders and free associates and takes you through an experience, through the thoughts until you have become filled with the idea and story that the author wished to impart to you. As opposed to a tightly structured, tightly-contoured, and arranged series of parts. Is this making sense? I am interested in minds that see this type of movement and mezcla as viable. It feels like freedom to me.

One of the things I am attempting to do by drawing out all the nuance is avoid implying or giving the impression to anyone that this trip and this experience were not useful. Nor that the money was not wisely spent, nor that other journalists should not attend if they are lucky enough to have the opportunity. Exactly the opposite. I feel these types of discussions galvanize thought and spur progress. And I have no hesitancy in saying I felt damn honored to be amongst all these professionals.

I only offer my experience so that if desired, the organizers can think on it and use it to make the next one even better…at least to include the awareness of this dynamic, or more discussion in such directions. But again, I did not operate under any such seemingly altruistic agenda. I simply spoke what I saw and felt.

Karla Gomez-Escamilla of Univision exchanges looks with me as we are given an unexpected post-discussion/ pre-dinner speech about not letting our 'passion' or what we heard in the field get in the way or overshadow our journalism on these topics.

Objectivity: the Man Behind the Curtain

“You don’t know how he’s gonna hit you,” said Mona (she’s the one flashing the peace sign in group shot above), about the so-called “Objectivity Lens” of much Mainstream Media. He’s a man behind a curtain. Won’t show his face. “That’s why I left that world,” she said. I’m tired of that type of objectivity. “I want to tell you how I feel and how I see things,” she laughed, loudly, with what I perceived as a damn enchanting British accent.

And I encouraged her to please do so, please keep on. Mona is a spirit-filled, wise, powerful voice and she’s shaking things up, informing the world, and shattering Muslim stereotypes left and right, every time she speaks on her community.

Stylish French Cat said The Objective Lens is a way of keeping YOU OUT. “No! This is objective! No room for you!” he laughed, dramatically holding both his hands up.

Professor Kwong mentioned how the typical gatekeepers would only allow articles from him that prop up their own visions of Chinese culture. He said the “Objective” model is one that functions to exclude. And that the objectivity model is a misleading one.

Mizanur said “I don’t mind even FOX news having an agenda. I don’t have a problem with expansion of the menu. More choices, to me, is good.”

Karla Gomez-Escamilla of Univision (I repronounce the way she says it from time to time in the back of my mind…oonee-vis-YON!) and I met at the first breakfast and hit it off right away. Over the next two days, we spoke a lot about these things, and as she is a working TV reporter, I’ll keep all her words off the record. But we spoke of all the currents in play, and speaking for myself, I’m glad she was there. There were moments her presence—and what I knew to be her background and opinions and experience—were a touchstone of safety and comfort. Even without words. After all, at this event I was—and even called as much over and over—”The Blogger.” The potential for me to have been isolated, given not only that aspect, but also in what I kept talking about, was high. Again, I have a lotta love for all the friends I met who made sure to surround me with support, both days.

Chicken Plus!

In my presentation, I spoke of the MSM as being ethnic media in its own right! Just not the brown contigent of Ethnic Media. A different ethnicity. It is the lens that pretends it is no lens. It is the invisibled lens. You’ve heard me speak about this in years past as The White Lens.

I spoke of my ideas on Ethnic Medias’ strengths—prefaced by the warning that I can only speak for what I know of Ethnic Media. Not all “ethnic media.” Also adding that race and ethnicity and culture matters are obviously unique to each country and that country’s history. I said that communities of color have longer memories when it comes to history. Here in the US, we factor in slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wounded Knee, General Sheridan, the US invasion into Mexico, the CIA interference in Latin America, or the railroads and how they came about when we speak of the echoes that still play out in oppressions and laws and politics today. Etc.

I said that Ethnic Media, in many cases, would know right away there is something problematic about dropping off a van of mostly white—or simply outsiders—into a community of color and then prompting that community to reveal the divisions they have between them and other communities of color. Ouch. Which was our assignment, in essence. To fish out the positive interactions they have with new immigrant communities, as well as the conflicts. [UPDATE: I tried to leave this out, but doing so leaves a question mark as to the strength of my reaction. The first day we were given our papers explaining the assignment there was only the directive that we should discover the conflicts. That completely weirded me out, and I was glad to see when they handed out updated papers the next day, the assignment was much more even-handed, and was changed to the version I posted above: to find out the positive "as well as" the negative. So if anything, those planning this adjust and self-examine quickly, and clearly are aware enough to be on guard for those kinds of biases. I felt better after the edit, but still found the entire scene odd. I also brought up to the group that I noticed this edit, and was happy to see the change.]

There was some pushback to the things I said to the group. I know I didn’t word everything as perfect as I would have liked. I know, too, though, that the process of interacting with free speech and getting to the bottom of these things will be imperfect and at times messy. And yes, we must be careful not to be essentialist or to overgeneralize.

The Big Cheese. (And Mizanur.)

I feel it is far more perilous to pretend these dynamics are unimportant.

What should also be made clear is that I was not informed of this practicum part of the experience until after I had agreed to speak on a panel! I had no idea the trip would involve my going out and into a community for a couple/few hours and interviewing people. If it was in the documents they sent me, I missed that part (very possible). Regardless, that part came as a total surprise. As it was, though, Miami was Part TWo of a two part (International) symposium, the first of which was in Paris. (Damn! Missed that one!) So everyone but me, pretty much, knew we’d have the reporting component.

I also loved the field trip and am very glad it was, indeed, a part of the trip.

Sandy Close of New America Media said on the penultimate day of the symposium “I always learn the most when I am uncomfortable.”

And that’s why I’d never want anyone to draw the conclusion on this event that it was not supremely educational and worthwhile, despite ripples in the smoothly-ironed fabric of our planned dialogues. Because part of what happened—conflict and all—was part of what needs to happen and is happening everywhere.

As Mizanur said to me, this is the way news is trending, like it or not.

Maybe that is because the Objective Model was never objective to begin with and has in fact been a detriment to justice and democracy.

We were warned to apply sunscreen liberally. Here are some folks putting some on before we took our field trip.

You deconstruct…but do you create?

The gentleman who was speaking up hard for anti-immigrant extremist groups FAIR and CIS also said that writers like myself, bloggers like myself (he did not mention me by name, but to tell you the truth, many things he said might have been interpreted as almost direct responses to some of my writing and videos) who “go off into their own tribal enclaves” are dangerous. He sounded very worried, to be honest.

I am not dangerous to him. At least that is not my intention, nor do I put any energy into harming him or wishing him ill.

Again, though, if we go back to the Polite Society idea, you can see how voices like mine (voices not “trained” and reined in to the standing order and conventions) might be perceived as dangerous.

But I am not here to simply deconstruct or challenge or as some say about us “ethnic media” types, to complain. I see this type of writing more as…sweeping sand and clutter and debris away from the floor so you can see where the weak spots are. So you can travel safer, faster, and truer. I am certainly not saying I see all, or have all the answers. Which is why Ethnic Media is very often associated with community, with the need to connect with each other and support our communities, and from which political action is basically inseparable. This consciousness and tradition is passed down in our communities from generation to generation.

When I dropped into the African Heritage Cultural Center on Saturday, I had little urge to either cleverly or directly inquire to them—as someone from outside their community with only an hour or so to spare to build up any rapport—regarding the conflicts between US-born African Americans and Haitian immigrants or Cubans. I am not saying that these conflicts do not exist!

What you don't see is that the moment after I surprised him with a lens in his face, we grinned at each other and shook hands without uttering a word.

But I am saying…why? Why go in there and try to get at that? In this short time? What is the interest there, first? And I have to say, I steered away from that for the most part. I am glad the organizers were sensitive to this, to the fact that the conversation or day might go otherwise. And they did remind us that those questions were only suggestions before they sent us out on our trips.

Though I did, a few times, attempt the questions, anyway. And what I found—it’s what I expected to find, even though I may have been assuming too much by extrapolating from how the activist/community-oriented Ethnic Media blogger-types I am familiar with are—these people wanted, instead, to speak of how their solidarity crossed over divisions in communities of color. They talked to me about how we are all in this together. About how we are not settling for the conditions in which communities of color find themselves, and are fighting it. About how nobody is illegal, and if someone is, then its everyone but the indigenous. They were mostly black, Haitian, Latino, and they radiated and demonstrated such love and acceptance of each other and positive energy that I was swept up and was reminded of my days at Centro Cultural de la Raza where as a young chico, I first remember feeling that community love.

Love and Community

That’s what it’s about.

I’m not saying there are not tensions that need to be explored! Especially when they erupt into harm or violence on one or more of a group of people. But like at least one of my interviewees, I feel that tension we are chasing is very often exacerbated or initiated by Arpaio types. By Brewer types. By Hayworth N McCain types. And that the focus ought to be on them, and the big border lovers who do NOT see us all as together here, and on those with far more power in the system who would ferret others out by their accent, or their otherliness. Or put the glare not on the poor housing and impoverished conditions they live in quite as much as on those who operate in this world and make so many rundown areas possible by their own massive and disproportionate siphoning of wealth.

I know at least one person at the conference felt that this focus was a weakness of Ethnic Media. Okay. I won’t argue that. I disagree entirely. But I have nothing to gain by arguing it if you don’t get that.

More importantly, the focus is better served being on positivity. A constant broadcast of fear, scarcity ideology, terror, and division resonates in the collective heart. The focus ought to be, sometimes if not almost always, on the ties that connect, on the common causes, on the strength and bridges built between commonly marginalized communities. On the love and power there that not even the most objective person could deny feeling, even as but a stranger invited into the bosom of another community’s presence.

________________________________

This was my rundown of all the cultural and social elements of the event and setting. Soon I’ll post again on the info and insight that I gained through sitting in the presentations and hearing the findings and teachings of scholars and journalists. Both these worlds coming together reveal more, I feel, than only one or the other.

]]> http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2010/05/10/miami-debriefing-the-intersections-of-race-class-journalism-activism-croissants-and-reality/feed/ 6 http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2010/05/01/happy-mayday-2010/ http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/2010/05/01/happy-mayday-2010/#comments Sat, 01 May 2010 13:21:29 +0000 nezua http://theunapologeticmexican.org/elmachete/?p=7158

THIS IS A SPECIAL DAY for a number of reasons. Here at UMX, I cannot help but think of my own, as this is The Unapologetic Mexican’s fourth birthday. That’s like 20 years in blog years! Empires rise and fall out here in a couple years! Seemingly sound friendships are utterly exploded in a three day flamewar! Massive campaigns ripple across the blogiverse, change the world, and then subsume into pixelated fade out in an eighth of that time!

And I’m still going, and still raising hell, and still talking to some of the same cool cats I met in the early days.

In that time, I’ve seen immigration and the human rights issues involved there, and the ones needing attention regarding the Latino community, become centered in the meanstream media in a way I never expected. I’ve seen numerous lists, groups, companies, and orgs spring up to address these needs. The landscape has changed a bit, the challenges remain the same, la lucha sigue.

Echoes. I became gradually more and more aware of all those issues for various reasons, but a lot of it began with my father’s activism/poetry/writing on our community’s situation. I’m thinking now of the late 80′s-ish Coors’ boycott. (People telling gente not to boycott AZ may not understand the tradition and success of our boycotts.) I remember jefito and Margarita takin’ me along to chill with some of their friends, and that issue came up on the way to their casa—no Coors, whatever we end up buying to bring over!

And I learned about Prop 187 through different pieces he  wrote, and it was HR 187 4437 that of course prompted the massive turnouts in 2006…it was part of that energy that gave birth to this blog. But our community has been in this struggle since I was born, and of course, much longer.

Here we are in 2010, and SB 1070 is not so different than the Sensenbrenner attack. Same poison, same sentiment, different name and state. Same backlash. And the bill is headed for the same defeat, if we stay strong.

Stay strong.

We may need to. I am hoping for the best. Remember, in 2007, the police stormed the LA march with tear gas and rubber bullets. That was their response to the massive turnouts in 2006. But we do not fear them. We will show up.

Today are the marches. All across this nation. (I’ll be in Salem). Let those who decry protest and marches and demonstration note of how we do, from coast to coast. And let those who join us be empowered and happy in their hearts, or at least stirred deeply with righteous fury. I send much love to all of you who are takin it to the streets. Feel this beat. Stay safe. Steer clear of provocateurs and tense police! Be loud. And be joyous!

THOSE WHO RUN MAINSTREAM BLOGS and by that I mean white blogs, and by that I mean blogs that mostly pretend justice can be found by traveling all the well-worn channels of conversation and operation and who do not challenge the standing vampiric order by reminding readers of the systemic racism that girds the US’ international actions, domestic reality, criminal law system, entire prison industry, immigration law, and media portrayal do not have the same comment moderation experience that others do. That I do. That Racialicious does, that Zuky does, that ManEegee does, that Blackamazon does, that many of my friends do. They surely deal with blowhard know-it-alls and all forms of annoying commenters, but there really is something different about the responses you get when you DARE to write as if mexicans are decent, good, intelligent, creative humans too (IMAGINE!), or that Blacks or Asians are equal to, and at times superior in ability, to whites. There is a special form of outrage and murderous intent that comes your way when you write about real history, and don’t mouth all the propaganda our nation sells to us. There is just something really vile and disgusting about the animosity that rises in reaction.

So we moderate our comments. Because we are not beholden to some weird idea that we deserve hate and to display it like some little gold star on our blogchest. I have never, ever had any compunction about that. I used to have to battle with commenters about even that point. They seem to have given up, maybe my blog has a reputation for not dealing with that stuff, maybe the color of page I chose repels hate, I don’t know. But there is a very simple precept that I operate on. I am here (or on YouTube, etc) to create an undiluted message; to present a strong presence and reality that will not be found in other media. Giving hate part of the stage would make no sense, when it has so much territory of its own already.

Again, none of my friends (people of color) out here feel any strange notion to leave those comments when they appear, like flies clustering to saliva-slicked candy. Let the white feminist blogs battle all day with misogynists who flock to their threads. But that becomes a battle and an endeavor all on its own…and that is not what I came out here to do. I didn’t one day in 2006 say “Hmm. I really wish I could take all this hate I feel coming at Mexicanos…and manifest it in the form of comments on a page that was associated with me. I think I’ll start a blog!”

No. It was more like “There is too much anti-Mex racism and hate flying around in the air, on the street, in my neighborhood, and in the media and it is unchallenged and it needs to be CHALLENGED and COUNTERED and I need to be doing that.”

So I laugh when people leave whiny comments about my moderating their hateful screeds. They actually criticize me for not letting them center their vitriol! As if just by the direction the hate is traveling in, it is righteous. I’m thinking now of my YouTube video I made in February about SB 1070. I allow through a fair amount of the nasty comments when I feel like batting them around. But many I do not. Many are simply poisonous. And as I replied to one person who thought sneering in hate at me was the way to make their comments be made visible, “I understand. It hurts to find even one tiny place online where you are not free to spew nasty shit about immigrants or people of color. I bet you wish you could just run around rampant on my page, sucking up all the oxygen and centering your own hostility.”

And I’m fucking with him. But the truth is, they really are baffled! I know that. It really just seems surreal to them—in a culture, national culture, media culture—to find any spot where The Understood Hierarchy is not in place. White on top, color all underneath and subservient to any opinion and feeling and abuse white feels like dishing. We get normalized to anything that is around us, we get habituated, as is the term in the field. It’s that sense of NORMAL that destroys people of color in this nation. Our lives, our minds, our bodies, our families, our legacies, our opportunities.

When people—white people in this example—protest at reaching but not being able to grasp this power normally so accessible to them, you can hear the tones of frustration and fear. Those used to napping in the satin bedding of undeserved privilege don’t WANNA wake up and mow the lawn. They don’t HAFTA. It’s not FAIRRRRRRRRRRRR

Just ask Mitt Romney, who hires help to carve out a pretty, illegal lawn for him.

When Glenn Beck, the foofy crybaby millionaire vampire, moans about the “death of white culture”? This is what he means. The death of his ability to dish abuse on non-whites and have it be NORMAL. Arizona doesn’t quite understand either (or the legislators with power I ought to say, because I’m betting most of Arizona is brown people who don’t agree with these landowners and lawmakers). Right now they are all “Hunh?? Wha’ ‘appened?? All we did was institute the Rightful Hierarchy!”

It’s a changing nation. I mean what the hell did they expect? For all the slaves that were dragged here never to fall in love and have children with each other? Or that when the slaveowners raped their slaves (or even had love affairs with them) that the descendants would never have skin that reflected the dominant genes of one of their parents? That the Indians in the hot lands would stay down there? That the Chinese would dig the mines and then go home? That the Indians here in the north would teach the invaders how to farm and then fade away? That the Chileans and Japanese and El Salvadorans and Argentinians and Mexicans and Blacks who powered the economic and agricultural and garment industries would never procreate? Or that Melanin and epicanthic features can be wished into oblivion?

Of course the nation is browning! This land—not too long ago, some need reminding—was entirely populated by non-whites. Aside from the European (French and Spanish and British) forces that showed up wanting gold or goldlike opportunity, that is who lived here and that is who was brought here in droves. Or, for example, in the case of Mexicans, that is the workforce that the nation advertised for and solicited!

Some people—mostly the older generations at this point—dwell in illusion about this plain fact, and losing your illusions HURTS. Having the White Lens peeled off by the caustic hands of reality HURTS.

Here is the sad part:

Those people flocking online to spread hate…they are nobodies. In terms of who is caging whom? They are not staff at the zoo, only other visitors. They are just as oppressed in thought as anyone. They are tools. They say “go back to where you came from” without thinking twice about any of this. The logic is so….stupid that you can’t even argue with it. That’s why I don’t usually. Sometimes I’ll respond when they cry You are stealing jobs and breaking our laws! Maybe I’ll say I was born here. Or You do know that US industry advertises for labor in Spanish on Mexican radio, right? Or You do know that railroad towns in many instances originated from the shanties and camps set up by Mexican workers, right? But mostly I don’t. Because like the song almost says, “They only have eyes for you…below them.” And that’s all these ones can see.

And all the while, these people are being used. They show up spouting lines that would make politicians jump like monkeys and clap with their feet. Sure, they have a heart and mind and their momma loves them, I bet. Some of them, at least.

But as time wears away the illusions, they understand they have been duped on some level. And being fooled stings. It humiliates. The stories preached in films and on TV and in books and in classrooms about the inherent white superiority and natural ability to succeed and Be Greater Than (and this includes dominating in numbers) were lies. These people who now live the dawning of the lie need someone to blame for this new pain. There are already prescribed scapegoats. They begin to seethe with frustration because while many of us already understood the nature of the illusion (because we’ve already paid for our lesson with pain) they are just getting around to seeing reality. They want to punish someone for their having been tricked. And just like trained animals, this small group of reality-resisters aren’t great at producing original thought on their own, and fall back on their training. And point to us. That’s who they want to punish for their being fooled.

Progress will come. It is coming. It is arriving. It is on its way. We are living it. It won’t be instant. It will hurt. Like harvesting crops in the blistering sun, it will exact a cost, a toll of pain and sweat. Did ya think justice grows on trees? Even if it did, you’d need someone to pick it. This time, I say don’t leave that work to others. Because they might decide later that the orchard belongs to those who work it.

MY FIRST THOUGHTS when I read about the boycott on Arizona as a reaction to their passing SB 1070 were, yeah! Let’s do it. Make them feel the pain. Nobody pays too much attention to anyone or anything in this nation unless it either costs a lot or makes a lot of cash.

But then I thought about how POC are always going to suffer more when an economy dips…and that the boycott might be a sort of double punishment on those already suffering greatly in AZ.

And then I thought some more, and a Twitter amigo added the thought that it’s gonna be rough on gente in AZ no matter what. That made sense. And not just now. After all, this is the state that fought against an MLK holiday!

So I think AZ should feel the pain from the rest of the Union. Because this state has decided that it wants to return to an era that the rest of the Union—the other states in the US—has left behind. A boycott by the rest of the states, or as many as possible, says “Okay. You want to go in a whole different direction than the country? Then do without the rest of the country’s support for a while. Think that over.”

Arizona needs to think this over. And a whole lot of us say so.

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update: and counting…
update2: ouch.
update3: whoa.