THIS WEEK, two comprehensive reports on the health of immigrant detainees were released by Human Rights Watch and the Florida Immigrant Advocacy Center. let there be no doubt that in the custody of ICE, immigrants are, literally, “dying for decent care.”
THOUGH WORKING TO CLOSE Guantánamo, peppering his speech with talk of law and order, and restoring US image to the world abroad, Obama still risks muddying up his accomplishments with a blatant hypocrisy: we cannot lead the way on liberty or justice when investing in detention systems from Arizona to Iraq.
ALL OVER THE NATION, communities are clamoring to be heard. In this worsening economic landscape, migrant communities are being terrorized by violent raids, families are destabilized, wage earners are jailed or detained, and xenophobic pundits continue to fuel a rising wave of hate crimes against Latinos. The stakes could not be any higher.
A VLOG featuring various headlines on current Immigration News. Border Guards sentence commuted, violence in Mexico now even disturbing economic bloggers, Immigrants and allies march on ICE headquarters—with original footage of the march itself.
I’VE BEEN FOLLOWING NEWS FROM MEXICO for a few years now, and as I’m sure you know, most US media ignores Mexico, and to our detriment. This is baffling to me because our cultures, our land, our labor, and our peoples are so intertwined as to be two parts of one whole. It is easy to forget this in the midst of much rigid talk of maps, borders, and walls. But reality is knocking at our door.
THANKSGIVING is probably the most popular and earliest-given justification for invasion, murder, imperialism, occupation, and “othering” that we know of in this country. Even now in Iraq we hear fables fashioned on the same colonizer’s framework and it sickens. But Thanksgiving is Iraq, with its steaming platter of corpses. Iraq is Thanksgiving.
IF WE WANT TO UNITE, it cannot be by overlooking differences that stab at people and stick in their throats and veins and bellies. This unity must come about by connecting ourselves through struggle; by working together to fight the iniquities that pit most of us against each other, and all so that one or two types of persons can ascend, unfettered, to the top of the heap.
KEVIN: The Cross Road has been on my mind lately. Not because I feel that our President-Elect, Barack Obama, is at The Cross Road in the sense of selling his soul to become President, or that he is “out alone after dark” in his new role as leader of the United States. Both possibilities are there, to be sure, but that is not what concerns me now…
CARMEN D: In 2004, President George Bush garnered 44% of the Latino vote and pundits everywhere declared that “Hispanics” were conservative, and might provide a growing base of support for the Republican party going forward. It was a reasonable hypothesis, I guess…
ELLE, PHD: I expected to cry if Barack Obama won the election—everyone who knows me expected me to cry. I even had friends who called and said, “Are you crying yet?” Admittedly, I dashed away a few tears, but I didn’t really cry. The joy I felt was overshadowed by worry. And why am I letting it get to me?
DEAR MISTER PRESIDENT ELECT: You are too smart to pretend you don’t see all this. So I say if you do not act on it and soon, you are nodding along with this scourge that threatens both our peoples and the whole nation as a consequence. And I know I don’t need to be overly direct about this, but I will anyway:
JOSE VILSON: Barack Obama isn’t just a man in isolation or the man who’ll lead this country for the next four to eight years, but also a mass movement for that future, a bright one. Barack has overtly galvanized the country in his favor and has built a formidable youth movement that should keep this generation’s voice heard, but its soul intact.
BLACKAMAZON: Not another going back till that ship on that sea woman rocking now fatherless children. Not another beautiful “strong black woman” punished by loneliness for loving a man trying to be good. Not another group of brothers in tears kicking themselves because they FELL FOR IT THIS TIME AGAIN. That they believed that this time work would pay off. We prayed for it, chanted lit candles, and it seems like it snuck up on us…
I AM VERY HAPPY that my children will grow up to see Barack Obama as our President. I do think certain lines of thinking, where people imagine the arc of justice completed now that a black man is our President, go too far and too soon. But I know that from this day forward, children in the USA will grow up with a different idea of African Americans and our country, both.
WE HAVE AMAZING STORES OF POWER within us. Stores of energy; of psychic, spiritual, and mental energy. That’s why we can heal ourselves and sicken ourselves and others around us. Obama is not perfect, but from what I see, he believes in orienting upon the restorative, constructive, and healing properties of that energy. And anyone who does this has my attention.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
