THE LONG WAR. The Longest War the USA has been engaged in is not with Afghanistan. It is with Truth. It is against Truth. It is the war for White Supremacy, and it takes many shapes over time and yet never owns up to its own name: War. Waged by other means.
MAKING SENSE OF SINSEMILLA. This week’s News With Nezua looks back on the history of Marijuana, the racism involved with its prohibition, and how that prohibition still plays out as oppression on people of color.
I AM NOT AN ALTRUIST. Nor am I here to convince you that I’m a Nice Guy. Nor to claim I am a champion of immigrants. If it needs to be made clearer to aid in expectation or understanding, the story and reasons behind my particular hand en la lucha are far simpler.
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?
MOYA BAILEY: I don’t feel victorious. I don’t feel like we won. I do think that these sentiments are particularly interesting after the early press spin that asked whether Barack was black enough and black people were ambivalent about the answer. Now he’s one of us, our hero, our modern day Martin and Malcolm….
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.
Soy Indio y Euro, soy mestizo, soy Latino. I am the conqueror and the conquered, I am the field and the worker and the hungry consumer; I am all these things, but my heritage is and will always be la lucha. And that is why I am here many days. For mi gente are still in the fields. It is not a thing of the past.
House of Nezua
the XOLAGRAFIK theater!
