VivirLatino

Living & Luchando la Vida Latin@

In the Bronx, Dismissal of Charges Against Alleged Killer Officer Nothing New

May 20th, 2013

On Feb. 2, 2013, NYPD narcotics officer, Richard Haste, broke into the family home of Ramarley Graham and shot and killed the unarmed 18-year-old in his bathroom. A Bronx grand jury indicted Haste on two counts of manslaughter, but on Wed. May 15, 2013, Judge Steven Barrett dismissed the indictment on a technicality. Outrage by this miscarriage of justice, this past weekend Graham’s family called on all New Yorkers to rally in front of their home to demand justice. The weekend prior to the indictment being tossed, Graham’s parents participated in a protest, Mothers Cry for Justice, held in Downtown New York City by NYPD headquarters and City Hall. Here is what Graham’s father said there.

The Justice Committee, a grassroots organization that has been working with families of NYC police brutality and racial violence victims, including the Graham family in a statement said:

“Although an outrage, Judge Steven L. Barrett’s decision to drop the manslaughter charges against Haste is not surprising. The District Attorney’s Office’s sloppy and inadequate handling of the case is also a story with which families who have lost loved ones to the NYPD are far too familiar. It is important for New Yorkers to understand that there is an inherent conflict of interest when the DA’s office prosecutes NYPD officers. This conflict is rooted in their daily reliance on one another. They are on the same side and part of the same system.”

This is why the JC and other organizations and individuals have demanded for some time a special Independent Prosecutor for all cases of police killing.

This isn’t the first time that an indictment against a police officer in the Bronx has been thrown out on a technicality, highlighting the close nature of the DA’s office and the NYPD. In March 1995, a Bronx grand jury indicted Francis X. Livoti on charges of manslaughter in the second degree. for the chokehold that killed Anthony Baez. Homicide charges were thrown out after an indictment with an incorrect charge was noted. In December 1995, Livoti was reindicted for criminally negligent homicide. But what happened between March and December wasn’t the Bronx District Attorney’s Office of Robert Johnson checking itself and making sure justice was served for the community. It was through the efforts of community activists including the mother of slain 29 year old Baez and other mothers whose sons were killed by police that a second indictment was obtained.

In October of 1995, Iris Baez, who usually walked around with her Bible and opened and closed vigils in memory of her son with prayers, risked arrest by sitting in Robert Johnson’s office, demanding he would reindict Livoti, who had a series of complaints against filed against him via the Civilian Complaint Review Board. Baez was joined by Margarita Rosario, mother and aunt of Bronx police brutality victims, Anthony Rosario and Hilton Vega, who were shot in the back while face down on the floor by police officers, Patrick Brosnan And James Crowe, who had once served as then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s personal bodyguards.

Officers refused to arrest Baez and Rosario that day but activists like to credit their actions as applying critical pressure to get a second indictment of Livoti who ended up going to jail for violating the civil rights of Anthony Baez.

It’s not clear what the Graham family will do next. They have options including asking for federal intervention, seeking civil rights violations charges, and or a civil lawsuit against Officer Haste and the New York Police Department. They may also attempt to pressure and shame Robert Johnson’s office into getting another indictment. But none of those options will bring back the son they lost nor will they change the culture of policing in New York City and the entire United States that looks at people of color as perpetually criminal and deserving of less than human respect.

The Growing Inequality in the United States

April 12th, 2013

Apologies for the long delay between posts. I was waiting for #CIR.

All kidding aside, I’m going to try and post more regularly, sparked into (re)action by some of the voices claiming to be forging the future. This post is not about that. At least not directly.

While for many the future rests in the growth of huge online entities like Google and Facebook, living in the shadows of Silicon Valley are people whose lives exemplify the growing gap between rich and poor.

The clip below from Bill Moyers shares some individual stories painting what that widening gap looks like.

One of the things I was thinking about as I watched the clip is how the debate around immigration reform and who should be deemed the “worthy” ones to get a chance to “ganar la verde”, is how that sort of framework does more to increase that chasm between the affluent and the poor and working class. If visas and legal work permits end up limited to those few with certain technological skills, what happens to everyone else? Are they left to enter the US how ever they need to in order to eke out an existence? Have we really left people any other choice with free trade agreements that push down wages and rights in favor of profits?

Also, watching the clip and thinking about the statistics and images presented I had to stop and think about how much more that loss of personal income was felt by women of color, who experience much greater levels of income disparity. The roaring twenties, the post World War II boom, and today’s so-called economic recovery have not been felt in people of color communities, who bear the brunt of cuts in the social “safety net” i.e. health care, food programs, public education.

Also when you watch below catch how one of those big silicon valley companies avoided paying billions in taxes bu taking advantage of the colonial status of Puerto Rico.

All of these things really are interconnected. The sources of inequality cannot be countered unless we recognize how they work together.

VL at the Cine: Snitch

February 22nd, 2013

If you are wanting to check out a film this weekend, Snitch may be on that list. Many folks I know personally are choosing to see the film for one reason: Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock. So, before you make plans to check the film out read our review, which won’t have too many spoilers! Before we begin, check out the trailer below.

Based on “real events” is the first thing we notice and see in the film Snitch. What “real events” they are focusing on is racially white youth being arrested, charged, and tried for drug trafficking with the intent to sell/distribute. Now, this is not often a film plot I choose to want to see, but like many of my friends, there’s Dwayne Johnson. Isn’t that enough? Let me tell you if it is…

Dwayne Johnson as John Matthews, a self-made wealthy man who owns a fleet of trucks in the midwest. His son, Jason Collins (Rafi Gavron) with ex partner Sylvie Collins (Melina Kanakaredes), is a senior in high school who accepts a package that a “friend” sends to him via the mail and that package holds large amounts of narcotics in addition to DEA tracking devices. It was a set up.

What I find hard to believe from this starting point is: How does a big Black Samoan partner with a Mediterranean woman and have a racially white identified manchild? There’s just too much magical realism asked of me in that casting decision. I can’t suspend my belief that much to believe their child only identifies as racially white, but then again Jason does act like a self-entitled young white man (is it really an act?).

Ten Years After Feb. 15 Global Protests Against War, A New Call

February 15th, 2013

Ten years ago, on Feb. 15, 2003, sometimes called “the day the world said ‘no’ to war,” millions marched around the world against the then-impending invasion of Iraq in what is widely regarded as the largest protest in history.

I, along with my then five year old daughter participated in one of the larger of these marches, in New York City. My daughter, now a teen and her younger sister have grown up thinking the United States occupying nations from Afghanistan to Iraq is “normal”. That doesn’t mean that they are growing up thinking it is just.

On the anniversary of those protests, I wanted to share a statement I am proud to be a signer of, along with such critical thinkers as Noam Chomsky. I signed the statement because my family comes from a country that is currently a colony of the United States, Puerto Rico. My children have family who survived the aftermath of the U.S. backed coup of Chilean president Salvador Allende. The impact of imperial wars are not abstract ideas. They have roots here in the continued resistance of Indigenous peoples.

Please read the statement below (in English and in Spanish) and consider signing on or at the very least having a conversation about what resistance and survival beyond that looks like.

The Blue Metal Kettle is On : Zine Review

February 13th, 2013

Last week, I reintroduced you to you the rich zine work of Noemi “Hermana Resist” Martinez when I reviewed her Lines from acedia to apatheia. This week I bring you a look into the second zine in the two zine collection – Blue Metal Kettle.

More visually rich than Lines, Blue Metal Kettle opens with Martinez asking herself and readers the question : is the internet stunting our communication, changing how we communicate and our expectations on how others interact with us?

If Martinez’s zine is any indication, then the answer is no. Many of the pieces in the zine are cut up into short, twitter appropriate character counts. But don’t take this to mean that they are banal updates of what she had for lunch. Quite the opposite, the snippets offer glimpses into Martinez’s life and also challenge our relationship with words and their function.

pressed between
musty yellowed paper
you’ll find verbs
waiting to react

In fact, Martinez lets the reader know that she doesn’t think communication has changed that much except perhaps in reference to the speed of messages getting from one end to the other. She writes almost with nostalgia about courtships conducted via letters.

Domestic chores such as ironing and cooking are repeated themes throughout the zine, but the acts themselves don’t even seem the point. It’s what’s happening while the work is being carried out : a thought, a conversation, a memory. Daily rituals of eating become sacred acts but no less painful because of associations. Masa, raspas de melon, coffee are all consumed but Martinez clearly has swallowed and digested more with each bite, every sip and sometimes they don’t sit well with her or with us, the readers.

Blue Metal Kettle seems in many ways to be a study in oppositions. Flowers in bloom versus rotting fruit. We see forces working against each other even in the images used throughout.
Skeletons and bones contrast with seascapes, mermaids, and hearts. Or perhaps they are not even opposites of all but representations of the space we have, do and will occupy: the depths of the dirt where the bodies (but not the almas) of our ancestors live, the bottom of the ocean to the heavens and all that hangs there.

Blue Metal Kettle is part of a two zine set that comes with Lines. You can have these beautiful words on paper for only $4 and support independent mujer media. Buy them here now for you or for someone else. If you prefer paypal, you can send $4 (or mas) to csdistro@gmail.com.

Inner Peace & Grief Battle it Out in Zine Lines from acedia to apatheia

February 8th, 2013

When independent media maker, single Chicana/Bori mami Noemi Martinez asked me to review her zines for VivirLatino, it felt like an obligation and a gift. Obligation because what is the point of having a space like this one if I can’t open it up and share the way too marginalized work of mujeres like me and so unlike me. A gift because that is what Martinez’s aka Hermana Resist’s words and work are. This is more than blind loyalty it is right and I sincerely hope others will support her work.

Zines and zine making handmade, folded, glued, printed booklets have always felt just beyond my reach. Coming up as a media maker whose mediums are primarily digital and verbal/performance, I never felt like my hands were skilled enough. I would rather leave that to artists like Martinez who lays out her poems and thoughts on paper in a way that is an art all on its own.

Lines from acedia to apatheia is a perfect example. Organized around the ideas of interior peace and it’s supposed opposite, rage and grief, this zine asks the eternal question of “why am I here” and answers through words that Martinez writes “never found a home” but here they do.

Some works deal with coming to accept the painful but loving relationship between our bodies and our environments. From our bodies/ the dirt :

roots intertwine with wooden legs dying specs of light sometimes our bodies – the dirt fills the morning

Our environments include our histories and the places and people that inhabit those houses and the impact the past has on our present identities.

all the house we’ve lived in have been torn down

this ain’t for the dad
who fucked me up at 9 or 10 or 11
either

this poem is about
the girl who asks
me her father’s name
you know how good it feels
to hear -
I wanna be a momma just like you.

The zine also explores expectations put on us and internalized, even when we think we think they are our own invention. Martinez writes, in a stream of consciousness style, a series of questions and thoughts that I know I related to – as a former single mami, as a woman working in a job to provide for my family but that slowly is sucking the life out of me, as someone struggling financially, as I age, as a Latin@, as a border dweller in multiple senses of the word. Do you relate to any of these identities? Chances are there is something that will resonate, ring a bell, pull at your alma.

but then why do I feel that this
feeling I get of just “being” is some
sort of flat living. Maybe it’s the
media, …

But make no mistake this zine is rooted in the Rio Grande Valley of south Texas, in the land of Gloria Anzaldua, cooking colors between borders.

Visit all the raspa stands in Elsa,
Edinburg, McAllen, Pharr, San Juan,
Alamo, Weslaco, Mission, Donna, San
Isidro, Harlinggen, Brownsville, San
Benito, La Joya, Los Fresnos, Los
Saenz, Port Isabel, La Blanca,
Edcouch, Roma, and Mercedes.

The valley is not a book or a stanza
The valley is not in tune. The
valley is not seasonal.

You can purchase a double zine set including Lines from acedia to apatheia via Martinez’s Etsy page or if you prefer you can use paypal and send $5 to $7 to csdistro@gmail.com

President Obama’s #CIR Principles Nothing to Celebrate

February 5th, 2013

Many regular VivirLatino readers and followers via social media know I’ve been hitting the radio airwaves hard demystifying much of the hype around both the Senate “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration principles and President Obama’s blueprint. While I wrote about the bipartisan Senators’ plan here, I really haven’t had a moment to put down into print my thoughts on Obama’s “plan” as laid out last week in a speech in Las Vegas, until now.

Obama’s speech was short on details and long on perpetuating a hype machine that obscures what the administration has been doing and continues to do in terms of immigration enforcement.

Four years ago the chant “si se puede” was everywhere. Even my then two year old was saying it. This year “now’s the time” is being ushered in, as if the last four years hasn’t been filled with advocates letting the administration slide with it’s never ending release of memos and activists continuing to point out the record breaking deportation numbers thanks to the expansion of programs like Secure Communities.

What Obama did in his speech in Vegas was promote the “good” vs “bad” immigrant binary and expand upon it even by creating a hierarchy of “desirables”. Much of this was based in the language of middle class-ness or aspiring to get to that. Obama invited entrepreneurs, and engineering students while making invisible the domestic workers, street vendors, and day laborers.

The baseline of the president’s speech was naming the eleven million or so undocumented as “rule breakers” above everything else and that before any path to citizenship or legalization they need to make that right – pay taxes (which most do already), paying fines, learning English and getting to the back if the mythical line. Obama admitted that the road to citizenship would be long (10, 20 more years?) but said at least everyone could be comforted by knowing their time would come.

I’m not comforted and neither are some of my undocumented friends whom I went out with the night of Obama’s announcement.

Obama patted himself on the back for border enforcement and misrepresented who has been getting deported. He said deportation of criminals is at its highest level ever. What he didn’t acknowledge was that deportation of everyone is at the highest level ever. In the afterglow of his speech, both Obama and his favorite Latina spokesperson, Cecilia Munoz, acknowledged that yes “others” get caught up in the system. But this is why they need congress to act. The White House continues to wash it’s hands from separating millions of families. They are back to blaming Congress.

Obama also praised his administration for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), the temporary response that fell far short of demands for administrative relief in the wake of the DREAM Act failing to pass in 2010.

Obama also laid the groundwork for making problematic and flaw ridden employment verification systems like E-Verify mandatory so that both workers and business can “play by the same set of rules”. The errors in this program will not just prevent the undocumented from working and keep business from hiring them, they will potentially keep hundreds of thousands of “legal” workers from employment.

Today there is the first of what will likely by many hearings in the House of Representatives on comprehensive immigration reform. So far the middle ground being offered creates more lines of separation – a hierarchy of the worthy and maybe not even a path to citizenship. I will write more on this in the coming days.

Day by day I grow increasingly more frustrated by how immigration is being talked about and about the constant and consistent reinvention of history by politicians and organizations. I can’t even imagine how undocumented communities feel. the deportation machine keeps on working while everyone else keeps on talking.

VivirLatino’s Maegan Ortiz on CounterSpin

February 2nd, 2013

I’ve been very lucky that over that last few days I have been very busy talking on many radio shows about both the Senate’s “Gang of Eight” immigration reform principles and President Obama’s speech on his plan for comprehensive immigration before.

I will share the links with you as they become available.

One great conversation I had was with Peter Hart of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting for their show Counterspin. (Full disclosure: I have contributed twice to their publication Extra!). In the interview, I talk about the hype or spin that’s dressing up the proposals and give a bit of a reality check.

You can listen here.

Blueprint for a Road that Already Is : #CIR

January 28th, 2013

And they’re off! “The Road to Immigration Reform Starts Today!” announced one organizational email. They are talking about a set of immigration reform principles – not an actual bill – that was released today by a bi-partisan group of eight senators :Senators Bennet (D–CO), Durbin (D–IL), Flake (R–AZ), Graham (R–SC), McCain (R–AZ), Menendez (D–NJ), Rubio (R–FL), and Schumer (D–NY).

What’s interesting about all the congratulatory messages that ask people to support immigration reform, is that they lack an actual analysis of what is in the principles. Since the principles include “a pathway to citizenship”, it’s assumed to be good enough.

It is extremely disheartening to read messaging that renders invisible the years of work by immigration and human rights activists. Claiming that the work begins now, denies the role that some of these very same “pro-migrant” orgs have played in watering down the demands of comprehensive immigration reform. It has now become acceptable to become reactive instead of proactive. Instead of telling the administration and Congress what we want, we are expected to celebrate lawmakers rehashing old policies and basically doing their job – working together. IIt is no longer enough to say, stop the deportations. That is obvious and it has been for some time.
It is no longer enough to say that enforcement only policies like Secure Communities need to be defunded. We have to be willing to stand up and say things like:

1: The border is “secure” so let’s stop pouring money into agencies and organizations that put more boots on the ground and enforcement technology.

2: Being able to live in the United States “with papers” shouldn’t be based on some merit system that awards the “smart” immigrants. If we really want to award success then we need to look at how the educational system in the US perpetuates cycles of poverty and underachievement, filtering a limited amount of “success stories”.

3: Employment verification systems like E-Verify have proven themselves flawed and harmful to the labor market so stop the push to make this mandatory. Immigrants are not taking peoples’ jobs. That’s the unspoken subtext. Cut it out. We will not accept the introduction of a biometric identification card which has been the subtext for much of this portion of discussion in years past.

4: We don’t want a guest worker program. We want fair labor standards for farmworkers. How is the proposed Agricultural Worker Program different from H-2A visa program already in place?

5. This get to the back of the line language means people who are already in the United State will have to wait how long before they can get papers? 10 years? 20 years? Is this the beginning of an expanded DACA like program that will allow people to stay in the US in a limbo status indefinitely? How do immigration court backlogs figure into this line?

6: Who will determine what makes an immigrant “seriously criminal” or a threat to national security and thus ineligible for citizenship and targeted for deportation?

7. Limits on accessing federal public benefits for “lawful probationary immigrants” helps to perpetuate poverty and poor health outcomes in immigrant communities. This isn’t being “tough”, this is punishment.

8: Having an English language requirement in order to earn a green card is reminiscent of Jim Crow era literacy laws. There is already a proficiency requirement to become a naturalized citizenship. Making it a requirement for permanent residency has one intention, to limit the amount of people eligible.

9: Creating a fast track to citizenship for DREAMers and some agricultural workers while leaving others to languish in undefined lines will serve to further separate families who have mixed statuses and mixed immigration histories. No to a hierarchy of applicants.

I have read the principles and don’t think there is much to praise. A framework is not a policy change and we have had multiple frameworks put out there already. i think it’s especially important to note that there is no mention in the framework of same lgbtq immigrant families and how they would earn their pathway to legalization or citizenship. I’m a little tired of politicians going on tours, again, holding townhalls, again, that will inevitably lead to the same point unless we do something different. Touting an “earned” pathway to citizenship ignores the anti-immigrant histories and policies in the United States. If anyone has to earn anything, Congress and President Obama need to earn the trust of our communities by giving us more than just the same old same old.