In an effort to get the disturbing lows humans will fall to out of my brain, I surfed youtube for some random joy, and found the following video of Mandy Patinkin singing a traditional queer Latina favorita with the supa hawt Audra McDonald:
The part I found interesting was how Audra stated that she didn’t “look the part.” But what is a Puerto Rican *supposed* to look like? And knowing Latin America’s historical roots of mestizaje, why on earth would there ever be an assumption that a black woman could not be Latina?
Besides, I think she makes a more convincing Maria than Natalie Wood.
6:32 pm By Jennifer Woodard Maderazo · US Presidential Race 2008 · Comments Off
21 Oct 2008Ok, I expected that there would be a certain amount of racism with this presidential election. I live next to an awful lot of libertarians and ‘liberal’ white folks (as in, they don’t see color, which means there’s no reason for affirmative action, race based organizations like NAACP etc) and I know that there are many of them that say quietly to themselves, “Obama is nice and everything, but well, I won’t vote for *that* kind of person.”
Which, of course, means, I won’t vote for a black person.
I have some big ass problems with that kind of logic, but these folks are my neighbors, so I can’t very well go around beating them up. I talk with them, they talk with me, and hopefully somewhere down the line, we’ll come to a truce that we can all live by.
But then I read this story–and I am not sure if we live in the 1950′s or in the year 2008:
Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.
Leila Tvedt, associate vice chancellor for public relations, said Monday night that maintenance workers found the 75-pound bear cub shot to death in front of the school’s administration building at the entrance to campus. The Obama yard signs were stapled together and placed over the bear’s head, Tvedt said.
The bear had been shot in the head, Tvedt said.
Signs and whispers are one thing. Murdering a bear with a gunshot to the head and putting pictures of a human being on it is something else all together.
Where is this blessed “America” that the far right is so eager to rub our faces in? Where is the rule of law? Where does the idea come from that if you don’t like a person’s politics, the next best thing is to kill him (or otherwise imply murder through the murder of other beings?).
I hope the FBI/Secret Service has made its way out to North Carolina.
Oil is gold these days, as a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, and as a commodity that fuels more than homes, but also wars and diplomatic relations. Take the U.S. relationship with Venezuela for example. One of the biggest threats that President Chavez has made is that he will cut off U.S. access to Venezuela’s oil. Now there is a new potential threat. Well not new, pero a new spin on an old threat. Cuba announced that there may be more than 20bn barrels of recoverable oil in offshore fields in Cuba’s share of the Gulf of Mexico, more than twice the previous estimate.
What does this mean if it is indeed true?
12:27 pm By Maegan La Mala · Activism|Blogs|Internet|Magazines|media justice|Women · Comments Off
21 Oct 2008UTNE Reader released a list of 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World and VivirLatino is proud that some dear amigas of ours are included.
brownfemipower, whom I consider an hermana on the blogosphere:
brownfemipower, whose inimitable blog is the anchor of the pulsing women-of-color blogosphere, began posting three years ago. She writes emotionally and radiantly about gender violence, immigration raids, public housing demolition in New Orleans, sexuality (a recent post on this topic included a video of Aerosmith’s “Crying”), and other “out of bounds” issues, morphing feminism back into a force for social change—for everyone—rather than an “exclusive networking club.”“Feminists can’t seem to figure out why their movement isn’t growing,” she wrote in June. “Could the fact that feminism uses universities as its major site of recruitment rather than jails, halfway houses, day care centers, churches, restaurants, the streets, mommy blog communities . . . have something to do with it?”
Felicidades mujer!
Other amigas and people who should be amigas after the jump…
VivirLatino is a daily publication published by Mamita Mala Media, dedicated to featuring all the latest politics, culture, entertainment of interest to the diverse Latin@ diaspora.
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