Archive for April, 2010
Taking Note of the Rising Hate Against Latinos
7:50 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Florida|GLBT|Immigration|Violence · 4 Comments
6 Apr 2010I’m feeling overwhelmed with anger and sadness right now. I am Looking at three separate open tabs on la Mala’putadora with three separate recent acts of violence and hates against Latinos in the U.S. and two of these incidents happened right here in NYC, where we are told that these things aren’t supposed to happen, where immigrants are loved and the melting pot is a warm, friendly hot tub.
One case that just came to my attention is from last year and I’m angered and saddened that I’m only learning of it now but also not surprised. How many people don’t know about Manny Mayi Jr. and that is a 19 year old struggle for justice. What these lives and losses of life also tell us is the way that one hate intersects with all hates, like in the case of Jose Sucuzhanay and how these crimes are connected to immigration “reform”. While organizations argue about how much criminalization is acceptable in order to say “si se hizo” in terms of an CIR bill, people are assaulted and then victimized again by a nation that pays lip service to to the idea of “and justice for all”.
In the early morning of Saturday, July 18, 2009 at the corner of Caton Ave. and Ocean Ave. in Brooklyn, two men attacked Ricardo Muñiz and Carmelo León with a wooden stick and a belt while calling them anti-gay epithets. Ricardo does not speak English so he gave the cops at the 70th precinct a written
testimony of what happened. Despite the fact that the testimony states that the attackers targeted Muñiz and León because of their sexual orientation, the NYPD failed to classify the incident as hate crime and, instead, charged Muñiz and León with assault. Muñiz is an undocumented immigrant. Deportation proceedings have been initiated
against him as a result of these events.
There’s no other way to say it. Arizona is continuing it’s years long trend of being one of the most horrifically violent anti-humanitarian states in the country.
The Arizona Legislature gave preliminary approval Tuesday to a proposal that would allow the police to arrest illegal immigrants on trespassing charges simply for being in the state.
…
The House bill must be reconciled with a version passed by the Senate, something that may be done within the next week or two. Both include measures to outlaw the hiring of day laborers off the street; prohibit anyone from knowingly transporting an illegal immigrant, even a relative, anywhere in the state; and compel local police to check the status of people they reasonably suspect are in the country illegally.
Oh, yeah, because there’s that tricky little issue that nativists hate so much: being undocumented is pretty near the same thing as not renewing your drivers license. It is a crime of bureaucracy, of paper work. So, just like you can’t get arrested for going out to eat or walking to the corner store or getting an apartment while having an expired drivers license–you *technically* can’t be arrested for not having proper documentation. Which is why so many work places get raided: the way the US government has chosen to work around this unpleasant fact of life is by making it illegal to work without proper documentation (and I say “technically” because we’ve all seen people arrested for all sorts of petty issues–all of which stem back to police figuring out that proper documentation is missing. Case in point: the number of people who have been charged with “social security fraud” recently or the number of people arrested after calling the police for help as victims of crimes.) (and please, I am in no way a legal scholar or expert–and I recognize every state is different, so if I am wrong about any of this, please let me know in comments!!)
So this bill would address the fact that it’s technically (on paper) still legal for those without proper documentation to exist in the state without proper documentation. It is a scary proposition–as it means that people who have committed no crime can have their status checked, simply because they look like they might be “illegal.”
If anything could possibly be worse than that–this bill would not just give local police the *right* to racial profile–but would *require* it of them. Which means that a whole slew of entirely legal natural born citizens of the US will now be subjected to legal government stops and searches. The only reason I can fathom that far right Libertarians and Conservatives would even consider supporting such an incredibly terrifying government intervention on Civil Liberties would be that it is white Libertarians and Conservatives who are supporting the bill, and thus feel no danger in the idea of being subjected to required investigation by the government–for no other reason than a “suspicion.” Because who is “suspect” in situations like this? The blond white woman jogging down the street? The white man driving to work?
I anticipate this bill passing. With a Republican governor that has expressed support for the bill–how could it not? That doesn’t mean that we can’t at least try to mount an opposition. If you are from Arizona and know groups organizing against it or just know good organizations that are doing good work on any immigration issues, let us know in comments!
National Poetry Month : Dia 3, Cherríe Moraga’s New Mexican Confession Part II
11:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Poetry|Women · Comments Off
6 Apr 2010I know I am behind…blame mami’hood and Spring Break. Pero maybe that’s why I am drawn this to las Chicana fore(co)madres. They have been calling to me lately.
New Mexican Confession (an excerpt)
Upon Reading Whitman fifteen years later. Jemez Springs, 1988
by Cherríe Moraga
II
Like a Poet
I have come here to look for god
but make no claim of finding-
the quest, a journey
of righteous and humble men
strangers to their bodies
cartographers to the contour of women-flesh,
a border between nature and its lover,
man.I am a woman
who walks by the motherhouse
of the sisters of the precious blood
sleeping beneath the snow
and can easily see myself there
my body sleeping beneath the silent
smell of fresh pressed linen,
the protection of closed doors
Against the cold
Against the foul breath ‘n’ beer
talk of Alaskan pipeliners passing through
Against the vibrant death this land is seeing…
Who do they pray for? Do they pray for this land?The sister ventures out into the cold of noon
to play the campanas. They sound of time,
a flat resonance as I pass
no even twelve strikes but a sporadic three strikes here
another two-rest-again three
and I imagine she calls me as I always feared
to join her in her single bed
of aching abstinence.I am the nun
as I am the Giusewa woman
across the road
who 300 years ago
with mud and straw and hands
as delicate as her descendant’s
now scribbling on dead leaves,
walled up the Spanish religion
built templos to enclose his god
while the outer cañón
enveloped and pitied them all.
I.C.E. Taking a Page from Late 90′s Policing
6:15 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|Immigration|Justice|Obama · 2 Comments
6 Apr 2010My inbox is flooded with conversations regarding the latest “revelation” about ICE policies and really color me not surprised.
A report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed the presence of quotas for identifying, arresting, and deporting the non-criminal undocumented.
You’ll remember that 287(g) which started under Bush and was expanded under Obama, essentially deputizes local police departments to act as immigration agents. From jump, this opened the door to racial profiling and violating the civil and human rights of all immigrants and of all Latinos really since the face of undocumented immigration is painted as brown and having a z at the end of your last name.
The fact that ICE is using the police to criminalize all immigrants was something using 287(g) was something that activists and “difficult” bloggers, like myself raised from the beginning (VivirLatino is one of hundreds of signers on a letter calling for an end to 287(g) sent last August) and many advocacy orgs purposely didn’t touch the issue with a 30 foot pole so as not to upset the delicate status quo or “coalition” of Comprehensive Immigration Reform work.
Back then and now, this whole public airing of what our communities have been living with, reminds me of the late 1990′s in terms of policing urban communities of color across the country. Broken windows didn’t work then, it’s not gonna work now.
Are People Still Buying the “But Some of my Friends Are…” Line?
7:51 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|New York|Violence · 1 Comment
5 Apr 2010In case people haven’t been paying attention, because you’re waiting for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, filling out your census, or like me, taking care of the off from school Spring Break children, in Suffolk County, Long Island the trial against the “alleged” killers of Marcelo Lucero continues.
The hate crime against the Ecuadorian immigrant for being a Latino immigrant has Jeffery Conroy taking the heat for the the stabbing death of Lucero in which at least 6 other young men participated in, now has it’s first Latino apologist with the media eating up one of the oldest racist defenses in the book : “But, he can’t be racist. His best friend was a beaner, spic, I mean Latino.”
Enter Will Garcia, the Ecuadorian friend of Conroy, who is quoted in the New York Times:
“How’s he going to be a white supremacist if he chills with Spanish people and he chills with black people? He’s my friend. He’s been there for me. I’ve been there for him. He wasn’t a racist.”
US soldiers fire on Iraqi citizens and Journalists working for US media
4:52 pm By la Macha · Iraq War|Violence · 6 Comments
5 Apr 2010I am not going to frame this video with my response to it–I am only going to say two things:
1. I give a massive trigger warning to all who watch this, in particular war survivors or those connected those who were in war. It is horrifying, disgusting, sickening. But it is essential it is seen. So those who are like me–who abhor violence, but will not be emotionally traumatized as a survivor would–I feel it is a duty to watch it. To see what it is being done in your name. And take responsibility for it.
2. As a US citizen, I forcefully denounce what these soldiers did in the name of the US government. As a child of immigrant parents and a member of the immigrant community, I suggest on the strongest terms possible that the pro-immigration activist community complicate and challenge the prevailing idea that we intend to “march for America” as a way to “win” pro-immigration agenda from the government that committed this horrific atrocities.
That said, please watch this video–if you can’t, please forward it as far and wide as you can.
A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”
Calling it a case of “collateral murder,” the WikiLeaks Web site today released harrowing until-now secret video of a U.S. Army Apache helicopter in Baghdad in 2007 repeatedly opening fire on a group of men that included a Reuters photographer and his driver — and then on a van that stopped to rescue one of the wounded men.
None of the members of the group were taking hostile action, contrary to the Pentagon’s initial cover story; they were milling about on a street corner. One man was evidently carrying a gun, though that was and is hardly an uncommon occurrence in Baghdad.
Reporters working for WikiLeaks determined that the driver of the van was a good Samaritan on his way to take his small children to a tutoring session. He was killed and his two children were badly injured.
In the video, which Reuters has been asking to see since 2007, crew members can be heard celebrating their kills.
“Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards,” says one crewman after multiple rounds of 30mm cannon fire left nearly a dozen bodies littering the street.
A crewman begs for permission to open fire on the van and its occupants, even though it has done nothing but stop to help the wounded: “Come on, let us shoot!”
Story continues belowTwo crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses.
And after soldiers on the ground find two small children shot and bleeding in the van, one crewman can be heard saying: “Well, it’s their fault bringing their kids to a battle.”
This Wednesday in NYC Puerto Rican Political Prisoners: A Panel Discussion!
10:43 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Events|New York City|Puerto Rico · 1 Comment
4 Apr 2010
Puerto Rican Political Prisoners: A Panel Discussion!
Wednesday, April 7th 2010
6-8pm
Union Theological Seminary
Social Hall
The Church and Society program and the Latin@ Caucus of Union Theological Seminary would like to invite the faculty and student community of Union, as well as the wider community, to a panel discussion regarding the plight of the Puerto Rican political prisoners currently being held in the United States. The political status of Puerto Rico will also be addressed.
Our Panel will consist of legal and pastoral activist/scholars that will frame the issue of these political prisoners within a context of justice, mercy,democracy and the right to political self-determination. Our panelists include:
Attorney Jan Susler of the Poor People’s Law Office in Chicago, IL;
Attorney and Law Professor Eduardo Villanueva Muñoz, of Maria de Hostos School of Law, Mayaguez, Puerto Rico
Episcopal Priest Father Luis Barrios, Professor/Chair Department of Latin
American & Latin@ Studies, John Jay College of Criminal Justice-City University of New York.We eagerly anticipate your presence and participation in this critical
discussion. For further information please contact Professor Cruz or Richard Colon, Chair of Latin@ Caucus.
Friend to the VL familia and the brains behind the PANIC! series in which our own Mamita Mala has performed, Charlie Vázquez is releasing his second novel this month. Contraband is available April 15, 2010, below is the synopsis, which I have to say is intriguing and I’m excited to get my hands on this book:
Inspired by Latin-American revolutionary struggles, this riveting work of Latino noir follows the paranoid underworld exile of Volfango Sanzo, a man so haunted by his secrets that he escapes to sprawling networks of underground tunnels and labyrinths in near-future America—where dissidents and “lunars” are seeking refuge from the smoldering ruins of a nation plagued by a deadly civil war and revolution. Volfango is certain that renegade genes in his DNA will be exposed by government-mandated “gene tests,” so he vanishes before his scheduled test date, terrified of being discovered and executed. He also suspects he is being hunted by a government ministry, who wishes to silence him before he speaks. What will he find in those dangerous underground worlds populated by rebels and pariahs? And what secrets does he keep? Will he survive against bleak odds in an underworld where sunlight, food and water are scarce?
Seriously, don’t you want to read the book….like right this second! You can reserve your book now by clicking here.
Below is a video of Charlie reading his bilingual poem “Bronx Dharma” while learning to use his new video camera from his Youtube channel.
National Poetry Month : Dia 2, The Cannibal’s Cancion de Gloria Anzaldua
7:47 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books|Culture|Poetry|Women · 2 Comments
2 Apr 2010I always turn to the mujeres, the women who have come and gone before me as poetas and activistas. As I was leafing through my worn copy of Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands/ la Frontera
the Catholic girl still left inside found this poem appropriate for Good Friday.
The Cannibal’s CancionIt is our custom
to consume
the person we love.
Taboo flesh: swollen
genitalia nipples
the scrotum the vulva
the soles of the feet
the palms of the hand
heart and liver taste best.
Cannibalism is blessed.I’ll wear your jawbone
round my neck
listen to your vertebrae
bone rapping bone in my wrists.
I’ll string your fingers round my waist–
what a rigorous embrace.
Over my heart I’ll wear
a brooch with a lock of your hair.
Nights I’ll sleep cradling
your skull sharpening
my teeth on your toothless grin.Sundays there’s mass and communion
and I’ll put your relics to rest.
Republicans Love Immigrants …er Maybe Not
2:16 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Politics · Comments Off
2 Apr 2010Both pre and post the March 21st March for America , there has been a series of meetings between immigration “reform” advocates and politicians about pushing the “reform” agenda forward. The most recent happened just the other day when Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele met with some “reform” advocates.
You know the Republicans have been talking some good game when it comes to courting Latinos, saying that they recognize the power and presence of the Latino vote (something everyone says when there is an election close by). The GOP knows that an issue close to the Latino community is the immigration issue, not because it directly impacts so many of our communities pero because of the ways it ties into other critical issues such as health care and the economy. But the Repubs seem to be a little undecided as to how best love immigrants. After the latest meeting it was reported that said he would push Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and the party’s leadership to enlist another Republican senator’s support for comprehensive and bipartisan immigration reform. Then he said (well a spokesperson said to the NYT) that there was no promise made to do anything.
Hola!
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