VivirLatino

Living & Luchando la Vida Latin@

Daily Archives: July 19, 2010

On These Shoulders We Stand

July 19th, 2010

So far, I’ve only made it through the first two parts of this documentary–but it’s so good, I had to share. Usually, most of us in the LGBT/queer community know all about Stonewall and the organizing in the East. It’s more rare to really know anything at all about the organizing in the West, much less organizing that queer Latin@s and people of color did. This is fabulous. Espcially stay on the look out for Nancy Valverde!

On These Shoulders We Stand tells the stories of 11 older members of the Los Angeles lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community from the 1950s into the early 1980s. According to the filmmakers, the documentary, showing at film festivals around the country, “brings to light Los Angeles’ significant, yet hidden, role in U.S. gay history by interweaving first-person accounts with narration and seldom-seen archival materials.”

The producers want to spread the word that “not everything began with Stonewall.”

The 11 participants in the film, directed by Glenne McElhinney, are:

Dr. Maria Dolores Diaz: Activist in the Chicano and Feminist Rights Movement.
Nancy Valverde: A barber who was arrested and jailed many times.
Kevin Thomas: Los Angeles Times writer and film critic.
Dr. Marsha Epstein: Founding physician at the Herself Feminist Women’s Health Center.
Dale Reynolds: Hollywood actor, founder of Gay Actors Rap in Los Angeles.
Margo Strik: A graphic artist, active in Southern California Women for Understanding.
Miki Jackson: Friend of Morris Kight, early volunteer at the Gay Community Services Center.
Ivy Bottini: A founding member of the National Organization for Women.
Don Norman: Came out at a very early age in Los Angeles, Chemical Dependency Counselor.
Troy Perry: A Pentecostal Preacher, founded Metropolitan Community Church, in Los Angeles.
Mia Yamamoto: Attorney, Los Angeles Public Defenders Office.

ETA: Apparently there are only two clips! I thought that the whole documentary was online, I guess not! Anyway, the two clips are really good–they point to a really important time in our history and they highlight non-white folks, which I think is especially important. If white LGBT folks don’t know much about their history, non-whites know even less. So it’s good that they have multiple communities highlighted.

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Monday Movie : Yo Soy Lloréns

July 19th, 2010

The seven part short film, Yo Soy Lloréns, came to my attention via Facebook and I was really struck. The short clips all focus on life in the largest housing project in the Antilles, Lloréns Torres, in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

The reason why this series affected me is that when I was child, spending many of my holidays in Puerto Rico in the house of my Stepmother’s family in Santurce, Lloréns Torres was right across the street. I and the other children were warned to never to speak to anyone on the stress because they might be from there and we were taught to be wary of stray bullets, especially on New Year’s Eve. There was so much fear put in us over a caserio, a project, even though the only thing that separated “us” from “them” was a bit of concrete and iron gates. When I became politicized, I revisited Lloréns Torres through poetry and as an adult, traveled to Santurce and through Lloréns Torres with my then small daughter.

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Can a Law Stop Racial Profiling

July 19th, 2010

In the late 1990′s, when racial profiling, especially framed in terms like “driving while black”, was in the headlines, Congressmen like John Conyers spoke out about the possibility of legislation aimed at stopping racial profiling. Now, ten or so years later, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. and Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitution,
Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Chairman Jerrold Nadler introduced H.R. 5748, End Racial Profiling Act of 2010 (ERPA).

This bill is being introduced in the context of the rising use of police tactics like stop and frisk in NYC and of course laws like Arizona’s SB1070 which make it suspicious to be alive while brown.

From the official press release announcing the legislation late last week:

“The debate over racial profiling has become a central element in a much larger history of adversarial relationships between the police and communities of color,” Conyers said. “Over the past two decades, the tensions between police and minority
communities have grown as allegations of racial profiling by law enforcement agents, sometimes supported by data collection
efforts, have increased in number and frequency. The recent passage of Arizonaʼs new immigration law has crystallized the terms
of the profiling debate and demonstrates that the combination of racial discrimination and law enforcement represents a volatile
mix across all strata of the minority community. In 2001, we achieved a bipartisan consensus with the Bush administration in
support of profiling legislation and hope that we can rebuild that momentum in support of this long overdue federal action.”

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Monday Morning Musica : Calle 13 & The Mars Volta

July 19th, 2010

I was originally going to make all of this week’s morning musica posts related to Las Vegas given that I will be heading out there for Netroots Nation (more on that later) pero when I heard this jam via Remezcla, I decided to go with this. You really have to listen to the lyrics and apologies for my non-Spanish speaking peeps. Calma Pueblo which can be translated as “stay Calm Community/town/my people”, makes reference to the Puerto Rican governor’s mass firing of workers on the island, mass media misinformation, using corporate sponsorship, the Vatican as a mafia, and using music a voice of the people.

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