2010 September | VivirLatino

Archive for September, 2010

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama : Gaby Pacheco

6:46 am By Maegan La Mala · DREAM Act|Education|Immigration|youth · Comments Off

14 Sep 2010

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act.

Dear Mr. President,

I am a member of the first graduating class of Felix Varela Senior High which is located in Miami, Florida. I had attended school with my native-born friends. Like them, I participated in activities, field trips, dances, and felt the pain of losing a classmate.

It was around 10th grade that I realized my future after high school would not be the same as those of my peers even though I worked just as hard to obtain excellent grades. I understood that I was different. For over ten years I had been in hiding. For days I thought about coming out of the closet. I wanted to tell the whole world who I really was. I thought, “How would this affect the relationships with my friends?” “How would I be judged?” “How will my parents be affected?” I thought about it day and night, hoping that someone would help and wondering about the others, like me, out there.

It took a lot of courage, but one day in 10th grade I told everyone: I was an undocumented immigrant.

Read more…

NYC Candlelight Vigil In Memory of Iman Morales 9/23

1:19 pm By Maegan La Mala · Justice|New York City · 3 Comments

13 Sep 2010

Iman Morales was a loving son, brother and friend.

Please join his family as they remember his life and denounce his death at the hands of the NYPD.

The vigil will mark two years since Iman Morales, a 35-year-old man with mental illness was tased to his death by NYPD officers on September 24th, 2008.

After receiving the tasing order from NYPD Lieutenant Michael Pigott, despite an NYPD procedure forbidding tasing someone on an elevated surface, NYPD Sergeant Nicholas Marchesona tased Iman.

Iman, who stood naked on the ledge of a store front awning 10 feet above ground when he was jolted by the taser, was propelled to his death in front of his horrified mother as her cries for help to couch his fall were repeatedly ignored.
Lieutenant Michael Pigott who gave the taser order took his own life days later. Sergeant Marchesona, who fired the taser that killed Iman was promoted to Detective six weeks after the Killing.

As Iman’s family, community members and activists, we are outraged by yet another instance of police brutality against our community and in particular against a person with mental illness. Iman’s death once again highlights the blatant misconduct exhibited by the police when responding to mental health crisis calls and underscores the lack of consideration and empathy not only for communities of color but for their own members of the New York City Police Department.

Please Join Us
Date: Friday, September 24, 2010 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Location: 489 Tompkins Avenue btwn. Decatur St.& Macdonough St. Brooklyn, NY
Directions: C Train to Kingston-Throop Station or the B25 bus to Brooklyn Ave.

Sponsored and organized by the Justice Committee
For more info contact justicecommittee@gmail.com or 212-614-5343

Monday Musica : The Roots of Chicha 2

11:01 am By Maegan La Mala · Music|Peru · Comments Off

13 Sep 2010

Call Mala late to the party. I’ve been hearing/reading about Chicha, the music genre, not the drink, for maybe two years now without actually hearing the music or sitting down to study it in depth. Enter into my mailbox, The Roots of Chicha 2, to be released on Barbès Records on October 12 (Dia de la Hispanidad fyi).

According to the press release, my own reading and listening, Chicha is a label given not just Peruvian cumbia dating from the late 60′s into the early 80′s, but a label given to anything coming out of the “ghettos” of Lima if you will. While the U.S. has hip hop and it’s predecessors, Peru and other countries in South America had cumbia. To this day, cumbia in Latin American countries where it hasn’t been mainstreamed (exceptions would be Colombia and Mexico) is considered music of the lower class.

The Roots of Chicha 2 features 16 tracks from 11 bands. The songs were recorded between 1968 to 1981 and reflect diverse influences that have to to do with chronological time and geography. Read more…

September Song

8:32 am By Maegan La Mala · Uncategorized · Comments Off

11 Sep 2010

Because no one owns 9-11

Because the U.S. is not the center of the universe

Because of my hijas

Because remembering is more than just a rehashing of the events of one day it is attempting to understand how we got to that day.

Because poetry can save us

September Song

The melody is in the falling to the ground
in between the changing of the fertile ripe green
into shades of death
between two seasons
royal gold
and blood red.

The background beat is
the tick tick tocking sound
of heartbeat bombs
inside weapon of mass destruction wombs
of women between nations
moaning and mourning in between languages
as in between children
break into this world
from between their legs.

The melody is composed
of the engine whirr of planes
flying overhead
in two separate hemispheres
on two separate continents
in two separate countries
joined at the root by the same politics
on the same day
28 years apart.

The aftermath is a chorus cry
for the disappeared and the dead
it repeats numerous times
translating
transforming into prayer and protest
in Spanish
in English
in Mapudungun
in Farsi
in Arabic
all sounding eerily alike.

And in an in-between nation
with an in-between status
the song plays like an FBI ambush
with a bridge leading to a murdered leader
spilling blood
red.

The melody is in the falling to the ground in between the changing
of the fertile ripe green
into shades of dying
the colored rhythm of a season
between two seasons.

by Maegan la Mamita Mala Ortiz 2006

U.S. Justice Department Investigates Southern Cali City for Targeting Latinos

6:12 am By Maegan La Mala · California|Immigration|Justice · Comments Off

11 Sep 2010

Early this year we told you about how law enforcement in parts of California were setting up sobriety checkpoints that seemed to be more about racial profiling than public safety.

Yesterday, the U.S. Justice Department launched an investigation targeting the Southern California City of Bell. The investigation will determine whether city officials violated civil rights of Latino residents by aggressively towing cars and charging residents exorbitant fees to get their vehicles back.

From Southern California Public Radio:

Some Bell residents have complained police officers pulled over motorists and towed their vehicles if the drivers didn’t have licenses. Bell has a large immigrant population, as well as many illegal immigrants.

Image Via / by ChrisDag

Jan Brewer and the Headless Horsemen Coming Home to Roost

3:54 pm By Maegan La Mala · arizona|Immigration|Media|U.S.-Mexico Border|Violence · 6 Comments

10 Sep 2010

Arizona Governor Janet Brewer is most recently known for 16 seconds of silence and way too much talking shit before those 16 seconds. From America’s Voice:

Brewer had to admit that she wasn’t exactly being accurate when she talked about headless bodies in the Arizona desert. Her false justification for SB1070 isn’t isolated however. Seems the whole country is doing it, it being exaggerating and/or just plain old misleading people when it comes to the situation along the U.S. Mexican border.

What Brewer, hasn’t addressed is the role that U.S. policy has on violence in Mexico. For example, a report from Mayors Against Illegal Guns (PDF file of the report here) states that 90 percent of the guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes originate from the U.S. nor has Brewer responded publicly regarding her possible connection with Corrections Corporation of America and how that connection may have played a role in her deciding to sign SB1070 into law. What Brewer has done, well what her campaign for governor has done anyway is stop ads from running on the TV station whose local news has been conducting an investigation on the possible CCA Brewer connection.

Sorry Nativists, These Are Not the Race Riots You’ve Been Waiting For

7:26 am By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|Los Angeles|Movies|race|Violence · 5 Comments

10 Sep 2010

When Bianca Laureano posted her review of Robert Rodriguez’s Machete here on VivirLatino, one Facebook fan/friend asked if we had heard about the “race riots” that some were claiming the film was going to cause. I admit I laughed aloud because, no I hadn’t heard about the riots (maybe my invite got lost in the mail) and because it was a ridiculous notion that because Latinos went to see a film that suddenly we would all take to the streets with machetes and start slicing and dicing. I won’t even touch how stereotypical and racist the idea is. As if there weren’t REAL reasons for Latino communities across the country to get pissed and take to the streets (which isn’t the same as rioting).

And lo and behold….nativist organizations, hate organizations and yes anti-immigrant and anti-Latino organizations are taking the protests of community members in Los Angeles, protests that legitimately question the police killing of an indigenous Guatemalan man, Manuel Jamines, and calling those protests the L.A. Machete Riots.

Anti-Immigrant Law Does Not Stand in Hazleton

5:10 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|pennsylvania · Comments Off

9 Sep 2010

Upholding a federal court decision from 2007, today the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Hazleton, Pennsylvania may not enforce a law which denies business permits to companies that employ illegal immigrants, fines landlords who rent to them and requires legal tenants to register and pay for a rental permit.

The mayor is promising to appeal.

Via / Immigration Impact y WHPTV

Increase of Border Patrol Agents = Increase in Border Violence

1:55 pm By Maegan La Mala · Immigration|mexico|U.S.-Mexico Border|Violence · 1 Comment

9 Sep 2010

Even before the recent increase of border patrol agents along the U.S. Mexico border, la frontera was not a safe place for those living, working and playing nearby.

An article in the L.A. Times published this week, the paper reports that in the last 18 months five Border Patrol agents have been accused or convicted of sex crimes or assaults including one agent who pleaded guilty in January to raping a woman while off duty, and another who is accused of sexually assaulting a migrant while her young children were nearby in a car. These are only the cases that we know of. Think about how many assaults go unreported or unprosecuted and like many of the recent alleged police brutality cases, some of the officials involved are Latinos.

So when DHS Secretary Napolitano crows about how the numbers that are supposed to be going up are going up, one has to wonder if she feels that the increase in sexual assaults and physical assaults are numbers that also are supposed to go up, as inevitable trade offs for the idea of safety for some.

DREAM Now Letters : Matias Ramos

2:37 pm By Maegan La Mala · DREAM Act|Education|Immigration · Comments Off

8 Sep 2010

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act.:

Dear Mr. President:

I greet you with respect and admiration, but also with a complaint and a request.

In April 2010 I packed my clothes in two bags and left my family and friends in California to work full time for the DREAM Act, a bill that you know well, and for which I have waited for many years. At that time I had nowhere to live but a friend lent me his chair for several months until I could rent a room. Washington is very different from Los Angeles in the culture and lifestyle. The adjustment was difficult, but received the support of many people across the country, who share the same dream: to become citizens of the United States.

Original Letter in Spanish after the jump

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