6:55 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration|Phoenix|Politics · 1 Comment
15 Jun 2010The United States Conference of Mayors closes it’s annual gathering in Oklahoma City today. The conference, which includes Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Phoenix, AZ Mayor Phil Gordon, passed a resolution opposing Arizona’s SB1070 and copycat legislation and supporting legal challenges to the law, while calling for bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform legislation.
It should be noted that their the Conference’s call for CIR is qualified by five principles, passed in 1999, that they feel reform must contain. The first principle is increased border security and enforcement.
6:33 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Allied Media Conference|Detriot|Events|media justice · 2 Comments
1 Jun 2010For the last two years, I have been blessed enough to attend the Allied Media Conference and both times my attendance was thanks to the generosity of others. This year, with the conference less than a month away, my attendance feels like an impossibility, especially since I would need expenses covered for myself and my two children who would have to travel with me but miligros do happen and even if not for me, for other amazing mujers whose work I respect.
INCITE! will partner with To Tell You The Truth to host a track of workshops and strategy sessions at the Allied Media Conference, June 17-20, 2010 in Detroit, MI. Read more about the track at http://alliedmediaconference.org/program/tracks.
We need to raise $4,000 to support travel, housing, food and childcare costs for 10 AMAZING mamas, community care-givers and their kids attending the AMC and USSF. Read more about them below. We need your help!
Please support the INCITE/To Tell You The Truth Track by making a donation on the To Tell You The Truth site by following the PayPal link on the bottom right of the page here.
As a thank-you for your donation, you will be entered into a raffle, with the chance to win one of the 2 FABULOUS RAFFLE PACKAGES of Mamas and Feminist of Color Media (described below).
For a $5 donation, you will receive one raffle ticket
For a $20 donation, you will receive five raffle tickets
For a $100 donation or more, you will receive 60 raffle ticketsMake your donation today here!
Raffle Package #1
* An INCITE! T-shirt
* The Gloria Anzaldua Reader by AnaLouise Keating. This reader—which provides a representative sample of the poetry, prose, fiction, and experimental autobiographical writing that Anzaldúa produced during her thirty-year career—demonstrates the breadth and philosophical depth of her work.
* A one-year subscription to Make/Shift magazine. Make/shift creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art. Made by an editorial collective committed to antiracist, transnational, and queer perspectives, make/shift embraces the multiple and shifting identities of feminist communities. We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work.
* I Was a . . . Student Nurse! by China. Every page oozes personality: a distrust of science, a vague but persistent spirituality, her own brand of low self-esteem, love for her children and friends, and a constant desire to be anywhere but where she is. And the setting–nursing school–is one we’ve never seen depicted from this angle. (Poems about genetic recombination and stoichiometry? Never saw that coming.) Sometimes we found ourselves screaming (at least in our heads) at China to get over her fear of hospitals. She’s the one who chose nursing school, not us. But it’s China’s ability to cause such reactions that keeps us reading.
* Los Viajes: a literary anthology by POOR Magazine. For a year and a half POOR Magazine conducted free bi-lingual, multi-generational, art and writing workshops in shelters, schools and community centers with migrant poverty scholars from across the globe to be included in the audio and print anthology called Los Viajes..Los Viajes introduces a new lens on migration of peoples across Pacha Mama informed by the UN Declaration on Indigenous Peoples.
* A DVD of Motherland, a Jennifer Steinman film. An honest and intimate look at the complexities of grief and healing, Motherland is about resilience, triumph of the human spirit and the power of unconditional love. It also reminds us of the vastly different ways in which disparate cultures confront deeply felt personal challenges.Each year over eight million families around the world suffer the loss of a child. In Jennifer Steinman’s moving and inspiring documentary film, a 17-day trip to South Africa transforms the lives of six grieving women from across the US.
* Dressy Bessy: holler and stomp – CD
* To tell the Truth Freely by Mia Bay
* Mamaphiles #4 – Raising Hell – Mamaphiles returns for its fourth issue with the theme of “raising hell.” The newest installment includes 34 contributors, including papa zinesters. Check in with your favorite parent zinesters and discover some new favorites as you learn about the many zines that have come out since #3 was released in 2007. In addition to fabulous essays, poems, artwork, and photos, #4 includes comprehensive ordering information about each contributor’s zine. This is all new material, no repeats of the pieces in previous issues. (118 pages, half size)
* “Program a Playshop” Residency at Gris Gris Lab in New Orleans, LA. Program a Playshop is a Gris Gris Lab signature community building residency. Advocates, artists, healers, activists can live and work at GGL for up to 10 days and produce a playshop for the New Orleans Community. Work must involve some aspect of one of these themes: healing work,art, food justice and urban farming, sustainable economics or woman-centered work.Raffle Package #2
* AN INCITE! T-shirt
* The Gloria Anzaldua Reader by AnaLouise Keating. This reader—which provides a representative sample of the poetry, prose, fiction, and experimental autobiographical writing that Anzaldúa produced during her thirty-year career—demonstrates the breadth and philosophical depth of her work.
* One year-long subscription to Make/Shift Magazine. Make/shift creates and documents contemporary feminist culture and action by publishing journalism, critical analysis, and visual and text art. Made by an editorial collective committed to antiracist, transnational, and queer perspectives, make/shift embraces the multiple and shifting identities of feminist communities. We know there’s exciting work being done in various spaces and forms by people seriously and playfully resisting and creating alternatives to systematic oppression. Make/shift exists to represent, participate in, critique, provoke, and inspire more of that good work.
* Slant by Laura Williams
* The Dancer from Khiva by Bibish. An autobiographical story, this is an unflinchingly honest memoir, The Dancer from Khiva is a true story that offers insight into Central Asian culture through the harrowing experiences of a young girl.
* Mamaphiles #4 – Raising Hell – Mamaphiles returns for its fourth issue with the theme of “raising hell.” The newest installment includes 34 contributors, including papa zinesters. Check in with your favorite parent zinesters and discover some new favorites as you learn about the many zines that have come out since #3 was released in 2007. In addition to fabulous essays, poems, artwork, and photos, #4 includes comprehensive ordering information about each contributor’s zine. This is all new material, no repeats of the pieces in previous issues. (118 pages, half size)
* Discovering Pig Magic by Julia Crabtree
* The Color of Violence INCITE! Anthology – What would it take to end violence against women of color? How does the mainstream antiviolence movement help? How does it hinder? When will we admit that repositioning women of color at the center of the movement— women more often harmed by the police, prisons, and border patrols than aided by them— means that we must address state violence?
* Once You Go Back by Douglas Martin
* Hermana, Resist : The Poetry Collection: “…media can be yours/and you can write your own history.” – Noemi Martinez. Authored and compiled by Noemi Martinez of Hermana, Resist this zine is breathtakingly beautiful and contains poems from 2000-2007.
* Resistance is a Duty! and other essays by comrades from Action Directe – Kersplebedeb
* I Was a . . . Student Nurse! by China. Every page oozes personality: a distrust of science, a vague but persistent spirituality, her own brand of low self-esteem, love for her children and friends, and a constant desire to be anywhere but where she is. And the setting–nursing school–is one we’ve never seen depicted from this angle. (Poems about genetic recombination and stoichiometry? Never saw that coming.) Sometimes we found ourselves screaming (at least in our heads) at China to get over her fear of hospitals. She’s the one who chose nursing school, not us. But it’s China’s ability to cause such reactions that keeps us reading.
* The Astonishment: Banana SandwichA subscription to make/shift magazine, one of the great raffle prizes!
This raffle is made possible with support from: Gris Gris Lab, New Mythos project (To tell you the Truth), INCITE!, Feminist Review!, Allied Media Projects (AMP)
Read more…
12:03 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · chicago|Immigration|Puerto Rico · 8 Comments
28 May 2010This goes out to all of those Latinos comfortable in their privilege, all of those who say that the “legal” Latinos have nothing to worry about, all of those who are offended when they are called Mexican.
8:28 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration|New York City|race|Seattle · 3 Comments
14 May 2010Racial and ethnic profiling is all over the media. Last night, with a knot in my stomach, I watched the local news talk about the raids that happened all along the U.S. Northeast in search of those involved with the failed Times Square bombing fireworks show. I do not feel any safer.
As a survivor of 9-11-01, I feel less safe when I hear pundits on television saying this is the way to do ethnic profiling. Already one of the Muslim Junior High School students I work with is being bullied again. I don’t think she feels any safer either. I especially feel less safe for her and so many others when it is being argued that it is ok to suspend Constitutional Rights in the name of the “war on terror”.
And before anyone jumps on me in the comments section, pointing out to me that this site is called VivirLatino, here is the connection.
Recently another report came out of my city, New York City, saying that people of color, specifically Blacks and Latinos were more likely to be stopped and frisked BUT that they were not more likely to get arrested. Meaning that ::gasp:: Blacks and Latinos are not more predisposed to criminality. We just always seem to fit the description or look “suspicious”. Don’t tell that to a “cop in the hood” though. It just makes sense that more of “us” are stopped in “our” neighborhoods.
7:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration|Politics|Seattle · 18 Comments
11 May 2010With so many eyes on Arizona post the passing of SB1070 in Arizona, there is less talk about the possibility for comprehensive immigration reform and the violence, both from the State and it’s residents and how they are connected.
Take for example the recent beat down by Seattle police officers caught on tape, complete with anti-Mexican slurs.
Trigger warning : the video contains violence and slurs
The fact that the man beat up in the video had nothing to do with the crime reported (a robbery with Latinos involved) is besides the point. If the police had beat up and used anti-Mexican slurs against the “criminals” would we, those who consume media feel a little better about it, think somewhere in the back of our minds “well, they had it coming”?
The point is that laws like SB1070 and the current Comprehensive Immigration Reform framework put out there by Senator biometric Chuck Schumer works from the default position that immigrants, painted broadly as Latinos, painted broadly as Mexicans are criminals. It works from the framework that we need to prove ourselves worthy of humane treatment via speaking proper English, paying fines disguised as taxes, getting to the back of the line. Resistance to this, asking for legalization and/or basic human rights is seen as ungrateful and as an unwillingness to play the political game we asked to swallow in the name of political efficiency.
I am happy to see the boycotts and the civil disobedience in response to SB1070 just as I am happy to stand on a corner of my hood with my hija just talking to my vecinos about what this means for ALL of us. Pero I am bothered by the treatment of what happened to this man in Seattle, the disrespect towards the lives of our hermanos and hijas, and the accolades paid to Democrats for moving forward on a CIR plan that takes its lead from Arpaio. I am bothered that too many being credited with leading the movement talk about all of these things as if they are separate. As if one monster isn’t feeding the others and are all being led by the same master.
The other evening walking to casa mala, I saw four NYPD officers teasing and fucking with a Latino man who was visibly drunk pero really wasn’t bothering anyone. Of the busy crowd in Corona, NY only three people stood by to watch, not saying a word, just letting the police know we were watching. Those people were another Latino man, my three year old, and myself. When the cops finally had had enough fun and sent the man on his way, the other adult witness looked at me shaking his head saying in Spanish ” they have nothing better to do than harass those who are doing nothing but surviving”.
We need more witnesses and we need to do more than survive.
8:58 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · arizona|Immigration|Phoenix|science · 6 Comments
10 May 2010
SACNAS, a society of scientists dedicated to fostering the success of Hispanic/Chicano and Native American scientists, formally withdrew Phoenix from consideration as a conference location. In a letter to Governor Brewer, the organization stated that SB1070 would guarantee attendees would be subject to harassment. SACNAS estimates that this represents a loss of in revenue to the local economy of $3 million.
From the organization’s press release:
The leadership of SACNAS strongly believes the immigration law SB1070 will make the state inhospitable to people of color, especially Hispanics,” says society president, Jose Dolores Garcia, PhD. “We have been seriously considering Phoenix as a site for our conference in 2012. However, we feel the passage of this law and the policies of Maricopa County Sheriff Arpaio will lead to racial profiling of our students and faculty.
7:14 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Cities|Immigration · Comments Off
30 Apr 2010May Day was the deadline that many immigration advocates put out there as the deadline for a comprehensive immigration reform bill to be put on the table. The 26 page Democratic proposal released yesterday should be an unacceptable option for justice loving people and there are marches and events planned all over the country (and all over the world- May Day is an international holiday after all).
Here in NY, I am hosting my own May Day eve vigil in solidarity con la comunidad de Arizona and against SB1070.
Corona Plaza, Queens NYC
8 pm
April 30, 2010
On Saturday I’ll be bouncing between the Union Square, NYC rally and the one at Foley Plaza, both scheduled to jump off at noon.
Reform Immigration For America has a listing of marches and rallies being held across the country. To find one near you visit them here.
See you at the marchas!
From Incite! Blog, comes this really important update on the Young Women’s Empowerment Project, who recently got interviewed by Chicago Public Radio.
Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP) recently released their findings from a participatory action research project entitled, , “Girls do what they have to do to survive: Illuminating Methods used by Girls in the Sex Trade and Street Economy to Fight Back and Heal.” YWEP is a youth leadership organization grounded in harm reduction and social justice organizing by and for girls and young women (ages 12-23) impacted by the sex trade and street economies, and is run by girls and women with life experience in the sex trade and street economies. YWEP members were interviewed about their research by Chicago Public Radio program, Eight Forty-Eight, who posted a podcast of the interview.
The most startling thing I heard on the podcast:
I would say for us, the surprises in the data were about how much people were being denied help from institutions. And by help, we don’t mean rescue or saving. We mean, I need stitches. We don’t mean, save me from the street. We mean, give me a hug, or I need to file a report against this person. We’re not even talking about elaborate forms of life changing help, we’re talking about really simple emergency intervention type care that was really shocking to hear how infrequently girls were being successful in getting that help from systems.
So young women and girls can not even get emergency help when they have problems like needing stitches. This is not just heartbreaking, but absolutely infuriating. Can you imagine being a teenager, getting the shit kicked out of you, and then not even able to get help from the local clinic or hospital?
Does anybody else besides me see how impossible the “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” dictum really is?
Listen to the whole podcast here!
11:02 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Activism|Allied Media Conference|children|Cities|Family|Gifts|Justice|Media|media justice|New Mythos Tour|Women · 4 Comments
16 Mar 2010
Mami is a core part of my identity, my life. It seeps into every letter, every post, everything I breath out and take back in. I am proud to announce that we are a part of The New Mythos Tour that is jumping off next week and ask all VL readers and supporters to extend their love and support as well.
Gloria Anzaldua says: “By creating a new mythos – that is, a change in the way we perceive reality, the way we see ourselves, and the ways we behave – la mestiza creates a new consciousness. The work of mestiza consciousness is to break down the subject/object duality that keeps her prisoner and to show in the flesh and through the images in her work how duality is transcended. The answer to the problem between the white race and the colored, between males and females, lies in healing the split that originates in the very foundation of our lives, our culture, our languages, our thoughts. A massive uprooting of dualistic thinking in the individual and collective consciousness is the beginning of a long struggle, but one that could, in our best hopes, bring us to the end of rape, of violence, of war.”
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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