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Getting Drunk off Fake Puerto Rican Pride

8:37 am By Maegan La Mala · Culture|Justice|Puerto Rico · 29 Comments

1 Jun 2011

I will confess that it has been years since I have attended the Puerto Rican Parade here in NYC. When I used to go, in the late 90′s and into the early part of the 2000s, it was to protest, collect petitions, and hand out flyers. But as a Puerto Rican woman, the NYC/National Puerto Rican Day Parade, with all it’s floats, musical artists and waving of our red white & blue, has never felt like an entirely safe space. Throw into the mix growing corporate sponsorship that disrespects and reflects some of the worse stereotypes of our communities and the parade’s focus on the cultural while ignoring the intersections of the political and you have an event whose value is suspect.

The latest advertising/sponsorship campaign, coming via Coors Light, an official sponsor, first encountered by me in the subway over the weekend, invites to “EmBoricuate” – a play on the words Boricua, (rooted in the Taino name for the island Boriquen) and Emborrachar , to get drunk. Because apparently nothing says being Puerto Rican like getting drunk, drunk to the point of forgetting.

Wait could Coors be onto something? Read more…

This Weekend in NYC

8:18 am By Maegan La Mala · Arts|Books|Events|New York City · Comments Off

27 May 2011

It’s the first unofficial Summer in NYC weekend and that means plenty to do. Check out some ways to kick off warm weather season that will also feed your head/heart.

Sunday

Lunes Libro : Hey, Shorty!

7:55 am By Maegan La Mala · Books|GLBT|New York City|Violence|Women · 2 Comments

16 May 2011

As a mother with a teenage daughter about to enter the NYC Public High School system, as a woman of color with daughters of color living in New York City sexual harassment and violence is always somewhere on my mind. Sometimes these thoughts determine how I dress, what time I go out, where I go out to, and what streets to walk through or not. As a radical tutor who works with young women of color who are learning inside the NYC public school system and as a daughter who clearly remembers walking home from school in my neighborhood feeling a gauntlet of eyes and words against my body and the shame I felt when receiving my first piropo/catcall while walking with my mom, I was excited and feeling grateful for the release of Hey, Shorty! A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment ad Violence in Schools and on the Streets by Joanna N. Smith. Mandy Van Deven, And Maegan Huppuch of Girls for Gender Equity.

The book follows two paths. One is a narrative path that looks at the process of organizing young woman, primarily of color, first in a public school in Brooklyn and later NYC wide around the issues of sexual harassment and violence experiences daily from the moment they leave their homes to go to school until they return home. The second path, which crosses and overlaps with the first, contains concrete strategies for understanding, confronting, and preventing sexual harassment and violence.
Read more…

Tonight in NYC, Tomorrow in Amherst : The Revolution Starts at Home

14 May 2011

A book that should probably be used as a reference and jump off for critical conversations and growth, The Revolution Starts at Home : Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities, edited by Ching-In Chen, Jai Dulani and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is out and on tour.

The anthology took 7 years to pull together and even 7 years ago was long overdue as there are so many struggles within so-called activist spaces about how we treat each other.

“Was/is your abusive partner a high-profile activist? Does your abusive girlfriend’s best friend staff the domestic violence hotline? Have you successfully kicked an abuser out of your group? Did your anti-police brutality group fear retaliation if you went to the cops about another organizer’s assault? Have you found solutions where accountability didn’t mean isolation for either of you? Was the ‘healing circle’ a bunch of bullshit? Is the local trans community so small that you don’t want you or your partner to lose it?

“We wanted to hear about what worked and what didn’t, what survivors and their supporters learned, what they wish folks had done, what they never want to have happen again. We wanted to hear about folks’ experiences confronting abusers, both with cops and courts and with methods outside the criminal justice system.”

— The Revolution Starts at Home collective

Long demanded and urgently needed, The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities finally breaks the dangerous silence surrounding the secret of intimate violence within social justice circles. This watershed collection of stories and strategies tackles the multiple forms of violence encountered right where we live, love, and work for social change — and delves into the nitty-gritty on how we might create safety from abuse without relying on the state. Drawing on over a decade of community accountability work, along with its many hard lessons and unanswered questions, The Revolution Starts at Home offers potentially life-saving alternatives for creating survivor safety while building a movement where no one is left behind.

For more information:
http://southendpress.org/2010/items/87941
http://revolutionathome.tumblr.com/
revathome@gmail.com

For all of you Northeast Coasters, there are opportunities to meet some of the editors, hear from the book, and engage in conversation about why this book and where from here. Mala will be at the NYC release tonight so please stay tuned to our twitter account for live-tweets (as permitted). Read more…

Original Pelo Diva Mirta de Perales Passes

6:46 am By Maegan La Mala · Celebrities|Cuba|Culture|Entrepreneurs · 2 Comments

10 May 2011

This isn’t usually the story I would write about but I would be denying a huge part of my NY Rican upbringing if I didn’t give a moment to acknowledge the passing of Cuban beautician Mirta de Perales at the age of 88 in her Miami home.

For those of you who don’t know, Mirta de Perales is cult legend, seen in between the novelas your abuela used to watch and Walter Mercado’s show or Iris Chacon’s show (depending on the night), Mirta used to advertise her extensive product line that included shampoos and conditioners. Her segments were more than just mere commercials. She told you the right way to wash and brush your hair (with her branded brush of course). I particularly remember one of my childhood babysitters using the lemon shampoo with conditioner, bright yellow in a clear, small bottle with green lettering. According to El Nuevo Dia, Mirtha became interested in hair at the age of 11 after having some undisclosed hair issues. She grew her business into an empire, apparently even earning some sort of award from President Reagan.

Rest in Peace Mirta and may all your hair days be good ones.

Resurrected, Make/Shifted, and Returned from Los Angeles

6:15 am By Maegan La Mala · Arts|Culture|Events|Los Angeles|Poetry · Comments Off

3 May 2011

Regular readers will note that posting, tweeting and Facebooking has been light to non-existent. It’s not that there hasn’t been a lot going on : more empty words from Washington on immigration while politicians and the media have seemingly discovered the “R” section of the dictionary and want us to as well when it comes to the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Revenge, Relief, Remembrance, Reaction. I was engaged in some “R” words of my own. Reading y Relaxation.

Two Saturdays ago, I had the honor of performing in an amazing collaboration put together by the author and curator of talents, Charlie Vázquez. Resurrection, a series of performance and poetry pieces took place on Easter Eve at los Kabayitos Theater inside the Clemente Soto Velez complex of the Lower East Side of NYC. I shared space with Aravind Adyanthaya, J Skye Cabrera, Lola von Miramar (Larry La Fountain-Stokes), Carlos Manuel Rivera, Vanessa Martir, Charlie Vazquez, y Steven Maldonado. There was also visual art gracias to the Organization of Puerto Rican Artists, Inc. (O.P.Art) before and after the show featuring art by Everardus Bogardus , Giovanni Caravaggio, Pepe Villegas, Rafael Rosario-Laguna,
Luis Carle, and Peter Madero III. I only saw portions of the performance but there will be a video available shortly and honestly the warmth I received from the other artists and the full house really resurrected me as an artist. So thank you to all who came to the show including our own Bianca Laureano, fellow Latina artista Alicia Anabell, City Council Woman Melissa Mark Viverito, and Puerto Rican activist Pedro Julio Serrano.

From there it was onto Los Angeles. What was originally just supposed to be a vacation and participating in May Day LA, turned into my West Coast reading debut thanks to the amazing people behind the Make/shift Reclamation Tour, Jess Hoffman and Hilary Goldberg, who just happened to be in Southern Cali at the same time I was. I read a new poem at Cal State Los Angeles and share space with Jess, Hillary, Fabiola Sandoval, tk karakashian tunchez with Film/Video/Audio by Alexis Pauline Gumbs and imMEDIAte Justice.
Read more…

Tuscon Students Protest To Protect Ethnic Studies

5:06 pm By BiancaLaureano · Culture|Education · 1 Comment

28 Apr 2011

It’s been a busy week, apologies for the sporadic posts. If you are in the west coast area hopefully you were close enough to see VL’s own Mala as part of the Makeshift RecLAmation in Southern California.

In the meantime this Tuesday Tuscon students protested in an effort to protect Ethnic Studies from being shifted from part the core curriculum to elective courses. In the video below you’ll see students in a crowded meeting room at Tuscon Unified School District (TUSD) where board members were scheduled to vote on the change of Ethnic Studies. Eight students occupied the seats of the board members and chained themselves to them as they chanted “Our education is under attack. What do we do? Fight Back!” Also heard in the video is the voice of a woman saying “Don’t touch our kids” to security while the crowd cheered.

National Latino Museum: What Are Your Thoughts?

5:05 pm By BiancaLaureano · Arts|Culture|Media|Politics|Washington DC · 11 Comments

25 Apr 2011

There has been a lot of emails I’ve received regarding the National Latino Museum and the advocacy around supporting the creation of such a space in Washington, DC. The proposed National Latino Museum would be on the National Mall where many Smithsonian museums are located.

I have to admit that I am torn about this museum for various reasons. Not because of the folks who are advocating for the space (Eva Longoria-Parker and Emilio Estefan, Jr. are some of the celebrity pull), yet because I grew up going to Smithsonian museums as a child. Growing up in Maryland, and for those of you unaware the metro system in the area connects DC, Maryland, and Virginia, my father is an artist and many weekends we would go as a family into the city and hang out on the Mall.

My parents were also big hippies and support(ed) the independence of Puerto Rico throughout my childhood, (they still do to an extent, but right now they are focusing on staying alive as older adults with various health issues they didn’t imagine). As a result, my parents made it clear to us that the Smithsonian museums, although free, open to the public, entertaining, and something we were taking advantage of because of those three things; it was a government (especially federal) building.

One of the reasons they shared this with us was because they wanted us to understand what it means that we are consuming art that is considered by the US government worthy of exhibition. There are a lot of problems and privileges that come with having art supported by a government that continues to cut funding for the arts in public schools. It’s actually something that I find ironic, especially when the museums began to implement the alarm/censors that go off when you get too close to a piece of art. Additional irony: officers as security in the museum. I understand protecting and making sure the pieces are not harmed/altered/bothered but having visitors under surveillance was a jarring experience and remains one to this day for me.

Makeshift RecLAmation in Southern California Featuring Many VivirLatino Friends and Mala!

19 Apr 2011

I am so excited to write about this because the Southern Cali portion of the tour includes so many people I love…yes myself included. So blessed that this will be my West Coast debut in such an amazingly well curated space.

For those that don’t know:

Makeshift Reclamation: New Feminist Art and Activism
A multimedia event showcasing how contemporary feminists are resisting and creating alternatives to not only gender-based oppression but also a collapsing economic system, climate crisis, and more. Featuring live readings, performances, and video works by artists and activists including Jessica Hoffmann, coeditor/copublisher of the independent, transnational, antiracist feminist magazine make/shift; Hilary Goldberg, whose new project, recLAmation, is a Super 8 experimental documentary/narrative film in which queer superheroes navigate a future beyond capitalism; and others.

Upcoming Southern California Tour Dates 2011

Friday, 4/22, 8 p.m.: Echo Park Film Center
1200 N Alvarado St. (@ Sunset Blvd.) Los Angeles, CA
Feminist Media Night with imMEDIAte Justice
Live performances by Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR Magazine

Saturday, 4/23, Time TBD: Cal State Long Beach
Chicana Feminisms Conference, USU Beach Auditorium,
1250 Bellflower Blvd., Long Beach, CA
Live performances by Irina Contreras, Fabiola Sandoval, tk karakashian tunchez, Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann; Film/Video/Audio works by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte justice, POOR Magazine

Monday, 4/25, 3:15 pm, Cal State Los Angeles
U-SU Theater, Student Union, 5151 State University Drive, LA, CA
Live performances by Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, Maegan “la Mala” Ortiz, Fabiola Sandoval, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR Magazine

Tuesday, 4/26, 7:30 pm, UC Santa Barbara
Multicultural Center Theater, 1504 Santa Barbara, CA
Live performances by Irina Contreras, Hilary Goldberg, Jessica Hoffmann, tk karakashian tunchez; Film/Video/Audio: Alexis Pauline Gumbs, imMEDIAte Justice, POOR Magazine

VL At The Cine: East WillyB

14 Apr 2011

Often when we share what films we’ve reviewed and seen it requires VL readers to dish out some money to get to the theater or wait to rent (or find other ways) to see the film. This is the first time we are reviewing media that is FREE, that you can interact with online and whenever you have access.

East WillyB is a Latino centric web series created by Latinos, produced by Latinos, and casting Latinos. Created over coffee in Brooklny, creators Julia Ahamuda Grob and Yamin Sagel sat down and discussed what they wanted to create, who they wanted to reach, an what messages they wanted to send. Reaching the “new generation of Latinos” who are wired and plugged in, educated, and tired of one-dimensional stereotypes in the media was their focus. They began working on the scripts and character development and created East WillyB. This is a series that will be featured on the web and have various webisodes uploaded each week (so you don’t have to wait a full 7 days to get the next episode!). Each webisode is less than 5 minutes and has a multiplatform appraoch (i.e. animation, comedy, drama, etc.).

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