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A Quick Note Monday Morning Note from Mala

4:50 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Events|Immigration|Media|media justice|New York City · 1 Comment

3 May 2010

Hola VivirLatino familia! I’m writing this post before the sun rises over St. Petersburg, Florida where I’m at for the week gracias a Poynter. I’m here as a Sensemaking 2010 Fellow, which brings together a group of diverse media makers to talk about the business and ethics of media making.

I know this won’t be of huge interest to most of our readers, pero it should be interesting for many reasons.

I’m editing videos and fotos from the May Day rally and march here Union Square so that should be up soon. Across the country thousands marched and raised their voices against the hateful SB1070 and other Arizona measures and also against an immigration reform proposal built on the same enforcement rhetoric that has turned deadly and dangerous for our comunidades.

Do you have fotos and videos from May Day pro-migrante events you attended? If you would like to share them with the VivirLatino community let us know at info@vivirlatino.com.

Amor y lucha

Help Our Online Friends Stay Online!

10:43 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Blogs|Media|media justice|Women · 2 Comments

29 Apr 2010

As an independent media maker I know how hard it is to stay afloat. We do this out of love, out of necessity. Here at VL we struggle to stay online, pay to keep our servers, and give a little some
thing to our editors. Going to events, even when on someone else’s generous dime, still require us to pay out of pocket expenses like food.

Some of our friends in the blogosphere are asking for specific help to keep doing what they do. If you can help please do.

Where would la Mala be without BrownFemiPower aka BFP. She’s always been an inspiration, a model as I was coming up in the blog mundo and continues to be. Hermana needs a computer porque well how the hell do you expect her to drop knowledge and beauty the way she does on Flip Flopping Joy without a computer?

Can you help this amazing radical Chicana mujer get a new computer and continue to spread her truth?

Another VL amigo, Nezua from the Unapologetic Mexican, is auctioning some art to help raise some funds. Nez and VL have faced some of the same challenges as we write on immigration and other issues of comunidad, so I want him to stay online and causing trouble.

Update on the New Mythos Tour

7 Apr 2010

A few weeks ago I shared an exciting project with you, one that gets to the very heart of why I do what I do and how I live. Consider this your update and call for support.

I am writing because I’d like to tell you about a new project I am working on called The New Mythos Project. This project is building a network of phenomenal sistaz who are engaged in social justice work through spiritual and creative ways, in their everyday lives.

I’ve been working with a phenomenal crew of mamaz to identify the variety of communities and movements we are participating in and leading, and what ways we can more fully support ourselves as mamaz, social change agents, artists and truth-tellers.

We come from a variety of different backgrounds, share a variety of lived-experiences and are all interested in learning from each other and growing with each other. We are invested in radical movements AND we believe that there is a radical platform- a new articulation of our age- that we engage in from a holistic, spirit-based place; informed by our ancestors and our visions of our futures. In our lives, work, community care-giving and mama-ing we are manifesting feminist prophecies.

We are invested in building a network to share with other radical m/others, mamis and community caregivers to fortify our collective lives and work. We are excited to continue to learn and grow with you!

To this effect we are all participating, supporting and collaborating in The New Mythos Project— an ongoing national collaboration that began over the past few months and that we are designing to support ongoing participation, networking, visibility raising, resource-sharing and truth-telling between radical m/others, mamis and community caregivers. We are investing in this project to support our communities and ourselves and we are asking for your support to do this!

Mamis Are the Movements : The New Mythos Tour

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.”

Bronx NYC Today : Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen

8:36 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · media justice|New York City|Women · 1 Comment

6 Mar 2010

Vol 3: 2010

Women of Color Stirring a Pot of Awareness, Reality and Justice!

Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen Volume 3, Back to Our Roots, will be honoring International Womens Month by shedding light and creating awareness on Environmental Injustices and Educational Inequalities and their impact on women of color.

Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen will bring together women of color educators, students, environmentalists, djs, emcees, b-girls, poets, visual artists, dancers, healers, pastors, organizers and activists. We will come together through a hip hop showcase to express our solidarity with women’s rights!

This event will take place in the South Bronx, the birthplace of Hip Hop, and the poorest congressional district in the nation, also called “The Forgotten Borough.” In reality, the borough of the Bronx is not forgotten because one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, Riverdale, lies just northwest and has every amenity a human can ask for.

Hostos Community College will be hosting Momma’s Hip Hop Kitchen event for the second year in a row. Hostos Community College was created in 1968 in response to demands from the Latino community who were urging for the establishment of a college to serve the people of the South Bronx. Hostos was the first bilingual higher education institution in the United States.

The South Bronx is a community that has been in constant resistance, seeking justice in education and the environment. It is a community resisting pollution, asthma, toxic wasteland, and budget cuts for art, music, and gym programs. It is a community that lacks access to healthy fruits and vegetables, adequate health care and after school programs. The South Bronx’s need for reproductive and sexual health education is highly reflected in its high levels of HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections.

In place of access to healthy alternatives, the South Bronx has an over abundance of jails and prisons.

However, the South Bronx is not lost. It has experienced a period of healing through leadership guided by community organizations and collectives. This leadership has lead to the creation of new parks, food co-ops, recycling programs, and successful cultural community centers. We have won many amazing victories as a community!

Join us as we fuse our energy, our politics, our ancestry, our traditions, art, song and dance into a brew for Environmental Justice and Education Equality.
Turn Up the Heat and Let the Soul Simmer, as We Stir this Soup for the Hip Hop Soul!

When: Saturday, March 6th, 2010
@ the Hostos Center for Arts and Culture
450 Grand Concourse (at 149th St.) Bronx, NY
(Main Theater)

Time: 2-5pm
This event is FREE and open to all ages.

for more information about the event, please

visit our website @ http://www.mhhk.org

or email hiphopkitchen@gmail.com

FREE HIV TESTING – strictly confidential

Terrorism is Brown : Quick Reflection on Joseph Stack III

9:49 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · media justice · 7 Comments

19 Feb 2010

As a woman of color living in the U.S.
As a Puerto Rican woman, a woman whose homeland is a colony of the United States
As a woman who has had loved ones and has herself been called a terrorist
As an educator who has had a 13 year old sit at my table after she was called a terrorist
As a woman who survived 9-11-01 in downtown NYC and walked through the ash filled streets
As a woman who has mothered children with fathers whose families survived 9-11-73
I call terrorism.

My 12 year old and watched the news coverage of the plane crash in Austin. It was hard not to draw comparisons with 9-11-01, the flames inside building frame. That was something I lived through personally and can still smell as I write this. I remember the hours I thought my mother was dead and her thinking the same of me. I remember yes looking up in the sky, scared. But why the hell is this not terrorism? Why the hell is the government falling over itself to not use that word? Even my damn 12 year old was able to pick apart that message.

When it’s a white man or a white woman (like Shawna Forde who killed Brisenia Flores), terrorism is not a word we use.
The news coverage goes out of it’s way to announce over and over, hypnotizing people so we believe it and then presents us with experts to talk about terrorism.
Read more…

Including LatiNegr@s In Black History Month

11:28 am By BiancaLaureano · history|media justice|race · 5 Comments

2 Feb 2010

Regardless of your position on the allocation of months to highlight specific racial and ethnic groups, I think many of us can agree that LatiNegr@s are often not included as much as we can be in Latino Heritage Month and Black History Month. As a result, several writers/bloggers (many of whom are self-identified LatiNegr@s/Afro-Caribeños/Afro-Latinos) have joined together to help compliment any curriculum/celebrations/rituals/commemorations/etc. that people have planned for Black History Month to include LatiNegr@s.

It all started when I posted a list of LatiNegr@s To Look Out For In 2010. I began to talk with writer and poet Anthony about how so many of us don’t know our history, how we are omitted, and the need for recognition and representation. We decided to create a virtual project on our own online homes as well as create a communal space for discussion, engagement, and knowledge production. We’ve announced the project in various spaces and hope people will self-select to participate in whatever ways they are most comfortable/able. Here are the goals of the project:

As the formal US focus on Black History Month (February 1-28/9) is upon us we seek to celebrate all of the peoples who have influence and history via the African Diasporas. Expanding the inclusively of Black History Month is a goal for several of us, self-identified LatiNeg@s, Afro-Latinos and Afro-Caribeños. As people who recognize and claim the African heritage and history, we have often been excluded from US History, whether it be Black history or Latino history (Septermber 15-October 15). Join us in honoring and recognizing LatiNegr@s this year during Black and Latino History Month. We are Black, Latino and from the Caribbean. We REPRESENT!

Please share any images, videos, quotes, websites, links etc. you’d like to include on this page. Go to http://lati-negros.tumblr.com/submit to submit what you’d like to contribute.

Inspired by Maegan’s creation of the 30 Days of Latino Heritage Tumblr (I hope you contributed!) we’ve created a LatiNegr@s Tumblr where you may submit any video, foto, quote, link, resource for an inclusive, and hopefully, comprehensive representation of LatiNegr@s. Submissions are subject to our approval.

Online individuals/groups/spaces that are participating in this grassroots project and will be either featuring posts discussing various contributions, perspectives, and politics about LatiNegr@s or sharing on the Tumblr page include (and this is just a handful! If interested let us know and I’ll update the list):

You!

Chronicles of the American Pupusa

If you would like to participate please do so and send us your information here or via the LatiNegr@s Tumblr page where you can submit something. Shameless plugs for your blogs/online homes, quotes from past/current writing, fotos you’ve taken or that inspire you are all welcome! You may post anonymously on the Tumblr page if you choose.

In solidarity.

RIP: Howard Zinn

7:39 pm By BiancaLaureano · history|media justice · Comments Off

27 Jan 2010

Earlier this evening our friend Nezua shared on twitter that he saw on wikipedia that Howard Zinn has died today. Shortly after the tweets streamed in there was confirmation that he died of a heart attack today in Santa Monica, California at the age of 87.

I know for a fact that the VivirLatino Familia is mourning his death. Yet, as we mourn and remember him, author Sofia Quintero reminds us “coping w/news of Howard Zinn by reminding myself that our generation has some dope intellectuals, too. ” Yes we do!
Read more…

Complicating Media Coverage on Haiti

8:52 am By la Macha · Haiti|Media|media justice · Comments Off

21 Jan 2010

The following is from a really important post by Sokari at Black Looks. It’s a little bit long, but it is very very worth the time it takes to read it. Please allow a little complication into mainstream media representations of what is happening in Haiti!

There is also the increased militarisation with thousands of additional UN forces and US military both of whom have a record of brutality in Haiti, and which can only intensify the suffering already being experienced. Again and again I spoke with women of all ages who reported acts of violence by the security forces, against them personally or their fathers, husbands and sons which has left them in even greater poverty. One of the most common themes I met with was the demand for the return of President Bertrand Aristide – the only Haitian leader to have to have been freely elected and who worked on behalf of the poor but was constantly undermined by the US and eventually removed with their consent.

What we are witnessing is an invasion of battalions of military personal, journalists and mega aid agencies which can often bring with them additional problems due to insensitivity, preconceived ideas of the country and a lack of gender analysis. See the Red Cross in Katrina and Christian Aid’s previous record in Haiti As one twitter asked – who is feeding them and on what? How much of the resources are they eating up? How much of their needs are preventing urgent medical equipment and food reaching the Haitian people? And all this so they can report that people are “scavenging” and “looting”, gorge on people’s misery. Write about the need to protect food from hungry people and hospitals from the wounded. A disgusting shameful spectacle – the real long term disaster is the one being set in place by yet more cultures of violence and greed.

The White Professional Anti-Racist

21 Dec 2009

The latest episode of News with Nezua is one I had to link to because it was about a figure that unfortunately I have come into contact with in my years as an activist and blogger, the white professional anti-racist. This person may come across as being on your side and having your back pero eventually will try and create/promote divisions and create conflict to support his/her own career growth. Not to mention the tokenization. While Nez’s video is male-centric, there are plenty of women who play the role as well. Additionally, as a women who has sat in conferences and been brought to events, the way that tokenizing and divide and conquer politics plays out against women of color is especially problematic.

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Maegan La Mala: Thank you Julio! To be honest I was a little nervous. [...]

Ana L. Flores: I was very excited when you decided to join us. I really wanted your voice there as it would add dep [...]

Maegan La Mala: Hola Juliana and thanks for commenting. There is a dearth in activist/critical thinking Latino blogg [...]

Julio Ricardo Varela: Good for you for asking. I got goose bumps just reading this and yes, yes, yes, to it all. Thank you [...]

julianabritto: The sense that I get is that you might feel a little frustrated at the dearth in activist bloggers? [...]

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