Archive for the ‘society’ Category
Update : Arrest Made in Murder of 19 Year Old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
9:54 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · GLBT| Puerto Rico| Violence| crime| youth · 5 Comments
17 Nov 2009
Just read this off of Pam’s House Blend and then read the original article off of Primera Hora.
A man was arrested in the early morning hours in Cayay, suspected in the death of 19 year old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado…an apparent homophobic hate crime…Sources say that the 28 year old man may have offered Lopez Mercado money for sex.
This case needs to be closely monitored for what may be the double victimization of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado. There may be an attempt to paint this as a crime of passion, “gay panic”, and/or “prostitution gone bad” instead of the horrific act of hateful violence it was.
Organizations Asking Department of Justice to Intervene in Murder Case of Jorge Steven López Mercado
6:41 am By Maegan La Mala · GLBT| Puerto Rico| Violence| youth · No Comments
17 Nov 2009
Yesterday la Macha wrote about the horrific murder of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado in Puerto Rico.
Some organizations are calling for the intervention of the United States Department of Justice, especially in light of comments that the local police investigator on the case made in the media:
The local police investigator assigned to the case said to Univisión about the victim: “Someone like that, who does those kind of things, and goes out in public, knows full well that this might happen to him.”…Puerto Rico’s Civil Rights Commission and Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, a local activist organization, have asked the Puerto Rico Police Department to take disciplinary action against Rodriguez. The PRPD has removed the investigator from the case, but local activists plan to protest outside the territorial capital in San Juan on Thursday. They also plan to hold a vigil later this week.
The Puerto Rican government added sexual orientation to its hate crimes laws in 2002, but Serrano complained local police have not used it to prosecute those accused of anti-gay violence. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has announced it will take jurisdiction over the case if local investigators conclude López’s killer or killers murdered him because of his sexual orientation.
Gay Rican Teen found brutally murdered
2:45 pm By la Macha · Puerto Rico| Violence| crime| youth · 6 Comments
16 Nov 2009This news is just so sad and horrific and enraging.
“On November 14 the body of a gay 19 year old was found a few miles away from the town in which he was residing in called Caguas. He was a very well known person in the gay community of Puerto Rico, and very loved. He was found on the site of an isolated road in the city of Cayey, he was partially burned, decapitated, and dismembered, both arms, both legs, and the torso. This has caused a huge reaction from the gay community here, but its a difficult situation. Never in the history of Puerto Rico has a murder been classified as a hate crime. Even though we have to follow federal mandates and laws, many of the laws in which are passed in the USA such as Obama’s new bill, do not always directly get practiced in Puerto Rico. The police agent that is handling this case said on a public televised statement that ‘people who lead this type of lifestyle need to be aware that this will happen’. As If the boy murdered Jorge Steven Lopez was asking to get killed…”
May peace be with Jorge Steven Lopez and VL sends so much love and support to his family and loved ones during this horrible time. VL will keep you updated on any actions that happen.
Story found via facebook
Lunes Libro for los Chicos Edition : Al Galope
10:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Books| children · No Comments
16 Nov 2009
This is Poroto’s (my toddler) new favorite book, the recently released by Workman Spanish translation, Al Galope! by Rufus Butler Seder.
Warning : blatant use of my kid ahead
Poroto Peeps Al Galope from VivirLatino on Vimeo.
What makes Al Galope! so much fun for the pre-school set (the ideal age for this book, in my opinion) is it features animals and what they do, adding a touch of a self-esteem in it’s final pages. But what sets this book apart and even had my 12 year old saying “that’s cool” is its use of “scanimation”, a mix of optical illusion and animation that makes the animals “move”. The author explains it best.
Monday Morning Movie : Justicia for Sarah Kruzan
6:44 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice| Violence| Women| youth · No Comments
16 Nov 2009Last Monday we wrote about how the Supreme Court was hearing two cases examining the practice of sentencing juvenile offenders to life in prison without the possibility of parole. In the video part of that post the way this type of sentencing impacts young people of color was looked at. However, in hindsight, the post presented the issue as primarily a male one, failing to look at how women of color are unjustly treated especially with the added layer of sexual violence playing a role with their introduction into the criminal justice system.
I came across part of the life of Sarah Kruzan via a few of my friends on Facebook. Here we have an example how the sexual violence women of color experience criminalizes them, the “victim” if you will, even though I hate that terminology. Sarah was a child, just a year younger than my older daughter, when she was groomed for prostitution by a predatory man. Now I’m not saying that the adult male that pimped her deserved to be killed, but I am saying that Sarah certainly doesn’t deserve life without parole.
Happy? Veteran’s Day
11:00 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Immigration| history| holidays| military · 4 Comments
11 Nov 2009Today is the day set aside by the U.S. government to recognize those who lived and died in military service for the U.S. Despite my strong opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the countless smaller undeclared wars all over the world, that doesn’t mean there is no love from me for those who have chosen the military life. They include members of my own familia, primas and tios who have fought for the United States and they represent a growing number of young men and women of color who look to the armed forces as a way to survive and move forward with their lives. Pero as today’s editorial from el Diario/la Prensa points out, the role of Latinos in the U.S. military is nothing new, it’s just that people have failed to recognize it.
As many as 750,000 Latinos and Latinas served in the armed forces during World War II, according to the U.S. Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project. During the Korean War, the 65th Infantry of Puerto Rico won the praise of legendary military commanders such as General Douglas MacArthur. Yet, in the telling of U.S. history, Latino soldiers have received little mention.
Y porque? Is it because that if the history books were to acknowledge the role of Latinos then the U.S. would have to start acknowledging Latinos as humans as part of its’ policy including passing or hell even getting started on comprehensive immigration reform?
Supreme Court Hearing Two Cases on Juvenile (In)justice
12:36 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Justice| Linking Latinos| Politics| crime| youth · No Comments
9 Nov 2009Today the Supreme Court is hearing two cases that could hopefully change how the (in)justice system sentences juveniles. The cases specifically deal with sentencing youth to life without parole and if that is unconstitutional. The cases being used are that of Terrance Jamar Graham and Joe Sullivan, who were 16 and 13, respectively, when they committed their crimes. Not surprisingly, considering how in all phases of the criminal (in)justice system people of color are profiled and targeted, the Supreme Court’s ruling could impact the case of Latino Efrén Paredes, Jr., who at age 15 and wrongly convicted in 1989 for a murder and armed robbery he did not commit; a crime to which others have admitted guilt.
This week’s News With Nezua discusses what the Supreme Court is up to and what’s at stake.
Remembering Marcelo Lucero : Images and Thoughts from Vigil in Patchogue, Long Island
11:40 pm By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Ecuador| Family| Immigration| New York| Violence · 8 Comments
8 Nov 2009On Saturday evening I took the trip from NYC into it’s suburbs, specifically Patchogue, Long Island. On about an hour and a half drive out there, it’s easier to try and understand why immigrant communities are more isolated and why Lucero’s family and his case hasn’t gotten the support that it deserves. At only 5:30 at night, the streets were dark and isolated and I remembered the Southern Poverty Law Center report telling of people being driven off the rode and not walking alone after dark. This is a stark contrast to my immigrant hood where yes, people look over their shoulders and put their heads down as they pass the police that patrol, but it never stops. The traffic, the hum of conversation, musica and children. Stores stay open late as do restaurants. In Patchogue, at the end of a road that led to the tracks of the Long Island Railroad, a crowd of a few hundred gathered where Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero was killed by a gang of racist youth to remember.
Remembering Marcelo Lucero, One Year Later from VivirLatino on Vimeo.
Images from November 7, 2009 vigil remembering Marcelo Lucero, an Ecuadorian immigrant killed in Patchogue, Long Island in a hate crime.
The Lucero family asked that the vigil not be political, rather that the message stay focused on peace and unity and everyone in attendance respected the wishes of the family, I will do that as well by not inserting political commentary here but rather just showing what I saw, heard, and felt.
Marcelo Lucero Vigil : America the Beautiful from VivirLatino on Vimeo.
Scenes from vigil in memory of Marcelo Lucero. 11-07-09 Patchogue, Long Island, NY.
Mangos With Chili Presents Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead in the Bay Area Tonite & Nov. 15th
11:42 am By Maegan la Mamita Mala · Arts| California| Culture| Events| Lo Que Hay| Raices| Violence| Women| dance| history| language · 1 Comment
7 Nov 2009
Porque we remember our loved ones from our familias and community everyday and porque the mujeres that are involved in the creation of this project are beautiful and kick culo.
Mangos With Chili: the floating cabaret of QTPOC bliss, dreams, sweat, sweets & nightmares
proudly presents the premiere of:BELOVED: A Requiem for Our Dead
because we refuse to forget youFeaturing:
Nalo Hopkinson
Charleston Chu
E. Rose Sims
SoliRose
Nico Dacumos
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Ms. Cherry Galette
and moreWith video by Storm Florez, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kortney Ryan Ziegler, and more
November 6th and 7th, 8PM
The Lab
2948 16th St
San Francisco, CA 94103
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsNovember 15th, 8PM
Hechos en Califas Festival
La Pena
3105 Shattuck Avenue
Berkeley, CA
$12-16, no one turned away for lack of fundsIn this highly anticipated premiere of the newest Mangos With Chili production, we invite you to join us at the crossroads for a night of conjuring, memory, mourning and celebration. Through elegies of story, song, dance, drag and more, the Bay Area’s noted and notorious queer and trans people of color performance crew will honor our erased, fallen and slain queer and trans people of color family lost to hate crimes, war, colonization, and genocide. We will celebrate our queer legacies and the ways we’ve found to survive through the beautiful resistance of memory, and whisper stories about grief, loss, healing, sweet darkness, and walking between worlds towards rebirth.
Beloved: A Requiem for Our Dead will feature the brilliance and blaze of renowned Caribbean speculative fiction storycrafter Nalo Hopkinson; multimedia invocation performance art heart wrench by playwright and poet Nico Dacumos; In Memoriam, a new collaborative dance theater work by Charlston Chu and Cherry Galette; ancestral prayer/spoken love letter by writer and theater artist Rose E. Sims; a mixed media jazz dance cabaret extravaganza by Charleston Chu, an autobiographical musical journey traversing the Middle East and African Diaspora by virtuoso trio SoliRose; the powerful truth renderings of queer Sri Lankan writer and performer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and the premiere of Moorish Salt a burlesque-dance theater/ritual performance art piece by fusion dance artist and theater-maker Cherry Galette.
Mangos With Chili is a Bay Area based arts organization committed to showcasing high quality performance of life saving importance by queer and trans artists of color to audiences in the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2006 by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Ms Cherry Galette, Mangos With Chili has performed to sold out houses across North America, wowing audiences in world class theaters, underground performance spaces, bars, and campus halls, with their high intensity, breathtaking performance, politics, and storytelling craft, reflecting the lives and stories of queer and trans people of color, while making art that speaks out in resistance to the daily struggles around silence, isolation, homophobia, and violence that QTPOC face. Mangos With Chili is a fiscally sponsored project of the San Francisco based arts organization CounterPULSE, which provides space and resources for emerging artists and cultural innovators: www.counterpulse.org. Mangos With Chili is supported by the Horizons Foundation, the Astraea Foundation, and the generous support of our community of donors.Both venues are wheelchair accessible. The show contains material of adult nature. Parental discretion advised. Please refrain from wearing scented products to ensure that audience members and performers with multiple chemical sensitivity can attend.
For more information:
mangos.with.chili@gmail.com
mangoswithchili.wordpress.com
Rihanna interview
6:11 pm By la Macha · Celebrities| TV| Violence| Women · 10 Comments
5 Nov 2009This just broke my heart. Broke my heart.
From Huffington Post, a preview on the Rihanna interview:
I think that it is really generous and loving of Rihanna to think about girls at a time in her life when she is hurting and confused and devastated and even humiliated. But that section quoted above–that part where she says, “her selfish decision to love”….Oh, how my heart breaks.
It is not Rihanna’s job to stop violence against women. It’s not any woman or girl’s job to stop violence against women and girls. Even if she stayed with Chris Brown forever–it would never be her fault that women are being killed by men. It is manipulative and even violent to say it is. It is not selfish for a woman or girl to love. Dear god, no.
It is selfish to beat a woman. It is selfish to scare and intimidate her. It is selfish to take her love and use it against her, it is selfish to beat a woman who loves you because you know you can.
It is Chris Brown’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop violating women. It is men’s job to stop twisting and FUCKING with love so freely and generously given. It is the job of men to grow the fuck up and get into some kind of healing/therapy so that they can teach *little boys* how to not beat the holy fuck out of a person who loves them.
And it’s media’s job to stop putting the lives of little girls onto the shoulders of survivors. They have enough shit to worry about. It’s time to start putting responsibility where it belongs. On the fists of men who make the choice to use them whenever they feel like it.
Hola!
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- Puerto Rican, Latino Clergy, Theology Professors, Community Members To Condemn Brutal Hate Killing of Gay Puerto Rican Man
- Vigils for Justice y en Memoria de Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
- Russell Athletic rehires fired union organizers
- When Things Go Wrong…Terribly Wrong.
- Official VivirLatino Statement on Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN
- Sexual Violence Against Women in Immigrant Detention
- Nadya Suleman Speaks Again
- Update : Arrest Made in Murder of 19 Year Old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
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- Dear Troll(s):
- Puerto Rican, Latino Clergy, Theology Professors, Community Members To Condemn Brutal Hate Killing of Gay Puerto Rican Man
- Vigils for Justice y en Memoria de Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
- Russell Athletic rehires fired union organizers
- When Things Go Wrong…Terribly Wrong.
- Official VivirLatino Statement on Lou Dobbs Leaving CNN
- Sexual Violence Against Women in Immigrant Detention
- Nadya Suleman Speaks Again
- Update : Arrest Made in Murder of 19 Year Old Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado
- Organizations Asking Department of Justice to Intervene in Murder Case of Jorge Steven López Mercado
