The National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights And Event Co-Chairs : David Galarza * Juan Ramos * Carlos "Charlie" Ramos, Jr.* Martha Laureano,*Julissa Santiago

Invite you To a Social Meet-and-Greet Entre Familia.

For An Evening of Music, Poetry and a Historical Reflection of the
NCPRR's 27 Years of Community Activism and its Role Today.

Featuring NuyoRican Poet Mariposa and Julisa Vale, Prisionera, Andy Torres and
Other great performers.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Latin Quarter's Nightclub

511 Lexington Avenue, New York City

Doors Open at 6:30pm

2 for 1 Drink special and Buffet

Admission:

$25 gets you Free Admission and a One Year Membership;

$15 Non-Members

Must be 21 or older to attend.

RSVP today and/or for more information, please contact
Juan Ramos at juan4thepeople@gmail.com

The Filiberto Ojeda Rios Film Festival 2008 is an initiative of the ProLibertad Freedom Campaign to showcase films that speak to our experience as a colonized people fighting for independence and self-determination!

We have named the film festival after assassinated Machetero leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios because his death raised consciousness throughout the Puerto Rican Diaspora; his murder illustrated the colonial oppression Puerto Rico faces and has radicalized a generation of young activists to continue the fight for independence.

We hope these films will do the same. Join us on our three consecutive Fridays!

Don’t support the Hollywood machine that feeds you nonsense, sex, violence and cheap humor! Learn about yourself, your people, and your struggle!

This Friday's film is la Operacion, a film I have written about and referenced often. Pero for those who have not been paying attention:

La Operacion/The Operation
This documentary brings to the foreground the problem of widespread
sterilization among Puerto Rican women through the use of personal testimony, newsreels, and government propaganda excerpts. The procedure is so common that more than one-third of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age have been sterilized. Begun in the 1930's as a means of curbing the surplus population, it continues to be reinforced politically and socially in the Puerto Rican communities.

$5 donation/Best offer at each film!

Friday November 21st, 2008 @ 8pm @ The Brecht Forum 451 West Street (that's the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets.

This is not just history. It is directly tied into how women's cuerpos are used today as projects and not respected, how the language of choice is often manipulated to help some while harm others and devalue our lives and how and when we continue to bring forth new lives or not.

Violence against women of color, especially Latina women, cannot be separated from a colonial context (despite what any Washington Post reporter may write). Specifically for Puerto Rican women, our bodies have been used as a battleground since the days the Spanish landed on Boriquen, to when the U.S. invaded in 1898, to today.

Pero today, in honor of Be Bold, Be Red, I want to specifically address the mass sterilization of women that took place in Puerto Rico.

“We in the EPB–The Macheteros, in turn, have been able to identify several of the mercenaries who participated in the assassination of our commander. Our intelligence division has been able to do so. Today we publish the name of John Roeper. In the next communiqués, we will report to the nation about other agents.

In October of 2008 I have discovered yet another off-putting situation. The other bearers of this passport are receiving their ballots this month, a head start to this November election. It’s an ex-pat party: the hitchhiker who went south from Recife and voted in Salvador, the old roommates from Buenos Aires, the new friends in Recife. All of them received their absentee ballots or voted at the embassy. Friends, acquaintances, strangers: all American citizens.

But, somehow, I am different than them. I cannot vote. Though I am weighed down by the negatives of carrying the same passport, I do not have the same rights. Why? The last address I registered with the IRS (and the American government in general) is in Puerto Rico, my home (non) state. And Puerto Ricans, though US citizens in paper, are second class citizens in practice. Therefore, I am not allowed to vote in the presidential elections, unless I move and prove that my current legal residence lies in of the (actual) 50 states.

I carry the weight of this passport because I have no option. There is no Puerto Rican passport; I am a second class citizen with no alternative.

Read the entire post and the struggle that the colonial status creates at Zerotres

y mil graciaa a Elenamary for sending me the link.

Caro was blessed enough to see Calle 13 here in NYC the other night.

Via / Remolacha

To counter Daddy Yankee's move to the right with McCain, Fat Joe publicly is lending his support to Barack Obama right from his head down to his toes.

And while we can debate the commodification of political figures on shoes and other gear, I wanna shift into the commodification of politics and politics show.

You can listen to the single here.

I love Calle 13 and Cafe Tacuba pero I'm not sold on this joint effort. No se. What do you all think?

Today, activists y amantes de la libertad, call for a day of solidarity with Puerto Rico, a colony hidden behind the name of a commonwealth. A country and a people that are pandered to for votes when needed by presidential wannabes when the island's very status doesn't allow for the U.S. citizens by birth to vote for the person under whose laws they must live.

The National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights, a social justice organization, has written a letter inviting the candidates to collaborate with the NCPRR to develop a means for communication with the Puerto Rican community.

“We are willing to work with the candidates to creatively set up a discussion that will allow our community to understand the candidates’ positions. Our children are also dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we should know what the future will bring from these candidates.” said Vazquez-Hernandez, a professor of history at Miami Dade College, who is a Vietnam Era veteran and a lifetime member of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV).

Full disclosure : The NCPRR was the formative entity in terms of my political upbringing.

Read the entire letter after the jump.

Vega Yunqué moved to New York from Puerto Rico in the mid 1940s. He was the stepfather of singer Suzanne Vega. He was divorced and was not very close to his relatives, said Colchie [his agent].

The feisty writer, who was the director of the Clemente Soto Velez from 1993 to 2000, managed to alienate a lot of people throughout the years though lately he had been patching things up.

“He was a brilliant, conflictive man,” said media activist Marta García.

His last novel was a comic false memoir about a Jewish woman who meets a Puerto Rican Romeo and falls in love. It had been tentatively titled “Rebecca Horowitz, Puerto Rican Sex Freak" but publication was cancelled by the publisher recently, said Colchie, who’d been trying to find another publisher.

Edited to add: Caro over at Soundtaste has an interesting post up about her last conversation with Vega. I had no idea he was considered machista. I've been to Clemente Soto Velez a few times (I dance with Junot Diaz there YEARS ago at a fundraiser) but I am sad to say I've never read a book by Ed Vega. Time to start I guess.
Via / NY Daily News

Terry Butler, a spokeswoman for the National Center for H.I.V., S.T.D. and TB Prevention at the centers, said that the total money for the system — which is awarded to applicants on a competitive basis — would remain the same, but that the remaining 25 participating states and cities would receive more. Ms. Butler said those participants had the most reliable systems and could help the centers produce the best estimates.

The system uses a new test that distinguishes recent infections from old ones, helping epidemiologists track them in something much closer to real time than was previously possible.

The states that lost funding are Georgia , Illinois , Maryland , Missouri , Ohio , Oklahoma , Pennsylvania , Tennessee.

Via / NYT