Tag Archives: Maegan la Mala Ortiz

6 Years of VivirLatino – Still Causing Trouble as Latin@ Blogging Shifts

  By Maegan La Mala | October 12, 2011 - 1:27 pm |
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I started today thinking about how difficult it has become to maintain VivirLatino and keep it up and running the way I want to. 6 years ago today, this site went live and it has three editors (of which I was one) and owners who had the best of intentions but who also wanted to capitalize on what was to become the “Latino internet boom”.

That was never my interest and it still isn’t. I, having already been personally blogging about my experiences as a single Rican activist mami in nyc, was and still am interested in the way life/struggle was (is) a reflection of larger social and political issues. This means that I rarely look at page stats, am a bad hustler/marketer, and have sacrificed a certain level of “success” because of my refusal to sell out to trends and/or organizations, because I don’t mind being confrontational if that means keeping it real.

6 years later, there are two editors (including me) and I own the site. My intentions, my integrity, my politics, and my passions have no changed but the face of Latino blogging has. I have witnessed a shift away from critical analysis and a move towards marketing our experiences. In the post Obama election period, I have seen the beltway (Washington d.c.) shift in terms of the level of engagement they (represented by both politicians and non-profit orgs) are willing to have with spaces like VivirLatino. We are not the “traditional” media and thus can be shut out in a way that mainstream media cannot. I have also seen a steep decline in revenue, mostly because as the recession get deeper and deeper orgs didn’t have the money so many of us independent bloggers struggled to get. As a result the field of independent (meaning not tied to an organization) Latino political/activist bloggers has gotten smaller and smaller. Dear and talented voices have gone silent (online- their work continues in other spaces) and trust me – when you are a space like VivirLatino – you need all the allies you can get.

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Cross Post/RePost : Summer of Feminista: When we are all experts, everyone’s voice is heard

  By Maegan La Mala | July 23, 2011 - 8:59 am |
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Mala’s Note : I originally wrote this post for the site Viva la Feminista when I read the prompt for Veronica’s Summer of Feminista. I wrote it earlier this week when I am particularly struggling in my head with what supportive communities look and feel like and when I am thinking about how best to use my skills, talents and experience.

Enjoy y tell me your thoughts and areas of expertise.

 

My name is Mala and I am an expert in Mami’hood because it is where I live, work, struggle, survive and thrive and have for the last 14 years.

I dislike the word intellectual as much as I dislike the word feminist. It’s not that I am against intelligence, study, engagement, learning, or teaching just like I am not against equal rights and access to all women. I am against the way the word intellectual has been co-opted to mean one thing to the exclusion of many just as feminism has been. There is no such single definition of an intellectual. Who and what an intellectual, especially in the context of the United States has been dependent on what point of history we find ourselves in and what is the most regarded value. Is an intellectual a scholar? A person who has spent years inside universities with no experience in the real world? Is it someone who conducts research within the real world but forever maintains a safe distance between us and them, the classic anthropologist if you will? Is it someone with a foot firmly planted in each world or would someone who has little formal schooling qualify just as well? With this in mind, and using the same sort of questioning, what does it mean to have A Latina public intellectual and if we need A public Latina intellectual?

Just as there is a struggle to name a Latina leader, the trouble with attempting to find a Latina intellectual is that it assumes that there is one Latina experience. Latinidad, as I define it, as a shared history rooted in colonialism and survival across the Americas, has many faces. To ask for one Latina intellectual is to engage in simplistic demands for a cult of personality – a figure to rally around and behind and perhaps even hide behind as the defining example of what we as Latinas are supposed to be. Hell, many of us can’t even agree to use the word Latina. Some use Hispanic, others hyphenated Americans, others are rooted in their regions, and some a hybrid of all of the above. If we cannot and do not share a common vocabulary – hell we don’t even share a common language really – how can we expect to have one common intellectual or expert among us?

While we all wait for one leader to be baptized, one thought queen to be crowned, there are many unsung members across communities reclaiming and redefining Latin@ experiences across the diaspora. This means elevating the work that has been pushed into the casitas and alleys, the work of the mami, the puta, the poeta, and of course the mami puta poeta. There is knowledge within pockets of our communities that was never meant to be shared – put into words. I am thinking of the power between the fingertips of curanderas, healers, and matronas, weavers, painters, scribes who have no sense or need for letters. There are intellectuals – people who know- all around us : your lover, your hija, your ti@, your vecina, that lady who sells ice cream on the corner, y tu mama tambien.

My name is Mala, I am an expert in my vida as you are an expert in yours. I share my knowledge and with my hij@s my herman@s – biological and chosen. Sometimes through words, sometimes, action, sometimes through silence. Choose your mediums, your methods. Choose your movement(s).

 

 

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b-Side Chat : I AM THIS LAND Interview with Maegan la Mala Ortiz of VivirLatino.com

  By Maegan La Mala | November 29, 2010 - 1:21 pm |
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Cross-Posted with gracious permission with Breakthrough’s b-Listed site.

Breakthrough’s I AM LAND contest, now calling on people to make a video on diversity to celebrate our differences and win prizes, also wants to share the important work our partners are doing to uplift diversity.  Read our first in the I AM THIS LAND interview series with Maegan la Mala Ortiz, Managing Editor and Co-Publisher of Vivirlatino, a daily publication, featuring news, analysis and opinions about Latino politics and culture created for the diverse and influential Latino and Latina community in the U.S. by Latinas.

b-listed: Why did you feel the need to start VivirLatino?

Maegan: Actually VivirLatino was started in 2005 by a company in Spain who wanted to break into the Latino market. The writers who were brought in as editors had already been writing on and off line about Latino issues. The editors became the owners a few years ago and we made a more concerted effort to represent who we represented: Latinas born and raised in the U.S. with strong ties to our home countries with a commitment to justice/love centered human rights who also participate/consume pop culture.

b-listed: How has the response been to your blog from within the Latino community?

Maegan: Pretty awesome. We have always received lots of support and love for keeping it real and honest and true. We also get props for being really independent. We aren’t funded by any organizations and our editors work from home while balancing paying jobs, kids, activism. Our growth and popularity has come from connecting the online work to on the ground work we are all involved in and supporting other such efforts. Criticisms and critiques include doing more stuff in Spanish/bilingually. Conservative Latinos aren’t likely to be fans of us as we are shamelessly progressive/radical.

b-listed: How can online media activism (through blogs, social networking sites and other forms of new media) improve relations between the different communities living in the country?

Maegan: The only way that online media activism can improve relations is if it is connected to real on the ground work. This isn’t a popular position to take, but VivirLatino has never existed to educate or organize people outside the Latino community. If non-Latinos get something out of it, beautiful and we welcome non-Latinos to read and engage but the Latino community is so huge, so diverse that we have so much work to do amongst ourselves (in terms of educating and organizing) and I think it is ok to say that. Where the interconnectivity comes in is that Latinos are more than just Latinos. We are parents, we are queer, we are women, we are workers, we are transgender, we are immigrants, we artists, we are undocumented, we are youth etc etc etc, so we need to support justice driven work for all those intersections and vice-versa. Coalitions, collaborations are beautiful and important things that must be used strategically.

b-listed: How do you think your work in the last five years has uplifted diversity?

Maegan: Just by being real. We have taken alot of heat for not following certain messaging but we have always been honest about who we are, what we experience in our communities and what people are telling us. Diversity has become such a buzzword almost to the point of meaninglessness. Diversity is not about holding hands to cover up difference. It is about acknowledging how difference works, good and bad and how we can build across not through or over difference.

b-listed: What has surprised you most since launching VivirLatino? Good or bad.

Maegan: Besides how much work it is? ja ja. I mean it is so much work. It’s not just writing blog posts or linking to other people. We try to collaborate with what activists are doing and really lend a critical perspective to the idea of “Latinidad.” Being independent is really really hard. It costs money and time and not wanting to compromise means turning away orgs, ads, and opportunities and it means we are really broke. But on the good side, there is a constant amazement of how many people read us and look to us and who we work and collaborate with. VivirLatino really is a few gatos doing this out of a huge sense of love and responsibility. In many ways it is an extension of selves and it sounds corny but when just one person sends us a letter or tells us in person how one post impacted them or made them think, that makes it all worth it.

b-listed: What do you hope for the future as we head into 2011.

Maegan: That we have enough money and time to keep doing what we love. That we see some movement towards justice for our communities including immigrants, queer people, women, mamis, parents…, that we can all find safety in our chosen communities/families and to paraphrase the Young Lords, that each generation keep moving the struggle(s) forward.

b-listed: Complete the sentence: I AM THIS LAND because…

Maegan: I AM THIS LAND because la historia me trajo aqui a traves de de genes, sangre, y lucha /history brought me here through genes, blood, and struggle.

Enter your video on diversity to win at I AM THIS LAND.

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Vl’s la Mala Participating in Virtual Summit on Diversity & Social Media

  By Maegan La Mala | November 22, 2010 - 12:19 pm |
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I am very excited that I have been asked to participate in this event. I will be focusing my presentation on independent media making and the role that gender, class, and race play in activist social media. I hope some of you can watch and please feel free to send me ideas, suggestions or love letters of encouragement.

KU journalism students to host virtual summit on diversity and social media

LAWRENCE – Students from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications (http://www.journalism.ku.edu/) at the University of Kansas will host an online virtual summit entitled “Telling Stories of Diversity in the Digital Age” on December 4 in Stauffer-Flint 100 on the University of Kansas campus.

The summit begins at 11 a.m. CST/ 12 p.m. EST with an introduction by Associate Professor Simran Sethi (http://simransethi.com/), who teaches Diversity in Media, a course cross-listed in the schools of journalism and social welfare. “I wanted to highlight the ways in which journalists and non-journalists alike are participating in a broader range of storytelling through the use of Twitter, blogs, Facebook and other digital platforms like the iPad. This course, culminating in the digital summit, is the ideal format for a deep exploration of participatory media and opportunities for the democratization of storytelling.”

Sethi will be followed by a series of guest lecturers covering topics including Social Media and the Notion of a Post Racial America; Women in New Media; Global Social Media: Giving Us a Voice, Or Limiting Whose Voice is Heard; and Different Voices, Same Technology.

The summit is co-presented with UNITY: Journalists of Color (http://www.unityjournalists.org/index.php), a strategic alliance advocating fair and accurate news coverage about people of color, and will include concluding remarks from Executive Director Onica Makwakwa. The event will be streamed live via Ustream on the UNITY homepage (http://www.unityjournalists.org/index.php) and the University of Kansas School of Journalism homepage (http://www.journalism.ku.edu/). The summit will be liveblogged on Twitter under the hashtag #digitaldiversity. Twitter participants will be given the opportunity to ask questions directly to the speakers and are eligible for a free HD Flip video camera courtesy of UNITY.

Those interested in participating are encouraged to do so via the UNITY website, the KU School of Journalism website, or by attending in person.

A complete schedule of events follows and can also be found on the summit fan page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/KU-Journalism-Telling-Stories-of-Diversity-in-the-Digital-Age/169849916372666?v=wall):

11-11:10 a.m. CST / 12-12:10 p.m. EST – Welcome from KU William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications Dean Ann Brill.

Summit Introduction by Simran Sethi, Associate Professor, KU School of Journalism.

11:10 a.m.-12:20 p.m. CST / 12:10-1:20 p.m. EST – Social Media and the Notion of a Post Racial America

Chris Rabb – A visiting researcher at Princeton and a nationally recognized thought leader on the intersection of social identity, entrepreneurship, politics and media, and the author.

LaToya Peterson – Editor of Racialicious.com.

Shawn Williams – Award-winning president and editor of DallasSouthNews.org, which began as DallasSouthBlog.com.

12:30-1:40 p.m. CST / 1:30-2:40 p.m. EST – Women in New Media

Maegan la Mala Ortiz – Managing Editor and Co-Publisher of VivirLatino.com who considers herself a radical Rican media maker.

Marcia Yerman – Writer and co-founder of cultureID, a social community dedicated to creating a connection between activism and the arts.

Pat Lynch – Experienced, charitable media maven focused on strengthening women’s media voices, and the CEO and Founder of Women’s Online Media and Education Network (W.O.M.E.N.).

Shelby Knox – Feminist blogger, writer and activist, who according her blog The Ms. Education of Shelby Knox, is “an Upper East Side girl via Lubbock exiled to the West Village – a lover of animals, a women’s history geek and a policy wonk in training.”

Erin Vest – Former award-winning reporter turned blogger, now the Social Media Strategist at the largest women’s blogging network: BlogHer.

1:50-2:50 p.m. CST / 2:50-3:50 p.m. EST – Global Social Media: Giving Us a Voice, Or Limiting Whose Voice is Heard.

Nick Valencia – National Desk Editor for CNN, who has extensively covered Mexico’s drug related violence for CNN.

Vicky Lu – TV news reporter for Chinese State Operated News Press, who has first-hand experience living in a government with heavy social media restrictions.

Sekombi Katondolo – Dancer, artist, filmmaker, community organizer, journalist, and center director for Yole! Africa Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Goran Sabah Ghafour – Reporter, editor and author from Kurdistan. Currently studying at the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.

3-4 p.m. CST / 4-5 p.m. EST – Different Voices, Same Technology

Shannon Des Roches Rosa – Writer, editor, autism advocate who writes fearlessly and compassionately about parenting, autism, and geekery.

Robin Deutsch – Chief executive manager for PsychMoo, a networking site for the “mentally interesting.”

David Morrison – 23 year-old disabilities columnist with StarNewsMedia in Wilmington, NC, currently attending school and living with a disability.

Maria Holter – Entrepreneur and proud mom with a documentary film background on a quest to put mainstream equipment, smart software and new media in the hands of non-verbal people for communication, learning, fun and social networking.

4-4:10 p.m. CST / 5-5:10 p.m. EST – Conclusion by Onica Makwakwa, Executive Director of UNITY: Journalists of Color.

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Con la Vista al Voto : Think of Voting as the Least You Can Do

  By Maegan La Mala | November 2, 2010 - 8:53 am |
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Every time elections roll around, I am reminded of the words and actions of my mentor (RIP) Richie Perez. He worked for years for Puerto Rican Rights, Latino Rights, and Voter Rights and he helped me think about revolution as a process and us as a people having many tools in our revolutionary toolbox to move the struggle(s) forward.

The speech below was a speech I made right before the 2008 presidential election, but I think it is still relevant, especially as I have had conversations with friends and loved ones who cannot vote, because of the their legal status, because of their once incarcerated status, because they are colonial subjects.

As long as we frame and allow the powers that be to frame voting as the end all and be all then we will never see change anywhere.

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VL’s Maegan la Mala at Hispanic PANIC! Tonite in NYC

  By Maegan La Mala | September 29, 2010 - 12:12 pm |
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For the third time, yours truly, VL’s own managing editor, Maegan la Mamita Mala Ortiz will be reading at Hispanic PANIC!, a reading series featuring queer Latino writers hand picked by Charlie Vazquez.
That’s happening tonite
8 pm sharp at Nowhere, 322 e. 14th st, NYC.

Featuring: Orlando Ferrand, Alicia Anabel Santos, Aaron Powell, Maegan La Mala Ortiz, Miguel Angeles, and Cristy Road.

This will be my third PANIC! and I am so excited. Charlie, who has been featured here before does a magical job of curating (and sharing his own work). The readers are always amazing and the audience spectacular.

For those who haven’t attended a PANIC! reading before, you can read all about it in this piece that was featured in Viva!, the Latino pullout section of the New York Daily News. The feature article was written by fellow PANIC! writer Erasmo Guerra.

Hope to see some of you there.

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VivirLatino Says Vegas or Bust

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | May 12, 2010 - 8:03 am |
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Last year was Mala’s first time at Netroots Nation. Thanks to a scholarship from America’s Voice, who yes have purchased ads on the site (full disclosure), I went to Pittsburgh not knowing what to expect and had a tough time, to say the least.

So why would I apply for a scholarship to go again? Women like me aren’t usually invited to these types of events. The costs are prohibitive and there isn’t child care. Often women of color radical media makers hear that we were referenced, talked about but are not included in the conversation. Situations that we are living like the intersection of enforcement heavy immigration, sexual violence and mami’hood. Even when we are invited to conversation spaces like conventions, we find ourselves isolated, tokenized or ignored.

Part of me considers these conferences and conventions a social experiment where I test my own limits and the limits of others. I always end up crying. Sometimes those are tears of joy, sometimes those are tears of anger, fear, frustration. You can tell alot by who you end up crying with at a conference.

The last time I was in Las Vegas was in 2007 to cover the Latin Grammy Awards. We’ve changed alot since then.
Now towards the end of July, I will be in Vegas again for this year’s Netroots Nation, thanks to a scholarship from Democracy for America.

I feel like this year, I know what to expect and how to navigate a little better. I want to thank the academy people who voted for me and those on the judging panel who thought that my voice, presence, and experience was important. I hope that I can do my comunidad justice.

PS : I’m also excited that Prerna Lal from DREAM Activist will be there also via a scholarship.

Now I just need funding for my airfare!!!

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Vivirlatino’s la Mala at Hispanic Panic NYC Tomorrow Nite!

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | September 29, 2009 - 3:05 pm |
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3913934946_0df6370bd7_mI am so excited to be a part of Hispanic Panic tomorrow nite and I hope that some of you in the NYC area can join this fabulous collection of Latino poets and writers that Charlie Vazquez, the host, has brought together.

HISPANIC PANIC! w/ Brandon Lacy Campos, Maegan ‘La Mamita Mala’ Ortiz, Erasmo Guerra, Robert Vázquez-Pacheco, Cristy Road, and Claudia Narvaez-Meza.
Wednesday, September 30th @ Nowhere, 322 E 14th St, NYC, 8PM, 21+

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VL’s Own Maegan la Mala is a Powerful Latina (Interview Tonite)

  By Maegan la Mamita Mala | April 29, 2009 - 8:00 am |
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maegan-ortiz-150x150
Just a little shameless plug. Tonite I am going to be speaking on the Powerful Latinas interview series about the development of my political consciousness, and how my creation of my media outlets are connected with my politics.

I’m really excited and hope you can listen in!

Sign up aqui to be a part of the fun.

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