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Youth Perspectives on NCLR Conference & POTUS Obama

July 27th, 2011

Maegan is working on a longer post specifically about President Obama’s speech at the NCLR Conference this past Monday (of which I don’t think either of us desire to hear, I know I don’t!). In the meantime, I wanted to share some information that I have been reading from youth perspectives regarding youth being welcomed into the ballroom for the luncheon where President Obama gave his speech.

In short, youth participants in the Lideres Summit were originally invited to be in the room during the luncheon for the President’s speech. As reported by Ernesto Dominguez on Amplify Your Voice, on Sunday evening

“at the ‘Noche De Premios,’ Lideres participants were asked to give up their tickets to enter the Monday Luncheon event and hence give up the chance to be in the same room that President Obama would be giving his remarks from.

Participants were told that ‘seats have sold out to the lunch event, and to make sure youth get to see the President (over view screens), they were told to go to the overflow room only and give up their seats to ‘others.’”

Needless to say Lideres participants were upset and questioned if NCLR is committed to included youth in all aspects of the work they do. NCLR President Janet Murguía asked Lideres participants to “withhold criticism until after the lunch on Monday. We ask everyone to make sacrifices at this summit…’Judge me when this is all over.’ I believe we can deliver the President, and we will see what happens.”

The activism of the youth present resulted in this video where Murguía was questioned and offered clarification on the decision to replace youth participants in an “overflow” room. Below is the interview in English (sorry no transcript at this time):

One thing I noticed about this video is that it is youth created and I think it is great that Murguía made/found time (even if 5 minutes) to talk with you. I also noticed that towards the end of the video where Murguía indicates her plan to urge President Obama to go to the “overflow” room how she spoke to the youth about their activism. The reporter shares that the youth are also using their new media skills to reach out to President Obama regarding this situation and prior to the youth reporter finishing her statement Murguía speaks over her and states “I think any time you can use your new media strategies is great, but I’m telling you I have some really powerful advocacy skills and I believe I can deliver the President.”

Reminding myself to take deep breaths, that not everyone embraces a positive youth development approach, that this is probably a very challenging and stressful time for Murguía, I must state that I was so disappointed in this response it is sickening! First of all, this is NOT about what advocacy skills Murguía has, it is about the initial decision to remove youth participants so that more adult/traditional conference participants can join the luncheon replacing the space set aside for the youth. This is about recognizing that the work we need to do as a community requires just that a communal effort. It requires us to recognize that young people are powerful contributing members of this society. That they can and will (even if we don’t like it) mentor and teach us how to do things differently and effectively! It is not always the “adults” that have all the knowledge and wisdom to share. We need to understand our roles are not always to teach the youth, but to also learn in the process!

The image of a “kiddie table” came into my mind when I read this story. The youth participants being sent to another room called “overflow” (when they weren’t even overflow to begin with!) reeks so much of not making room for youth anywhere, even at the table. Which to me, ultimately means you are not welcome, old enough, privileged, or have not earned a space here. There is so much wrong in this approach!

I know conferences are stressful, I’ve organized national ones before and I know folks are asked to do all sorts of things not in their job description to make the event run smoothly. Yet, I’ve also been that conference participant who was asked to move somewhere else because of whatever the issue was (height, my hair blocking the person behind me, misspelling of my name, given the wrong credentials for entry, challenging the “expert on the panel, etc.).

Finally, if you are wondering if President Obama was recruited by those “powerful advocacy skills” to visit the “overflow room” where youth participants were, he was. He entered and from tweets regarding the interaction (you can read up on this by searching by hashtags #NCLRConf and #Lideres11) by youth participants present, he shook a few hands and took a few fotos then was off. NCLR senior staff are of course seeing this as a victory and that the youth were appeased. Some response to this was that Lideres participants deserve “more” and “substance.” It seems youth do not just want a foto op or a handshake, they want to be treated with respect! Shocking, I know….

Introducing Youth Media Maker: Espie Hernandez

June 24th, 2010

I’ve decided that this summer I will take time out to interview media makers over at my Media Justice column. The site focuses on youth and often we don’t always embrace the media they create and find it valuable and worthy. Last week Vivir Latino was invited to attend the Human Rights Watch Film Festival’s youth track: Youth Producing Change. One of the films featured was by a young media maker named Espie Hernandez.

Espie’s film is about her experiences being a 15 year-old out Latina lesbian and planning her Quinceañera. Her short film MARIPOSA is below. I’m planning to use her film in my human sexuality class I’m teaching this summer and am very excited to hear what others think of her film (it was the only film that discussed aspects of sexuality and sexual orientation).

Espie’s interview was done on video and I’ve transcribed the interview as well. You may read and hear the interview at my Media Justice column.

Sergio Adrian Hernandez-Huereca

June 15th, 2010

I’m still waiting for the day when all the “obey every single law at any cost” people demand that the as yet unnamed agent be handed over to the Mexican police so that he may receive his just punishment. It doesn’t matter how angry it makes him that he can’t shoot people on the other side of the border (even if they are drug smugglers!) it is the law. And he apparently broke it.

An official story soon came out. The Border Patrol claimed that reports of the incident indicated U.S. officers on bicycle patrol “were assaulted with rocks by an unknown number of people.” Border Patrol and other government officials claimed that their agent was surrounded by a rock-throwing mob and that the agent was attacked and stoned before he fired his weapon.

A video taken with a cell phone proved this account to be full of lies. CNN reported on its web-site that “a video obtained by CNN casts doubt on the Border Patrol agent’s claim that he was surrounded by rock-throwing suspected illegal immigrants when he fatally shot the boy on the border at Ciudad Juarez. … The video contradicts [FBI spokeswoman Andrea] Simmons’ account. She had said: ‘This agent, who had the second subject detained on the ground, gave verbal commands to the remaining subjects to stop and retreat. However, the subjects surrounded the agent and continued to throw rocks at him. The agent then fired his service weapon several times, striking one subject who later died.’”

The video clearly shows that no one is “surrounding” the cop. He is clearly seen pointing his weapon at a group of people who are on the Mexican side of the river, which at this time of year in Juarez/El Paso is mainly dry, and 10 feet wide. Three cracks from his gun are heard.

Several vendors on a bridge overlooking the carnage also disputed the official story. Estelle Gonzalez, who sells hats on the Paso del Norte Bridge, said, “The kid wasn’t throwing rocks. He was only watching.” Another vendor, Luis Rodriguez, said, “The kid wasn’t throwing anything. Then he [the Border Patrol agent] started shooting like crazy. He fired three shots.”

All laws enforced all the time folks. Right? This man broke the law. He should be in jail awaiting justice.

More News on the Shooting of Teenager at US/Mexican Border

June 10th, 2010

More information is leaking out about the murder of the teenager at the border. From Yahoo News:

But two witnesses to the incident told the Wall Street Journal’s Nicholas Casey that Hernandez was standing on the Mexican side of the border with his hands up and had not thrown rocks at the agent.
U.S. national Bobbie McDow said she was in the middle of the Santa Fe Bridge — which spans the border and has security checkpoints at either side; and saw a group of teens who had no weapons or backpacks. They were playing a kind of “cat-and-mouse game,” trying to make it to the U.S. side and back to Mexico without being caught, she told the Journal.
McDow said two Border Patrol agents saw the group and chased them — and that one agent, riding a bicycle, caught and pinned down a suspect. She said the same agent then fired shots into Mexico, where the other boys had run. McDow said that one teen had thrown rocks at the agent but that Hernandez hadn’t.
McDow’s husband, Raul Flores, told the Journal he’d seen Hernandez emerge from behind a pillar on the Mexican side of the border with his hands up before the agent shot him in the shoulder and then in the head.

From the AP:

Hernandez was found 20 feet (six meters) into Mexico, and an autopsy revealed that the fatal shot was fired at a relatively close range, according to Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state attorney general’s office. Mexican authorities said a .40 caliber shell casing was found near the body, suggesting that the Border Patrol agent might have crossed into Mexico to shoot the boy.
That would violate the rules for Border Patrol agents, who are supposed to stay on the U.S. side — and could open the agent to a Mexican homicide prosecution.

And from Democracy Now:

US authorities have said fifteen-year-old Sergio Adrian Hernandez Güereca was part of a group of boys throwing rocks at Border Patrol agents who were trying to detain two people at the border crossing. But a cell-phone video obtained by the Spanish language network Univision shows otherwise. The grainy footage shows the Border Patrol agent detaining one man at gunpoint. While he has the man on the ground, he points his gun toward a second person on the Mexican side of the border. The video shows that person running away as the agent fires several shots. The video then shows a body next to a column under the bridge. We speak to Fernando Garcia, the director of the Border Network for Human Rights.

I have to wonder, given the vehemence in which so many have argued that we must follow every single solitary law down the last drop–that we must punish those who break even those obtuse of laws–are we, as US citizens, going to hand over the border agent to be tried and convicted if it turns out he broke the law?

14-year-old shot and killed on the border

June 9th, 2010

Calling for increased militarization at the border has a charm about it in the political world. It seems to be the thing that we can all “agree” on. Standing on the wrong side of immigration may cause major meltdowns for a political career, but “defending the border”–increasing the military presence at the border–seems to be something that helps a politician to navigate his way out of immigration related conundrums. That is, if a politician can’t get reform pushed through or faces extreme opposition to reform–he can just call for increased militarization at the border, and he’s in good territory again.

The thing is, though, that increased militarization has consequences:

The Border Patrol agent who shot a 15-year-old boy near the Paso del Norte bridge Monday fired his gun several times, FBI officials said.
Earlier reports stated that the boy was 14 years old, but Chihuahua state police corrected his age Tuesday afternoon.
The agent shot at a group of Mexican nationals who had illegally crossed into the U.S. about 6:30 p.m. after they surrounded him and threw rocks at him, said Special Agent Andrea Simmons, spokeswoman for the FBI in El Paso.

Things still remain confusing as to exactly what happened–but there is this report from CNN:

Simmons told CNN earlier that she did not know whether the person who was shot was on the Mexican or U.S. side of the border, but that the agent never left U.S. territory.
The body was found on the Mexican side of the border, Simmons said.

Leaving aside the point that it seems like the US is perfectly content to kill and imprison people who cross into our territory, but expect leniency when we cross into others, the question must be asked-what are rocks compared to a bullet? And if rock throwing is a regular occurance at the border, why aren’t the officers trained to deal with rock throwing in ways that don’t involve bullets?

Why is increased militarization considered a viable good option in the immigration debate–when the people we are “protecting” ourselves from are rock throwing kids?

What would do if Canada killed a kid from the US that was doing something minor, like, say, bringing a bag of weed back into the US? Would we say the kid shouldn’t have been bringing weed across the border? That he got what he deserved?

Whiter and whiter!

June 7th, 2010

Over the weekend, there was a small uproar in Arizona. As if things could get any worse.

Apparently, a mural was the site of intense “scrutiny” on the part of various far right protestors, including a city official. The problem? The mural depicted children who had dark skin. The depiction was deemed racist or “too politically correct.” And after the intense scrutiny mounted, the principal of the school that authorized the mural caved to pressure and asked the artist to ~~whiten~~ lighten the dark skinned children.

via Huffington Post

Mirroring patterns seen statewide, one can sense the backlash from people attempting to maintain the “old guard” status quo of well-defined power and race relations in the face of rapid change, as reflected in this comment from Prescott City Councilman and local radio host Steve Blair about the disputed mural:

“I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination, but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand…. The focus doesn’t need to be on what’s different; the focus doesn’t need to be on the minority all the time…. Art is in the eye of the beholder, but I say (the Miller Valley mural) looks like graffiti in L.A….. I don’t see anything that ties the community into that mural.”

Before we rightly condemn such notions, it should be noted that Blair was giving voice to a point of view that has dominated the political discourse here for generations. Indeed, R.E. Wall, director of the Prescott Downtown Mural Project, reported that he and the other artists experienced weeks of “tense working conditions” at the site, including regular racial slurs shouted from vehicles and passersby such as: “You’re desecrating our school,” “Get the ni–ers off the wall,” and “Get the sp-c off the wall.” The original article detailing the mural’s completion drew a spate of vitriolic and racially-charged online comments that mirrored these verbal assaults. In an interview with the local newspaper, Wall observed that “the pressure stayed up consistently. We had two months of cars shouting at us.” Eventually, he said, the demands reached such a level that his group was asked by school officials to lighten the faces of the mural’s main subject, as well as the other children in the mural.

What message does this send to the school children (one of whom, in fact, was the model for the primary image that sparked the mural controversy) and others in the area with darker skin pigmentation?

Because of pressure (i.e. outrage) from various groups and media outlets over the weekend, it was announced that the mural would not be lightened after all.

Did you get that? The picture actually reflected a real child. A living and breathing child. A child whose image has been called sp*c and n*gger for the past two months. What does that child do now? Now that he knows what his fellow community members and neighbors think about him?

Thank heavens the picture wasn’t lightened. But–what does a child who can never lighten himself enough to not “look ghetto” do?

What other violence will this child face because he is recognized as the N*ggerSp*c on the wall? Is being called a N*ggerSp*c the only form of violence there is? Is being intimidated by school official and community members a type of violence?

Call for Submissions: Women of Color, Sexuality & The Talk

April 9th, 2010

I’ve partnered with an amazing media maker and radical educator: SuperHussy to help her find, edit, and publish an anthology focusing on women of Color, sex and sexuality! Here’s the Call for Submissions:

Alright ya’ll, it’s time to expand the reach of Super Hussy Media. You know there;s the blog, and the film projects in the works, but wait, here it comes…our first call for submissions for our annual publication, The Compendium.

Our first issue, The Talk, focuses on self-identified women of Color and how they learned about S-E-X. Here are the details:

The Talk: Women of Color On Sex is an exploration of how self-identified women across the Diaspora came to learn about sex and what it meant to have a sexual relationship. Did your mom, aunty or tia sit you down? Were your homegirls or hermanas responsible for giving you the blow by blow? Was Cinemax After Dark, Youtube or a telenovela your sex ed instructor?

Super Hussy Media seeks fresh and daring writers who can coax the reader into an intimate understanding of not only how they learned about sex, but how that knowledge impacted their sexual exploration. We want submissions that are funny, sad, enraging, and transformational.

The Talk is ultimately about our testimonies regarding how we were taught or chose to learn about our sexuality. How we are continuing to learn, lessons we wish we could share with other women of Color, introspective activities of reflection. This is all about us.

Submission Requirements

• Deadline: July 1, 2010

• No more than 2 previously unpublished short stories per submission

• Simultaneous submissions okay, but notify if your work is accepted elsewhere

• 4,000 words or less

• Double spaced

• Poetry and non-English submissions accepted as long as they are accompanied by an English translation

All contributors will receive a copy of the anthology.

Submissions

All submissions must be sent electronically using .doc or .pdf to submissions@superhussy.com.

Title of submission should be placed in the subject line. Please include your name, email address, mailing address, phone number, and short bio with your submission.

Superhussy Media publishes work that celebrates girls and women of color everywhere!

We look forward to reading your submissions.

VL’s Own Bianca Keynote for Youth Leadership Conference

March 2nd, 2010

Some VL readers may have already figured this out, but I am the same Bianca that hosts the website Latino Sexuality. I am a Sexologist and have been in the field for over a decade providing counseling, training, and curriculum development especially to Latino communities but also to working class and communities of Color (you know the communities often forgotten in general).

My graduate work and curriculum development has focused on how popular culture is an important tool for teaching youth of Color and helping them unlearn and/or be conscious consumers in what they have acquired via media. I’ve created “comprehensive sexuality education” curriculums that not only focus on youth of Color, queer youth, and working class youth, but also uses the media that is targeted towards them and they they interact with in various ways. This was one of the reasons the homegirls at VL thought the film and musica space on VL would be a good fit!

All this to say: I’m going to be the keynote for the New York State Family Planing Advocates of New York State’s Youth Leadership Conference. Here’s some information about the conference which already has 250 youth attending:

On March 15th, 2010 hundreds of pro-choice teen advocates from across New York State will meet in Albany for Family Planning Advocates of New York State’s Youth Leadership Conference. This event offers high school and college students the opportunity to learn more about the legislative process, reproductive rights issues and how to become a better activist leader. More specifically, these students focus on the need for real sex education and learning how to advocate for access to comprehensive reproductive health information in their schools.

I’m very excited to have been offered this opportunity by the Family Planning Advocates of New York State. Not only did they find me via my Media Justice column, but after reading my column they STILL wanted me to speak to their youth! Let’s be honest, I don’t take the most popular positions in a very bright White field (have you seen who the “experts” are on Oprah, Dr. Oz, and other such shows?) and I’m very vocal about challenging what some of the most well-known Sexologists have said/done/found because they lack an intersectional analysis. I mean seriously, how “comprehensive” can your sexuality education be if you exclude youth of Color or working class youth?

If you work with young people and are in NYS, please consider signing up! There are two sessions of workshops scheduled, my keynote, and an opportunity for youth to “lobby” to their representatives later in the day. It’s an amazing opportunity for youth to hear a radical woman of Color Sexologist affirm their identities, encourage their daily acts of subversion, and mean it! [It's kind of odd to talk about myself in the third person, but I kind of like it.]

I’m also available to do other presentations/workshops and am still offering a FREE training about how to work with LGBTQ youth who are living in out-of-home care (i.e. the child welfare system).

Stop the Deportation of Youth Without Due Process

October 19th, 2009

This video explains what is going on to immigrant youth in San Francisco. In short, they’re being deported without due process:

There will be a rally tomorrow at 2PM in San Francisco! If you’re there, let us know how it went!

Where is the outcry over this type of violence?

October 16th, 2009

We all remember the horrific video of the school kids in Chicago literally beating a fellow student to death. It was played over and over for us on national television and talk shows cashed in the main question: How can this be happening in our schools?

Or, more specifically, how can this be happening in *those* schools. Because we all know that there are certain kids who have to put up with this violent shit every single day of their lives, and there are certain kids that simply don’t.

But my question was never brought up, much less answered. Why do we assume that the kids that are brutalizing other human beings in the most horrific ways haven’t learned that behaviors from others? I.e., adults?

From Truth Out comes a video that is almost as horrible as the beating video. A teen age boy with a learning disability was walking down a hall way when the school cop noticed that the boy’s shirt wasn’t tucked in.

Within seconds, the police officer pushed him into the lockers, repeatedly punched him and then slammed him to the ground and pushed his face to the floor. The officer then applied a face down, take-down hold to the child, a maneuver that has resulted in over 20 deaths nationwide and is banned in eight states.

Now, many activists and bloggers have rightfully noted that just because there’s been an overtly racist reaction to the beating death of the teenager, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t something going horribly wrong in youth culture today. I agree with those people. Kids don’t just beat others to death without having gotten the idea somewhere that reactions like that are ok.

I would argue that the police man’s reaction to a boy walking down the hallway with his shirt untucked is one of the reasons why so many youths today react the way that they do to perceived insults. How many children are treated in similar ways by adults–whether it be the police, teachers, fathers or store managers?

And why do we think that our kids aren’t noticing that “power” comes in the form of violence?

I know many people will try to say that kids have a choice to make the bad choices that they do, and it’s not society’s fault and when oh when are we ever going to stop turning our kids into pansy Sesame Street “love everybody” queers?

I have to wonder, however, how many of those people who would say something like that have spent time mentoring youth? Grown ups want youth to take responsibility for their choices–but how many times have grown ups taken responsibility for their choices? The choices we are making right now are causing children to beat other children to death, leaving the most vulnerable kids open to violent attack by adults, and taking away opportunities from youths before they even realize they had the opportunity to begin with.

And yet, even though it is OUR choices that are harming kids, we are blaming everything on others. Seems kids are learning more than what we give them credit for.