Rants and ruminations by a classical liberal with radical Chicano tendencies
In: community organizing| latinos| organizing| racism| religion
22 Feb 2010Many of you know that I am a practitioner and a big fan of community organizing–especially faith-based organizing. If you have read CP before, you also know that we have a lot to say about racism, colonialism, injustice, etc. The guys in this video, titled “High Time for Latinos to Wake Up,” also seem to care about such issues, yet they are also terribly misguided. I am normally not so judgemental about folk that try enlighten their fellow community members, even when I disagree them. Better to encourage questioning rather than complacency, I always say. But we all have a limit.
While the clip is a bit creepy and scary, at the same time it’s quite hilarious that these “organizers” believe that they are going to make a difference by shouting foul language at people on the street, calling white people crackers, telling other Latinos, in broken Spanish, that the Catholic Church is “church of lies” and that Jesus (or at least the guy in the image) was a “homosexual devil;” and calling anyone who disagrees with them pendejos or mensos.
Anyway, I probably shouldn’t give these guys any more attention, as IMHO they make us organizers look bad. But since it is hard to teach good community organizing over the Internet, I thought this would at least model how NOT to organize. Enjoy.
HIGH TIME FOR YOU LATINOS TO WAKE UP
Uploaded by BANYASHARAHLA. – News videos hot off the press.
In: Latin America| community organizing| human rights| politics| violence
19 Feb 2010
While much of the hullabaloo about Honduras has died down since the United States shifted its policy with regard to the government (first condemning the coup but then accepting the current, convenient status quo), there is still a fight going on. You might not know this given the lack of coverage in the mainstream media. A fellow blogger wrote an interesting post about the continued resistance of Hondurans who believe that there was a bona fide coup d’etat and therefore don’t recognize the legitimacy of the current President of Honduras. He linked a great story by Kari Lydersen highlighting the violent repression that is taking place, her article was first printed in In These Times.
Now, before you get lost in the somewhat abstract arguments about constitutional law and general principles of due process, let me clarify that whether or not there was a true coup is irrelevant to the issue of ongoing repression. Democracy isn’t merely about form, that is, ok, the new guy, Porfirio Lobo, won an election so everything that happened to cause the need for that election is water under the bridge. Further, even for those who view the election as legitimate, how can one justify the repression of opposing views and of political organizing? Isn’t democracy precisely about that sort of liberty? If the U.S. were Honduras right now, we’d be locking up Sarah Palin, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell for attacking President Obama–the legitimately elected President–with practically every breath. heck we would have already sent in someone to disappear most of the staff of Fox News. But that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
It’s deeply troubling to hear reports of censorship and about ghastly murders of high profile community and union leaders. A democracy, can’t hold onto power this way. In fact, a democratic government that holds onto power this way ceases to be a Democracy.
Please forward and link stories that expose the repression going on in Honduras. Just a few days ago, another activist was murdered, Julio Fúnez Benítez. According to COFADEH Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (Committee of Family Members of the Disappeared in Honduras) , Benitez was “an active member of the resistance and union worker with SANAA, Workers Union of Aqueducts and Sewer Systems, was assassinated with three shots in the Brisas de Olancho neighborhood, by two hit men who were wearing baseball hats and were driving a motorcycle, around 6:00 pm, Monday, February 15.” This murder comes not long after the brutal murder of Vanessa Zepeda that was detailed in Lydersen’s article and discussed in the blog link above. People need to know about these atrocities.
Again, whether or not Lobo’s Presidency was the result of a coup, he and the rest of the Honduran government must respect the right of the people to dissent. This is fundamental and not negotiable if they wish to be viewed as a real Democracy.
In: African-Americans| Chicano| La Mujer| education| technology
16 Feb 2010I engaged in a long argument with a fellow blogger about whether working class Latinos were irresponsible for majoring in Chicano or Latino studies, especially if they were the first people in their family to ever even get to college. I, of course, felt that college is not only about making more money but it is also about pursuing knowledge for its own sake. The other blogger made the case that few Latinos were going to ever be star lawyers or best-selling authors of some Chicano novel, therefore, they ought to pick a major that was going to be more likely to get them some money. His answer was math and science. While we never did ultimately agree–I said that in the case that all the hopes were riding on Juanita or Juanita to help the family out of poverty, then yes it’s ok to pick a potentially more lucrative major, but, I argued it is still important to enjoy the subject matter and to allow for the possibility that Juanita or Juanito might in fact be a star. And what if Juanita really hates math? Is she supposed to resign herself to an unfulfilled life as an engineer? My solution was to find a school where he or she could double-major without a significant additional cost to the family. Why not get a degree in Math and Chicano Studies from UC Berkeley or a degree in Physics and Latin-American Studies from the University of Chicago? That would not look so bad on a resume–would it?
In any case, I did want to underline one point where the other blogger and I clearly agreed: Latinos are severely underrepresented in Math and Science. As a positive program, schools, community activists, parents–heck, everybody–really ought to be encouraging our youth to pursue math and science. This is, as my virtual friend put it, the great equalizer. I personally, have been encouraging my nephew who has not had the best time in school so far to stick with math. He was a late talker and has never been a straight A student. But, oddly enough, he likes math. I think many kids would love math but for terrible teaching, but that is another topic for another day.
The Mercury Times drives home this issue in an article about the scarcity of Latinos, Blacks, and women in Silicon Valley. Already underrepresented, they have also lost the most ground since the recession began. They argue:
The unique diversity of Silicon Valley is not reflected in the region’s tech workplaces — and the disparity is only growing worse.
Hispanics and blacks made up a smaller share of the valley’s computer workers in 2008 than they did in 2000, a Mercury News review of federal data shows, even as their share grew across the nation. Women in computer-related occupations saw declines around the country, but they are an even smaller proportion of the work force here.
The trend is striking in a region where Hispanics are nearly one-quarter of the working-age population — five times their percentage of the computer work force — and when dual-career couples and female MBAs are increasingly the norm.
In: angry white men| corruption| immigrants| latinos| politics| racism
15 Feb 2010
Ever since I went on a Student Government trip to Boston back in the early 1990s, I have had a fascination with New England. Growing up in California where everything, save the Catholic Missions, seems brand new, I loved the fact that one can still find three to four hundred year old churches. In addition, having spent half of my life in Chicago where anything older than 100 years was lost in the Great Chicago Fire, I appreciate the antique charm of places like Boston.
Of course, that was the Boston of two decades ago. On a recent trip, I was dismayed to see the extreme development of Boston, complete with condos on the Harbor. I traveled with a friend from Mexico who loves to point out how America doesn’t have anything comparable to the colonial jewels of Taxco or Morelia. This was my chance to prove him wrong and I failed. The old places were still there, but they were just dots on a very modern landscape. I had remembered a very colonial, ancient town. What I found was modern city with a handful of museums and a beautiful church at its center, Trinity, still locked in a battle with John Hancock Tower for its life.
Because Boston was the first trip I had taken outside of the Southwestern United States, I guess I must have created some imaginary land that really only existed in the plane of my extreme nostalgia. Yes, I still love Boston, but like most American cities, it is constantly being reborn. The old is replaced by the new. The people are changing color. The blue-bloods that I once had revered as being sensible liberals with old-money class, were probably closer to snobs than I had first surmised. I didn’t notice the divisions by class and color. I was much to busy visiting the home of Paul Revere.
Such is the myopia of the youthful traveler. We see what is on the tourist map and usually not much more.
Over the years, I have kept up a bit with the changing Boston area. My good friend ended up organizing Brazilian immigrants in Framingham. He shared many stories with me. Brazilians, it turns out, are the Mexicans of New England (though there are also many actual Mexicans these days). They are the objects of scorn, fear, and hatred there. Many of them are undocumented. Another friend of mine did some undercover reporting for the Southern Poverty Law Center. He shared details about an organized anti-immigrant movement in New England, one that I truly would previously have never believed existed.
All these thoughts came to mind this week as news articles like this one about William Lantigua’s resignation as State Representative, began flooding my news feed. I initially ignored the story. The gist that I got from it was that he had promised that if he ran for Mayor of Lawrence, MA and won, he would resign as State Representative. He decided not to resign. While of course this presents a conflict of interest, I did not seem like big news to me. I mean, seriously, you call that corruption Massachusetts? I’ll see your “Lantigua” and raise you a “Rod Blagojevich.” But until now, I didn’t pick up on the other issue that was causing a lot of the ruckus: race. Mr. Lantigua is the first elected Latino (Dominican) Mayor in the history of Lawrence (history of Massachusetts?). A glance at some of the comments at the Boston news sites sheds some light:
“seems like Lawrence will go down in the sinkhole…Yippie Ya Yeah…YEAHHHHH…. first the town needs to get clean up, sniped all those illegal immigrants, take out of those wanna be fake gangsters. Make the citizens go get some jobs even flipping burgers at McD or dressed up as Mexican yelling “Yo quiero Taco” even help….I really don’t want to give all my money to this people , because all they do is just sitting outside drinking Coronas…”
“Lawrence is not a very well-regarded city in MA, and has an enormous concentration of illegals and high crime. Lantigua is both Black and Hispanic (and tries to play up the latter)…”
I think it was a dumb idea to try hold on to both positions. With the anti-immigrant–perhaps, anti-Latino–sentiment permeating the country, Lantigua and other Latino officials need to be above reproach. I have said this many times with regard to corrupt Latino politicos in Chicago as well as adultery scandal seekers such as Loretta Sanchez in California. Lantigua, so far, seems to be on the tame end of corruption and/or conflicts of interest. But anti-immigrant and anti-Latino forces have already smelled blood in Massachusetts. Lantigua must move forward with squeaky clean steps. He owes it to himself and to the people of Massachusetts–especially Latinos– who look to him for leadership.
I think it would be nice to have a Latino cardinal in the U.S. (specifically, in Los Angeles), but it’s a waste of time to speculate whether or not the Church will pick one. There are not that many people to chose from given the priest scarcity that has been plaguing us for some time now. In addition, the church is not likely to put the race of the candidate above the need to pick someone who can oversee such a large archdiocese–the largest in the United States! Remember the last time we chose a Pope? The news media and even many of my friends went on and on about the probability that a Latino or African would be chosen to replace Pope John Paul II. Well, that did not happen–we got the German, Pope Benedict XVI. Remember all the speculation about getting a Latino Archbishop in New York? Well, they got an Irishman instead. I’m not saying that it’s not important, nor am I saying that there aren’t Latino candidates that are qualified; I’m just
saying that stories like this one that speculate as to the race of the person who would replace Cardinal Mahoney in Los Angeles are pure BS. As many cardinals reach the mandatory retirement age of 75, including Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George (72), there are sure to be more such fluff pieces. Just remember, the church isn’t the GOP–it’s not going to just pick a leader of a certain color because they think that’s what people want right now.
In any case, the question did get me thinking about the changing demographics of the Church. Here is some information you may or not be familiar with:
Statistics on Hispanic/Latino(a) Catholics
- Hispanics/Latinos(as) are present in practically every diocese of the United States.
- More than 20% of all Catholic parishes in the United States have Hispanic/Latino(a) ministry.
- More than 80% of all (arch)dioceses have diocesan staff coordinating Hispanic/Latino(a) ministry.
- Hispanics/Latinos(as) compose more than 35% of all Catholics in the United States.
- Hispanics/Latinos(as) have contributed 71% of the growth of the Catholic Church in the United States since 1960.
- More than 50% of all Catholics in the United States under age 25 are of Hispanic/Latino(a) descent.
- To date, 40 Hispanic/Latino bishops have been ordained in the United States, 28 of whom are active. They make up 9% of all Catholic bishops in the United States.
- Over the past few years, 15% of all new priests ordained in the United States have been of Hispanic/Latino(a) descent.
- Hispanics/Latinos(as) constitute 25% of all laypeople engaged in diocesan ministry programs.
- More than two-thirds (68%) of all Hispanics/Latinos(as) in the United States consider themselves to be Roman Catholics.
- The estimated Hispanic/Latino(a) population of the United States as of July 2007 is 45.5 million.
- It is projected that Hispanics/Latinos(as) will surpass the 102.6 million mark by the year 2050.
(I previously published this on blogcritics.org)
I had a difficult time writing this review. Honestly, I have never been much of a George Lopez fan. As a Chicano, originally from California, I get sick of the stereotypical East L.A. brand of humor with over-accented Pachuco flair. It was great back in the days of Cheech and Chong. Everything else seems to be a cheap carbon copy. So at the outset of this review, I was a little biased against Lopez, who definitely pushes the “L.A.-Chicano-accent” envelope. But after listening to Comedy Central’s audio recording of Lopez’s HBO special, Tall, Dark and Chicano, I came away with a new appreciation for his work.

First, although his gestures and Chicanoisms are still a little over the top, his material really does hit a chord with people who grew up in the ‘hood or people who have a good knowledge of it. His humor is a bit raw if you are a bleeding-heart liberal who expects nice, quaint Hispanic humor. He makes fun of poverty in way that no one except poor people or family and friends of poor people can handle or perhaps even understand.
There are a few moments when his humor goes into dangerous territory. For example, he complains about bad weather being named after Latinos, e.g. El Niño, and claims that no one would ever call a storm system “El Negro (pronounced negg-grow),” the black one (guy),and then goes on to talk about the effects of El Negro, at one point saying that “El Negro stole my chain.” For the uninitiated this sounds like straight racism, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Having grown up in Southern California, I know that there are strange relationships among people of color. Among ourselves–especially on the street–there tends to be a good amount of raw humor directed at each other. Of course, there is also enormous racial tension and even violence, but when it comes to humor almost anything goes. I remember hanging out with friends as we went back and forth cracking jokes about each other–this used to be called bagging once upon a time. It didn’t matter if one was Black, Latino, Filipino, Samoan, or White. Whatever your race or culture, there was sure to be a racially insensitive joke for you. And that was OK provided you were among friends and the beer was flowing. We always knew the difference between bagging on each other and coming out and calling someone a racial epithet out of anger or hatred.
I’m not romanticizing this–there were definitely horrible racial incidents and tension, but among friends the bagging culture was quite common. I think Lopez is one of the few people to demonstrate this type of humor in public which, judging from other reviews, has led many a blogger without this background to view him as a racist per se.
He does overdo the “white people accent” jokes. Such jokes were funny I suppose when they were fresh back in the Richard Pryor days or even when Chris Rock did them. But they are quite stale and unoriginal now. I especially think his joke about “tortillas vs. flatbread” is annoying. He thinks the term flatbread is used to Anglicize and sanitize the Mexican tortilla even though flatbread is really an ancient treat going as far back as Sumer and Ur! A little research on that one would have been nice. If it were just a joke, I wouldn’t mind, but he recently used that joke to make a political point when he was interviewed for CNN’s Latino in America.
Aside from the uncomfortable racial moments that Tall, Dark, & Chicano might induce among the uninitiated, the Chicano humor that Lopez highlights is definitely authentic and most of the time quite funny. If you can’t handle raw, angry Chicano humor or if you are a fan of Erik Estrada, then this is not the CD for you. For nice, cute, Hispanic humor, I definitely recommend Lopez Tonight or reruns of The George Lopez Show.
I’m a big fan of the Marin Institute. I’ve even been part of a study that they sponsored many years ago. Marin works to highlight the negative effects of alcohol in communities and actively tries to reduce such effects. Their latest study, “Alcohol-related Deaths and Hospitalizations by Race, Gender, and Age in California,” is a bit of an eye-opener.
With all the community education and programs related to alcohol that have existed over the years, I expected at least some drop in the most pernicious alcohol abuse indicators. But at least as far as California is concerned, I was dead wrong. Latinos and African-Americans are still significantly more likely than whites to die in alcohol related homicides. Now, for those of us who live in big cities such as LA or Chicago, you don’t need a study to tell you that it’s mostly Blacks and Latinos that are blowing each others’ brains out (I’m ignoring the crazy white kids who wipe out their suburban classmates for other reasons). But I did think that the alcohol-related homicide rates would at least show some decline. According to Marin, the rates are pretty much unchanged from about 20 years ago which was the last time a study like this was conducted.
I bet Chicago has similar numbers but I haven’t found anything similar to the Marin study. The closest thing to it was a study linking an increase in alcohol-related crime and homicides in the Black community with the availability of malt liquor and storefront alcohol shops. If any of you know of such a study, please link it here in the comments. In any case, as someone who has lost friends and family to alcohol-related homicides, traffic accidents, and alcohol-poisoning; please allow me to remind you to educate your friends and family about such consequences.
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While some people look at cockroaches as disgusting pests, I view them as resilient organisms that predate humans and will likely outlive us as well. People of color, the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed, much like cockroaches, are often despised, feared and in some cases have been the objects of extermination.
I started this blog as an attempt to understand the complicated world we live in. Things have changed since the old days of conquest, colonization, and slavery. Anonymous living, consumerism, and mass media have made it difficult to identify the forces that make modern-day oppression possible. Thus, posts here tend to focus on corruption, media, bureaucracy, ethics, economics, law, human rights, etc...in short, I try to take a second-order inquiry into assumptions and systems that some of us take for granted. I also take time to challenge stereotypes that function to place us in a box. Occasionally, I just rant.
Thank your for reading!