Nuestras Voces

what headlines don't know

2011-05-23T18:01:00.001-07:00

A name and a few numbers cemented to the pages. No color, no raspy voice worn out from years of storytelling and the shouting of opinionated slurs, no smell of stale pipe smoke…no life. The headlines and ink smears have been robbed of the adventure and the love and the music that you are.

They tell us the world is a cruel place and our hands must be used to climb the ladders of societal success, trumping over all others so we can be the best. But you have showed us that hands are made for healing the pains of the world. The best hands are those calloused with labor and love. Worn from days of becoming one with the soil we walk and the plants we consume; warm from the touch of another souls’ skin no matter how dirty or torn. A hand should never fear what is different or unknown. A hand must constantly reach out and embrace every ounce of life if we are to understand our relationship to all that is beyond the stars.

They tell us that our eyes should be open, always on guard for those trying to cheat and rob us. But you taught us to close our eyes and dream. You told us truth is found in the places eyes can’t see, and you reminded us that our hearts will guide us on journeys through untamed fears and uncertain worlds. You reminded us that if we listen, if we trust, we will reach the precipice of light, and there we will see the potential of the world and all that we can be. We will see our connection to all that feels the graceful brush of the wind and the violent fury of the currents, and this vision incites a power within us that allows our dreams and realities to be one.

And so it goes that they tell us our feet are made to sprint through life, moving from this stage to the next until there is nothing left. Hurry! Run through childhood, run from your imagination—it will only slow you down—run through college and while you’re running be sure to pick up a degree that will guarantee you a job, run to the house and the fence and the mortgage…never slow down. And then the race is done. But you said, “Wait dear child. Don’t forget to walk. See that snail? It’s in no hurry. Just taking its’ time to get from here to there, enjoying every ray of sunshine and every centimeter of shade. You know we get energy from the sun, but some people are moving too fast to feel its’ warmth? Once you get moving too fast you’ll forget that your mind was made to create. Never abandon your childhood because children are wise and pure. They know the world. The preservation of childhood is our greatest hope.”

And when it comes to love they say guard your heart, don’t let anyone too close. But you would simply laugh at their words and say you wished they had the joy you have. You told us never to forget to love. Love everyone and everything. Every blade of grass, every insect, every person. Take time to massage the pregnant African Fat Tailed Gecko, and time to come home early from work to dance with your love. Take time to listen to the stories of your neighbors, and time to play in the mud with your kids. Take time to climb a tree, and time to cast a line in the river.

You have defied what they teach us in school for your life proves myths are all but false and legends are walking among us, inspiring strength and passion.

With a wisdom as ancient as life itself you took me to the woods and taught me to listen to the spirits of the forest. You told me each living entity has a soul, a soul that is constantly speaking and growing and connecting to all that is around it. “Be sure to thank the trees and the water,” you told me. So I learn to appreciate life, and when the world becomes too much I go to the trees and I find comfort knowing they understand. As I sit in the forest I thank the trees just as you taught me to do when I was young, and I feel their spirits emerge in the darkest of nights, teaching me black is not bad and illuminating a world of comfort and peace, where most people find nothing but fear.

And your experiences taught you life is hard and not always fair, and people hurt each other, but through your stories of war and racism and abuse, all I learned was love would prevail and good was stronger than bad. I knew this must be true through your tears. Each tear told stories with depths greater than the seas. Each tear was evidence that you heard and felt the histories that have destroyed so many lives. Whereas textbooks would neglect those faces, you would forever carry them with you and pass them on to us, and us onto all those that we meet. A single man’s tears for the world are songs of resilience proving the necessity of justice and compassion and change. So we collected your tears and use them to propel us forward with conviction and strength, eager to fight for those who are too often unheard and unseen. And we too cry as we learn histories untold and unchanged, but you lived by example, proving to us that crying is evidence of humanity, not a sign of weakness. So we cry, just as we laugh, with all those who share this earth.

And you had that chair and that pipe and that stove and those opinions in that room you and grandma filled with love. “The world is crazy out there. Don’t go get yourself killed,” you would advise me. “I wasn’t planning on it,” I would reply, and you would worry, and then you would tell me I won’t always be a communist and someday I may want to get a gun because who knows what the future holds, and I would argue I’m a pacifist, and you would worry some more. You would tell me this man is corrupt and that man is a liar and the world is doomed if things continue as they are. And I’d get you some coffee and you’d tell me I was a good kid and I’d be alright and I knew you still had faith in people somewhere beneath your haggard beard and your torn flannel shirts. So we would switch the topic to your cat and what a good cat he was and how smart he was and how you needed to chop more wood for your stove because the cat likes to have the doors open so he’s free to go in or out despite the freezing temperatures. And we would laugh. And you would tell me not to get killed in the crazy world, and I assured you even if I died, it was a beautiful ride and you said the same for yourself.

It was always then, after the politics, that you would tell me no matter what’s happening in the world if you can find someone to share the evolutions of life with then the world will forever be flourishing with beauty and color. And you’d look into the distance as if she was there dancing in the room with us. It was the same look I remember as a kid—the look of unconditional admiration and love. A love so true that that all those around you could feel it. An unwavering love that makes Disney princesses fall to their knees in prayer for something that real and good. And for the two of you every day was an adventure, a blessing necessary of thanks to all the gods that ever were, or ever will be. Once more your bodies are intertwined among the stars, never to be separated again.

Now, like a Cherokee myth, you have vanished from this world but your life beats on through the vibrations that guide us. Just as we used to dance for the rain with dirt on our faces and braids in our hair, we now bow our heads to the ground in gratitude for the songs you taught us to hear in the smallest of pebbles and the grandest mountain peaks, and the rains fall to fill the wells and we know you’re here.

--with hope in their heart

Anything is Possible

2011-05-09T18:09:00.000-07:00

Nights like this I can never forget
Feather breath tickles my cheek,
Lips brush my ear, and laugh lines deepen from streams to rivers
We sit in my car on the side of a mountain
Evading time, crickets are our only reminder of the outside world
You are a walking mystery
Secrets have embedded themselves in the mazes of your fingerprints;
Treasure maps for the forgotten stories buried along the ridges in
the canyons of your palms,
A life-time of tales hidden in every lifeline
"Me" becomes "we" and we are limitless
I limit less and let you hold the box inside of my chest labeled
"handle with care"
Kissing not my lips but my soul our
Childlike spirits for a moment believe once again in the idea of
"anything is possible"
Anything is possible
Anything
Is...
Ours to conquer in our world we have compacted into the confinement of
these car doors
Fingers play hopscotch along spinal chords
Smiles are scribbled into the dew
As my head rest in the crevice of your neck, I am reminded of what
happiness feels like
Suspended between twilight and our intertwining breath
Magic is real
The insecurities i casually wear on my face like makeup can not be
seen on the dark side of the moon where we sit and exchange fears,
hopes, dreams
Gravity-less
Minds beautiful pieces of work hand sculpted by God to be in his prize
art gallery
You are real.
But nothing last forever.
Our snowflake was beautiful, but melted with the first "Hello" from the sun
Wings are clipped, birds are re-caged
Smiles are erased
In our world anything was possible
Me
You
We

--♥

"Doing"

2011-05-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

DISCLAIMER: This is all my opinion. These are conclusions I have made after careful reflection upon my own experience and observing others. In no way do I claim these things to be Truth, however realistic to my worldview they may be.

it’s not that serious, seriously some people take religion way to serious
there’s so much more than religion
religion only exists to create some form of foundation in a chaotic world
but it should not rule over a person’s life

religion is a tool
a tool people can use to get their lives straightened out
to find purpose where it seems nonexistent
a place to extract hope from
in order to get through the day
it can have a major influence on our day to day lives
but it should not be the center

so many times I have seen religious people put legalism in the center of their lives
rather than the faith they try so hard to live out
thinking about things is a good thing
being intentional about the things you plan to do
the words you say
how you treat others
is important
constantly striving to be better
and requires some form of contemplation
but some of you need to chill out
it’s really not that serious

thinking is one thing
talking is another
but at the end of the day
doing is just as good
give more respect to verbs that require physical action
put to use the body that God has given you
use your mind
but do not neglect the rest of the body in doing so
please remember that there is a bigger perspective
there’s so much to learn by the end of a life
and you only have one lifetime to work with
that’s not enough time to become perfect
or to concretely solidify all the worlds so called ‘truths’
doing things
making mistakes
gaining new experiences
taking risks
is just as important
if not more
gain a new-found gratitude for the lessons learned while doing something

take doing as serious as reflecting or praying or questioning

when you’re stuck
and don’t know where else to go
when you feel like your in a ten foot hole with no way to get out
your mind has become foggy with all the chaos and confusion of the day
your heart is numb to feeling because of the obstacles you’ve faced
your soul feels starved for love, hope, joy or what have you..
try doing something
it may help you get your joy back
maybe you’ll even find a new purpose
a new dream

whatever the case
never sit still for too long
never neglect the power of Doing

-- a thinker attempting to do

powerless, still . . .

2011-05-01T14:18:00.000-07:00

(all names have been changed to protect the privacy of the indivduals)

With deep-set eyes and a broad smile, Derrick Hayes was perched upon his baby blue bicycle just inside of the iron gate and barbed wire fence of the high school in South L.A. where I teach. I didn’t see him at first; my attention was on Ms. Jones throwing her arms around Sean, a ranking gang member who used to attend the school.
“Hi, Ms. Cirelli.” Derrick’s warm voice caused me to turn and see him grinning in the afternoon sun. His hat tipped to the side, he was wearing bright blue sneakers and a blue t-shirt.
Derrick was in my first class of students, ever. I started my teaching career with two periods of U.S. government and three periods of CAHSEE prep, a class designed to prepare students to pass the high school exit exam. Derrick was in one of my 10th grade CAHSEE prep classes. He was constantly in trouble, but from the first day, I so badly wanted him to do well.
In my class, Derrick had good days and bad days. Often, he would attempt the English assignments, but when it came to math, his position was firm.
“I don’t do math.”
“Okay, well just try the first problem. Here, we can work on it together.”
“No. I don’t do math. It’s just not my thing.”
However opposed to math he was, Derrick wanted to be in school. His behavior consistently threatened him with expulsion, and although he almost never got into fights in my class, I often found him in the office during my conference period. In the first few weeks, he would simply leave my class whenever he felt like it. I didn’t know how to stop him from doing this, but I did my best to respect his time by creating meaningful assignments.
Eventually, he started staying in class for almost the entire two-hour period. One day he asked if he could go to the office to speak with the vice principal, Mr. Garcia. I told him he needed to stay in class. We were covering important material, and I attempted to impress upon him the importance of the work. I have to speak with him now, Derrick insisted.
“What could possibly happen between now and the end of class?” I asked.
“Mr. Garcia is going to sign the papers to send me to Crenshaw High.”
There was a chilling combination of desperation and defiance in Derrick’s expression and tone that startled me. At Crenshaw High, gang affiliation runs deep and threat of violence has shut down school events. I allowed James to go give Mr. Garcia the paperwork from his parents that would allow him to remain at our small high school. Derrick wanted to stay in school. But he also wanted to stay in his gang.
One day, our class was reading a short story about a boy in the 1950’s in a fictional New York gang. In the story, the boy is dying and reflects on his loss of identity ultimately leading to his death. Derrick volunteered to read. It was the first time he had volunteered to do anything in class. Stumbling over a few words, he alternated with two other students to read the story in its entirety. The class listened in perfect silence.
Afterwards, I allowed the students 15 minutes to free-write a reflection of any kind before they began the rigorous literary analysis assignment. I had been nervous about using literature that would hit so close to home, and many of the students seemed grateful for the chance to emotionally process before attempting an assignment. Derrick wrote nothing, but spent the time carefully drawing the symbols for his gang over and over on the lined paper.
Kneeling beside his desk, I quietly thanked him for reading and asked if he was okay. He nodded, and kept drawing. In response to a character whose dying action was rejection of a gang identity in favor of individuality, Derrick quietly asserted his identity as a part a group.
There were other days when such assertions were less than quiet. My classroom was on the second story of an old, brick building with windows facing the street. Over the barbed wire fence, the crank-open windows faced 8th Street. Once, someone looked out the window and commented that some Bloods were walking down 8th Street. Derrick jumped up from his desk and started yelling slurs out the window, vociferously claiming the territory. Half the class leapt from their desks to crowd around the windows.
My heart raced, but when I went to the window, I was relieved to see only a few young teenagers walking by. Ordering everyone back to their seats, I again knelt by Derrick’s desk.
“Not from my classroom,” I said as firmly as I could.
Derrick nodded.
Because of Derrick’s affiliation, and recent activity targeted at our school, it was deemed unsafe for him to remain on campus after school. Detention was therefore not an option, and he was permitted to leave 15 minutes before the last class of the day let out. The only thing I had to shape Derrick’s action in class was respect. I used every accommodation I knew as a 2-month-old teacher – preferential seating, special classroom jobs, rephrased directions, breaks outside, etc. It was difficult to track his progress since he completed so little work, but the work he completed seemed to increase day by day. When he wrote an entire paragraph, I was nearly bursting with pride.
Still, during my conference period, I would run into Derrick without fail either in the office or sitting outside his history class, doing work alone on the benches. It seemed to be a good strategy for him, until one day when a new student arrived, and a significant altercation occurred. Ms. Acosta, the fiery, well-respected, barely five foot history teacher was standing in the door of her class, physically blocking Derrick’s tall frame from whoever was inside.
“Please go get someone from the office right now,” she calmly but urgently asked me.
My eyes begged Derrick to calm down, but I went to retrieve a security officer.
The incident was resolved, but I knew Derrick’s expulsion was hanging by a thread. Several of the other teachers were working hard to keep him on track, and as a brand new teacher trying to figure out everything from lesson planning to classroom management as I went along, I felt powerless to make an impact.
A week or so later, the administration informed me I would be switching all my classes. The 9th grade English position needed to be filled, and I was selected to take over. Although I had only been with my current students for two months, I was already very emotionally invested. But the decision was for the good of the school overall, so I had not choice but to oblige.
At a staff meeting two weeks later, the principal announced that Mr. Hayes, as he referred to the students, had been let go. My heart dropped. Why? I thought. During the last several meetings Mr. Lopez, the principal, had used Derrick as the poster child for students who were turning around, an example of the school’s progress. Now, without warning, he was gone.
I carried on teaching the 9th grade for several months, which brought a new set of challenges for which, again, I was radically underprepared.
When I next saw Derrick, it the day of a ceremony for the 12th grade students to reveal the colleges they planned to attend. James, an affiliated student I had in one of my old U.S. Government classes, planned to attend U.C. Santa Barbara. Aside from greeting him in the hall, I hadn’t kept in contact with James, but I knew he was doing well and was proud to see him unveil his post-high school plans.
Seeing Derrick and Sean back at school surprised me.
“Derrick! How are you? What are you doing here?” In the back of my head, I remembered Derrick was not allowed on campus after being expelled.
“We’re here to support the homie,” he replied, nodding towards James, who was grinning widely.
“That’s right! That’s awesome.”
Before I could say more, something called my attention to the other side of the building. When I walked back, the vice principal was locking the two boys out. James continued to talk with them through the iron gate, practically pressing his face against the metal. Derrick biked in circles in the street.
Fifteen minutes later, I was getting lunch at the celebratory barbeque, and Derrick wheeled in, triumphantly maneuvering between lunch tables to greet old friends.
“He’s not supposed to be here,” one of the other teachers grumbled. Someone went to alert the administration. I anxiously worried an unnecessary confrontation would spoil the afternoon. Please just leave, I thought to myself.
“It’s okay, he’s nice,” one of the students explained to a new teacher who looked nervous.
Yeah, I thought to my self, he’s a good kid. He could have done so well. But when he leaves, he’s not going back to school somewhere. It’s the middle of the day. He seemed carefree, but I knew otherwise. Derrick’s father had been in the hospital with cancer the last time I saw him. I wanted to ask him how his dad was, I wanted to ask him if he had changed his mind about dropping out of high school. I’m sure being expelling from our school couldn’t have helped him make his decision. He knew the trouble that was waiting for him at Crenshaw High. I wanted to ask him where he was living. I wanted to ask him to come back.
I hated the blue t-shirt. I hated the blue sneakers. I hated the vice principal for locking him on the other side of the gate. I hated myself for not knowing what to do when he was in my class, and even more for having no power to do anything now. My body ached as he sailed away. A few minutes later, one of my own freshman was being restrained by security and a substitute teacher. His face was twisted with the pain of being powerless. I had no idea why he was fighting, but I wouldn’t have any way to find out until the following week when I had him in class. I put my fruit down and herded ravenous students away from the scuffle.
When I joined Teach for America, I thought I would be part of a movement to provide educational equity. In some ways, I do feel like I’m part of that movement. However, the stories I read of TFA classrooms lead to high achievement and students whose lives were turned around seem to mock me now. “Lisa, the 5th grade student who increased her reading by three years in just one, is why I Teach for America,” the stories would end.
“Carlos, the 11th grade student who couldn’t write a sentence and is now applying to college, is why I Teach for America,” a story in our training manual concluded.
During training, we also heard stories of teachers who didn’t do such-and-such, and never reached a certain student. These teachers ominously told us they were still haunted by their failures.
At the time, I thought perhaps this was all a scare tactic to shape all our actions into uniformity. But now, these are the stories from training that resonate with me the most. Maybe it’s cynicism, but I think it’s the soul-numbing reality that propels me forward each day.
Derrick is why I Teach for America.

Labor Pains

2011-04-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

I would like to announce a death in the family
Today loved ones we bury a friend, daughter, sister, lover, and visionary who
has selfishly taken her own life for the sake of her dreams
You may approach
If you dare--
this broken alter to share fond memories of the girl you once knew
give thanks for moments of laughter
respects for moments of pain
pauses-- that validate the space shared
but be mindful that this is a new kind of sanctuary
and all these illusions will too be buried
packed tightly into a treasure chest
nuzzled closely beneath her bruised ribs
these memories
suffocated by insecurities rooted in comparison and
ignorance founded upon capitalism
will finally be put to rest

instead, if i may propose
we take this time,
while her soul is suspended in purgatory to speak new truths
ones that once buried will resurrect our dear friend
bringing her forth form the soil
time will breath life into these truths
multiplying and manifesting their roots deep into the land of our ancestor
both slave and oppressor runs through these veins
with this understanding
no one goes guiltless

there will be an emergence of a spirit
beauty will radiate from her being
rivers of life from her womb
stars of love will shoot from her eyes and
her feet will guide the way of her divine purpose
her heart, though scared
will sing songs of freedom to caged birds
reminding them not to believe the shadows
that allude to bars and low ceilings
but to transcend and take flight
her hands will heal freedom
love liberation
and embrace truth

my friends
this is a death that i have long awaited
finally the soul who had believed the lies of a distorted reality has passed
yet we can nurture a planted seed to life
the sun has warmed the earth soaked with our tears
the moon will crystallize them
and just when we thought we had lost something so precious,
the earth will give birth to something wonderfully sacred
something that we all helped create
don’t wallow in disparity
don’t fear blood that gives consciousness
soon the fruit of our work will be birthed
that crippling jab in your side is nothing more than labor pains
a bitter foretaste of the miracle to come

push harder
pleasure is misunderstood without pain
take a deep breath
air is necessary for growth

Take a deep breath.

--Love

Stay Up

2011-04-21T12:26:00.001-07:00

Stay up for the stars. Bright futures through bars
Magic School Bus type of cars swerving through the hood,
watchin’ cops helpin’ when they should, smilin’ cause they could,
protecting- I wish they would.

Stay up above the line.
Break the mirror reflecting time
stopped by mama smokin’ dimes, women strippin’ for a shine,
babies sexin’ when they’re nine, kids stealin’ to look fine.

Stay up beside the truth, potential in your youth.
Freedom for fantasy, pencils for sanity, lyrics preaching fire that burns beyond the choir,
fingers to hold, fists to unfold,
faces growin’ old, stories bein’ told.

Stay up with the trend, and drive by it with your friend.
Know what they do but be only you.
Feel the pain and use it, don’t abuse it.
See the world with you in it, healthy, happy, that home-run hit.

Crush their comments with what’s honest, trust you without the complex.
Grab your shovel and get digging ‘cause your treasure is worth seeking.
Glitter, gold and faces don’t pay for how you live more, it’s a power only you store.
Don’t let bolts and bullets stop moves, let your smile come and unlock you.

Stay up mothers
Stay up fathers
Stay up kids
Stay up

..Salaam..
J

Different Seasons, Same Journey

2011-04-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today I realized that I have reached a new level of adulthood. My 'Legalize L.A.' t-shirt has been replaced by slacks and a tie; the Cuban flag pinned to my bedroom wall has been removed to make room for framed pictures of friends and family; the piles of dirty clothes that once hid my desk are now contained in a hamper that matches my furniture set. (I am one step away from joining a fight club)

It is interesting how much life can change. So many of the things I purchased years ago have been buried in plastic containers. As I organize the junk that has taken over my closet, I remember how much I 'needed' to buy the official Barca soccer bag. It is sobering to see how wrong I was, and frightful to consider how wrong I still am.

Teaching high school has provided a unique perspective of 'growing up.' I see kids everyday who are excited and nervous to begin applying to college. Hearing their questions constantly causes me to flash back to a time when college was some distant, grown up dream. A dream that existed somewhere between playgrounds and cubicles. How little things change.

In those moments that I feel 'grown up,' I see my students' innocence in me. Their excitement and nervousness towards undergraduate life is mirrored in my emotions towards graduate life: the childlike curiosity of the unknown.

Sometimes I wonder if I have at all matured since I was 17 - different seasons, same journey. It will be interesting to find this post buried within long neglected digital containers. Maybe then I will have a new perspective.

-Matt

Dear God

2011-04-14T11:05:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

Bakit? Why? They say you are a kind God, a loving God, but my God, why?

A white man comes one day. He gathers the children and he preaches fear into the depths of their hearts. He stands up on the stage, all the closer to you dear God, and they sit at his feet where he declares through a hoarse voice and a fountain of saliva the sinners belong. He recklessly swings his sword, slaying all visions of a God that liberates and loves and cares for humanity, without ever opening a page to read the truth.

“You must fear God. If you do not repent you will spend eternity in the fiery pits of Hell. Do you want that? You know how hot it is right now? Imagine living for eternity in a place 1,000 times hotter without a break. Is that what you want? That’s what you will get if you don’t follow my path. You are poor, but I bought a $2,000, that’s American dollars, plane ticket to come here and sacrifice my safety in this terrorist country…all to save YOU!”

The fat white man, with a slurred southern English accent and a lack of breath, continued. He forced the children to stand. He ushered them into a circle, and he demanded they repeat his prayer.

“God, I am a bad person. I am a sinner. I need you. I want to spend eternity with you. I am yours.”

He congratulated them for their “big steps” toward you, dear God, and every ounce of his power paraded around the center of the circle to “bless” the new Christians. He patted the children’s heads with his sword and then told them each “Now, with God, you will be able to live a rich life in this place of poverty you call home.” As quickly as he stormed in, his Land Rover fled the school grounds surely taking him back to his life across the sea where you are white and a friend of the rich. Where he doesn’t need to look at or speak to or smell the children.

Bakit? Why, dear God?

The children write you letters. Letters of desperation, exposing truths only you and they know, yet your face remains invisible and your hands must be preoccupied in a far off land, where people have money to tithe, because the children are alone.

“God, I wish you would take my life early. Bring me to heaven where there is food.”

“God, I try to be a good son, but my dad is still angry with me. I don’t know why. I do everything good, but he says I make him drink and when he drinks he hurts me.”

“God, they don’t understand me. They say because I get angry with you that you don’t love me and I will burn. I don’t want to burn, but I don’t see you here.”

“God, my mother is in the city looking for work and I am here as a boarder and they treat me like a slave. I’m so tired God. I hate it here, but my mother says she doesn’t have enough money to take care of me.”

And so the letters go, and the teacher’s responses crumple those pains into little balls to be burned in the night trash, a glimpse of life for the sinners. “God is giving you these bad things because He is teaching you a lesson. You are meant to live the lives you are living. It’s for a reason, don’t complain about it. You need to be grateful.” And so the children retreat into themselves, and I watch their spirits crumble as they internalize their suffering and realize you are a powerful God who dominates morality and politics and the peace within one’s being.

These children grow, and the world is stubborn, refusing to change. After all, the children are told they can’t change anything because it is your world and the injustices that flood the earth are lessons to be learned and punishments to be received. So, the children grow hopeless and idle and their dreams of change dwindle to flickers of bitterness until there is nothing left to be felt. So like leaves dried by the sun they fall, weak against the mighty forces of time, unable to be revitalized with water. Trampled by all that life is they disintegrate into the land without a fight.

-With hope in my heart

Female First

2011-04-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

I thought I could be anything
until she told me
the V in my vagina meant victim.
Victim to a system quick to use, abuse, and obscure my potential
without ever knowing
my name.

I thought I could go anywhere
until she read me the sign that said
"Women Hours"
and the time had passed
where my window of shame,
pain, and blame was open.
The cars I cannot drive and the
hello's I will never meet
repulse me.

shhhhhh

I thought I could share my opinion
on democratic sound waves that
advertise availability to all,
but she just told me
I've been muted.
My whole damn life
I've been muted?
By him and he
who compliment me
and all that he sees
only to flip the switch of my smile
with the mute button dial
dismissing the truth that I speak.

All because he can.
He can because we let him.

I thought I could touch everything
but illusions soft like silk
float through calloused fingers
told to be pretty
but believing that titties are all that really
matter.

I grab and reach and strain
to touch a token to take me
far from this fate, but
his wall is too high to climb
alone.

I thought I could be loved
until she told me it doesn't exist
in the way that I dream.
It all comes down to you
on your knees, posing how he pleads-

guilty.

because that's the name of the game.

She’s guilty and he wins.
He’s guilty and she sins.

I thought I could be me
until they saw me as female first.

Salaam,
J

Like the first time we met...

2011-04-11T22:36:00.000-07:00

I don’t believe in forever but I believe in you.
& even if together we do not last
our memories will remain intertwined
with nights of dazed discussions
sitting on the cusp of sleep
bouncing the moon and the light
between our hands
dancing freely mid air
floating
like the time we first met

Minds engaged within one another’s
over a $1 cup of coffee
in the bosom of Los Angeles
then I didn’t know how to place you
didn’t know what to do with you & my feelings within the same thought
I just knew that you were
brilliant
& your mind reminded mines
of things that once inspired me
like the first time I really saw you

you asked me to study with you
but your head soon rested
in the arms of Plato
looking over at you
you reminded me of blooming sunflowers
like the feeling I got when I first realized that I liked you

fumbling with feelings that could not adequately be put in to words
I said:

“ I don’t think I’m Bi-sexual:
but I don’t believe in the terminology of straight—but I think I like you
not necessarily because of our matching reproductive organs—yet I acknowledge that you are an amazing woman—and I love that about you but I like you because you remind me of
beauty/hope/truth…things that I thought have long left me behind”

the other night while holding you in my arms
Those awkward moments seemed so long ago…
I remember chuckling to myself then weeping
this world will never understand
the butterfly’s that you let loose within me
the beauty that you’ve shown me
the way our hands fit perfectly
that a text filled with smiles can be quickly called out
with a “You’re really irritated right now…”
that we once met before in another life
that I pray for you constantly, always.
that your hope in others
shows me a way to be more compassionate
that you’ve previously checked out my journey before you even knew me
that you know me...very well
& that holding you feels so right

even if the world never understands
I will still hold you close enough to feel your essence
Still engage in learning of how we can do life with one another
Still kiss you in public
Still hold your hand when I'm on campus
Still carve snails into settled sand
Still send you messages of I miss you and quotes that I find in good books
& Care for you as deeply as you allow me to

Love,
I don’t believe in forever
my parents spared me stories of fairytales
never put glass slippers upon these feet
taught these hands how to hold yet also when to rise up
& I’ve learned from IV bags to trust in feelings always if not must times
over what the world says is truth
because they get things wrong constantly.

So, I will always dry my eyes on those hard days
& when faggot leaves lips of friends
or mom seems to be less understanding
or dad looks for a princess that he never raised
I just remember that to me we still sit
in the bosom of Los Angeles
admiring her beauty from within the window of a coffee shop
with a $ 1 cup of coffee in hand
Gazing; Watching;
Listening;Learning;
from the stories of each other
& in that moment nothing else matters…

♥ Freedom

We're Back : )

2011-04-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

I am happy to officially announce that Nuestras Voces has returned to the blogosphere! Whether you followed us in the past, or are new to this whole 'blog thing,' I welcome you on behalf of our entire team.

Here you will find everything from poetry to one act plays seeking to share ideas and perspectives you will not find on FOX News : )

I hope you enjoy our posts. Please feel free to share what you like on facebook and to participate in the dialogue, via the comment option at the bottom of each entry.

If you are interested in joining our team, or participating as a guest writing, please contact the appropriate editor.

Best,

Matthew González
Editor in Chief

Ethnic Minorities vs People of Color

2010-02-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

For a few months now I have been meaning to write on why I believe ethnic minorities should not allow themselves to be referred to as ‘people of color’. If for whatever reason this phrase is unfamiliar ‘people of color’, not to be confused with the phrase ‘colored people’, has become the politically correct way to refer to all ethnic minorities with connections to Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific Islands.

The problem with this term is twofold. First and foremost in an attempt to forcibly racialize foreigners (non-Euro-Americans) it falls victim to being clearly inaccurate. As Eduardo Mendieta observed, “race...has polarized the grammar of U.S political culture into two extremes: white and black.” (Making New Peoples 49) In effect, this paradigm for understanding the world makes Americans color-blind to any other categories that may function better in making sense of the world.

Being that the historical ‘us’ in the United States has been white Anglo-Saxon protestants males it is not surprising that groups who they would not refer to as ‘we’ or ‘white’ would be thrown into the only other category they conceive, ‘black’ or a ‘person of color’.

The reality of the situation, however, is that not all of us that fall into this category are black or any darker hue than the average European. There are Latinas and Latinos with blond hair, blue eyes, and skin so light that the shortest of periods spent in direct sunlight can bring about a sunburn. The only difference these whites hold with whites in the United States is that they stopped in Latin America on their way to the U.S. instead of traveling direct. If this is the case than color is clearly not what differentiates them and should be rejected for failing to accurately define the differences between them.

Secondly, the term ‘people of color’ reinforces ‘white’ (Euro-American) as normative and everyone else as ‘white’ plus ‘color’. In this way it conceptualizes a world in which there are ‘people’ and then there are ‘people of color’. ‘People’ describes humanity in general, while ‘people of color’ is constructed as a special kind of people, one with an additive, i.e., color. The world as we have known it has been observed by white eyes and recorded for white audiences. The phrase ‘People of color’ derives from this history. How does a white individual appear brown? They put brown paint on. Therefore, a brown person is a person plus color.

It is of no surprise that a world conceptualized by Euro-Americans would use terms such as ‘people of color’. I am sure that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, South Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific islands the people thought that their guests had some sort of paint on to appear so unusually (not normal to their eyes) white. In the same way it makes sense that Euro-Americans would describe other peoples in a similar way. Yet, the difference between Euro-Americans and everyone else is that they had the power to make their conceptualization the standard and enforce to such an extent that it has constructed the very way in which we as ethnic minorities of various cultures and hues understand ourselves.

This being said, if we are looking for a term to describe our reality from a perspective that is not uniquely Euro-American I suggest we reject ‘people of color’ for ‘ethnic minorities’. Looking at the US and the world as a whole it is clear that lines of power align with lines of ethnicity, with Euro-American peoples holding the majority of the power in the world while the other peoples of the world have been forced to make due with the scraps left by them or taken from their trashcans.

I hope that one day this will not be the case and power will be shared amongst all ethnicities but the first step to seeing change in the physical world is to change the way we conceptualize it. We will not be able to create a space for ourselves in this world if we are not able to see ourselves for who we are, people.

sit and think

2010-02-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

I sit.
They march.
They yell.
They cry.
They move.
They love.
I sit.
They act.
They discuss.
They write.
They sing.
They change.
I sit.
I sit and I think.
I hear their voices echoing through my veins
I feel their steps vibrating through my arteries
I smell their sweat intoxicating my mind with desires and questions

I sit amidst this tundra asking the age-old questions: “what’s my role,” and “why am I so far, not there?”
I want to do, I want to be, but I am here
I know, I just know, that I’m supposed to go and when I reach that place I will do and that doing will be good and I will be in my element and I will feel peace and maybe I’ll be able to finally help

For now I sit

I told my friend the other day I envy the souls who are content in the places the call home
Actually, I envy anyone who isn’t suffocated by the concept of “home.”
They don’t want to go.
They don’t want to chase something they can’t see; something they aren’t sure exists.
They are in their place and their place is good.
It is always good.

For now I think

I feel when I find that place, the right one, the one that makes my blood pump as antelopes gallop through the Serengeti untouched and free, then, maybe then, my heartbeat will be synchronized with the songs of the stars and will finally fall in alignment with all that is right

Constantly searching for the soil that will cradle me, the soil I dream of uniting with like old Navajo tales, I find myself lost to even my own body. Unsure of the colors I see and the sensations I feel I dance with curiosity and intertwine myself uncertainty.

My love is not knowing, not having a home, always searching for that which I no longer believe in because my fear is knowing, finding a place I won’t leave, realizing what I believe may mean the worlds oceans are in fact filled with the tears of hungry children, abused women, and scared men, all of which is daunting and difficult to combat.

So I sit and think about where next, and I think about all there is yet to know

I know and I know. There’s the knowing I know because it’s true and inescapable. It’s the sensation I feel when I see children dancing through fields of fireflies and hear the strength of the empowered reverberate through downtown city streets. It’s the paralyzing effect that transcends all physical capabilities I might have been born with when I read the news only to find stories of bombs plague the pages until we no longer cry for our fallen brothers and sisters of different tongues and colors.

Then there’s knowing. The knowing I know because I’ve read it on the pages of books I’m able to afford in the school walls I’m free to pass. This knowledge is termed fact, but it leaves me wanting more because I’ve come to discover stories are told by victors, and the voices of the defeated are often evaporated with the burning of their societies. When there are 7 billion perspectives, what is true and what is real?

Both types of knowledge leave me defeated. I read about wars and genocides, atrocities that repeat themselves throughout generations. I study the continuous cycle of evil and perpetual systems of oppression dehumanizing the poor, the immigrant, and the black man. I see child soldiers turned to stone after drinking the blood of their brothers, and I hold orphans whose parents have prematurely vanished because the costs of political campaigns outweigh the vitality of distributing free ARV’s.

But, both types of knowing inspire action initiated under the guidance of hope. I’ve read the words of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. I’ve walked the steps of Gandhi and I’ve heard expressions of joy shared amongst those liberated by Nelson Mandela’s administration. I’ve seen a meal for a stranger can curb social interpretations of the homeless, and I’ve watched communities embrace and strengthen AIDS orphans.

So I sit trying to piece it all together, all this knowledge makes me think and question my role, my place. It has to be there, somewhere. Somewhere out there with them, a part of the movements, alongside the oppressed.

Then I ask, what about me? What am I to do with this world of unfathomable possibility and unimaginable suffering? I want to go, I have to go, but where do I go? I tell myself I will know all I need to know when I reach that place, and that place will be home, and when I remove my shoes to enter I will do what I was made to do. But, why not now? Why not instead of sitting and thinking? It’s because I need to go I tell myself, but I go and I go and I go and the road is my home and childhood dreams are my map. I’ve got nothing but an untamed desire to experience and feel and love and be and see and learn and…why am I not with them? Why is my good only being done in my future, never my present? It’s because I haven’t found my place yet I tell myself, I will know what and when and how I tell myself. So I do nothing with now. I sit. I think. I sit and I think and time plays games with my mind, challenging the passion I say I have, daring me to do now as it threatens to cut the cord tomorrow.

I sit and I think. I think about all that I could know there, wherever there may be, forgetting that I can know here. I think about you out there, doing good and furthering the cause of love, knowing that my seclusion stems from the fear I have of being and allowing myself to know what is contained beneath this flesh covering. Fear of not doing the right thing in the right place prevents any doing in any place.

I sit and I think.

I ponder the causes and the people fighting the fight. I feel if I know more, if I understand more, if I experience more, if I live more, then, maybe then, I can do and my doing will be good. Right now all I have to offer the world are more tears for the oceans and another story written by a victor in the games of race and class. But I have to be more, there has to be more I can do, and the battle ensues as I learn the revolutions and accomplishments being won every day. I want to be there, I want to aid them. Which cause, which people? Who am I to offer help for anything and anyone? What do I know and what do I have?

I sit and I think.

It’s selfish. It’s always “I” and “they” never “we.” Never us as humanity. Never. I know that we are one and any movement for any person is a movement for all. Each victory for one is a victory for all as together we are 7 billion particles in this great creation we call life. All leaves on a tree. The struggle to preserve any stem is an improvement of the well being of the one giant organism. Here and there, this cause or that, it is all one as you and I are one. When the wind comes, the leaves float together, when the snow falls and the ice demands respect the leaves struggle for survival together, and when the suns rays shower the earth the leaves are all warmed and regenerated together.

I sit and I think.

I feel you are here and I am there, we are together and together we form one dynamic existence that breathes together and dies together. Whatever direction the leaves are blown, whatever path I walk, we are connected and that connection is home and that connection is good and that connection will attain peace.

much peace and love to you all

Life as the Status Quo

2010-01-09T00:07:00.000-08:00

Is it insane to introduce the thought that maybe peace, equality, and harmony make up the status quo of existence and all else that undermines these basic elements are abnormalities? Right now it is just a question upon which I have not yet meditated enough to develop an argument but it just seems right, somewhere deeper than the aspects of myself of which I am currently conscious, it just seems right.

If it is not right I am not sure if I can go another day. Life has to be more than just struggle. Success has to be something that is achievable today. I don’t know home much longer I can go running on the treadmill of resistance in the pursuit of a brighter, freer future. I’ve been running for a long time now and am getting sick of staring at the same four walls.

This week I got off the treadmill, walked outside and saw the world with fresh eyes. I saw growing trees, blossoming flowers, and beautiful skies. I heard birds singing, children laughing, and music celebrating the eve of a new year. These aspects of existence do not make sense in a paradigm of resistance, but they do make sense in a paradigm of life.

Life is around us, above us, below us, and within us. Within each breath, each organ, each cell, there is life. On every mountain and in every desert there is life—life as energy; life as goodness; life in harmony. A paradigm of struggle cannot contain the truth that life is the status quo of existence.

mateo

Begin.

2010-01-05T11:10:00.000-08:00

Sometimes escaping is the worst thing you can do. Sometimes you need to be amongst reality to truly see. But then other times the escape reminds you why you must continue to fight. you realize that it's within your being.

And I can sit here
Music blasting and escape into my world.
But it’s when the music fades out
Or the song changes
I remember
That it is here that I am sitting.
But the thing is
I take something from those moments
That you spoke to me
And inspired my spirit
And so if it is here I sat than this is here
it will start
Please deliver us.

--Give me PEACE revolutionary.

El Clasismo y La Gringa

2009-11-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

Though we had not much, we still had much more.
On special days I dined at the finest of
restaurants, and shopped at the nicest of
shops. Holidays were spent traveling
the longitudinal beauties of the
slender country, seeing much more than the
very children who were born under the
great Andes. I flew over the Andes,
snowboarded on the Andes, horseback rode on
the Andes. I seized the Andes.

On the metro and bus curious eyes
glanced at my fair, distinctive skin, thinking
not that I was American but a
light-skinned Chilena whose fairness reeked of
privilege, whose mestizo blood contained more
of Europe’s bullion, whose pampered body
dwelt on a large house on a hill, whose mind
was educated at institutions of great
prestige. And in the silence of
public transportation it matters not
if such things are actually true. Such is
my image—the apple of the beastly
classist eye. I cringe. Such is my life.*

With a fool's hope,
Bethany Lauren Grigsby

*Poem originally written in fall of 2007

mailbox ponderings

2009-11-04T00:37:00.000-08:00

My student mailbox is located right across from the Door of Discussion. I like this because it helps me keep an eye on the things that get posted there (though there hasn't been much at all this year.) It also allows me to inconspicuously eavesdrop on how people react to the Door. Tonight as I was peeping in my box, several boys walked by and I heard the following jovial conversation.

"What is on the door now?"

"I don't know. Dude, why do you read that stuff?"

"Naw, man. I always read what is on here. People say the stupidest things! Like ohhhh I'm gay . . . but like God still loves me."

"Ohh shoot, that's retarded!"

"Yeah, dude!"

As the group walked loudly laughing, I stood staring after them in furious bewilderment.

I am floored by the opinions students voice here. Just when I start to have hope that at least people are open to the conversation, open to the consideration that love can be a reality, I realize that hope is based on my experience with senior sociology majors. Not mainstream APU population. Not the culture of masculinity. Not youth groups or Bible studies. Not anything remotely resembling the forces that will shape my little brothers' understanding of the world. Just those folks who are finally starting to be able to apply the information that has been harpooned at them for the past four years.

I understand that the above dialogue isn't representative of the general consensus on ways to speak of such things. But it is revealing about the kind of environment we allow to flourish. An environment where an otherwise vaugely mismatched group of kids can find easy acceptance and assumed commonality in hatred and marginalization. Why do we just let it happen? Why doesn't anyone care? The senior sociology majors know how to talk in their classes, almost. Why don't they speak when it matters?

I think I need to walk around with a sign on my back at all times that reads "It's not funny." I have no idea in my little head how to convey to people the gravity of their words. No matter how reasonably I argue or how relatable my stories, it can all be blown off and invalidated with the fatal words, "I was just kidding." The discourses of hegemony that permeate our world here at APU (and at home in youth group) must be exposed for what they are. Until we figure out a way to do this, deadly closets will continue to exist and suck in the lives of beautiful community members.

Do you all have any ideas about discourse that reveals the levity of "humor?"

Thank you jazz

2009-10-29T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is a thank you letter
to all those who created and supported
the jazz movement.

Thank you for challenging the acceptable status quo.
For crossing musical borders in pursuit of melodic liberation;
For breaking the classical rules to usher in a brighter, freer future.

Thank you for filling the dark alleys with your songs.
Reverberating off the brick walls.
A saxophone weeping in the purest of tones.
Originating in your soul.
Finding expression through your mouth
Bring translated through that saxophone
Filling the poorest of cities with your sounds.

Thank you for giving us the words to speak
When hate had beaten our bodies to the ground.
Your melodies stitched our bleeding hearts.
Your lyrics brought strength to our bones.
And whether on a cell block floor
Or marching for our freedom in the cold
Your songs always guided us home.

Thank you for building the musical foundation
Upon which our songs were born.
Your courage was the elemental root
Upon which we have built the harmonies that now support our souls
Our actions are the overtones of your chords
Our voices are the voices harmonizing yours.

In each of our songs you can hear your cries.
Each of our words pays tribute to your rhymes
Rhymes with such might
That they can break the grip of whoever holds us down

Rhymes with which we challenge the racial
Framework that has been the slave masters disguise.
With you we strike the glass ceiling
That is invisible to the untrained eye.

Thank for giving us the eyes to see.
The sounds to scream.
The lyrics that freed.

Thank you for giving us the words to speak
The courage to stand
The hope of dreams.

Together we live in resistance
Transcending the restriction of time.
Tomorrow we celebrate our freedom
But until then, we will strive.

-mateo

Dear oppressor

2009-10-28T11:30:00.000-07:00

Dear oppressor,

Please stand still while I have my way with you
Hold that posture
As I sculpt you into granite
And create for you a frozen stone planet that only you and your kind could inhabit

Don’t even blink
Lest I remember that you are flesh and blood
And not barbed wire woven into a clockwork system
With an automatic timer set to mangle its victims

Don’t smile or cry
Do not look me in the eye
Or I might recall that once you were a child so weak
And that your beauty left your mother void of speech

Don’t let your body speak
Do not let your stomach growl
Or I’ll start to think that from this earth you and I both eat
And that you are not just a robot or a slab of concrete beneath my own very human feet

Don’t even breathe
I forbid any display of being weak
For I might recognize your precarious life
Or consider that you have a story and are a sister, a son, a father, and wife

Dear oppressor,
As I protest for human rights
And raise my fist so high
Let me forget that we are fashioned of the same clay
Let me strip you of your humanity
Hating you is so much easier this way

With a fool's hope,

Bethany Lauren Grigsby

libre.

2009-10-22T16:45:00.000-07:00

This spoken word or song or poem, whatever it may be is dedicated to all of those seeking freedom. They told us it was here, they told us what enslaved us was Satan, I’ve found that he is not the perpetrator anymore.
I’m sorry if you don’t understand it because its in Spanish. Id be happy to talk to you about it if you would like to know more.

Libre
Dios me ha hecho libre
Tu me encadenaste
No fue Satanas

Libre
Tu me encadenaste
Pero yo tengo la llave
Y eso a ti te duele

Mi voz
Sera la que tiembla al cantar
Pero mi voz
Sera la que oyes al pensar y decir…

Libre
Ellos ya son libres
yo los encadeno
y digo que los amo

libre
date cuenta, soy libre
por mas que no me quieras
aqui me quedare

libre
si lo que quieres
es que huya
no te tengo miedo
y no te tengo piedad

libre
mi voz tiene la llave
desato las cadenas
de tu opresion

libre
no tu no eres libre
tienes tus cadenas
de oro y de mentiras
de diamantes y de odio
de riquezas e ignorancia

libre
tu no eres libre
a tu lado sufre gente
de tu mismo color

libre
tu eres el titere
de todos los que te aman
por pensar tal como ellos

liberate
encuentra en las tinieblas
la luz de color negra
que resiste la opresion

Te duele
Verme resistir a gritos
Con canto y con palabras
Con poemas del Corazon

Te digo que escribo porque quiero
Que ya tus dias de victima
Han llegado a su final

Me dices
Que uso solo mi emocion
Que grito y que lloro
Que mas quieres
Si me desgarras el alma
Destruyes mi sentido de ser
Y oprimes a la gente
Que solo mi Cristo supo amar

Cristo, Cristo Jesus
Identificate con nosotros
Señor, Señor mi Dios
Identificate con nosotros
Cristo, cristo Jesus
Solidarizate
No con la voz mas fuerte
Sino con la mia que quieren silenciar
Con la voz de mi gente, mi pueblo que arde
Por la libertad

dorenyse ariana diaz

Dear White-jesus/god,

2009-10-20T16:54:00.000-07:00

There will come a time when the people will no longer sit on their hands
and kneal at your idols
they will look past your god and see their own
and in this true light of liberation
they will stand together
the ones you have labeled colors
will rise together

what will you do then when the people are tired
what will you do when survival will no longer lie in putting food on the table
but in the demands of their Freedom

will they still remain invisible to you?
how long will it take for you to acknowledge them
let me know how far will we have to go until you give us what is rightfully ours?

listen now we will speak louder so you can hear us
but we will no longer demand our freedom
we will take what you have denied us...

-Peace be with you.

Freedom♥

my trinkets and beads

2009-10-12T19:00:00.000-07:00

I unzip the bag of pictures. Decorations for my room. Memories from my past; inspirations for my future. Here and there, there and here…nowhere and everywhere, everywhere and nowhere.

Trinkets and Beads. A movie that can’t help but disgust the human soul. Exploitation is the theme. Here and there, there and here…nowhere and everywhere, everywhere and nowhere.

Beads cover my wrists from here and there, there and here. Pictures are my trinkets of nowhere and everywhere, everywhere and nowhere. Exploitation is my practice here and there, there and here…nowhere and everywhere, everywhere and nowhere.

I need frames to display my trinkets. My beaded hands instigate the $18 transaction. The wooden shapes are placed into plastic bags. Gas is consumed, lungs blackened, all to escort my idea of art back to the white walls that protect me from the elements.

I sift through ink painted paper. Which faces, which stories, which adventures are frame worthy? Eh, this person was pretty important to me, but the picture just doesn’t look quite “artsy” enough for the wall? Oh, this one is great! A little boy whose name I don’t remember, who knows if I ever actually took the time to get the pronunciation right, is placed behind glass. The glass is cleaned.

My fingers hold the nail against the wall as I begin to hammer. They’re a path back to the beads. Back to the memories. Forward to the future.

The nail is secure, the frame is placed, my feet take a few steps back, my eyes are pleased, the walls are covered…my heart aches. The camera has captured this boys smile amidst a war. A life of killing and rehabilitation. Rejected by his village and desired by my lens. Trapped behind glass he hangs as I prepare for my future.

peace and love

a night walk

2009-10-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

My time in India was approaching the end. For weeks I had been surrounded by women with terror stories to share about their male counterparts in society. Dowry, domestic abuse, female infanticide, rape, child sexual abuse, lack of education, assault in politics and beatings by joint family members were the common themes weaving together the lives of women throughout India. From the moment I stepped off the plane in Mumbai I was told a list of precautions to take and rules to follow, the most important being never walk alone at night.

While I had yet to have any particularly negative encounters with men in India I was growing to dislike many of them. I have always considered myself a generally open minded person, a person who didn’t judge a person based on his/her appearance, yet I found myself staring and questioning the character of the men I walked by solely because they were male and Indian. This is far from one of the proudest things I could ever admit, but my academic research (the effect of the 73rd amendment on the treatment of women in rural communities and thus the overall development of these communities), my internship (working at a women’s documentation and research center interviewing men and women about the rights of women in Pune as well as researching various abuses to women throughout Maharastra), and the stories my thirty female roommates shared with me about their lives and treatment by men left me very overwhelmed and frustrated with the male population in India. How could all of these abuses persist? How could they be so integrated to the religious, political, and societal trends throughout Indian history and contemporary life?

I knew that I didn’t want to judge every Indian man on the basis of our anatomical differences, and I was fully aware that I was becoming more judgmental than I ever want to be, so I worked on destroying any judgments or negative thoughts that may pass through my mind. I knew that I had met many kind Indian men and it was wrong to categorize all people of a particular group as having the same negative characteristics. I, after all, didn’t want to be deemed and obnoxious, ignorant, loud American before someone spoke to me, so it would be wrong of me to do the same to another group of people.

As I said before it was one of my last weeks in Pune. It was dark and I was walking home alone. As I approached Sinhgad road I could hear loud speakers and men shouting in what seemed to my ears no discernable rhythmic pattern. As soon as I turned on the road I could see traffic was at a standstill and stages were set up on both sides of the road with music blaring so loud the entire street and three-story high slum structures were shaking. Groups of men were huddled around the stages and seemed to be celebrating something as entire street reeked of cheap alcohol. Mobs, as it appeared to me, of men were jumping and shouting to the music while punching the night sky and waving tattered flags, which added some sort of organized flow to this image of chaos.

From this point it was about a thirteen-minute walk to my hostel on a normal (non-celebration) day. I knew looking at the scene before me that this would be a much longer walk, and I knew at that moment that it would probably be a slightly more interesting, for lack of a better word, walk than normal especially because there were no other women in sight. The thought of hailing a rickshaw passed through my mind, but traffic was at a halt as people were dancing on their parked vehicles and trucks were stopped with their doors wide open allowing the contribution of the drivers’ taste of music to the thunder of noise already consuming the street. It also appeared that most rickshaws were abandoned on the side of the street while their drivers made up a portion of the moshing men ahead of me.

There wasn’t much I could do at this point. I needed to get home, and I was trying to view the Indian man in a more positive light, so I was praying this walk would prove to me there was no need to worry or judge population of India who possess a penis. No need to give into the recently forming stereotypes I had of Indian men.

Within a couple yards of my walk I was approaching a small stage with about thirty jumping, shouting, dancing men, surrounding it. I was trying to think, “wow it’s really nice that they can come together and celebrate tonight,” rather than, “wow, I wonder where their wives are. Blast, I really hate the behavior of drunken men.” Within no time at all a man grabbed me and flung me into the center of the crowd.

Everything happened rather quickly. I mean in retrospect it did, but at the time it felt I would be stuck in that circle for the rest of my life, which I really wasn’t too overjoyed thinking about. I was trying to figure out what to do. I had been in semi-similar situations in other countries at various times, but this situation was different than those experiences. For one, in all the other situations I could speak the same language as the people complicating my life, so on a couple occasions a witty comment in another language would startle a person or two, as I don’t look like I should know how to speak Lingala or Isizulu. In this situation I didn’t speak Marathi and even if I could no one would be able to hear me. Another thing, this was the first time such a large group was interfering with my day. I had done enough work and research to know that if I tried to fight free, or punch one of the men, the other ones would literally kill me without hesitation. I’m just one girl, and they are thirty or so men. I knew that the only way I would be able to get out of this situation would be through the intervention of a person other than myself, which I was beginning to doubt would happen considering I was in the middle of this group and not a single one of them seemed slightly concerned about my well-being.

While I prayed and waited for someone to help me, my body was being thrashed around. Men were on all sides of me, pulling me in every direction, squeezing everything they could grab a hold of. I wasn’t entirely sure what was happening because all I could see were hands reaching for me and mouths aimed for my face. My hair was being pulled, my limbs being stretched, and some men were trying to rip my cloths off while others were trying to kiss me. Anytime I would try to turn my head away or wiggle out of the awkward positions and places I was, someone would hit my head or slap me in an attempt to get me to stay in place.

While all this was happening I was beginning to get pretty hopeless and quite disgusted by Indian men. I didn’t understand why not one of the men there was opposing this behavior and why no one was coming to help. At this point my body hurt and I had no idea what would happen next. Suddenly a man was walking by and somehow saw me unable to defend myself consumed by this crowd of men. He walked in and grabbed one of my arms trying to pull me out. His attempt was failed as there were so many men on the opposite arm resisting his efforts, so he resorted to punching a couple of them, then picked me up and put me on the street. He shouted towards me to run and made sure none of the men came after me. Here was a miracle. An Indian man who came to my rescue and risked his well being to help out my stupid self after I had made the mistake of ignoring the numerous warnings not to walk home alone, especially at dark.

I made it a couple more meters down the street when I was suddenly flung to the ground. A man had grabbed my purse from behind me and pulled it back so forcefully that my entire body gave into his yank, and I found myself struggling to get up from the dirty road. He started to choke me then grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him, squeezing my face so hard it felt he may puncture a hole through my cheek. He was trying to force his tongue down my throat and for a couple seconds I was able to resist, but when he finally succeeded he tasted the same as the other men. They all tasted like alcohol, the same cheap liquor that also contributed to the anger that led to abuse for so many Indian women. One of his hands began to go up my shirt while the other kept a grip on my face and I began to feel a connection to so many of the women I had listened to. Not that this experience was even a fraction of what those women live with for years on end, but this was a woman’s husband. This man would go home and do the same thing to his wife, possibly a girl even younger than me. If I was scared right now, I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live with this on a daily basis. I couldn’t imagine being trapped in a cycle of abuse and oppression by such a man.

Again too weak to get out of this situation, all I could do was pray and wait for someone to help me. By this point I was farther down the road than I had begun, obviously, which meant there weren’t many people around because most of the people on the street were near the stages. Luckily, before things got too out of control, another man came and punched this guy so that he let go of me. I began to wander down the street completely dazed and confused, but grateful for the man who had just appeared, when the man that had flung me to the ground came sprinting after me and grabbed me again,. This resulted in yet another series of sloppy undesired kisses. Thankfully the man who had punched him saw this and ran after him, holding him away from me long enough for me to get a safe distance away. Again an Indian man had come to my aid when I was in this negative situation because of my own choice to walk home alone at dark. A completely innocent man risked his safety to help me break free from a terrible predicament.

As I was walking another man came to me and held onto my arm. His grasp was much different than the other ones I’d encountered earlier on my walk. It was a gentle one, one offering protection, yet I pulled my arm free and moved away from this man. Despite the fact two men had already helped me that night, I was still deterred from being too close to any Indian man because of my encounters with the more violent men that night. This man was trying to ask me where I was going, and I knew enough Marathi to respond, so I did, but I kept my distance. I was skeptical, even though there was something about him I felt was safe. My mind wasn’t strong enough to get over my hesitation of Indian men at this moment. He noticed I remained a safe distance from him and he didn’t try to break that distance. He walked several feet to the left of me the whole way back home, watching out for me to ensure I’d be okay. He did all this, and yet I was still timid around him because he was male and Indian. What a terrible thing I did to him. I categorized him as one of them. One of the men who had hurt me. One of the men that hurt their wives and daughters. How wrong of me.

I didn’t tell anyone about this because I didn’t want it to be a big deal. I knew I shouldn’t have been walking alone and I knew me telling someone would just cause a lot of ruckus when there was nothing that could be done. I suppose had I known who the men were I would be able to press charges and have them arrested, but beyond the fact I would never be able to recognize all the faces of the men who had attacked me, I wouldn’t want to do this. So many women face the same treatment and worse daily, yet because they are Indian women, and not white women like myself, police officers never reprimand their abusers. Also, I had learned enough about the prison system to know that had I been able to identify one of the men and decided to have him arrested he would have been severely beat up by the police who arrested him and he would have been prohibited from working in whatever sector he was currently working. This would mean his family would have no source of income considering it is significantly more difficult for women to get jobs and many men don’t allow their wives to work. If I were to arrest him, his entire family would suffer. His children who couldn’t choose to be born, and his wife who most likely didn’t choose to marry him. I couldn’t do that to her, to the woman I never would meet.

The next morning I walked, again alone but in daylight, to meet a friend for breakfast. The restaurant was on the same street where the previous nights’ encounters happened. As I walked by the places where I had met those men I felt sick. At one point I was afraid I was going to collapse, and my whole body still ached. With a scarf around my neck and long sleeves and pants to cover any marks I made it to the restaurant. I sat down and listened to the conversation two of my friends were having. My mind couldn’t focus on their words. I was sitting with my face directed towards the street. I was watching a man emaciated by a system of caste and class oppression as he smashed rocks. Sweat was dripping into his eyes, and my eyes were cemented on him. He pulled a dirty cloth from his pants to wipe his eyes and his glance met my stare. He was one of them. One of the men from the night before.

This man was a poor slave to the system, desperate for liberation. He was helpless and my heart broke. Everything in me began to ache, not from the bruises and scratches, but from a deep feeling of sadness. This man was not a bad man, he was a man who didn’t know how to live because his days didn’t make a life of growth and development, rather they made a series of redundant battles that kept him trapped into this hell of poverty, disease, corruption, hard labor, forced marriage, absence of education, and a cycle of oppression his children will also face as they have the same last name as him, and are born into the same backward caste. The only time his voice is heard is when he uses it to lash out against his wife. He has no power, no authority, over any other being than her. Standing atop a pile of rocks that needed to be broken apart stood a robust man in a suit, puffing on a cigar, glaring down at him. The man in the suit directed some harsh sounding statement to the man with the sweat filled eyes, and as his head lowered so he could again begin to pick under the blazing sun he spoke to me with his eyes, and at that moment I realized maybe it wasn’t sweat in his eyes, maybe they were tears. He was working for his children, working for food, working for something he didn’t understand and he was desperate for something he may never taste…freedom and hope.

He remedied my heart and my issues of stereotyping and hating Indian men. I remembered all people are good; it’s just a matter of revealing this in the world around us.

peace and love

New Additions to Nuestras Voces

2009-10-06T09:58:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone!

It is my privilege to welcome three new writers to Nuestras Voces: Ahmad Demery, Bethany Grigsby, and Kaitlin McGarvey. We are very excited to be challenged and encouraged by their contributions as we continue to walk hand in hand in this process.

Para la liberación,

mateo

Naked Words.

2009-10-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

and what if i dragged them away from my words
kickin' and screamin'
and left my words without emotion
alone
able to speak on their own
so the "average" person
can get WHY

FUCK

so my FUCKing Professor can get WHY
Him "teaching" this BullSHIT isn't teaching me shit
only making the problems worst
because after class I face blue eyes trying to explain to them
that MY people didn't lay down and take shit from no one
we all fought back
and that our dumbass Professor got that shit wrong

and to prove that
after class I have to find and
FUCKing dig and search for some truth
and then come back to class and
explain it to YOU
without tears
without yells
and without

FUCK

without anything
inorder for YOU not shut me out
as another kid who has lost my way

BUT

if I was left without the emotional baggage
that ties me to what I scream for
i feel as if I will be left empty
there would be no reason to fight
there would no reason to tell them

FUCK

What we have to say matters
WE are real
WE are real
WE are FUCKing real
WE matter
and I worry sometimes that my
tears silents my words
and it gives the pass for people to shut me out
but god do they make them so much more real
and when I cry between words
of struggle, of anger,
for FREEDOM
I do so NOT because
I am weak
but
because
this shit is real
its real
not something i picked up in my FUCKing global studies class
not something that I experienced on LA term
or on Bridges or on a FUCKING missions trip to the whole FUCKing continent of AFRICA
not something that "god has put on my precious FUCKing heart"
but real like
when I go home I stare at an empty fridge real
like in my face
i see the tears of my mom real like
not sleeping because the streets never do real
real like this is my life real
that the revolution is for me and my people real
like when WE become liberated
we will not SHIT on you like you have continually have done to us
real (and thank Paulo for that)

so FUCK you!

and when I'm trying to explain myself
why this SHIT smells like FUCKed up people who have too much power
and I cry
ignore my words at that moment and look at my tears
because that emotion explains it all
it explains it all

FUCK.

FREEDOM first FUCK grace!

Some random thoughts on Conquest, Missions, and Salvation

2009-10-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that our understanding of learning is drenched in a mentality of conquest. More often then not people see learning a subject such as multiplication as ‘conquering’ the subject. I am even guilty of telling people that they should 'own' a subject before a test. The cross application of this mentality to learning another culture brings with it some obvious problems. In order to avoid falling into paternalistic patterns of thoughts and action we need a new way of looking at the process of learning.

Instead of seeing knowledge as this outside source that we conquer as a means of adding it to our collection of thoughts, like animal heads on a hunter’s wall, what if we saw knowledge as persons? Like subjects, we often dehumanize culture, i.e., we take the human out of the reality to make dealing with it easier. Once either is separated from its humanity it becomes very easy for someone in the 21st century to think of it in terms of conquest. Knowledge as well as culture are not things outside of us that we seek to conquer, but instead the thoughts of human beings that we should strive to befriend and get to know like we would any neighbor.

Along side this idea of befriending, it is very important to keep in mind some important aspects of friendship. First, friendship cannot be forced upon a person; friendship must be a mutual decision made by two independent individuals. Secondly, friends respect each other. This includes their religion and culture. They believe that each has something valuable to say and encourage each other to speak by fostering a healthy environment.

Considering these two criterions of friendship I do not see how a missionary can be a friend. Missionaries more often then not force themselves upon a people. This of course applies to pre-colonized areas. Once the first missionary has come in it is often the case that the colonized individuals become dependent on the presence of a missionary there after. Secondly, I think that missionaries come in thinking that they have the truth while the persons they are going to meet lack it, or even worse hold false beliefs. This relationship is not mutual, it is one sided. The mentality of the missionary is not one of an adult going to befriend other adults, but that of an adult going to educate a child. This has been the mentality of European conquest as the civilized ‘adults’ go to the world and pull up the primitive ‘children’ of the non-European world.

More and more I hear talk of adopting an incarnation model for missions. This model, as it was explained to me, begins with committing to a life-long or at least long-term ministry. Using the story of Jesus as an example the proponents of incarnation ministry advocate for becoming a part of a foreign community, a putting on of the flesh if you will as a means for sharing Christianity. The underlying assumption that goes unchallenged is that those from Europe and the United States represent the divine God while those in other lands represent sinful humanity. If a missionary represents God and the other represents humanity then a missionary is infallible, omniscient, and all-powerful while the other represents vice ridden, lost, weak sheep that are blind to the truth. There is no respect of friendship in this.

In recent years a move has been made to rely less on missionaries from Europe and the U.S. and more heavily on ‘local’ leaders. I put local in quotes because most of those who are selected to lead have more often then not abandoned practically every element of their person that made them local. As Schreiter notes in “The Study of Culture” those who are selected as local leaders are selected because of how successful they were in ‘rising up’ to mimic the divine, i.e., Europeans/American. They have been chosen because they were the most successfully “alienated from the roots of their own culture [and] socialized into the invading culture.” In short they were the most successful converts, the products of conquest.

Though many Christians today see the growing number of Evangelical churches in Latin America as proof to the success of missions, after spending some time there studying the ‘workings of the spirit’ I think that it is more accurate to say that this growth is another indicator of the success of the European/U.S. conquest. People all over are abandoning their traditional songs, rejecting the words of their sages, spiting upon their history and going to the church to be saved from the ‘foolishness’ of their culture.

This is the current state of the colonized because of the colonizers decision to see Latin Americans not as possible friends, but as a mission field, a place to sow and reap. I hope humanity will learn from its history and re-humanize our methodology.

-Mateo

Land of the free white Protestant heterosexual males

2009-08-28T12:28:00.000-07:00

“Land of the free.”

“Leader of the free world.”

Realistically looking to the past and present I do not see how individuals can continue to believe these sayings to be true. Just yesterday the lower house of Uruguay’s Congress passed a bill to allow same-sex couples to adopt children and the approval of their Senate is practically guaranteed. The passing of this bill will lead the way for other Latin American countries to do the same.

Adoption by same-sex couples is legal in Guam, Andorra, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Spain, Germany, Finland, Greenland, and now almost Uruguay. Yet 36 states if the US continue to bar same-sex couples from participating in adoption. Moreover, only a handful of states have agreed to recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry.

These unequal policies are nothing new in US history. As many of us know this country was built on the backs of slavery from the bounty of imperialism. The only group that has a long history of freedom in this country is white Protestant heterosexual males. Considering the fact that they have historically been the only individuals allowed to write government documents I guess these sayings should come as no surprise. But for the sake being accurate I contend that we edit the following sayings to fall within reality, past and present.

“Land of the free” to “Land of the free white Protestant heterosexual males.”

“Leader of the free world” to “Leader of the arms race.”

-mateo

the heaviness of argument

2009-08-19T00:39:00.000-07:00

Hours and hours into the night

Circles and circles

As the pale moonlight

Shines in through the windows

That need to be cleaned

Like the windows of my car

That also have seen

Pained conversations

and strained tones of voices.

Trails streak the grime on the windshield

Like tears of despair

That anything can be healed.

The wounds are too deep

The differences too vast

To keep losing sleep; we may as well cast

these worries away.

The world is busted, what else can one say?

There's so much hatred and injustice, it's painfully true,

but it all hurts too much to know what to do.

The leaders of the world are the blind leading the blind

yet not enough see it, so our hands remain tied.

Words without actions are worthless,

they say

though often words still seem superfluous

when we may

stop for a moment for a moment to listen and learn

about how to love and to live - the things after which we should yearn.

But for as long as the moon has circled the earth

We’ve been running in circles

Trying to prove our own worth

By proving our point – like therefore, you’re wrong –

and like gravity ensures the moon keeps going around

the world and it problems ensure our arguments abound.

but the moon never touches the planet it belongs to

like our talk is just talk and in lieu

of real action, we never grab onto the things

that actually might matter

we are planets, we pass each other with no possible way

of making real contact with what each tries to say

and we all just circle around what really goes on

and now we’ve been talking and talking so long that its dawn

and the moonlight no longer illuminates the dust

on the windows in my room that really, really must

get cleaned someday, along with my car

and my laundry and my life, and now I’ve wandered so far

away from my point, that now what’s the point

in finishing our talk, that never meant anything

yet we've talked til the moonlight was gone, so

we must have accomplished something . . .

what if we weren’t so concerned with coming full orbit?

what if each gave up their philosophical perch on their planet

to touch each other, and really listen to the problems

and get messy with the stuff of the earth

the mud and the weight and the width and the girth

that is far far too big for our silly conversations

but we’ll never realize it until we let go of our elaborate augmentations

and hold each others hands

and walk each others shoes

and be humble enough to just wonder

about the moon.

-abbie

We walk on

2009-08-11T13:49:00.000-07:00

*This poem is dedicated to Joe Snell, you will be remembered.

Though the journey is long, with no guarantees
And nothing awaits us but struggle
We walk on.

Though winter’s storm is at our door
And we may never again see spring
We walk on.

Though our loved ones leave us to struggle alone
And our hearts are weighed down by the pain
We walk on.

We walk on for those who have walked before
In the shadows of plantations on the rail the railroad to the north.

We walk on for those who were dragged through the streets,
Buried in the sea, and hung from trees.

We walk on for those who suffer today
Crossing borders to live another day.

This is our life.
This is our struggle.
With arms locked tight,
Let’s take on tomorrow.

Para la liberación,

Mateo

Intersex Theology

2009-08-08T11:29:00.000-07:00

Anywhere between 1-1.5% of humans are born with ambiguous biological, sexual parts. Somewhere around .1 or .2% of births are so sexually ambiguous that they receive medical attention and often surgery. This does not seem like a huge number, but taking into account the millions of births each year, humanity is taking in thousands upon thousands of people who are intersex, often known as hermaphrodites (though true hermaphroditism is only known in the non-human animal kingdom). The parents of an intersexual person truly face a difficult decision. They may be encouraged to have the newbor undergo surgery in which they choose the sex of the child and raise her/him as that gender. Some may choose to allow that child to grow up and choose on their own which gender they will choose to live as. Either way, this is an incredibly difficult decision. It is not uncommon for a child whose sex was chosen for them by their parents to grow up and be raised as that gender, yet later struggle immensely with their sexual identity, possibly identifying with the other gender. If the parents choose to allow the child to grow up as intersex, the child is very likely to face severe ostracism from the world around them.

We live in an incredible gender dualistic world. It is important to note that there are some societies where intersex people are not only accepted, but honored, namely in societies where sexually ambiguous or intersex deities are revered and worshipped. In the western world, however, intersex people are often thrown into the sexually deviant (and misunderstood) realm, along with homosexual and transgendered people. Though this gender and sex dualistic view is supported by many, many segments of society, religious or not, I would like to focus specifically on the mainstream Christian theology surrounding intersex people. Western Christianity, in particular evangelicalism, along with conservative Catholicism, is obsessed with gender. In the American context, books like Wild at Heart and Captivated, gender specific Bible studies, male bonding, girl's nights out, and a obsession with dating and marriage are incredibly common and form much of the thread of American Christianity. In American Christianity, there is no room for sexual ambiguity- there are men and there are women. God created it this way. It is part of God''s order.

A person who is intersex is born intersex. It is not a disease or a handicap. It can be considered a birth disorder, but most would agree that is a very loaded term. Intersexuality is a natural thing, as being born with a mental or physical disability is natural (I compare intersexuality to mental and physical handicaps because handicaps are ony handicaps because they are not the norm- if everyone was born without legs or with Down's syndrome, being born without legs or with Down's syndrome would not be a handicap. A handicap is a handicap because that person cannot thrive in a world where their condition is the exception, not the rule). It seems as if American Christianity has moved past ascribing handicaps or most birth abnormalities to some presence of sin in the world. It is not uncommon to even hear language such as "gifts" and "blessings" when speaking of people who hold physical or biological characteristics that are not the norm, in particular people with mental disabilities. Yet it seems as if American Christianity has not come to the point where a person who is born with an ambiguous sexual identity is considered beautiful, or even a gift. Why is that? It is highly likely, in my opinion, that this is because "these people" do not fit into the American Christian worldview, propogated by prominent Christian leaders and groups, of a gender and sexual dualistic world, where men are men, and women are women- anything that challenges this "natural order" is only met with confusion at best, ignoring as common, and ostracism and labelling as-a-result-of-sin-in-the-world at worst.

Intersexuality is natural in the same way that autism, Down's syndrome, and physical deformation are natural. They are only handicaps and disorders because they are different.* Yet if an intersexual person were to enter into mainstream American Christian circles, my guess is that they would eventully begin to pick up hints that they were somehow a violation of God's established order. But how could they be if they were born this way? Another part of God's order that seems to be pushed is the idea that humans should, for example, work and play and talk. How then, could a person who is born in a vegetative state be part of that order? The simple answer is that people tweak that so that that person can be included- as a "gift", as a "blessing", though maybe "in disguise".

Jesus came from and dwelt in the margins of society- where the sick, poor, handicapped, and otherwise God's-order-violating lived. Because this is where Jesus, who is the Gospel, came, this is where theology must come from. Theology, to be Christian theology, cannot be born in the established, whole, powerful segment of creation. Those who are intersexual are at the margins of most societies today, with American Christianity certainly being no exception. They are the exception, not the rule. If mainstream American Christianity has no room for the intersexual person, whether they have chosen a gender or not, and whether they fit into that gender's societal "role" or not, then the theology of American Christianity is not a Christian theology at all. A gospel that only has good news for the healthy, whole, and otherwise "normal" is not good news at all. Let those good news continue to be that we are all created in the image of God, exactly as we are.

by: Rod

*My intent here is not necessarily to critique the concept of a handicap, and at the same time it is not to advocate the sociological designation of people as handicapped- that is an entirely different discussion, and one worth going into, I might add. For this discussion, I am going with the mainstream perceptions of people as disordered and handicapped, though I am certainly not ascribing any negative connotations to these words.

It Is Time To Re-Evaluate the Systems.

2009-08-06T14:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we forget

Get caught up in the words

And stop ourselves from allowing us to see the commonality in our goals

And other times we stop ourselves

From voicing our opinion

And standing up for what pulls at our hearts

And for others, what just makes sense

In those times that we stray from the path

We somehow are reminded

Before we get lost

That while we are here

Our present does not guarantee our future

In fact it threatens it

So dive into the cliché

Of living life for today in mind of tomorrow

Knowing that the latter is affected by the first

We are not promised anything

Nor are we owed anything

Therefore function in a way that will benefit the people

And that will leave none stuck under your thumb

Function in a way that will respect the ideas of the free thinkers

In order to encourage others to think freely without the fear of

Persecution or condemnation

And finally always remember that

We will continue to function in the ways that we do

Until we question why we do…

And in that dialogue…in those questions

We will begin our journey to Freedom♥.

A better place.

2009-08-03T16:12:00.000-07:00

I say B,
You hear C.
You leave mad,
I stand confused.

You say D,
I hear C.
I leave sad,
You stand confused.

Hurt would be avoided
If we took the time to listen;
Took the time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Love would be attained
If we took the time to listen;
Took to time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Before we speak,
Let’s swap views.
Let’s take the time to see life
From each other’s shoes.

Listen!

2009-08-02T11:58:00.000-07:00

While I am in Camden most of my posts will be about the conditions here... mainly because my mind seldom wonders away from the things that I see here...always trying to connect the dots to what I have read or seen before...and also trying to map out new dots based these experiences and those past experiences....here is something that has been on my mind for the last few days

One thing that has bothered me for some time now is this notion of what "Correct English" is...

Some of the people that I volunteer with make fun of the way most of our students speak here...or they will blatantly correct them while they are saying something. And man does it frustrate me. While, I understand that there is a majority socially accepted way to how one should express their selves in a "business setting", I fail to see how that became the "correct" or "proper" way to speak.

And just because my students choose not to communicate in that way why is it okay to correct them or make fun of them?

And I know this is not the only place where this occurs because I have been corrected on and made fun of because of how I may pronounce certain words which is in large part due to growing up in a family where American "English" was not always used.

In my class I let my students speak and express their selves in ways that make them feel comfortable. But I let them know that "yes" when they go for job interviews or something like that they will have to speak in the way that has been deemed "socially acceptable" but how they speak and express their selves is not incorrect or wrong it is just different and other people are too ignorant to realize that...

But I would like to hear from you, the reader....what do you think about "improper" and "proper" English? By saying that one way is correct and the other is not are we not silencing those whose voices are already at a whisper?

Grace&Freedom♥

Spiritual Warfare

2009-07-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sunny summer day.

Air conditioned pizza place.

Pop music playing in the background, its waves joining the waves of artificial cold.

Young guy enters.

Sunglasses, flip flops flip flopping.

Orders the two slices of pepperoni and a drink combo.

Takes his cup, fills it with ice- whoops, a little too much, pours some out.

Some orange soda sounds good. Fills it with orange soda, puts the lid on, sticks the straw in.

Sits down.

“Two slices of pepperoni!”

Gets up, takes his plate.

Sits down again.

Bows his head to pray.

It’s a long prayer.

No lips moving, no expression.

There is no way of knowing for sure, but he may be thanking God for the pizza.

For the hands that prepared it.

For his family.

For his friends.

For his country.

For the freedom to pray in public.

In Jesus’ name, amen!

Okay, stop. Let’s dissect for a second.

This is a battlefield.

A spiritual war zone.

Bad words in these circles?

We have all heard it-

The person just back from their trip to “love on” the third world.

Proudly displaying their tans and “ethnic” purses.

“People in other countries are so open to the spiritual world!”

“There was just this feeling of darkness as I was walking through those streets.”

Soon, they might find themselves in the pizza place.

At the mall.

At Disneyland.

Eating, drinking, shopping, playing, consuming.

“It’s just relaxing!”

“God blesses us with so much!”

“This reminds me of my childhood!”

The roots of what they are buying, eating, drinking, taking pictures of-

They are non-existent.

All that exists is the finished product, the final show.

Long, unpaid hours.

Backbreaking labor.

Children deprived of a childhood.

Exploitation?

Landfills spilling over.

Fumes drowning our lungs.

Pigs squealing in agony as they are harvested for their fruits: pepperoni, hot dogs, chorizo.

Century-old trees being chopped away to make chairs and to make room for our burgers, steaks, tacos.

Clean water flushed away everytime we need to piss out our soda, or we put too much ice in our cup.

The raping of the Earth?

None of these things exist.

The truth is deep fried and wrapped to preserve the continuation of luxury, of convenience, of great taste, and of fun.

The truth is drowned out by the lights, by the fireworks, by the good memories.

The truth is covered by a plastic lid so that we won’t spill on our leather seats.

The truth is on the clearance rack, hidden by a bright red tag.

Young guy takes his last bite, throws his trash away into the trash can, bound for the landfill, and drives

home.

Unaware of the war around him.

-the war waged where the other side has no chance of defending itself.

Prayer directed to the “spiritual war” in far off regions.

Failing to see the violence in his own choices.

Blinded by comfort, success, convenience, luxury, “blessing”.

by: Rod

Who will stay?

2009-07-28T12:25:00.001-07:00

INTRODUCITON

The situations in which my students live in are ridiculous, yet I am aware of those who live in worst. However, when I see what has been given to them to create this so called “American Dream,” I think to myself the government might as well come to Camden and spit in all of their faces…

PART I

I look at my students and sometimes I get so frustrated with them. Because I believe that we are a people who have survived many things and many things have been fought for in order to secure the liberties (no matter how few) we have today. And even though many of us grow up in conditions that are far from what America has promised I still believe that we have no excuses because worst has been done to those who have come before us. So when I ask my students what they want to be in the future and they say basketball players, football players, or going into the army… or when I hear them say that there is only the league or the Army after they graduate high school…I get so frustrated with them because I think of those who risked there lives to teach each other to read in the dirt…I think of those whose parents have traveled to America in order to better our lives….but I have not figured out a way to show them that there is more out there….that they have more options than what the world is showing them…

And I say to myself what should I tell them… “Do better in school”….”Pay attention in class”… “Make sure you get good grades”….how can I tell them that after I hear the stories of how their schools treat them like inmates, how the teachers suck, and the school board couldn’t care less if the students were learning because test scores get you money not free thinkers…not critical thinkers…not independent thinkers…but students who can bubble in “right” answers…

PART II

Myself and one other girl are the only two black American interns here at this program…

PART III

On Saturday I had the pleasure of going to DC to meet an uncle who I have not seen since I was six years old. Later that day I was introduced to a cousin who I have never met before. After speaking with my cousin for a while he invited me to a Bar-B-Que.

I believe in Los Angeles and maybe even the entire west coast in itself lacks something that I saw a lot in NYC and DC. It was this sense of community within the Middle and Upper Middle Class Black Americans.

The Bar-B-Que was filled with people my cousin had went to grad school with at Cornell and people he attended Morehouse with and people who worked on the Capitol Hill and people who have accomplished receiving their Masters and Doctorial Degrees and people who worked with him…in a nutshell they represented most of the up and coming prominent African-Americans, 1^st,2^nd,3^rd,4^th, and 5^th generation Black Americans in DC and the surrounding area.

It was something that I had never experienced before and felt truly empowered by it…

The city of Camden is predominantly made up of Black Americans with descendents from Haiti and other Caribbean countries along with those whose ancestors were slaves in America…

PART IV

After I left the Bar-B-Que….I sat for a very long time…I picked up the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed that same day. I read the Introduction to the Anniversary Edition written by Donaldo Macedo and he writes about a conversation he had with a personal friend of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 60s. The man who is identified as African American confesses to not going back to the ‘community’ in over twenty years. Donaldo writes something that I have been thinking about for a while now…He writes “having achieved great personal success and having moved to a middle-class reality, this African American gentleman began to experience a distance from other African Americans who remain abandoned in the ghettos.”

When I read that I thought of what I experienced at the Bar-B-Que…and then I thought about Camden….and how many of the volunteers are not Black…all of the churches we have gone to in order to raise money have been predominately white churches…

And I am not one to draw conclusions…I know there are many factors being who Urban Promise reaches out to that may affect who volunteers and who donates….but say the least I wonder how many of those who I met at the Bar-B-Que would be willing to move back…to help those neighborhoods that some of them left behind in order to move into Suburbia….

PART V

On Mondays’ and Fridays’ we have “Bible Buddies”. During this time we just hang out with a group of kids. One of my Bible Buddies is Lenny he is a Black Puerto Rican. Lenny is about to go to the 8^th grade and is probably the most respectful person I have ever met. So we were talking about what he wanted to do…he quickly answered with “Anything that will get me out of Camden, this city is wack.” I asked him why wouldn’t he stay to help change it. Lenny said what I think a lot of people in the ghettos believe…or would also say…and was actually my response for a very long time… “it isn’t my problem…I’m leaving…someone else can fix it”….

So I say all of that to say that it will be very interesting to see as the Black middle class continues to grow if they will turn back to help those who are still in the ghettos…It will be very interesting to see if they will rebuild there neighborhoods or escape them…

And then again are they suppose to?….why should they sacrifice and stay “behind”? Isn’t the goal of growing up in the “inner city” is to get out of it?

CONCLUSION

But if they leave…who will fight for those who couldn’t leave?

Grace&Freedom♥

Weddings, Virginity, and Patriarchy

2009-07-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had the opportunity to be a part of my good friends wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony filled with even more beautiful people. However, though I was trying my hardest to be happy for my two friends, I was disgusted by just how patriarchal this tradition is.

Though most of you reading this have probably already experienced similar moments of epiphany, I will cite two common examples of how the traditional wedding ceremony perpetuates patriarchy.

1. The pastor asks, “Who gives this woman, to be married to this man?” The bride’s father responds, “Her mother and I.”

2. After the bride and groom kiss the pastor declares, “I now present to you Mr. & Mrs. (Groom’s first and last name).”

Both of these traditional components of a marriage ceremony support the idea that woman are property that is traded between households. No one gives the man to be married, nor does a bride ever brand her husband with the name of her mother.

As I was standing at this wedding, reflecting on all the weddings I have attended I thought to myself, would my wedding be any different? YES! If I truly believe that patriarchy is oppressive, I cannot consciously act in a way that perpetuates it.

So if I marry, this is what my wedding will look like.

1. I refuse to brand the person I marry with my last name.

2. I will not keep friends from my side of the wedding court just because they have a vagina. Traditionally, grooms select groom’s men to represent their ability to protect their bride to be. In contrast, brides select bride’s mates to compliment their beauty. This is an archaic tradition founded in a patriarchal ideology that I cannot support. My side of the court will be the friends and family that I wish to be there to publicly support me in the ceremony.

3. Neither of our families will give us away. If I marry, it will be because another person and I, as autonomous individuals, decided to commit to each other. Not because our families found our union economically, politically, or socially advantageous.

4. In wedding ceremonies, as well as in art, women are commonly portrayed as passive objects of beauty and men as the able actors. One of the clearest manifestations of this is the common phrase, “You may kiss the bride.” Since the man is the actor it therefore falls upon him to complete the necessary action. At my wedding, we will kiss each other.

5. Either both of us wear white or neither of us wears white. Traditionally, the bride’s white dress symbolizes her purity. However, neither purity nor a symbol of purity is required of the groom. Though the reason for this double standard is clear few ever take a moment to think about it. Traditionally a bride’s value is dependent on her beauty. If her virginity has been compromised then it is held that her beauty is as well. Since a groom’s value has been traditionally placed on his strength, his virginity is not a major concern (though more often then not a man’s experienced in sex is held with greater stature) and therefore must not be symbolized in the ceremony. Virginity is a social construct that has been used to oppress women and has no inherent value outside of that which we place on it; there is no physical state of virginity.

6. Any suggestions?

Para la liberación,
Mateo

what it means to "love"

2009-07-27T13:22:00.001-07:00

love is all you need.

love is the answer.

god is love.

love god, love people.

love is greater than hate.

love is patient, love is kind . . .

love conquers all.

there are so many little maxims and expressions about love. most people will accept that love is the ultimate goal, that love leads to the right actions and decisions. okay, maybe not most people. but Christians tend to be pretty fond of the concept, and a good majority of the people i run into fit this qualification. and this sort of surprises me, because so many of those people have radically different views than i do. we both start with this abstract ideal of "love" and end up in totally different places.

for example, someone very close to me believes that all people deserve respect. when kids make jokes about undesireable things being "gay" or "fag" jokes, it makes her angry because the kids are not being respectful towards people, people who happen to be gay. she thinks it is very important to view people as people before anything else, and then that all sin is equal, etc. etc. but she voted yes on Prop 8. this whole situation confuses me so much because i constantly am thinking "if only we can get the christians to see the LGBT community as people just like them, things will change, they will understand. only someone who sees the gays as the gathering storm would vote yes on Prop 8." but i'm totally wrong. this woman who believes so strongly in similar ideals as i do - respect for everyone, love towards all - believes that love means not supporting something that is harmful. she thinks homosexuality is harmful. so she feels that out of love, she cannot support validating something that harms people. the same way she would never support legalizing heroine - it is harmful to those who use it.

and all i can do it cry. and pull out my hair. and beg and plead with her to think about what she is saying, think about how much she knows all people deserve love and respect. things that seem to be gaping contradictions to me flow perfectly together for her. there is no arguing, there will be no persuading. she must love people, nothing can change that. and all i can do is cry.

sometimes i think our cause is so valiant. here we are marching for dignity, equality, and respect, waving the banner of love and acceptance for all people. but perception is everything. apparently that is exactly how the other side sees themselves.

in the end, rhetoric is worthless. perhaps experience really is everything. we are not drawn together by being convinced we are wrong, by being told we are hateful. we are drawn together by common experience, and by common humanity. sometimes the horizon seems to bleak.

i cry for the blood of children spilled because of the "love" their parents showed them. i cry, and then cry more because i have never shed tears alone in the dark because no one knows who i am and if they did they would hate me. i cry because i don't know if i even have the capacity to love someone forever, and meanwhile those who have loved and been faithful to each other for decades cannot hold up their lives and teach the young how to love. they cannot show children who grow up in a world of individualism and selfishness and faithlessness what it means to work for something worth working for. rather we hold up examples of celebrities, pop stars, and divorced christian parents, and say good luck kids.

i do not know what it means to really love. but ill spend my whole life trying to find out. sometimes, i think it means just sitting with each other and crying. and i'll be crying my whole life, too.

-abbie cirelli

The Importance of Writing

2009-07-21T10:58:00.000-07:00

Why have we allowed writing to become nothing more than an assignment? Do we have nothing to say? To we think that our words our not important enough for others to read them?

I believe that we should take out our pens, pencils, and laptops to just write. Write poetry, short stories, and novels. Express ourselves with incomplete sentences, page long paragraphs, and Spanglish. Whether it be in a private journal or a public blog we need to make the time to just write. We cannot allow our professors and school administrators to control what we write about and when we write it. We need to use our autonomy to express our unique perspectives in our unique voices.

In writing we enter into community without loosing our individuality. With words we can change our realities. With words we can change the world. These are my thoughts; what are yours?

Para la liberación,

Mateo

Question?

2009-07-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

I am currently working with a program by the name of UrbanPromise. For the past month I have been living and working in Camden, NJ. You drive through the city and you see little hope…

One of the leaders that I quickly befriended while being in Camden asked me, “If I were to write a dissertation on what you have experienced so far this past month, how would it begin?” I quickly responded with, “We are all products of our environment.”

Even now I see the holes in that statement. With looking at the environment that they live in I feel as if I rob them of opportunities…of dreams by saying that…I set limitations…I judge… that they won’t succeed….

Well my friend said something very encouraging to me. Since I have been here I have been in an awkward position thinking about what I should teach my students and then struggling with who am I to say that I know what they need to know. What he told me made me realize that there are some things I can learn from them but there are also certain things I can expose them to. Not necessarily saying that what I claim to “know” is right but more of opening the door to things that they would not have been exposed to and letting them make their own decisions…

From there I realized that maybe what we are given in life does not always determine where we can go and who we are…

As I continue to think about this I was wondering what your thoughts were. Do you disagree or agree with the statement that I made about people being the product of their environment?

Freedom♥

Kameale

Words of Hate

2009-07-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

The article that accompanied this video click here.

I do not understand. How could a person do something like this? How can those who use their rhetoric to dehumanize minorities continue to claim no part in these atrocities?

Words construct our realities! German Arians did not go from accepting their Jewish neighbors to systematically killing them over night. It took months upon months of dehumanization, via rhetoric, before they could justify such an appalling crime against humans. The same was true in Rwanda. It took day, after day of radio broadcasts disrespecting the humanity of the Tutsis before the Hutu mobs could justify chopping them down with machete’s. Hate crimes begin with words.

The FBI has reported a 40% rise in hate crimes against Latina/os since 2003. The FBI also reports that 62% of all hate crimes are targeted at Latina/os. This should be no surprise. As our economy is steadily declining it is becoming more and more acceptable to proclaim hate against Latina/os under the guise of critiquing immigration policy.

Just like in Germany a failing economy is what is being used to justify the verbal dehumanization of Latina/o migrants. In both these images you see these groups depicted unjustly taking the money of the nation for themselves in a time of economic crises. It is also important to note that much Nazi propaganda also depicted Jews as dirty, disease-infected rats.

Posters declaring the United States under “invasion” of Latina/os in effect declare all those who act against these “invaders” patriots. Why then are we surprised when we see that all over the country individuals are committing hate crimes targeting those who share the physical characteristics of the “invaders?”

Dehumanization of Latina/os in not just occurring on the Internet, on T.V., and at protests but also in one on one conversation. Every time a person laughs at a “beaner” joke they are encouraging that the person that made the joke, as well as everyone that heard it, continue to dehumanize Latina/os in their rhetoric. And though some may think that the act of staying silent when such jokes are said shoes disagreement with the joke, they are grossly mistaken. Silence, i.e., neutrality, ensures that the status quo of dehumanization continues. Only speaking out against such words works to end their power to oppress.

We must not just speak out against racial slurs; we must also become more vocal of our beliefs surrounding the topic of immigration and U.S. policy. This is where the deepest held racist beliefs are often allowed to fester unchallenged and so it is hear that we must be the most willing to speak up. Immigration policy is not about numbers and charts, it is about families and human lives. In re-humanizing the conversation, we act directly against those that have used the topic to justify them spewing their hate through bullhorns since the founding of this nation.

Para la liberación,

Mateo

The Veil of Equality

2009-07-19T14:00:00.000-07:00

The morning after Senator Barack Hussein Obama’s historical victory over Senator John Sidney McCain the New York Times’ headline declared, “Racial barrier falls in heavy turnout.” I wonder what the person that wrote that headline would think of the broadcast posted above? Racial barrier falls? Did they bother to look at the racial demographics of Congress, Universities, or Prisons? As Obama stated in his speech to the NAACP on Thursday, “There’s probably never been less discrimination in America than there is today.” Racial barriers, as well as barriers drawn along gender lines or sexual orientation, are still strong. This headline, along with every other statement alluding to the “end of racism and discrimination” are nothing more than manifestations of the veil of equality we must work to tear town.

This veil has a long history in the United States and around the world. Its purpose is to give the notion of equality, and in doing so protect the oppressive status quo. The truth is that we are far from reaching an era of equality and if we ever wish to achieve it we must take on a new methodology. We have been fooled into accepting the veil as reality. Instead of working to bring true long lasting change, many of us have fallen into the trap of decorating the veil.

Our strategy, like that of the oppressor, has worked to make our peoples content with their condition instead of inspiring them to question it and rise against the unjust society we operate within. Many movement leaders have fought for statues to be built in public spaces, scraps to be given to our starving neighbors, and annual celebrations in honor of heroes such as César Chávez, Martin Luther King Jr., José Martí, and Malcolm X. These “accomplishments” amount to nothing more than distractions, decorations on the veil of equality that covers the realities of our unjust society.

If we truly want to celebrate the lives of our heroes we must do it with daily action to liberate our peoples. We must introduce ourselves to our neighbors; support those in our community who are in need; educate each other in the realities of human history; and empower each other with love, commitment, and knowledge. Instead, we build statues of our leaders in the centers of our communities and wait silently for the day that they will rise again to lead us into salvation. We allow ourselves to be paralyzed by an unending reflection on past accomplishments. They are dead and will never rise again. We must rise to lead our communities. We must act to liberate ourselves and our neighbors.

One example of this is the national movement to establish a federal holiday in honor of César Chávez. I truly respect César and the work he did for his community but i must ask myself, “Would César want us to commit ourselves to such a trivial matter with minority teen pregnancies and drop out rates where they stand?” Looking to the life of action he lived the answer seems to be no.

Let us imagine for a second that a national holiday is declared in honor of César. A day off of school accomplishes nothing. Instead of bringing about change, such an action only gives the perception of change. The struggles of the Latina/o community lie in teen pregnancy rates, unequal education, high dropout rates, high level of representation in the prison system, discriminatory policy, and unjust immigration policy. A national holiday does nothing to solve any of these problems while its pursuit is distracting individuals and their money from working to truly advance our community.

It is of the utmost importance that we consider whether our actions are bringing about change or only giving the perception of change, since such perceptions strengthen the chains we bear. By decorating the instruments of our oppression with flowers, we fail to challenge the injustice that they are the manifestations of, make oppression more bearable, and consequently make it less likely for our people to consider the actions necessary to achieve liberation desirable. We must take on a new methodology. Equality will not be achieved until we rip down the veil of equality and show our peoples the true state of our condition.

Para la liberación,

Mateo

From the diary of an oppressor... "Fuck a Revolution"

2009-07-15T19:14:00.000-07:00

Though it has been a year since I came upon this poem I find myself regularly coming back to it. There are so many revolutionaries out there claiming to desire “radical change.” From street corners to coffee shops they claim to be in the struggle for justice. With their fingers pointing out they list off all the restaurants, clothing companies, and governments that are oppressing individuals around the world.

These revolutionaries are quick to critique the actions of others but slow to admit their own involvement in the oppressive system we live in. As Da’ Shade says, “No one is innocent, we all carry the burden of guilt, we oppress each other daily.” These revolutionaries stand on the soapbox of “unity,” yelling through the bullhorn of “change” only to use their words to discredit the struggles of others in an attempt to monopolize their own. As if “the struggle [was] solely theirs” they are quick to mention why they are the only true revolution. Their hypocritical actions undermine whatever truth is buried in their long, eloquent speeches.

What they do not understand is that “we are all connected by our struggle.” All our communities, from the most oppressive to the most marginalized are tied together. Injustice is a venom that poisons the hearts and minds of each individual member of a society. The debate whether its effects are most clearly seen in the environment, racial lines, gender lines, or class divisions should not distract us from working towards a cure.

As we pursue a solution we must not be mislead to believe that there is a simple answer to this complicated situation. We must read our histories honestly. We must not fall into the trap of seeking out scapegoats. Our goal should not be to punish, but to liberate. Change will not come by taking down a white oppressor only to replace them with a brown one. Change will come when we turn our ears to the song of justice and begin to create a new system that brings forth an era of liberation for all.

Why have we internalized the lie that there must always be a winner and a looser? Why do we work to elevate our movements at the expense of others? It is my belief that we have given in to the lies of the vultures. Those within and without us who wish to protect the status quo. These forces, sometimes manifesting themselves in the actions of government officials and other times in our own thoughts must be brought into the light. This is the only way that we can bring forth an honest system, a system that does not dehumanize its members.

To do this we me must analyze our actions, non-actions, rhetoric, and the situations in which we have failed to speak. There lies the most basic manifestations of oppression and it is therefore where we should begin our revolution of liberation. Stand up first to the oppressor within. Once our hearts are free we will never again take upon ourselves the shackles of the oppressor.

-Mateo

Speak.

2009-07-08T22:27:00.000-07:00

I was going to start off with maybe

But today I am going to take command of the audience

I’ll stand on my soap box

And keep my ear to the streets

I’ll speak what they whisper when ain’t no body is around

Today I’ll tell you what my children cry about at night

Tears that concrete faces deny them from shedding

because they were taught that respect lingers in others fears

so these are the tears

that keep the grass growing in the grave yards

Because here at 6^th N Ferry

Nobody ever sleeps peacefully

the dead walks with the living

With crack bags and pistols

Waving stacks of dollar bills

To lure the children into thinking dirty money will last

not knowing the pigs will take half

of Your stack or your life

serving 15 to 20 in the grown up Pen at 16

while they go and purchase bigger houses with ur cash

SO YES

Today I am going to take command

Of the crowd

Who I will refer to as The People

Because we have written ourselves into the

Documents that once denied us

so "We The People" means more than what they could have imagined

I will tell The People what We already know

But have been forbidden to speak; to think; to dream up

And from my mouth will escape their words

And we will curse the heavens

For the shit that has been done to us

And ask God where He was when that one girl was shot

Or where He was when momma had to go down to the truck stops

But we will gratefully thank him for his mercy upon us because our sins are countless and

We will thank him for The food that somehow made it to our tables today….

Today we will take command of the crowd

The babies will rise up and speak

in tongues only understand by The People

who have been convinced that Dreams are Illegal in the Ghettos

The babies will speak

Of stories that mimic the lives of

Refugees and veterans, of POW's, citizens of 3rd world countries

They will spit

to the beat Of the gunshot rhythm of the pistols

That they carry in their diapers....

And somehow between babies speaking, me crying, and the people yelling

I figure that we will be rescued

Because if someone sees this they will care

their ears will be convicted to listen and there body to move in a way that will change

our conditions

They will care enough to rescue us from what they put us into

They will care enough...

so we wait.

Freedom♥

--Kameale Terry

I have always been convinced that those who are privileged will never rescue the poor. However, I am also starting to see that sometimes we are taught to wait to be rescued. Such as waiting on the government to give us things, change things for the better. But what I have learned is that once you rely upon those who are ignorant to your experiences and can not understand why drug dealing will beat out starvation on any day, you begin to hope for something that is not fathomable. I believe that The People must rally their selves and not be convinced that a rescuing boat is coming....

numbers

2009-06-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

people are not numbers
don’t reduce
my friends to math
my brothers and sisters
to clicks on a keyboard
they are people, living and breathing.
I stand against this blasphemy.

Recocnize individuality
not insignificance
it’s about spirituality
not statistics . . .
everyone has a face
and everyone has a word
we must shout it from
the mountain tops
let it be heard, let it be heard -
all these people have voices
don’t you silence them with
your scribbles
on the paper of the numbers
you want them to become
so that we’ll all disappear
and the whole world will
be numb.

We cannot stand by
and comply
with the wishes of the
calculator and the spreadsheet
and the corporations and the congress
who all want to steal our souls
who all want us to become
nothing more than
a click and a clack
into a datasheet, dead to the world.

I refuse to go down without a fight
My sisters, my brothers
Stand to your feet
We can’t let them take it from us
if we only stand together
living every second
breathing every breath
like his face, her voice
are all tellers of their story
and this story keeps on going . . . and going
it’s the story of humanity
its why its so important
that we don’t black out the faces
and we don’t block out the voices

not just figures and data -
the currency you deal in is flesh and blood
yet we are all of the same flesh and blood
we all cry the same tears
we sweat the same salt
but how dare you smear it all together
into groups and charts
that exist only in your blackberry
in the pocket of your suit

no -
the space where any child of god draws a breath
is sacred

I stand against this blasphemy.
this urge to conquer, name, perscribe
this need to seperate the cause and effect,
the bombs and the broken
the laws and the lovers
the bottomline and the barely surviving
the fences and the families
blasphemy is disassembling the world
making it what you want,
you fancy yourself gods

How dare you ignore what makes us all the same
we’re all living and breathing and loving and dying

everyone has a name
and every name has a story
and every story has a voice
Don’t ignore this valuable reality,
don’t ignore this essential choice -
to tell one's story as one knows it.

people are not numbers
don’t reduce us down
to numbers on a paper
that will perish in the jaws
of an office paper shrewder somewhere,
adulterated, used, dirty.

cause everyone has a chance to let someone
tell their story
and that’s why its so important

to not black out the faces

and not block out the voices.

From the diary of an oppressor by: Mateo González Regueiro

2009-06-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

As a white Cuban-American I am a privileged oppressor. My material wealth, the way I speak, even my ability to record these thoughts in the form of written words are all manifestations of the oppressive system in which I function and that my family has helped perpetuate. These are facts. I cannot change the past, but I can work to know it. Looking to history, and the present, it is clear that we all function in a power hierarchy that is founded on oppression. Though not every human is guilty of oppression, any honest look at our human societies will show that the vast majority of us are. Around the world different peoples oppress others; light skinned peoples oppress darker skinned peoples, darker skinned peoples oppress those with lighter skin, wealthy oppress the poor, men oppress women, adults oppress children, peoples from cities and suburbs oppress those from the country.

Although we are born at different levels in this system, we all function within it. These are facts, not excuses. The oppressive actions of others do not negate the oppressiveness of our own lifestyle, and vice versa. Oppression of another, or even of oneself, is inherently unjust and as such should be challenged wherever it is manifest. As Martin Luther King Jr. observed, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” If we truly wish to see justice flourish, we must speak out against all oppressive actions. This not only entails speaking out against racist and sexist policy, but also speaking up to our families and friends when they act in ways that perpetuate this unjust system.

The present state of human society has been molded by the actions of our ancestors and in the same manner can be transformed by us. As Paulo Freire writes in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, “Just as objective social reality exists not by chance, but as the product of human action, so it is not transformed by chance.” The responsibility to transform our societies therefore falls upon us, and our decedents.

It is first and foremost crucial that we begin by looking to how we directly and indirectly oppress others. To achieve this we must look to our rhetoric, our actions, and even our non-actions (since the status quo functions on the oppression of others, not acting against it ensures its continual existence, i.e., ensures the continuance of oppression).

Secondly, we must act. As Paolo notes, “Discovering [oneself] to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed. True solidarity with the oppressed means fighting at their side to transform the objective reality.” Though anguish may do much to change our perspective of society, it does nothing to change the objective reality of oppression. A person awakened to their oppressive lifestyle must begin by purging themselves from oppressive actions. Whether this be not buying clothing that is made in sweatshops, not making racist/sexist jokes, or not laughing at those who do one must work to end their involvement in oppressing others. Although this is a life long process, it must be the first action step we take.

From here it is important that we act to end the oppressive actions of our community (by community I mean family, friends, co-workers, the churches and schools we attends, etc.). It is much easier for a person of privilege (which by now I hope it has been made clear that this is all of us) to “step down” and give a “lending hand,” via mission trips or volunteer work, then it is to speak out against the oppressive actions of one’s community. In going to “serve” those outside of our community the worst we can fear is the rejection of our “helping hand.” At home we risk being ostracized by the few people in the world who have ever loved us; this makes protesting Prop 8 in West Hollywood much easier than speaking against the unjust treatment of homosexuals at home.

Malcolm X noted the tendency of oppressors to find an easy way to “salve their conscious” by joining black organizations. He wrote, “By visibly hovering near us, they are ‘proving’ that they are ‘with us.’ But the hard truth is this isn’t helping to solve America’s racist problem. The Negroes aren’t the racists. Where the really sincere white people have got to do their ‘proving’ of themselves is not among the black victims, but out on the battle lines of where America’s racism really is and that’s in their own home communities.” It is our communities that are the source of oppression and it is therefore in our communities that we should work to end oppression. Though this process is admittedly long, the longer it takes to change individuals and systems the harder it is for them to be changed back.

These are the steps that must be taken if we truly hope to purge our society of the injustice of oppression. The above-mentioned actions are not the only necessary steps but I truly believe they are the first three. We must strive to consistently speak out against all oppression, no matter who the oppressor may be. Whether it is a church, a university, a family member, a friend, or even ourselves we must not sit idle by as our societies continue their oppression.

In the arms of trees by: Mateo González Regueiro

2009-06-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Free leaf sailing through the air,
Follow the wind; release your cares.
Enjoy the sun on this clear day.
Soon you will fall to the earth and rot away.

Today you have been freed from the chains of your tree.
So fly through the sky.
Sing for joy.
Ride the breeze.

Chances like these don’t come to all.
Some leaves rot, long before they fall.
Drained, curled, and brown, they are thrown to the ground.
Used by a tree and by a tree thrown down.

Never do these leaves sail through the air
that offers liberation from jealous trees.
Never do they experience a life free of the chains
That have not been loosened since the day they were named.

We are all leaves.
Not all of us our free.
Some live encaged,
In the arms of trees.

We Would Like You to Know

2009-06-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

a poem by Ana Castillo

We would like you to know
we are not all
docile
nor revolutionaries
but we are all survivors.
We do not all carry zip guns, hot pistols,
steal cars.
We do know how
to defend ourselves.

We do not all have
slicked-back hair
distasteful apparel
unpolished shoes
although the economy
doesn't allow everyone
a Macy's charge card.

We do not all pick
lettuce, run
assembly lines, clean
restaurant tables, even
if someone has to do it.

We do not all sneak
under barbed wire or
wade the Rio Grande.

These are the facts.
We would like you to know
we are not all brown.
Genetic history has made some us blue-eyed as any
German immigrant
and as black as a descendant
of an African slave.
We never claimed to be
a homogeneous race.

We are not all victims,
all loyal to one cause,
all perfect; it is a
psychological dilemna
no one has resolved.

We would like to give
a thousand excuses
as to why we find ourselves in a predicament
residents of a controversial
power
how we were all caught
with our pants down
and how petroleum was going
to change all that but
you've heard it all before and
with a wink and a snicker
left us babbling amongst
ourselves.

We would like you to know
guilt or apologetic gestures
won't revive the dead
redistribute the land
or natural resources.

We are left
with one final resolution
in our own predestined way,
we are going forward.
There is no going back.

(posted by Rod)

Sexual Education at APU By: Mateo González Regueiro

2009-05-31T01:13:00.000-07:00

College is a time in which we as students are taken out of the world our parents, family, and friends have constructed around us and learn of the world outside. In this time we are meant to transcend above the cultural mores and ignorance of our tribes by gaining a more holistic and objective understanding or ourselves and the world in which we live. One topic that is taboo in our society and often never to be spoken of in Christian families is human sexuality. As a person who grew up in the public school system and has had the opportunity of attending a public and private/Christian university I am very surprised to see that the mandatory textbook for Health does not include one chapter exploring the topics that revolve around sex. I was also surprised to find that the student health center refuses to provide condoms for students and that section 10.1 of the student handbook states that “students who engage in unmarried sexual behavior will be subject to disciplinary process.” So even if the Student Health center did provide condoms, students would be disciplined for requesting a pack. These policies stand as one of the clearest examples of the disconnectedness between APU’s administration, the student body, and the real world that cannot be kept outside of the APU bubble.

As a student, these facts concern me. The administration’s unwillingness to accept their students are engaging in sexual activities, and their refusal to take the responsibility to educate students in all the realities of life is a mistake that is having devastating consequences on members of the APU community. Having been at a public college and a private Christian university I can tell you that I have the same amount of friends that are sexually active here at APU as I did at Fullerton College. A difference that does exist between here and Fullerton is the ignorance of the complexities of human sexuality and sexual relations. I have spoken with girls at this university who believe they can get pregnant during oral sex. Others believe that a condom is not necessary if the man pulls out before he ejaculates. Still others have been made to believe that sex is something for the man’s enjoyment and it is the job of the woman to make sure that the man feels satisfied. These cases, alongside the overwhelming amount of research that has been done in the areas of contraceptives and sexual violence against women make clear the need for APU to commit itself to properly educating students on their sexuality, the complexities of responsible sex, and the realities of rape.

Studies by governmental and non-governmental organizations such as the American Public Health Association have shown the United States to have the highest rate of adolescent pregnancies in the post-industrial world. This comes at no surprise when one considers that the United States government is also the leading investor of abstinence education and has a median age at first intercourse of 17. In contrast, the Netherlands boasts the most comprehensive sexual education program in the western world as well as the lowest teenage pregnancy rate. These numbers are no coincidence, American adolescence and young adults are beginning to have sexual relations at the age of 17 free of an adequate sexual educated, purely because those in power refuse to come to terms with the facts. How can this Christian university shame woman who choose to have abortions, while at the same time refuse to provide them with contraceptives or educate them in the importance of having sex responsibly? To bring down abortion rates, we must bring down the rate of unwanted pregnancies. As shown by the evidence, this can be achieved not by spending millions of dollars on abstinence education (the US model) but by educating individuals in the complexities of responsible sexual relations and providing them with contraceptives (the Dutch model).

Unwanted pregnancy is not the only harm that an extensive sexual education program can prevent. Research by the Department of Health and Human Services Center for Disease Control and Prevention suggested that more than 302,091 women are raped each year in the United States. The same survey also estimates that one in six women have been the victims of rape at some point in their lifetime. In 2000 Congress was finally moved to act on these numbers and passed the Violence Against Women Act. This act is founded upon the importance of educating women and men of the realities of rape by a stranger, by a significant other, and by husbands. I know women that have been raped by men on this campus, many of which have stayed in a relationship with these men because they have accepted the lie that sex is for the man, not the woman. Told that if sexual activities ever get out of hand it is the woman’s fault for ‘asking for it.’

These lies must end now! One woman being raped on this campus is too many, and I am appalled that this administration continues to ignore this reality for the sake of protecting their view of the student body as their innocent children. The words on this page are nothing more than a sample of the reality that APU students face daily and will continue to face after they graduate. It is the responsibility of this university to educate us in the realities of this world so that we can face them appropriately.