La Teatrista

Voices of the 99%: Dear Mayor Bloomberg

2011-10-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Mayor Bloomberg,

As you have created new regulations to protect the interestsof your political alliances and not your citizens, we urge you to seriouslyconsider the aftermath of what is going to be your own undoing. It is clear and evident you are part of thenation’s percentage that is pinning Americans under their knees like the NYPDon peaceful demonstrators. The government which you serve haseconomically exploited, unlawfully criminalized, and unjustly marginalizedAmericans for too long. Whether you like it or not, this Occupying Movement isthe true democracy of our time.

From reporters, lawyers, elderly, minors , legal immigrants,homeless, students, workers, labor unions, educators, nurses and more are all the contributingcitizens in this demonstration. Your baton bashing, dishonest enforcements have pushed the frustration with your unethicalpolitics beyond a breaking point into a solidified resolve among your NewYorkers. Cities across the nation are organizingand uniting in efforts to bring awareness and call for reform peacefully,transparently with collaborative consensus, community, and consciousness. Thesecitizens are a mirror of the first American Revolution, now emerging in this new century.

We urge you to listen. We urge you to have dialog with yourcitizens to discuss the reform that this country is urgently due. Your dismissal of the message with patronizingactions and words only highlight the true interests of your ambitions. Your interests are not with the majority of tax-payingcitizens living in the city which you serve. These peaceful demonstrators from all walks of life have joined to makea stronger voice to change a nation in the interest of all, to reclaim prideand no longer assume the role of victims to violent and salient profit-mongering,social injustice, policing of our rights.

Criminalizing this movement will not be in your bestinterest, Mr. Bloomberg. Do not attemptto sweep away a national outcry. The founders ofthis nation instituted the right for free assembly. Do not infringe on our rights. Like a child abuser trying to snuff the noiseof the abused, you are choosing to muzzle the abused Americans of your city. Thenoise you are trying to prevent will only get louder. The world is watching.

Sincerely,

Claudia Acosta

Voices of the 99%: Echoes from Brooklyn Bridge

2011-10-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

For all those who were suspended onthat concrete slab over a river, The of Battle of Brooklyn Bridge left animprint in our memory. The media thatevening had difficulty assessing who the specific group was that took themovement to the bridge and unsurprisingly held up the Police statement beforeanyone else’s on that bridge. There are seven-hundred stories. Seven-hundred accountsof that day, seven hundred voices that all were there for a reason and werearrested. Seven-hundred New Yorkers took a stand, here is one of them.

“My name is Dion Mucciaccito and Iam an Actor, Director, a teaching artist, and activist for at risk youth / inner city youth. I have worked as a teaching artist,teaching self empowerment through the arts, in New York,New Orleans, South Africa, San Diego, and South Florida. I was part of the Battle of Brooklyn Bridgeon Oct 1st. This is my witnessing of the events.

We were marching towards theBrooklyn Bridge. I started walking on the pedestrian lane somewhere in themiddle of the march. I looked over to my right and saw white collaredpolice officers in a line walking in the direction of Brooklynon the street portion of the bridge in front of the arm of the march thatstarted going down that way. From my perception, it seemed that thepolice were going to escort us across the bridge. So, I joined them.

As we marched across, we noticedPolice were also marching behind us. Then the march stopped as we werebarricaded from the front, and the back. A panic then surged through thecrowd and people started to climb the fifteen foot wall to the pedestrian walkway. A girl next to me started to cry. Two women in their fiftieswere next to me and were very worried about what was going to happennext. We linked up arms and exchanged names as we were completestrangers. It then seemed that the police were letting people leave in abottle neck that they created in the back of the march where I was. Iasked the two women I was linked up with if they wanted to leave, and they said"yes." We tried to make our way to the choke point, but made noprogress.

I later found out from my arrestingofficer that there were individuals in the choke point that refused to move,when given the choice to leave, which gave the police the ok to start arrestingpeople for disorderly conduct. There was a monk in his sixties who satdown to meditate in peaceful protest, and was dragged off. I would latershare a jail cell with this man. Many people sat and had to be carriedout. I was singled out and ordered to come out to be arrested. I was cuffed andput in a police paddy wagon along with nine others. My arresting officer was anextreme gentle man and very courteous and communicated with me in a very civilway. There was no excessive force by this man, and I found him to be quitecompassionate and had a good sense of humor about things. I wish there weremore like him.

I was one of the first fifteen orso people to be arrested in the back of the protest. There were ten of usin the back of the paddy wagon, all cuffed with hands behind our back, sweatingit out as we waited in the dark. The guy next to me had to urinate andwas not allowed to do so until forty-five minutes later after we had arrived atthe station and the first van had been processed. The guy across from mehad a previous rotator cuff injury and was in a good deal of pain with thecuffs behind his back.

After an hour of waiting in therain with the police officers, I was finally brought inside to be processed. Iwas put into a big holding cell with about twenty others. Within twohours we had one-hundred men in the cell. As each new man came in, theywere greeted with a standing ovation and cheers. The women being broughtto their cells were also applauded as we could see them through the window ofour cell. Immediately strangers became friends and this motley crew ofmixed races, classes, sexual orientations, and ages started engaging each otherin dialog about democracy and solidarity with each other.

There was an African AmericanPastor from a Brooklyn church there, and was the first one arrested, because he"couldn't, as a man of faith, stand by and watch people behurt." The Monk in his sixties who was earlier arrested whilemeditating had no ID on him, and was told that he might be kept for threedays. The group then voted to see if they wanted to go on a hunger striketo get him out. Those that agreed did not eat the peanut butter and jelly sandwichesand milk that was provided. Those that did not, ate the food.

I found myself serving as the guywho pours the water for people. They brought in two big five gallon jugsof water with cups. These are heavy so we needed to have one person pour whilethe other person holds the cup. This became my service for the next fivehours, which I gladly did.

I was released at 12:45 out of 1police plaza, and then proceeded to call all of my family and friends that wereworried about me. I made it home by 2:30 am.”

How did this community becomecriminals? A teaching artist, a Pastor, a monk where processed ascriminals. This response from the NYPDto the prior march on Police Plaza, proved to be ineffectual. It only created deeper bonds within theprotesters. It only made the reason forresistance stronger.

The day following the event, Dionfriended me on Facebook after seeing my videos and posts. I was still reelingfrom it all. I had to share my experience with someone since I had gone alone.In an effort to piece together this event, I asked for stories and I discoveredI must have been only a few feet from Dion. The monk he spoke of was right in front of me. We were connected.

Anotherprotester, Danny Valdez, described the most vivid part of the memory,

"Iremember during the intense moments on the bridge when we all knew arrest wasimminent someone yelled out and we repeated: “Mic check! It is an honor and aprivilege to be arrested with you all today. Fifty years from now, when youtell your grandkids about this, you can say that you were a soldier in theBattle of the Brooklyn Bridge!” And there among the tears and the worries andthe panic, we found a place to cheer and stand together."

WhenI read this in the account he wrote for Indypendant,I posted it on my wall. Edward Pages, I had previously quoted in my lastletter, also a new Facebook addition as a result of this event, replied, “Thatwas me!”. He is forever remembered.Though we are all still strangers, we have an unforgettable bond. Unfortunately, this spirited arrest was notthe same experience for everybody.

Imarched this past October 5th for the Community Labor March. The day New Yorkbroke open and swelled into a true picture of democracy that hasn’t been seenin decades. Again, I fly solo trying tomaybe meet up with friends but in the sea of people I found myself floating withthem. There was an indescribable joy and fervor. As the spirit and mass movement encouraged, Istarted conversations with fellow protesters and began talking with a manbehind me. He was older, large, heavyset and Polish. He was also there at theBridge. John was held for thirty hours only given milk and no water. As we marched on, I got his information.

The Voices of the 99% will be documented. Thesestories will offer truthful accounts and perspectives of a new movement toinspire dialog in a now rapidly changing America for observers abroad. There ispower. Change is possible. For more information and access tothe declaration go to: OccupyWallSt.org

Voices of the 99%: Battle at Brooklyn Bridge

2011-10-07T12:59:00.000-07:00

“As I was getting walked into the police bus, I told a cop that he too is in the ninety-nine percent and they rich don’t care about him either. His exact response to me was, ‘I know but it’s the NYPD, common sense is not a common virtue’ ” -Edward Pages Age 30 Cinematographer.

What started as a wondrous and promising event on Saturday afternoon that reverberated through the financial district from Liberty Park to Brooklyn Bridge, ended with an even louder cause for the reprimand of the one percent currently in control of the United States economy and law. Thousands of protesters marched up Broadway demonstrating peacefully with energy and spirit, a unified voice to demand attention from the nation as the ninety-nine percent. Together, these Americans painted a vibrant portrait of the ninety-nine percent from all colors, ages, cultures, backgrounds, occupations and walks of life including children, students, and the elderly. By the time the sun went down, reports of seven-hundred Americans were arrested for allegedly disrupting the peace and obstructing traffic.

After two weeks of building awareness and organized sustainability, the Occupy Wall Street movement reached another peak in its momentum to demand accountability for the corporate rape of America. The Declaration of the Occupation approved by the consensus on September 29^th was drafted twelve days after the first demonstrations which resulted in arrests and evidence of excessive force used by New York Police.

“As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known. ”

Twenty facts where addressed in the new Declaration mirroring the same structure and effort of the original Declaration of Independence. This is a powerful symbol, clearly suggesting a new era after two-hundred and thirty-five years since the country’s first revolution. The Declaration identified corporate impunities, discrimination, worker’s rights, environmental crimes, profit-mongering, torture, murder, brutality and healthcare issues among others.

I witnessed the announcement of the Declaration in the General Assembly broadcast via the people’s microphone. A powerful call and response method for amplification of speeches through people’s voices not only used to comply with NYPD regulations, but to embody the message of the protest with the collective use of voices. Participating as a voice, gave me pride as an American like I never felt before.

The event that preceded Saturday’s chaos was momentous, the largest gathering in support of Occupy Wall St. With tremendous clamor, the assembly before the march warmly received the presence and public support from New York’s Transit Workers Union Local, the SEIU (Service Employees International Union). The March Against Police Brutality was an invigorating message to the NYPD that their tactics were unlawful and their actions needed to be held accountable. Almost three thousand demonstrators sat down on One Police Plaza in front of armed and riot geared wall of officers with waves of speeches filling the plaza. The assembly met their agenda and dispersed peacefully. Based on the following day’s event, the NYPD actions were a clear and planned response.

This is my account.

At three pm the large assembly gathered and made their way to Brooklyn Bridge. I was at the back of the march. I attended alone, but felt peaceful and safe among my unfamiliar marchers. The police were watchful and respectful of the protesters making sure we were staying on the sidewalks. When the end of the train finally arrived at the base of the bridge, there seemed to be a split. A trail of our train went onto the pedestrian walkway, we continued on the road. As the road descended, some scaled the fence to join others on the walkway. The majority continued onto the road. We walked by police and they said nothing. The wall of police behind us kept distance and followed us. They said nothing. The march stopped. There was an uproar to keep marching, but the frontline communicated chants that echoed and reached us in a wave. It was clear the police had blocked the frontline. The crowd spread and filled the entire road from one side to another. No cars were able to pass, we were stalled.

Officers were advancing when next to me, a man in orange quietly sat down crossed his legs with his sign in his lap, closed his eyes and exhaled. In an instant, this powerful and peaceful gesture charged me with emotion. I moved forward, my legs drawn to join him, but before I could make a solid decision, police officers descended on him. I backed away and began recording the arrest with my phone. Six officers surrounded him and we cried “Let him go!” We chanted, “He did nothing!”. A high ranking officer waved over the other officers in his command. With that, I stopped my camera, knowing what was coming.

Trucks drove up. The fast approaching officers were clearly prepared with dozens of zip-cuffs on their belts. The orange nets were being carried in and I kept close to the side of the bridge. A few others began to leave and I slowly walked away. Once I felt that they were not going to stop me, I gained speed. I made eye contact with one Officer, who only replied with shaking his head. Officers yelled at us to keep moving. I was lucky, but I have this residue of mixed emotions of relief and guilt with anger and frustration having watched my fellow protesters trapped on the bridge.

People who made it back to the Manhattan entrance were told to disperse by police. It was comforting to be able to approach complete strangers I marched with to debrief, consult and share. In our shared eye contact, moments of true solidarity and support was felt in ripples. A group re-convened at the base of the bridge and confronted police with calling out names they captured of the arrested. Finally, I found friends that were on the pedestrian level. They noted that police had threatened them to disperse or face arrest. They were witnesses with cameras recording all what had unfolded below. What was certain by the majority who where there: police led the group onto the bridge, giving the impression they were offering protection when indeed they planned to kettle the protesters.

These unlawful arrests and the entrapment ordered only fueled a stronger solidarity. Media attention from major networks clearly supported the NYPD statements. New York Times changed their reports. This story is intended as a beginning.

The Voices of the 99% will be documented. These stories will offer truthful accounts and perspectives of a new movement to inspire dialog in a now rapidly changing America for observers abroad. There is power. Change is possible.

For more information and access to the declaration go to: OccupyWallSt.org

The Art of Education: Memoirs of a Teaching Artist

2011-08-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

The Graduate

I was back from an unsuccessful attempt to make it for a second year at Texas Tech University when I got my first contract as a teaching artist. I moved to Lubbock, when I got a small playwright’s scholarship from Texas Tech for “Girlie Stories”. The county college production won festival honors and got a run in a great local theater. Glad to tell that part of the story first, since my once promising high school track derailed sophomore year turning four years into five. I finished at an alternative school where I moved through classes with work packets and assignments at my own pace checking in with teachers along the way.

My graduation ceremony was initiated when I turned in my final test for Math of Money (the last math class I could possibly pass to graduate). Once graded, numbers where crunched and submitted. My name was called on the intercom. Walking by the wall of graduates on my way to the office, I only felt relief knowing it was all done. The secretary had a blue cap and gown waiting for me. I put it on to begin the small school’s tradition. My parents and a family friend were in the office. The office staff came around blowing bubbles and tossing confetti in the air very warmly. The Principle hit play on a small boom box offering “Pomp and Circumstance” to mark my graduation march for some semblance of tradition in this informal version of a rite of passage. I smiled, camera’s snapped, bubbles popped on my nose and I went home brushing confetti and the end of an age off.

I chose not to walk the stage. I had walked my own way without school spirit, prep rallies or proms. My attempts at high school involvement only helped me stay away from it.

The advancement from high school to community college to receive a university scholarship felt like a victory. I still bombed my academic classes left and right for three years, while I seemed to do well in my newly discovered pursuits. Thankfully my first professors believed in my abilities and recognized a drive that I could harness. With their help, acting and writing had brought me recognition in an unexpected way. I won a Best Actress Award my first year at Tech, but none the less I couldn’t hack it in a university either. To make sense of it all, I had to step away and be realistic about my education.

I moved on from completing a degree in theater to find opportunities on stage, taking in every ounce that resonated in me from local writers, directors, actors in the community of theater in Fort Worth, Texas. I figured I could also make my own way to master a craft that I found ultimately drives my strongest instincts.

A friend mentioned a listing for a bilingual position with an after school program as a theater instructor. I learned to swim as a small kid, when I was thrown in the pool. This method still proves most effective for me. Acting, writing, directing, producing, cooking or living: I learn best in sink or swim situations. I was hired.

With a rocky start, many triumphs and failures, I found what it really means to learn by doing. I have been a teaching artist for eight years and found the art of teaching has single-handedly taught me how to learn. The effects on my artistry are reflected in my diversified career path and progress as a professional in my field.

I am convinced the arts and imaginative learning can create bridges for many students to tap into a well that will give them tools to access what was previously inaccessible. In a time of devastating results of American academic practices and standards, the current crisis from public to private institutions are making headway to shift traditional learning paradigms.

Economically -challenged communities are facing record numbers of school closings in a country where prison construction is on the rise and wardens receive ample funds to build state of the art facilities. The generation informed by technology, raised in an era of convenience and speed are in the hands of underpaid educators. Advocates are desperately reaching for new answers to empower students and prepare them with more options and resources.

Teaching artists are taking creativity to the next level by engaging learners to develop practices that instill decision-making, reflection, empathy, and creative problem solving skills. They are raising informed audiences supportive of arts and culture one classroom at a time. Through theater, music, visual arts, dance, writing and film professional artists can transform the landscape of American education.

I cannot say if my career would have benefitted from a degree or not. I have also seen the flip side of higher education that only accrues debt with no promise of a return in the form of career or stability particularly in the arts field. It is also uncertain if returning for my degree will help or slow me down now. Would I have the opportunity to work with some of the top arts organizations in the country? Does my one thousand hours of creating and implementing curriculums as a theater artist over eight years make me a master in my field without a piece of paper? What kind of education is respected in America?

I made my own way the best I could navigating through an education system to offer an alternative voice for learning while strengthening my own as an artist. Inspired by the community of artists armed with vision and pedagogues that brave the nation’s best and most dire classrooms to foster innovation and expression, these memoirs share a lifestyle guided by the learning and culture crisis in America. There is an education in art and it is an art to educate.

Mayan Calendar created by the students of White Bird Creative Theatrics lead by Erin Orr

Para Nuestras Perdidas Muertas

2010-06-19T08:02:00.000-07:00

Just in rememberance....

Para nuestras perdidas muertas

#156 had long black hair, dark skinned,
eyes brown
#208 made four dollars a day
#289 worked the late shift…
had a long dark walk home.
#315 wanted to be a movie star

then another
y otra
una mas
and there will be more pink crosses
marking lamp posts, bus stops, dark alleys
where stars of innocent eyes vanished
where vampires prey on faraway dreams.
dreams turn daggers
leaving scores of vacant bodies,
sacrificed
with cut-off breasts, disembowled, torn, beat
left with no trace of face and teeth
left ripped from the inside
souls caged…our little birds
and no sound.

From pueblos, hungry farms, and wastelands
These birds flock to find a brighter sky
on the other side
of nothing
only cardboard, concrete, tin roofs
tiny shacks held together by strings of tiny hope
for something better…
green lawns, paved roads
running water and $5.15 an hour
over there, al otro lado
just past the bridge and blood…
just past the gaping wound our sister Anzaldua called it.

I remember 16 years of mountains
and smog disguised as gilded sunsets,

I remember desert winds like cold dead fingers living there…
where las muertas hang over desert graves

Their cries swallowed by dirt
erased by careful watch and careful want
lost under high ranking boots of men,
bought men, scared men, gluttonous men.

Still they come to Juarez the golden city:
City of fortune
City of dollars
City of greed
City of bloodshed
Of caged birds bitten by the devil’s own sons
These leaders in their shiny badges and shiny seats of laws

See our dead children!
Que la sangre corre por las calles

Mother Mary, Virgin, Tonantzin
Help me mother goddess
que la rabia dentro mi piel me come viva
like the animals that feed on the dead of the deserts of Juarez
these men like animals that feed on the dead of the deserts of Juarez
Justicia para las muertas de Juarez
Justice for the women in Juarez

-CA 2004

CRYING OUT FOR A SENSE OF ADULTHOOD: What can we learn from the incarcerated youth?

2010-04-20T14:27:00.000-07:00

I have referred to Riker's Island teen detention centers as the black and latino boarding schools. This check point in the system, as it functions now, is the problem as opposed to "a" solution. In this system that processes the underprivileged like money launderers (to be this outspoken is a conscientious risk as my personal opinion not CAT's) there exists a class that cannot progress without radically re-thinking collective perceptions of identities, communication, choices and consequences during the fragile transitional stage of adolescence into adulthood for a society that is not giving many options to what is a frightening majority.

This workshop with the trainers in the academy for correction officers is such an opportunity to really understand patience, acceptance and how to find solutions in the most delicate and dangerous of rehabilitative living conditions. How do Officers cope with a generation of youth that was created by the system for the system? What power do we have to offer the questions to that will create room for change?

Gwendolen Hardwick, Associate Artistic Director of Creative Arts Team and Keith Johnston, the Adult Services Program Director, are guiding the development of this workshop. In lieu of last year's homicide, the indictments of several officers and the further investigations of the teen centers at Riker's, the Academy is incorporating this training session as part of the curriculum for the new recruits.

These last two days the team has been exploring these questions as we devise our scenes that will be the base of the workshop and the activities used to have the participants find possible solutions. We first assess the populations and their conditions:

LAUNCHING PADS:
How do the Correction Officers perceive the teens?
How do the teens perceive the COs?
What are both groups experiencing?
What are the learned patterns of dealing with communication and conflict?
What is the difference between respecting the person vs. position?

INCARCERATED TEENS
What is an adolescent?
How do they rebel?
Why?

CORRECTION OFFICERS
What exactly is a correction officer?
How do you think your position is perceived?
Who do they serve?
What do they service are they providing?
How do you gain respect as an authority figure?
What constitutes their authority?
What made you take your job?
What are they dealing with?
What are effective coping skills?
How do you cope with the resentment on the job?
What are the challenges of dealing with gender specific populations and/or different sites?

Tomorrow we meet an officer to learn more about the culture of Correction Officers.

Back to Riker's Fight Club

2010-04-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

I still try to hope and put
the best intent in mind and heart
always connected in my actions.

Next week I return to Creative Arts Team to revisit Riker's. The program is being brought in to do the same workshop we did in 2008 right after the homicide of Christopher Robinson at RNDC. It was for the entire unit..beginning with the Correction Officers. We devised a scene to facilitate a workshop to address trust and conflict.
Now we meet the ones who train the Officers. Should be interesting...running with wolves again.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2009-04-15/news/rikers-fight-club-the-knockout-punch/
Rikers Fight Club: The Knockout Punch
Documents show that top officials in the city's jail system were regularly briefed on violence and extortion between teen inmates.
By Graham Rayman
published: April 15, 2009

*

For a year prior to the murder of 18-year-old Christopher Robinson on Rikers Island, the second and third highest officials in the city Correction Department had been receiving regular intelligence reports about gang violence and extortion—some of it encouraged by correction officers—in the jail for teenagers, documents obtained by the Voice show.

In weekly meetings and in monthly reports, the Chief of Department Carolyn Thomas and Chief of Facility Operations Patrick Walsh were briefed repeatedly about an alarming series of fights, assaults, and serious injuries connected with gang members controlling the phones, commissary, and access throughout the Robert N. Davoren Center, Correction Department sources say and records show.

The violence climaxed in October when a gang of inmates beat Robinson to death. Three correction officers have been indicted for organizing a "team," inmates who carried out punishment beatings of other inmates, over a four-month period, in the unit where Robinson died. The officers trained the inmates to use wrestling holds and punch and kick their victims in the torso, where the injuries would be hidden by clothing, the indictment alleges.

At the officers' behest, the "team" would ask inmates whether they were "with it." If the inmates said no, they were beaten. In exchange, the indictment says, the inmates were allowed free rein to extort phone, food, and access privileges from other inmates.

Just one month prior to Robinson's murder, an 18-year-old inmate named Alicedes Polance suffered a broken eye socket in a beating by a "team" of inmates in the same unit while those same indicted officers were on duty, records show. Polance's attackers beat him after he said no to the question, "Are you down with it?" In the aftermath, however, DOC officials failed to uncover the alleged scheme in time to prevent the fatal Robinson assault.

In the first 10 months of 2008, 39 inmates at RNDC suffered serious facial injuries—broken noses, broken jaws, or fractured eye sockets, records show. Twenty-eight of those inmates were teenagers. Twenty of those cases directly involved gang inmates attempting to control or extort other inmates.

Again and again, the ominous question, "Are you with it?" appears in the reports. On March 23, 2008, an 18-year-old inmate was asked, "Are you with it?" before his orbital was broken. A fight on May 19, which led to a broken nose, had "earmarks of control," a report says.

The investigation into an assault on May 3, which led to a broken jaw, found allegations that an inmate was extorting all new inmates. An attack on June 15, which led to a fractured nose and eye socket, was sparked after the victim was asked, "Are you with it?"

The investigation into a June 26 fight that resulted in a broken eye socket determined that one inmate got to use the phone all the time, while the 16-year-old victim never did. An inmate who suffered a broken jaw on July 15 was told that only Bloods gang members used the phone.

Moreover, on 40 occasions between July 1 and October 31, guards ordered unit lockdowns because of violence sparked by extortion or attempts to control the phones, commissary, and access. That's one every three days.

On July 14, for example, three inmates told a fourth that he was not allowed to use the phone at 9 p.m. The inmate refused to comply and was beaten. An inmate alleged on July 15 that three inmates told him that they run the house and refused to allow him to use the phone on certain days. On July 18, an inmate was assaulted after he told others that he was not "with it." On July 31, an inmate was beaten after he refused to be "with it."

The list goes on and on.

For some perspective on the numbers, the Voice contacted Steve J. Martin, a consultant on the use of force in jails who is based in Austin, Texas.

Martin says 39 fractures in a 10-month period is off the charts: "That's an extremely high number any way you cut it," he says. "It's evidence that there's something incredibly wrong in that institution."

Martin says he recently studied a jail system in which just one fracture was recorded over a six-month period. "If you're having more than one or two fractures in any 30-day period, you should be bringing in major oversight," he says. "You should be all over it."

In addition to the drumbeat of broken bones, correction officials had also seen a number of newspaper articles, including stories by the Voice, suggesting that there was a problem in RNDC, dating back to the summer of 2007.

And the department had already been embarrassed by the indictment in February 2008 of Lloyd Nicholson, a correction officer who also used inmates as enforcers at RNDC. He called his operation "The Program."

Every Friday, Walsh met with intelligence division investigators and wardens to discuss issues at individual jails. Time and again, investigators highlighted the incidents at RNDC involving extortion by gang inmates or attempts to control privileges, and suggested that a disturbing trend was developing, three correction sources said.

But Walsh, the sources say, treated each incident as isolated and failed to act on the overall problem. He merely ordered the attackers to be transferred and handed out infractions. He also treated stabbing and slashing incidents with much more seriousness than the broken bones. And few of the assault cases resulted in criminal charges.

"He used a Band-Aid approach," a senior correction official says. "They would deal with the incident, but not see the big picture: that it was widespread throughout the jail. No one questioned what actions the COs took."

Meanwhile, the serious injury reports were coming across Chief of Department Carolyn Thomas's desk, one after another, but it remains unclear whether she did anything to specifically address the problem. And it remains unclear whether DOC Commissioner Martin Horn himself saw the injury reports or was briefed on them.

The sheer volume of serious injury reports raises new questions about exactly what top correction officials did to prevent violence and inmate extortion at RNDC.

"They failed to address the culture of the adolescent housing areas," a senior correction official tells the Voice. "They needed to break that culture and make this kind of thing unacceptable, but no one put it together. It's all on management and a lack of leadership."

In a lengthy response to Voice questions, Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello insisted that Commissioner Horn not only publicly identified the problem in 2007, but initiated some two dozen system-wide policy changes and new programs to address it.

Morello said that many of the policy changes Horn advocated in 2007 in testimony to the city Board of Correction—including the right to monitor inmates' phone conversations—were designed to combat problems like inmate extortion and bullying.

"The list of actions we have taken both prior to and since Robinson includes plenty of steps the department has taken to address violence, including, specifically, in adolescent housing units," Morello wrote in response to a Voice query.

Morello cited department statistics, which he said show that serious injuries among teens at RNDC was steady at 32 per year from 2005 to 2007, and declined to 27 in 2008. He noted that the Robinson murder was the first in the city jail system in four years.

Morello also attacked the Voice's reporting on the subject, suggesting that this newspaper and other media were being unfair to the commissioner.

The spokesman did not directly answer a range of questions, including whether Horn assigned more staff to RNDC, whether correction staffers were told not to tolerate extortion, whether inmates were told that such behavior would not be tolerated, or whether they ordered a crackdown on such behavior prior to Robinson's death. Morello refused to address questions regarding Walsh and Thomas.

At RNDC, Morello listed 32 changes that he says address the problem.

A Voice review and discussion with correction sources indicate that many of them were done following the Robinson murder, not before. Indeed, it was only after Robinson's death that Walsh ordered a broader review of the incidents, which resulted in a report, obtained by the Voice, that detailed the problem. This report, completed four days after Robinson's murder, disclosed information that could have been learned at any point in the preceding 18 months: There was a specific five-tier hierarchy to the extortion scheme, ranging from the bottom tier of inmates who were "with it" to the top tier of the "team." The setup resembled something out of the world of organized crime. The hierarchy existed throughout RNDC, the report also revealed. Despite the warnings, correction sources say, some investigators have themselves been questioned about what they said about the problem, in what appears to some as an effort to essentially kill messengers who first sounded alarm bells.

When officers Michael McKie and Khalid Nelson were indicted last month, correction officials insisted that guard complicity in the beatings was limited to one RNDC unit, 1 Main, and they claimed they could never visualize a worse case.

But statements from some 300 inmate interviews conducted after Robinson's death indicate that "teams" were common in RNDC. Beatings by those teams were also common. One after another, dozens of inmates said they heard the phrase, "Are you with it?" and heard of the "team" or "The Program."

Twenty inmates claimed that they were part of a team. Forty-six inmates said members of a "team" beat them at one point or another. And at least four inmates claimed that guards were complicit in other units. One of those inmates gave the following detailed account of the atmosphere under McKie and Nelson in 1 Main: "Most of the problems started with the CO," he said. "He would open the cell while you were sleeping, and he would let the team come in your cell. The team would put you in a chicken-wing position and they would beat you."

The same inmate talked of a similar setup in a different RNDC unit: "When I was housed in 5 Main, the officer would ask you if you were 'with it.' If you were not, he would lock everyone in and let the team out, and he would watch the team beat you. He used to like watching inmates beat me up because I never fought back. This happened two months ago, and he still calls me a pussy when he sees me."

The violence creates a pervasive atmosphere of fear, says Martin, the correction consultant. "Whether you're talking about a vulnerable youth or a tough youth, every kind of behavior is dominated by the fear factor," he says.

Today, Walsh has been shifted to a senior post where he has less responsibility, but retains the same salary. Thomas remains as Chief of Department.

A call to Thomas's office was transferred to the Correction Department spokesman's office. Walsh did not return a phone call to his office.
grayman@villagevoice.com

The Girlie Stories HERStory

2010-02-01T16:51:00.000-08:00

2010 Has brought the most cosmic magic into my life. With major milestones and celebrations abound among friends and loved ones, my own actually feel real in their company. These victories feel like rebirth. That breath that is spanked out of you to remind you of your lungs and pulse. Each feat, each effort, each hope manifested to build on the dream inspires a deeper appreciation for my heartbeat, my breath, my thoughts, my fears, my hopes, my eyes, my ears...

To honor the regard presented to me by the beautiful universe, I got to shout out and keep on keepin' on the best I know how...by forever workin' towards better. Life is short friends. One love.

Nine years ago, I played Terry in Hip Pocket Theater's production of On the Road by Kerouac. Terry, the young Mexican mother Sal Paradise chose for his spicy retreat in California. Director Johnny Simons, pulled and cut out the play straight from the pages of Kerouac's time with a Burroughs flourish. It was the most timeless, unforgettable stage train de force, the whole company still shares with deep care. Again, someone took a chance on me and gave me Terry to tell Her story:

Terry- My story is this: I have a husband and child. My husband beats me. So I left him, left my little son with my family, who are grapepickers and we live in a shack in the vineyards. I have nothing to do but brood and get mad. But I love to talk with you. I wish I could go to New York.

Sal Paradise - Maybe you could.

I was just coming into my woman and freedom. I took to Mom's past to try understand little Terry. After opening my eyes to the broader story of the female, I had to question. Question. Question. I lived the Mexicana myth of that period for an eternal brief moment on stage. My maiden mind had to find the new herstory to define. I did and discovered something I never imagined I could do: make an idea come alive.

I made it to New York. My heart likes to dream Kerouac's ghost wished it for me and this little endeavor I chose to take had a life and left, but found its way back to me. The little pieces of what I wanted to discover as woman then, make my present days the greatest gifts.

I am blessed to present "Girlie Stories", my first one-act of nine monologues, is now published in the anthology TABOO THEATER: Sex and Violence on Stage by John Wayne Shafer. Mr. Shafer was my first theater professor. Mr. Shafer believed in my pen and gave me a chance.

Excerpt from the Introduction of TABOO THEATER

"Some collections stop at the historical. Those masters validate our connection to our ancestors. But, we need one additional element to complete the connection with our present. There are four vibrantly young new voices. Their plays have not been previously published. In widely different regions, they chose to write about the relationships surrounding sex and/or violence. Girlie Stories by Claudia Acosta was first performed in Texas and received honors from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. Oral by Hannah Kugelmann was presented at the Orlando International Fringe Theatre Festival. The Sweet Stuff by Jayme McGhan was written in Nevada and received honors from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. Backseats and Bathroom Stalls by Rob Mersola premiered in New York at the Kraine Theatre. The LA Times has called it a “cult hit.” These playwrights reflect the same need to ponder our impulses."

I received a message from a fellow teaching artist and friend I had the honor to work with during my time with Creative Arts Team. Ihe work we did in Riker's Island left it's mark on my memory and character. My friend performed a monologue from the play for the incarcerated girls at the Rose M. Singer as a vehicle to explore womanhood. According to my friend, it seemed to leave an impression and the young ladies asked to have copies of the piece. In lieu of the inspiration of my latest project, the request ignited my heart to keep moving forward.

Nine years later, nine monologues of a twenty year old's wonder are now in these pages. Nine years later, I am in the skin of new forged definition of Woman. The evolving Woman I will own to be for a while. Now full with new stories, I am ready to deliver.

Report in Verse

2010-01-20T21:34:00.000-08:00

(based on my experience as a teaching artist for Creative Arts Team. Conducting workshops by devising theater to be performed as a vehicle to open dialog to raise awareness on social issue for collaborative problem solving. Residencies were facilitated in school systems, colleges, universities, safe spaces, homeless shelters and Riker's Island.)

A bridge away,

barbed wire curls over the moat

and gate lock echoes

slam thru walls

around this fortress

the vinegar air hangs dank as if it too

gave up freedom

buzzers cry out under orders and complaints

Hushing the small celebrations

tiny sounds and eyes

searching for a reason to open

bright

like horizons of days

they can’t take away

from memories

living like haunted houses

these girls remind me of mine

back when my mind was gone

and my heart cemented shut to breathe

there was a better I knew to be

too hard to believe in then

I didn’t come from streets

but I knew what less meant

I stole from myself time after time

like violent streets down the veins

I wished open.

never for status

nor battles, but war worn in

the anger outward bound to

transgress and over step to

posses power to break

bound dreams taking arms

to express contempt in

bloodshed and hunger

burned into the hearts of the trapped

the unprepared

a less than half a chance given

power taken

for bitter survival or letting

lesson

be the hard fate for you

ny outlaw love

what scars you wear to bear

risk and freedom on either side

of bars were your hands rest and reach out

to grab

dignity and regret

bracing for hope

its too hard to swallow

but your hollow stomach needs you

making your own fantasies to fill

the days and mourning

with companionship in shouts

a shared pulse

woven in braids, proud chins

and hand shakes

holding me with you

your walls listen

voices giving the respect

we gave away.

ny outlaw love

How many times have I transgressed?

Gave up respect and took it away from myself

How many crimes have I committed to

liberate from pain,

because I did not care

for anyone, anything, any of me?

As much as I try to simply ask the questions

to be a mirror and shovel at once

dig deep and plant the seed

they make me watch

Thru their mirrors

I see me push up

hard past the earth

like a snake skin

shedding.

they say it hurts when you’re born.

but the light is so beautiful you forget

till you change again.

If only there was a space, Safe

knew here. A prize

of peace and a mind’s

own place to feel alive.

With no questions

No torture that demands

Enough to be enough

Accepted, loved

Allowed. Out loud.

Here I come with questions

but my ears filled with static

can’t find a clear signal strong enough

to help me be the mirror you need me to be,

outlaw love

You gave me a chance once to hear why

its cold here

I couldn’t listen. Make out your sounds past

this own damned noise

Cold rots the heart

those too easy give in

not us

Fighting deep in trenches

wounded soldiers

Us all bent patched and

Soaked thru all us bandaged

Hanging on to heal as healers

Whether we know or not

Like it or not want.

The bridge between islands means more than freedom

Color of Royalty

2010-01-20T21:20:00.000-08:00

COLOR OF ROYALTY
by Claudia Acosta (currently in progess)

excerpt ACT ONE, SCENE ONE

Darkness. A door opens Light switches to illuminate the Reyes boxing gym. Freddy enters toting a pitiful Lucia holding her hand over a black eye.

FREDDY -Tu mama me va matar.
LUCIA - What was I going to do, Dad? They were snapping rubberbands in my hair! Those fucking cholas won't leave me alone.
FREDDY - Watch your mouth! You ignore them! YOU were not supposed to be a fighter, Lucia. Not you. What is the matter with you? You made me have to look at ese baboso, Jaime in the eye. That man can’t run a school to save his life!
LUCIA - He is such a jerk! Mr. Canales only likes the pretty girls. It's disgusting. He is always so mean to everyone else!
FREDDY - You got yourself suspended mija!
LUCIA - THEY WERE HARRASSING ME!
FREDDY - Calamate! And what about thirteen absences?
LUCIA - Whatever.
FREDDY - (firmly) Don't start with your mensadas! You can’t be skipping school!
LUCIA -Just…I don't know. I have them in three classes. It's a nightmare dad! They won't stop!
FREDDY - This is the first and last black eye you're going to get. Thought maybe my last princess would be the peaceful one.
LUCIA -Your going to teach me to fight?
FREDDY - My princess can't be getting black eyes. Your brothers can't be there. I can't be there. Diane won't be there. A Reyes doesn't get black eyes outside the ring-
LUCIA - But they can give them.
FREDDY - Exactly. So on your feet. Fists.

Lucia feebly puts her fists up. Freddy adjusts them and corrects her form. Freddy grabs the boxing pad and holds it up for her.

FREDDY - Jabs. Go. Keep your wrist flat. Knuckles straight ahead.
Lucia manages to get a good round of jabs.
FREDDY - Crosses. Go. Extend. Twist the foot. Push from the hip thru your shoulder.
LUCIA - You're my trainer, Dad?

She smiles

FREDDY - Just don't tell your mother

He smiles. She continues her crosses.

FREDDY -Push me back. More Power. Pull from your core. More shoulder.

Lucia throws one last punch with all effort.

LUCIA - I don't get how Rafa listens to Big Mike when he's in the corner. Big Mike is mean.
FREDDY -Trainer is the overseer, you see. The director.
LUCIA - Why does Big Mike get so mad all the time?
FREDDY - Rafa doesn't like to listen. Big Mike can see everything, like a director of a movie, but Rafa doesn't trust anybody. Ese Payaso seems to think it’s all him. He has always been a cocky motherfucker. Since he was baby. He knew what he had in him since the first time he was pushed down. He got back up and slammed your cousin Samuel with a right hook. I saw it. Pero Felipe, now that's another story all together. It just so happens he's got the solid talent. The quiet talent, the talent like lava ready to explode. But see, his power comes from the deepest place. His is rooted in the earth like a volcano. That one mija, is the greatest power. Fighters like Payaso, want to radiate, but they burn out. Lava though, see, is fire so concentrated it sticks to the earth and stays close. Rooted… and being rooted, mija, is all you need to win. Get up lets go. You want to do this. Lets go.
LUCIA -And what were you dad?
FREDDY -Lava. When it cools, it becomes rock, Lucia.
LUCIA -Yeah stone, dad. Like you are with Rafa. Why don't you talk to him? What is going to happen when he gets here?
FREDDY -It's between father and son, mija. Let’s go come on. I'm getting tired and your mother is going to kill me if she knows we are here.

cont'd

Dear Barack Obama

2010-01-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

The basis of the plea to you is shared and simple. It is a plea for the respect of the American population. In the dust of crumbling towers, still soaked in a drowned city's neglect, lost in smoke and burning dollars, the devalued people of your country are taking the last pieces of generosity to a broken Haiti as a wish. To preserve, salvage, comfort, resuscitate, empathize and act. Despite the limited lens of America, we imagined once again, a greater loss. Here, your country dials 911. It is a national disaster:

When your nation is scrambling for crumbs to feed themselves.
When ALL your citizens can't care for their health.
When prisons are black and latino boarding schools.
When ALL women can't choose.
When gender is a limation to be able to honor love's union.
When a country won't lift a gentle hand for the world, but armfuls of armour for the royal terrorists of corporatacracy....

911. It's an emergency. Your unsuccessful attempt to rehabilitate a nation demands an intervention. Resist the corruption, detox from the red interests, say "no" to injustice.

As an American, I ask you to listen. As an American of Color, I ask you to balance the inequality. As an American woman, I ask you to honor your nations priorities. As a human, I ask you to reorganize your plans to enact the missions we elected you to fulfill and implement.

INSPIRED to FOCUS, SO TO SPEAK

2010-01-18T22:50:00.000-08:00

Ever felt your insides shake with knowing there's an incredible storm coming? You have to be ready. Calm before the storm. You watch its terrifying beauty approaching. Your shaking, but with such a clear sight-so alive- your heart doesn't know what to do with it. Your listening, tracking the storm with braced legs and sweaty palms. As the sounds reach to slowly engulf your ears, the ...

My brother wrote to me a couple of weeks ago. I love my brother. He noticed my love for the pen and book when I was a kid and opened the literary world to me. He gave me Dostoevsky when I was a freshman. His letters to me from Paris were like vessels to a world I never thought could be that close to me. As cool, collected and focused as he was, I don't think he really could believe it at the time either. We wrote to each other. A secret celebration that meant there was hope in taking flight, that we could spread our wings and see the world. Since he told me to open this page again...here I am, now in my Paris. I still can't believe it either. Two and half years of New York worn on my skin and heart like a scar with a good story and a favorite pair of boots.

New York. Twinkling and bustling in my soles, the swarming echoes of a sleepless city launches each step I take. Last two years, I've laid some track down on this town's pavement. Lucky enough to have built my own trains to my destinations. My work spreading and unfolding like a subway map (and just as confusing). A choose your own adventure novel, the second I step out on Fort Washington everyday. Today in my subway meditation of the day I thought of home. How my creative force survived in Fort Worth. From birth to wings. What I did, what I learned, when I was the happiest, when my heart worked on my craft, my art to my heart's content with people that left their mark on me.

I am still that lucky and bless my stars, but in my Fort Worth Town, it was all about the art in a special way. Maybe time in my mind turns my twenties into sparklers, bright and electric. The fire moving me then was opportunity, a blank page of creating independent art. Us taking a single blank page and transforming all we had in our hands into something new among a family where we recognized each other's Worth and bowed to each other to help keep the good fire going because that was how things survived.

Broadway glares in your face. High rise apartments point their prissy noses in the air, so you do too and an $800 coat would look stunning on you. You imagine. When you are holding on by the skin of your teeth, you imagine...because you have to (if you your going to make it anywhere). Retirement and health insurance are just a fairytale and the hustle feels epic like a George Lucas early phenomenon-legendary. Each merciless battle a nod down in history books. Because in New York, you pay with blood to win. I think I just now got to know my opponent. Me.

My creative feels like a monster sometimes. Overwhelms with visions like howls, premonitions like choking smoke signals and as ravenous as a desperate, dirty wolf and I am holding on to the reins as tightly as I can. Doors keep opening and my arms are beginning to cramp from all the juggling last seven years. But with strong arms, maybe I can hold it all. I have to. This choose your own adventure tale is unraveling it's traps and futures and the hero ain't sure what road to take.

Your listening, tracking the storm with braced legs and sweaty palms. As the sounds reach to engulf your ears...

to my brother. In blood and ink-

your sister.

thanks tammy gomez for reminding me back in 2007, ken shimamoto for showing the way when I saw your face in the book you reminded me, thank you crystal casey for doing your thing.

Here we go...

2007-03-13T01:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't been back on blogger land since myspace and I found each other....

but since I can use this forum for other musings, and philosorizing etc....we shall rekindle what I had thought of of as one more place I couldn't live up to.

As for my latest and greatest: it has been a '06- '07 season of epic porportions. This time last year I had opened my second original piece Recuerdos de mi Mama: Tributo a la Epoca de Oro. I played one of the best female roles I have ever experienced in Taming of the Shrew under the vision of Teatro de la Rosa's captain and comrade, Yvonne Duque. A surreal summer followed with my mother's chemo, solidarity with family, friends. I blazed the fall with a community project, producing the Day of the Dead event at the Metrognome Collective. Working with the most talented people of Fort Worth, it was an evening of true diversity, a celebration of art and remembrance. It was one of the most beautiful memories of Fort Worth I will ever have.

In October, I accepted the position as Interim Artistic Director of Cara Mia Theater of Dallas and directed/ produced Nuestra Pastorela at the Latino Cultural Center of Dallas. I learned so much from the experience . I realized the incredible energy and determination my predecessor accomplished with the company. A taste is what I needed as I realized I needed to ripen a bit before running a theater company. I still have knives to sharpen.

Winter came and I found my new year in New York to make a promise. I came back depleted, exhausted, heartbroken, shredded...in time for growth I guess. This is where I learned to lift a hand, to call a friend, to be open again and see inside for longer than I ever thought I could bear. Hard, dark, scarred and bruised...I collected myself and now with a place for all my new realized breath. I am in the light again and on the saddle.

I am now directing Les Liaisons Dangereuses for Fort Worth Theater. I play I would have only dreamed about doing. I am also directing for Sound Culture's week of 365 days/365 plays by Susan Lori Parks (poet/writer and mentor Tammy Gomez's production company).

As far as my promise I made to a friend... to celebrate New Year's 2008 in NYC as local. I keep my promise in May.

So I open these pages again...to remember, to observe, to honor, to dream as I take in my Fort Worth days and my Big Apple future.

Sound_Culture Presents...

2006-09-13T10:52:00.000-07:00

INSPIRING ACTION AND AWARENESS

FRIDAY 9/15 Two events in rememberance of Hurricane Katrina.

AFTERNOON EVENT: PLATICA/WORKSHOP

Time: 1pm -3pm
Location: Rose Marine Theater Gallery - 1440 N. Main
St.

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - donations accepted.

Focus of the platica/presentation:

Introduction to Augusto Boal’s Theater of the
Oppressed theories and techniques to help Latino/Mexicano
families learn about health and environmental issues.

John Sullivan and Bryan Parras actively use theater
performance for public health education purposes.

Bryan Parras is a performer with EL TEATRO LUCHA DE
SALUD DEL BARRIO in Houston.

John Sullivan is a theater artist who co-directs the
Public Forum & Toxics Assistance division of the
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Center at
the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. He
previously directed two theater companies: Theater
Degree Zero (Tucson, Ariz.) and the Theater of Liberation/Seattle
Public Theater (Seattle, Washington).

This will be a hands-on interactive workshop.
Participants will be taught basic principles of Boal's Theater of the Oppressed.

EVENING EVENT: PERFORMANCE AND DOCUMENTARY FILM

Time: 7pm - 9pm

Location: 1919 Hemphill Community Center -
1919 Hemphill St.

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC - $5 DONATION REQUESTED

7pm - "SPILLWAY SONATA"
a performance to commemorate those who
suffered/survived Katrina

7:30pm - DOCUMENTARY FILM SCREENING
"After the Wind, Child, After the Water's Gone"
- introduced by filmmakers Bryan Parras and John Sullivan
from Houston/Galveston

8:30pm - QUESTION & ANSWER/DISCUSSION
with the filmmakers John Sullivan and Bryan Parras

"After the Wind, Child, After the Water's Gone" is a new film
about the environmental health impacts of Hurricane
Katrina. The film was produced by the National Institute of
Environmental Health Sciences Center at the University
of Texas Medical Branch
at Galveston.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Tammy Gomez at 817.924.9188 or
sound_culture@hotmail.com

TO READ MORE ABOUT THE DOCUMENTARY FILM
"AFTER THE WIND, CHILD, AFTER THE WATER'S GONE":

http://www.cleanhouston.org/misc/katrinafilm.htm

WRECK PERFORMANCE TONIGHT MUJERES SIN MIEDO

2006-07-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

Mujeres Sin Miedo
Women without Fear

hosted by Fort Worth Arts Consortium

WRECK ROOM 8pm tonight

Local women artists and poets dedicate their performances to the people of Atenco.

On May 4th the Mexican government has sent federal police (basically army) to remove the local campesinos from their lands that have been expropriated violently from their lands to make way for a new airport. About two hundred people are politcal prisoners, among them women, farmers and journalists. The women arrested have been raped and beaten. Deaths, battered children and shredded homes have been reported.
Comrades in Rome, Canada, Australia, Seattle Houston, and all of Mexico as risen in protests and stages to show solidarity and demand justice by reproching the government.

enhanced actual Atenco pictures. Please hit Mexico link for more images.

It is 2006 Gentlemen: "Peru's female traffic cops face backlash" -AP

2006-07-17T04:52:00.000-07:00

We are still having major issues with empowered women. Machismo is the often ignored disease in many cultures. This vile mentality towards women seems to be more difficult to outgrow than we like to think. Here in the U.S., traces of discrimination and the place of women in our society are enough to prove our slow progress.

Recent findings show women are still not paid equally as men for the same jobs. We still have "firsts" for women in government. We have ivy league heads making negative comments about female intelligence. I hear educated men using demeaning language to describe women. I see women allowing this behavior because they think men are incapable of knowing better. I see women compromise intelligence and self-empowerment to be with a man. I watched a music award show where a female recording artist upon winning an award exclaimed how hard it is to be taken seriously as a woman in the industry. Actresses still find it difficult to have long healthy careers because bodies and age are barriers. Media images are distortions of sexuality and beauty at the expense of the woman's form. While femicides are happening on our borders, we are still questioning the rights of our bodies.

If we are to evolve, we must thoroughly examine our perceptions, our language, our actions, and our thoughts. It is the only way to manifest the change needed to influence and hopefully aid those communities where women are still suffering from violence and discrimination. We are not tools. We are not meat. We are not punching bags. We are not holes waiting to be stuffed. We are not props. We are not property. We are not an inconvenience. It is time we grow up. Read on

Peru's female traffic cops face backlash

By CARLA SALAZAR, Associated Press Writer
Sun Jul 16, 12:19 PM ET

When traffic cop Maria Luisa Calderon ordered a taxi driver to move on as he picked up a passenger in heavy traffic, his reaction bordered on homicidal: He turned on his high beams and floored it, slamming her to the ground and ripping her face and ankle as he sped away.

It was typical of a macho backlash on Lima's streets, where most male traffic officers were replaced by women in the late 1990s in an effort to give law enforcement a kinder, gentler and less corrupt face.

Eighteen months after her brush with death, 29-year-old Calderon says her foot still swells up. "The gentleman got away," she said. "They never captured him because I couldn't get his license plate number."

The "gentleman"? Yes. The policewomen are trained to keep their cool, never pull a gun, and always address the driver as "el senor."

But it doesn't seem to be working. Eighty percent of the 405 incidents reported in the past two years have involved one of the capital's 1,031 female police, meaning roughly a third of them have been cursed, shoved, punched, dragged, run over or taken hostage by angry men. Cabbies and bus drivers are the worst offenders.

Lima isn't the only Latin American city to have tried using women to tame its wild drivers, based on studies concluding they are less likely to be corrupt. Mexico City attempted it and gave up.

In Lima, the change came with tough new rules that oblige policewomen to ticket drivers who don't buckle up and bus drivers who carry too many passengers.

The drivers say the cops are overzealous.

"There are infractions that the policewomen should overlook. They should listen to us and say to us, 'OK, don't let it happen again,' but they don't," complained Jaimi Lopez, a 54-year-old bus driver. "Right away, they ask for your license and registration and they hand you the ticket."

The police blame weak laws for the violence against them. A Lima driver, says Calderon, "can do to us whatever he likes and the laws don't back us up."

The maximum penalty for such offenses is two years' imprisonment, in a country that suspends all prison terms under four years and has no provision for increasing penalties for repeat offenders.

"What that means is that no one is doing time for these cases," said Lima's deputy transit police chief, Vicenzo Ieva.

The Interior Ministry proposed increasing the penalty more than a year ago, but Congress hasn't considered the bill yet.

Peruvians desperate for work rushed into the taxi and bus businesses with little training after Peru lowered used-vehicle import tariffs in 1991 to ease a transport shortage. Already sprawling, dirty and disorganized, Lima jammed up with tens of thousands of rogue cabs, aging microbuses and vans called "killer combis" because they run over so many pedestrians.

Now supply exceeds demand, and the pressure has pushed the drivers to new heights of road rage, according to a University of San Marcos study. It found that more than 40 percent of public transport drivers interviewed displayed anti-social, even psychopathic, tendencies.

"Run over a traffic policewoman Ã— they don't care," said the study's author, psychologist Carlos Ponce, who interviewed 491 public transportation drivers and 249 regular motorists.

"The worst-behaved motorists are the taxi drivers, followed by the bus drivers and then us private motorists," Ponce added. "We aren't saints, and something needs to be done about it."

One other rule the policewomen are taught is never to climb into a "killer combi" lest the enraged driver abduct them.

Of 10 police abducted in 2004 and 2005, nine were women.

My trips of trips

2006-06-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

Just a rhyme just a riff
shakey fingers needing company
needing face needing
lips and eyes and a whole other human next to me
here while I sing such sad verses
thinking only deafly thinking
I am only

A Shower later
a bowl later and memories flood in
pictures of forgotten people
a flood
a gate
like a fierce daymare
when I thought of the comfort of a simple
dolls dress in my fingers a laughter
sad girl
sad girl
everything is so still so still
no breeze to make the leaves shimmy
nothing
but an empty box
I find no other way than this
pure hussy bone way
seems like a fine shade I built around me
I do silly things I do
sad things
I can do great things too
sometimes nothing
oh sad girl oh sad girl
you fell hard you fell down you fell small
I can't go down.
But I found me
deep down I remember sad me
the me I that didn't want to
the me that couldn't want to
see anything but sad bliss
like the wounds that feel yummy and warm
with its dull stab
the sad drain
keys are keeping me company
these I just found, never knew or maybe
just forgot about.
I can't find someone I know
on this clock that is ticking
and ticking and ticking inside
along with a song in my mind
some pieces
like never before

World Theater Day Message

2006-06-13T13:44:00.000-07:00

The theater moves, illuminates, disquiets, disturbs, lifts the spirit, reveals, provokes and violates conventions. It is a conversation shared with society. It is not its creators who speak through the theater but, rather the society of the epoch.
Que viva el teatro!

-Victor Hugo Rascon-Banda
playwright

Justice

2006-06-01T22:15:00.000-07:00

Watching a Spanish news show today with my Momma, I watched this brutal footage of a woman, eight months pregnant being dragged through Honduran Streets half naked, bloodied and beaten for break-in and theft. The police finally intervened right before the townspeople were about to lynch her. The two other accomplices got away.

I've seen other footage similar. People tired of the crime and unresponsive police, take matters into their own hands and brutally beat offenders.

My Mom said, "They burn rapists alive". What is the right balance between punishment and humanity? Our Justice system seems to cause serious damage in a subtle ways as well, one) by fostering Career criminals, two) by creating such a bureaucratic money guzzler. In taking these examples, its seems by we cutting criminals off, instead of slapping hands, we would be in a much safer world. For those sorry few who ended up being scape goats served as sacrifices for the community's standard, how do we deal with that? Is violence a lesson? Stoning a pregant woman for stealing is very horrific, but I am certain anyone witnessing it would probably not a make that mistake. The neighborhood stood up for its values. Responsiblity was taken, brutally, by the tribe. Where do we draw the line? Our system does a similar job, its just uses gloves and paper.

Punishment ...an interesting debate

American Diplomacy

2006-06-01T22:01:00.000-07:00

Found this fascinating article. It really gives a clear overview of the situation. It made me think of US Policy as a the Wal-Mart corp. It reminded me of that Apocolyse vision in the bible I learned as kid, being a Jehova's Wittness: a lamb with the voice of a dragon. American values are just tools...just like organized religion.

Monitoring Political, Economic and Diplomatic Issues Affecting the Western
Hemisphere

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

An Opinion Piece by COHA Director Larry Birns:

Latin America - The Path Away from U.S. Domination

Washington rumbles with suppressed outrage over Latin America's latest
demonstrations of its sovereignty - Bolivia's nationalization of its oil and
natural gas reserves. At the same time, newly inaugurated president Evo
Morales is a prime candidate to join Washington's pantheon of Latin American
bad boys, presently dominated by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez. Meanwhile,
the region's new populist leadership, also known as the "Pink Tide," extends
its colors across South America ready to leap to much of the rest of Latin
America. The "pink tide," consists of left-leaning South American
governments seeking a third way to register their political legitimation to
their citizens as well as to register their autonomy regarding such foreign
policy issues as Iraq.

Meanwhile, Washington's lame regional policy has spurred disbelief even
among the hemisphere's most ardent pro-U.S. governments. Some specialists
maintain that while the region's oncoming economic enfranchisement can be
understood from a number of perspectives, perhaps the most forthcoming
analysis places the roots of the new movement in the bedding soil of an
egregiously failed Washington regional policy.

Throughout the Cold War's gestation, Democratic as well as Republican
presidents have not hesitated to call for U.S. intervention in Latin America
however persistently malignant these events have turned out to be, ranging
from coup-making in Guatemala and Chile, to the fostering of civil wars in
Central America, most of these intrusions later proved to be irrelevant, or
at least insufficient to protect genuine, even narrowly defined, U.S
national interests. Most of all, they proved to be counter-productive or
destructive. As a result, much of the region has become estranged from
Washington's leadership, a legacy now apparent in the difficulties currently
being encountered by U.S. policymakers. No wonder that in polls undertaken
throughout Latin America regarding the Iraq war, and in the strategy of the
Bush administration, an average of 85% of respondents have said no to U.S.
initiatives.

Post Soviet Latin America
The demise of the Soviet Union in 1990 allowed the illusion to be born of a
new non-ideological hemispheric alignment almost exclusively based on trade,
and not, unfortunately, on a reworked and broadened confidence-building
relationship between the U.S. and the rest of the Americas that reflected at
least a passing interest in issues pertaining to social justice and the
expansion and exercisable option.

Throughout the years, Washington's policy towards the region has been fueled
by a paroxysm of odium aimed at Havana. In Washington's eye, Castro, who is
always with such kindred legions as Venezuela's Chávez and now Bolivia's
Morales, poses a lethal threat to Washington's Latin American cosmography.
Under the Bush White House, the relative closeness of its ties with any
given nation became a function of the latter's relations with Castro Cuba.
Meanwhile, non-ideological programs, such as maintaining the drug war at a
satisfactory level and the White House's almost obsessive interest in
privatization and trade, were prioritized first by the Clinton
administration and then by the Bush White House.

In affected areas of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru, already functioning
anti-drug strategies prompted a series of U.S. initiatives during this
period which ended up in failure as a result of ill-conceived crop
fumigation and interdiction processes that led to widespread environmental
damage along with illness and disease among locally exposed populations. The
particular rights of indigenous communities along with the compromising of
national sovereignty were among the casualties of these U.S-led efforts.
During this epoch, the Pentagon authored a growing pattern of collaboration,
mainly with the Colombian military, but also with the armed forces of
Ecuador, Peru, and Paraguay. These collaborations, as a result of burdensome
military budgets and other ill-started priorities, often ended with the
wholesale destruction of traditional agricultural practices and distortion
of local economies.

Finding its own way
The policy of replacing meaningful socially-directed aid to the region with
increased emphasis on the drug war, as well as stepped up trade in upscale
consumables and other luxury items, usually involved no more than 5% of the
populace. Only too late did a number of governments discover that their
often flawed economic liberalization policies, encouraged by Washington
conservative think tanks and other proponents of the Washington Consensus,
not only failed to ameliorate profound social and economic structural
lesions, but also predictably contributed to tensions between the haves and
the have-nots, both here and abroad. For Latin America, this meant
disenchantment with the status quo, along with adding further stress to ties
between the north and the south.

For its part, upon taking office, the Bush administration immediately picked
up where the previous administration had left off but also embedded hard
ideological tenets into U.S. hemispheric policy that Clinton had tended to
neglect. This was the period that saw the rise of such hard core ideologies
and the prominence afforded to such doughty Cold Warriors as Otto Reich and
his protégé Roger Noriega, after the former, due to his extremism, was
unable to secure a confirmation vote from the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee to be Assistant Secretary of State for Latin America. The Bush
administration's Latin Americanists now saw the region uniquely through a
prism molded by its anti-Havana passions. The administrations Cold War
paradigm had the hemisphere divided into a Zoroastrian world of absolute
darkness and light. On one hand, favored right-wing governments like El
Salvador's and Chile's, which had pragmatically allied itself with
Washington, in contrast Venezuela and Bolivia, whose leftist politics found
themselves out in the cold.

The Contradiction of U.S. Policy
The decision by Bush to submit U.S.-Latin American relations to an outdated
and small- minded game plan, which featured a preemptive and expansionist
foreign policy accompanied by an increasingly dysfunctional anti-drug
policy, has already pushed strained inter-American ties almost beyond the
breaking point. In spite of the economic weight and influence of the U.S
market, Latin America's growing discontent over the failures of the U.S. to
make its market entirely accessible to Latin American products accompanied
by the trade advantages enjoyed by U.S. subsidized crops and products, set
the stage for an increasingly snarling relationship between North and South.

The failure to introduce reforms that would accelerate real, inclusive
growth, was compounded by a series of egregious foreign policy missteps by
the Bush administration. Examples of these range from orchestrating the
ouster of constitutionally-elected President Aristide in Haiti, to helping
finance the abortive anti-Chávez coup of April 2002, to attempting to
blackmail Central American and Caribbean countries to join the "Coalition of
the Willing" in Iraq, and to supporting favored conservative presidential
candidates throughout the area. The latter action cynically caricaturing its
profound concern for "free and fair" elections as it threatened the
suspension of various forms of aid if the "wrong" kind of "democrat" was
elected to office. Also, there was the Reich-Noriega bullying of government
leaders and local politicians who didn't take the "right" position on such
issues as the embargo against Cuba, the election of the OAS
secretary-general, and trade.

The ferment generated by Washington's increasingly malign neglect of the
region gave rise to what began to be known as a "Pink Tide" movement that
sweeps across South America. But despite the tendency of Washington
right-wingers and other species of conservative think tanks, like Freedom
House, to demonize this political trend, the Pink Tide was a natural
reaction to pressing trade, security, and social justice issues of paramount
concern for the region, even though such concerns seemed to have dropped off
Washington's agenda. The Bush administration, now led by the State
Department's Secretary Rice and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, had no problem
accusing these left leaning governments, led by Hugo Chávez, of being
threats to the U.S. national interest and of being destabilizing factors to
other Latin American countries, even though they could never quite identify
the source of that threat. In fact, the reforms enacted by these pink new
populist left-leaning leaders turned out to be far more reminiscent of New
Deal reformation than any mythic reemergence of a grand neo-Stalinist era.
The strength mainly stemmed from the rejection by a new wave of enlightened
Latin American leaders of the faux democratization which was being offered
by various U.S.-backed governments as a miracle cure for the maladies of
underdevelopment, but which upon the next dawn, turned out to be only pure
snake oil.

New Players
The recent re-awakening of the indigenous population of regional
civilizations has started to profoundly reshape Latin America's political
landscape. As this new awareness peaked, indigenous communities began to
retroactively say "no" to presidential candidates who, once in office,
reneged on their glib commitments and proceeded to repudiate campaign
pledges to their Aymara and Quechua-speaking altiplano constituents. They
then countered these acts of treachery by ousting leaders in Ecuador,
Argentina and Bolivia after the presidents had revealed themselves to be
anything but bona fide servants of the people. This process ran
conterminously with the increasing political involvement of those indigenous
groups, who, with an increasingly powerful voice, began rejecting neoliberal
reforms with roadblocks and other rejectionist public manifestations. As
Latin American populations were spurning traditional politicians and their
dusty programs, different actors emerged to capture the discontent by
offering new solutions. These were most visible in 1998 with Hugo Chávez's
victory in Venezuela, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's 2002 triumph in Brazil and
in Evo Morales' defining victory in Bolivia last March. While the May 28
triumph in Colombia of Álvaro Uribe, Washington's favored South American
leader, produced great joy at the State Department, it had to be
disheartened by the strong showing by left-leaning candidate Carlos Gaviria.
Even with Uribe's big vote, Washington is still a bit disenchanted by his
strong sense of nationalism and his querulous reaction to any display of
U.S. sentiments of mastery over Colombia's public policy, the war against
drugs or Uribe's desire to maintain close business-like ties with Chávez.

But just as it appeared that this pink tide was spreading to Argentina,
Uruguay and Bolivia and had gained credence and political voltage in Peru,
Ecuador, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Mexico and some of the
Caribbean islands, two developments could be discerned: first that Chávez
had come to be seen by huge numbers as being the movement's spiritual
leader, as well as its sage, just as the staccato-like peppering of the
political scene by Chávez's ADS-like interventions in other countries
weakened thereby their already only loosely common front. Chávez is
sometimes belied by what his critics see as his buffoonish outbursts and
raffish personality, and could well be seen as perhaps the most dynamic
leader in the region today - though is power is more with the streets than
the diplomats of other Pink Tide countries.

A Hero for the Poor
As both a committed democrat, (having been confirmed by popular vote three
times; twice in national elections and once more in a recall referendum) and
seen by the majority of Venezuela and much of the rest of Latin American
chambers, as an inspired social activist, Chávez appears to embody the
region's greatest hope for the future and the growing despair over his
irrepressible style. His myriad social programs, ranging from medical
services for the nation's poor through an innovative oil exchange
arrangement with Cuba, to a meaningful land reform and educational project,
to a broad pattern of disconnected oil sales to many neighboring countries
as well as directly to deprived neighborhoods within countries, have given
luster to his revolutionary credentials. In exchange, he has not asked for
tribute, but merely called upon other leaders to do what is best for their
own countries. Chávez has also been the region's chief proponent of
increased integration in the case of social justice, as well as promoting
discounted oil for the Caribbean islands with strained economies, and poor
neighborhoods in Boston and the Bronx, while spearheading the effort to
construct a gas pipeline running between Venezuela, Brazil and Argentina,
with an extension to Bolivia. In spite of the State Department's most
benighted efforts to caricature him as a human right's abuser, a bully and
an anti-democrat, Chávez has demonstrated that he has an incontestable
record for transparency and for obeying the law far more clinically than
much of the leadership of his middle class detractors within Venezuela or
Washington's hypocritical salvos who helped to finance a coup to oust him in
2002.

A New Model Dares to Emerge
Furthermore, Chávez and now Morales may, if they politically survive,
represent a historic development in Latin America. As long as they survive,
they are the first democratically elected leaders espousing a mixed economy
containing socialist values that the region has witnessed since Salvador
Allende came to power in Chile in 1970. Clearly up to this point, due to
open market competition and the denigration of a mixed economy featuring a
vigorous role for the public sector, a sense of civic responsibility has not
been available for the average Latin American. The UN has stated that the
region has the highest level of concentrated wealth in the world. The result
is that the process produces few "winners" and a plethora of "losers"
throughout the region.

The values shared by Chávez and now Morales are not without their
detractors: The Venezuelan President is meeting the same portion of
Washington-backed subterfuge that eventually led to the coups that overthrew
Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and Allende in 1973. The Bush administration
has employed a range of strategies against its Venezuelan nemesis as part of
an intensifying campaign to ridicule, pillory, and perhaps eventually
arrange for the demise of his government. Themes ranging from Washington
providing strategic funding to nominally, if heavily compromised,
"democratic" bodies such as Súmate, to allegedly encouraging acts of
espionage and attempts to foment anti-Chávez unrest within the Venezuelan
military, are almost daily events. All sense of proportionality has now fled
the scene in Washington, when Chávez expels a U.S. embassy military attaché
(a relatively junior officer) for trafficking documents with Venezuela
military personnel, and the U.S. retaliates by expelling the second in
command at the Venezuela embassy in Washington. It's as if in return for
Chávez launching a rhetorical gonzo jab against President Bush - his beloved
"Mr. Danger"- the "Decider" readies the B 3's to bomb Caracas. Meanwhile, in
its totally discredited annual certification reports regarding drug
trafficking, human trafficking, human rights abuses and a respect for
religious freedom and the war against terrorism, the administration
shamelessly manipulates data in order to come forth with preordained
findings, with Venezuela being the target of choice for such protesting.

The Advantages of a Full Leader
Chávez, of course, has had the sort of leverage that Allende grievously
lacked: with oil at over $70 a barrel, the Venezuelan leader is not only
flush with petrodollars but ready and able to fund revolutionary domestic
and regional projects. He holds the additional trump card of an increasingly
important strategic resource that has yet to be exploited on a major scale
the heavy crude yielded from the Orinoco's tar sands. Furthermore, with a
widening slate of regional allies, theoretically including venues like
Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Bolivia, with several other potential
candidates in the wings and Mercosur as his bride, Chávez, theoretically has
the geopolitical heft to stand up to U.S. machinations. At the same time,
the already fragmenting loose knit Pink Tide alliance is suffering from some
important viperous tendencies, including Chávez's lamentable habit of self
destructively intervening in the local affairs of other Latin American
countries.

Standing up to Washington is a theme that has gained widespread currency
elsewhere in South America, as part of a leitmotif of the pink tide
movement, which in reality may be more apparent than real. The resounding
defeat of both U.S.-backed candidates in the OAS Secretary-General race a
number of months ago, indicated that the region was no longer willing to
docilely follow the diktats coming from the north. Additionally, Brazil's
decision around the same time to deny the U.S. even token observer status at
the Arab-Latin American Summit in Brasilia represented a momentous, if
symbolic, shift in U.S.-Latin American relations - something like the dog
being ready to bite the hand of its owner.

A Rush of New Development
As one of the more dynamic aspects of a fast moving scenario, Evo Morales in
Bolivia has emerged as a particularly plucky figure, unwilling to allow his
country's traditional bended knee posture to the U.S to continue
unchallenged. He insists that while wanting to have a good relationship with
the U.S., it must be not one based on "submission." Underscoring this escape
from the "Latin American ghetto," Morales' travels after winning the
presidency, included quick visits to Caracas, Europe, South Africa, Brazil
and China, but conspicuously left out Washington, suggesting that the
emperor's ring no longer needed to be kissed. The trip also highlighted
another phenomenon of the pink tide, which is an increasing propensity to
turn towards multilateral ties with non-traditional partners in order to
achieve diversification. Trade between South America and the EU is
quickening as the region seeks to construct new economic and political ties
around the world, and as Washington becomes an increasingly problematic
partner. Nascent bodies such as the Ibero-American Summit and the IBSA
(India-Brazil-South Africa) South-South alliance seek to integrate Latin
America into a world that looks and acts more like them, and as a way to
escape the imperial ukases, traditionally emitted from the State Department.

The forward, if fitful, motion of the pink tide has the potential to
profoundly reshape the internal politics of Latin America and grant the
region a new and enhanced place in the global pecking order. For Washington,
which has been wholly unable to constructively engage this movement and
still clings to the disabling vision of a wholly U.S.-dominated "back yard,"
sustained more by manipulation than by collective regional interests, the
pink tide, whatever its centrifugal tensions, presents a serious diplomatic
dilemma. Rumsfeld almost divisively indicates that the Pink Tide could be
dealt with by a series of U.S mini military bases (FOLS) or "lilly pads"
throughout the region, along with a beefed up and entirely complaisant Latin
American military establishment. If the White House continues to return to a
now poisoned well to draw from its legacy of past arrogant initiatives that
have helped create the disastrous conditions that have so frayed bonds of
the current distressed relationship, the rest of the hemisphere can be
excused for becoming increasingly alienated from a diplomatic hegemon which
has so lost its way that it risks finding itself pushed aside, as an
outdated and rather useless relic.

This analysis was prepared by COHA Director Larry Birns

May 30, 2006

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent,
non-profit, non-partisan, tax-exempt research and information organization.
It has been described on the Senate floor as being "one of the nation's most
respected bodies of scholars and policy makers." For more information,
please see our web page at www.coha.org ; or contact
our Washington offices
by phone (202) 223-4975, fax (202) 223-4979, or email coha@coha.org
.

A vow

2006-05-25T12:16:00.000-07:00

Thats it I am not drinking for a very long time. Maybe if I declare it it cyber-world, I will really do it this time. It hurts now I have to lay off for a while. I had my time, I had my fun now I gotta lay these hussy bones down.

The Vagabonds' Rabbit Laid to Rest

2006-05-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

Green Rabbit or El Conejito Verde (the zany tale of a mischievious Prince transformed by the long love of a peasant girl's done great feat) had its last performance in Dallas today. Young Audiences will now tour my Mexican mythological beast of a children's play: The Lizard's Secret, next year. We finalized the Dallas run with a surprise Shimamoto blessing as he waved on by the Rose and saw us off this morning.

In true Vagabond form, we blazed the Dallas roadways making magic for little wide-eyed ones. We shuffled across schools, classroom to classroom in post show glow, inviting them along on our crazy train of imagination and theatrical possibilites. El Conejito Verde has been performed at over 30 DISD schools where the Vagabonds conducted over 150 workshops in two years.

The Vagabonds' Rabbit Ride

630 am to Dallas,
from two cars to one,
finding midway in the run,
all the space needed was in my own
un-aired, unradio-waved car.

From there we treked,
one grump, one sleepy,
one cheery and two hazy
we never knew who would be who

soon with windows down
lungs full of old songs
and jams just found,
we raced through cars,
a safe-wielded steer, and time
always with just enough time.

A trunk,
a guitar,
two sombreros,
a necklace,
iron shoes,
a barrel,
tears,
sarapes,
flowers,
5 masks,
2 chairs, and

us five:
Chaca from Land of the Lost Yvonne,
Molasses Rob,
Dietrich,
Clauds, and
Birdie Jane Shann

slinging tunes on the ride
from White Snake to Beatles
to Hip Pocket Johnny verse

excited to
guess for lunch
Pei Wei the good ticket
El Pulpo not so much

Pre-show bad mouthin'
and almost always something missin'.
With new tunes discovered
in spur-moment bliss.

My wed night residue
pushing through my pores,
the tardy jinx:
if angry your next.

One sad school knew no rules
and mobbed me:

The four watched the swarm come over
all little arms wrapped around me
I look up to nothin but small faces
needing us more than we knew

Each day a new version
true Vagabonds just told the story,
moving and whispering through a
ballet with our inside verses.

The pin drop moments
to the roars of their voices.
In bright eyes and worried looks,
we found them

loaded their hearts
on our vagabond wagon
headed toward the kiss
of Marisol and her Prince.

That's why I don't go to the movies

2006-05-22T12:11:00.000-07:00

Last movie I saw at a big commercial theater was Sin City. It was pretty good, visual eye candy, typical gang killer story, really captured Gaiman's world.

The Rose has been my screen of late. Which really needs some support, El Mariachi which showed late on Fred's Fest Saturday (I would have gone but by show time I was too roasted to return to my workplace).

I did see an independant short by a local filmmaker Frank Vasquez, called White Skies-beautiful!!

One day for lunch we got to see a Wonder Woman episode with pizza (Latin Arts Association perks).

800 Bullets at the Rose was brilliant, exhuberant, raucous, heroic, charming, adventurous...to say the least I had a blast. It is a spagetti-western spoof directed by Alex de la Iglesia, Spanish filmaker. Excellent film.

Anyway which brings me to my rant on Hollywood. I was excited about Da Vinci Code, because I love history (art and world), anthropology, mythology and code breaking and with my time spent on conspiracy theories as a high hobby I thought...cool.

Never read the book, I am very behind with my reading since scripts, writing, news articles, research, blogs and yes myspace consumes most of my brain space.

As a film, it was a joke! Whoever wrote the screenplay was lazy and unoriginal. I kept calling out typical dialog junk before it even came out of their mouths. I didn't believe anybody not even the ever beautiful Amalie actress who turned out to be Jesus's baby girl. Talk about baby's daddy! Tom Hanks is not a scholar!!!! Tom Hanks will always be the bosom buddy we all loved in BIG! Gimme a break, he ticked me off. Ian and Tom's argument over the Christian-Pagan-Jesus-is-only-man debate
could have been fascinating and enlightening if only the director and actors were at all believable.

As former official christian and current global-faith based humanities freak I was sickened.

With the heft of historical connections, conspiracy theories, religious symbology, I guess they wanted to make sure even the non-thinkers could get something out of it. Typical hollywood, action, suspense bullshit...ugh.

I was disgusted, not even worth a rental. The Mary Magdalene theory was interesting but the truthful chorus of "you see what you want to see" was probably the book's conscience.

There is a reason why I am not persuing a mainstream acting career, even if it means I can't make my swashbuckling pirate girl adventure with me and my girls sword fighting and swinging on ropes from boat to boat kicking manpig ass in real wench ruffly, eye-patched hotness...no! Never! Not even if the new Charlie girls wanted to buy it not even if it meant reinventing the phrase

pirate booty

.

that is all

MEXICO BLEEDS`: Here is a tip to the iceberg

2006-05-10T10:36:00.000-07:00

History repeats itself. Big business always finds its way. Here is a story from

www.globalexchange.org.

I'll give you a background:

Two presidents before Vicente Fox (PAN is right wing), there was Salinas de Gortari (PRI is center left with alliances to the US. Mexicans with leftist views do not support US alliances). He was a ruthless political impresario who was involved in a running mate's assassination. After his presidency, he was exiled for leaving the country in a devastating financial crisis by stealing 40mil. Mexico is still recovering. He has returned and is now in bed with Zapatista subcomander Marcos. They are now trying to form a new party. So his involvement needs to be seriously scrutinized. I am afraid of Comandante Marcos for he is a wolf in sheep's clothing, very pointedly mentioning the support of his new party. It sounds much like Bush's attempt to reach out to the disenfranchised. Keep an eye on the words. I checked Mexican, and other Latin American versions on the story, this seems like decent account.

Police Brutality in Mexico
By John Gibler

San Salvador Atenco, Mexico - At 7 AM this past Wednesday, May 3rd, state police blocked 60 flower vendors from setting up their stands at the Texcoco local market in the State of Mexico, about 20 miles east of Mexico City. The police beat and arrested those who resisted. The flower vendors called to the residents of neighboring San Salvador Atenco for help and the Atenco residents blocked the highway that borders their town and leads to Texcoco.

The police response was overwhelming: hundreds of state and federal police, most clad in riot gear, arrived to lift the blockade. Atenco resisted, with machetes, clubs, Molotov cocktails and bottle rockets. The police tried to lift the blockade five times throughout the day, and five times they were repelled.

The violence was extreme. Photographs published in local papers show Atenco protestors beating a fallen policemen, police beating tens of fallen protestors. Severe beatings. Protesters kicking one fallen police officer in the face, groups of police pulverizing tens of protestors with rocks and batons.

Police also attacked photographers from both the national and the international press. Photographers and television cameramen from Associated Press, Reuters, Milenio, Jornada and Televisa all reported beatings and attempts to confiscate cameras. Photographs and film coverage of the beatings were published on the internet and shown on national television. Local and international news articles however, have not mentioned the systematic police violence against reporters.

All told on Wednesday, over 50 people were injured and 100 detained by the police. Protestors took 11 police hostage, but released them to the Red Cross later in the evening. A fourteen year-old boy was shot in the chest and killed in the afternoon. Local media reported that the boy was killed by projectiles from the protestors, but the death certificate said otherwise: bullet wound to the chest.

Atenco is famous across Mexico for having resisted in 2002 the forced displacement from their community to make way for a new Mexico City Airport. Villagers, mostly small farmers, formed the People's Front in Defense of Land (Frente del Pueblo en Defensa de La Tierra) and, wielding their machetes, became a symbol of popular protest in Mexico.

Organizers from the People's Front have attended several meetings of the Zapatista's Other Campaign, and hosted subcomandante Marcos' arrival in Atenco. During his visit, Marcos promised to align the Zapatista Army of National Liberation with AtencoÃ¢ÂÂs struggle. The Atenco Front, with machetes in hand, was in charge of providing security for Marcos during the May first Labor Day march to Mexico CityÃ¢ÂÂs main plaza where the FrontÃ¢ÂÂs leader, Ignacio Del Valle, spoke before tens of thousands gathered in the plaza.

Two days later riot police stormed the house where he had been hiding since the attack in Texcoco. At that moment the Televisa cameraman was outside the house filming the police operation when some five police officers approached and repeatedly beat him with clubs. As a result there is no film coverage of the police raid.

Several newspaper photographers, however, photographed Del Valle's arrival to prison several hours later that night. He was carried in a headlock by a masked police officer, who, in the photographs, is pointing for the photographers to leave the area. Another masked officer walked slightly behind, grabbing Del Valle's back. The two masked officers walk Del Valle through a gauntlet of a hundred riot police with helmets and shields. Del Valle's head is covered with a towel in the pictures, but his face, swollen and bloody is partially visible. Also visible is a blood stain the size of a fist on the groin of his jeans, evidence of repeated strikes to his testicles.

Police Siege Town, Take over 200 prisoners

The following day, Thursday May 4th, Mexico woke to the bloody images of violence from the day before. Atenco woke to a police siege that led to hundreds more wounded and detained.

Around 6:30 AM, over three thousand police surrounded Atenco and invaded, filling the streets, cutting down everyone in their way with clubs and firing tear gas, both to disorient, and to kill. Several protestors were shot in the head at close range with metal gas pellets three inches long and an inch in diameter.

Within two hours the police had occupied Atenco.

Then the terror began. The police went house to house, breaking windows and doors, pulling people into the street, beating them and then piling them in police vans and trucks. The police had a masked individual in civilian clothes who pointed out which houses to raid. Several people who had participated as speakers in high-profile Other Campaign events in Mexico City were singled out and beaten. One woman who spoke in the Zocalo in Mexico City on May first was pulled into the street and kicked repeatedly in the groin.

The police violence on Thursday was indiscriminate. Both mainstream and alternative press reporters were attacked. Several members of the caravan that accompanies the Other Campaign across the country were beaten and arrested.

Samantha Dietmar, a young German photographer who has been covering the Other Campaign since January was grabbed in the doorway of her hotel, beaten in the face and thrown into a truck. A neighbor who witnessed the attack said that she asked why the police were taking her: Ã¢ÂÂWhat did she do?Ã¢ÂÂ The police officer responded, the woman said: Ã¢ÂÂShe did whatever I say she did.Ã¢ÂÂ

Dietmar was taken to a women's prison on the outskirts of Mexico City. A human rights lawyer who was able to interview her said that she had serious pain in her eyes from the tear gas, and that she had been beaten in the face and body. Dietmar will most likely be deported.

The same lawyer said that five women were raped in the police vans when taken to jail.

Between two and three hundred people were detained, but only 109 have been recognized by the police. A list is circulating on the internet, compiled from witness accounts, of 275 people who have been detained. At least 18 people are missing.

Hundreds of people sought hiding in houses across the town. In one house, 23 people were packed into a 12-by-12 foot room. Just outside the hiding room, Alexis Benhumea, a 20-year old economy student in Mexico City, laid unconscious for 12 hours. Just after 6:30 AM he was shot in the head, most likely with a gas pellet. The impact broke his skull open in two places, exposing his brain.

Alexis was carried into a house by his father and two friends for hiding. One of the protestors hiding out in the house made an impromptu bandage for the wound to stop the bleeding. The thick bandage was soaked in blood by the afternoon. AlexisÃ¢ÂÂs father and those hiding out in the house so feared for their lives, and AlexisÃ¢ÂÂ life, that they dared not leave their hiding place. Indeed, just outside the house, state and federal police blocked both ends of the street and constantly patrolled up and down the street.

Ã¢ÂÂI was sure that they would kill him and dump him somewhere if I tried to go out and seek medical help,Ã¢ÂÂ said Angel Benhumea, AlexisÃ¢ÂÂ father. Ã¢ÂÂI didnÃ¢ÂÂt think he would make it.Ã¢ÂÂ

After coordinating by cellular telephones with friends in Mexico City, correspondents with Indymedia Chiapas were able to rent a taxi van (which operate in Mexico like public buses rather than individual taxis) and stage a rescue, taking Alexis and his father to a hospital 40 minutes away, on the eastern border of Mexico City. Alexis arrived alive and survived four hours of intensive brain surgery: hemorrhaging had filled 30 percent of his brain. At the time of writing, AlexisÃ¢ÂÂ condition is still critical, and the extent of brain damage is unknown.

Alexis Benhumea was attacked twice: first with the pellet that broke his skull, and second with the police siege that made it impossible for his family to seek medical attention.

By mid-afternoon Atenco was an occupied city. Burn marks and broken glass, thousands of police standing guard, leaning in doorways, lying in stairways, sprawled out sleeping in the shade of the central plaza. Yet the climate was tense. When I took a picture from a car window of a group of police, one whipped around and loaded a gas pellet in his rifle, but not in time to fire.

Around 5:30 in the afternoon, the state and federal police lifted their siege, piling into their trucks and driving off.

Zapatistas March to Atenco

Thursday in the evening the Zapatista Army of National Liberation and local labor and student organizations convoked a march for Friday at 4PM from the University of Chapingo to Atenco.

At 4PM Marcos arrived at the universityÃ¢ÂÂleaving the house in Mexico City where he had been surrounded by police and federal intelligence officers since Wednesday evening. About a thousand people had already gathered for the march by the time of his arrival.

The march left from Chapingo at around 5PM with some two thousand people. But the march kept growing. Standing on overpasses, it was impossible to see the end of the march as it occupied the highway that leads to Atenco. Estimates among local reporters ranged from 4 to 10 thousand people by the time the march reached Atenco.

As the march crossed through the town of Texcoco, where the violence began on Wednesday, locals closed the metal doors used to cover their windows at night, making the fear in Texcoco visible and audible. In the four months of the Other Campaign, nothing like this has happened before. Yet the police were not waiting for the marchers. A few motorcycle state police went ahead of the march, and several trucks with federal police trailed behind.

The marchers arrived in Atenco without confrontations with the police. In the central plaza, several local community leaders and parents whose children had been beaten and detained spoke to the crowd that filled the town plaza.

Ã¢ÂÂMy boy was on his way to work when they grabbed him,Ã¢ÂÂ one woman said, is that justice?

Subcomandante Marcos attacked the media manipulation of the violence in Atenco, accusing the government of directing newspaper, television and radio directors of holding back images of police brutality while publishing and passing over and over the same images of protestors beating police.

Marcos held in the air five empty shotgun shells, most likely slug shells, that locals found on the ground after the siege. Ã¢ÂÂHere is the proof of who killed the boy, Marcos said.

He offered to hand one of the shells over to reporters from Televisa and TV Azteca, the largest media corporations in Mexico, but the reporters refused to identify themselves. Marcos said he would grant interviews to any reporter who agrees to publish the interview Ã¢ÂÂwithout cuts or edits,Ã¢ÂÂ signaling a major shift in the Zapatista's media policy during the Other Campaign, which had been to refuse all interview requests.

Marcos reinstated the Zapatista's support for Atenco and its political prisoners.

You are not alone, he said,We will continue carrying out mobilizations across the country until all the political prisoners are freed.

He also accused the government of plotting the repression: why were the police ready to attack here if the problem was in Texcoco, he asked. Because they want their airport once again, and they are coming for your land.

Marcos said that he and participants in the Other Campaign would stay in Mexico City indefinitely and called for a national public gathering in Atenco over the next two days.

5 de MAYO anyone...anyone ?

2006-05-08T13:55:00.000-07:00

WISDOM FROM LORNA D CERVANTES:

"The reason why I boycott 5 de mayo?"

"coors"

nuff said

mine:

10. School teachers wearing those embroidered dresses.
9. Mexican food still tastes the same.
8. Wasted frat boys in sombreros
7. Wasted frat girls spilling margaritas.
6. Mexicans don't get a day off.
5. Can't find a hot looking Mariachi group.
4. Scissor cuts from the tissue paper flags
3. I do not recomend tequila and swirling folklorico dresses.
2. Speedy Gonzales still lives, he's a freaking rat guys! Get it?
1. 86 Corona

FOR THOSE WHO REALLY WANT TO KNOW:

Cinco de Mayo marks the victory of the Mexican Army over the French at the Battle of Puebla. Althought the Mexican army was eventually defeated, the "Batalla de Puebla" came to represent a symbol of Mexican unity and patriotism. With this victory, Mexico demonstrated to the world that Mexico and all of Latin America were willing to defend themselves of any foreign intervention. Especially those from imperialist states bent on world conquest. (SOUND FAMILIAR)

Cinco de Mayo's history has its roots in the French Occupation of Mexico. The French occupation took shape in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. With this war, Mexico entered a period of national crisis during the 1850's. Years of not only fighting the Americans but also a Civil War, had left Mexico devastated and bankrupt. On July 17, 1861, President Benito Juarez issued a moratorium in which all foreign debt payments would be suspended for a brief period of two years, with the promise that after this period, payments would resume.

The English, Spanish and French refused to allow president Juarez to do this, and instead decided to invade Mexico and get payments by whatever means necessary. The Spanish and English eventually withdrew, but the French refused to leave. Their intention was to create an Empire in Mexico under Napoleon III. Some have argued that the true French occupation was a response to growing American power and to the Monroe Doctrine (America for the Americans). Napoleon III believed that if the United States was allowed to prosper indescriminantly, it would eventually become a power in and of itself.

In 1862, the French army began its advance. Under General Ignacio Zaragoza, 5,000 ill-equipped Mestizo and Zapotec Indians defeated the French army in what came to be known as the "Batalla de Puebla" on the fifth of May.

In the United States, the "Batalla de Puebla" came to be known as simply "5 de Mayo" and unfortunately, many people wrongly equate it with Mexican Independence which was on September 16, 1810, nearly a fifty year difference. Over, the years Cinco de Mayo has become very commercialized and many people see this holiday as a time for fun and dance. Oddly enough, Cinco de Mayo has become more of Chicano holiday than a Mexican one. Cinco de Mayo is celebrated on a much larger scale here in the United States than it is in Mexico. HANG ON TO YOUR ROOTS HERMANOS.

Guerillera 4

2006-05-03T12:16:00.000-07:00

Has the research to save people's lives really been bastardized to create an incredible market?

not unlike the use Christianity (we know this)
not unlike universities (they are like little sub-countires with strong economies)

You need medicines to fix the side effects of medicines. The chemicals used to process food and the consumption of chemicals are causing slow internal putrification of our bodies: aka cancer. The only way to combat cancer is with it's own metal (my mother can't even have ginger to settle her stomach, apparently herbs deactivate chemo therapy hmmmm). Medical professions are the highest paying jobs, yet county healthcare can only serve those who are willing to make a day or two commitment to the wait for treatment. Of course, their source of livelihood is on the line. Vaccinations are now too dangerous to consider as a health must with links to mercury contents and mental health.

NOW an ancient herb salvia de venorum (shaman's sage) is being considered for illegal status.

Our leaders are forcing us to only eat from their own kitchens.

A wisdom from Nietzsche:

Who benefits from you knowing good and evil?

Estrella-bangled- Bandera

2006-05-03T12:12:00.000-07:00

hehe- What changed his mind?

from: magdaleno rose avila, human rights specialist (former director of: amnesty international, cesar chavez foundation, peace corp)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

National Anthem Sung In Spanish At First Bush Inaugural

On Friday, President Bush blasted the idea of singing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. But Bush's highly-scripted 2001 inaugural ceremony actually featured a rendition of the national anthem sung in Spanish by Jon Secada. From Cox News Service, 1/18/01:

The opening ceremony reflected that sentiment. A racially diverse string of famous and once famous performers entertained Bush, soon-to-be First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who watched on stage from a special viewing area.

Pop star Jon Secada sang the national anthem in English and Spanish.

Apparently, Secada singing the anthem in Spanish was a regular feature of the Bush campaign. From the 8/3/00 Miami Herald:

The nominee, his wife Laura, erstwhile rival John McCain and his wife Cindy joined Bush on a platform where children sang the national anthem - in "Spanglish," Secada explained.

This morning, ThinkProgress revealed that, according to Kevin Phillip's book American Dynasty, Bush himself sang the national anthem in Spanish. Looks like Bush's conviction that "the national anthem ought to be sung in English" was something he acquired very recently.

(www.thinkprogress.org)

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/05/02/spanish-anthem/

FACT CHECK: U.S. Government Commissioned Spanish-Language 'Star-Spangled Banner' in 1919

The right wing is up in arms over a new version of the Star-Spangled Banner written in Spanish. Last week President Bush stated that "the national anthem ought to be sung in English." Yesterday Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) introduced a resolution requiring the Star-Spangled banner to be sung only in English:

That flag and that song are a part of our history and our national identity. ... That's why in 1931 Congress declared the Star-Spangled Banner our national anthem. That's why we should always sing it in our common language, English.

In his press release, Alexander said the Star-Spangled Banner has "never before...been rendered in another language."

But in 1919, the U.S. Bureau of Education commissioned a Spanish-language version of "The Star Spangled Banner." The State Department's website also features four-separate versions of the anthem in Spanish.

Stage 2B Invasive - A Good Sign

2006-05-01T00:19:00.000-07:00

In a stale hall with unfinished walls,
my feet push my trembling hand
holding roses
like if it was my Mother's fingers,
five years old still
hanging on to a bad dream.

It was the drum in my chest
that pulled me into the room.
It was the rock I swallowed
that opened the curtain.

I found her tired face and swollen circles,
her mouth broadened big:
a smile brightened and beautiful.

As she reached my hand before
I could place my my gift in hers,
I reached her cheek,
and found a strong warmth
in her embrace.

She turned her neck from the
path of a bullet
aimed through her breast,
a tunnel down to mines
of weeds and poison.

Mija

I sank,
I couldn't
take the sword's strike
from the deep gasp
of her hand.

My sister wore that stab
like a black eyed
and broken-nosed dress.
Stunning,
giving me a mirror.

I stood with no clue
I stood blank
in front of the hard slip
of what I have always known
to be the strongest grace.

I come from a long line
of guerilleros
My Mother the bravest one
and for my Mother,
it was her Mother
and with
Grandmother stood my Grandfather
and with my Sisters, my Brother
with them, me.

all there along my Father's side.

Our blood in my veins,
helped my Mother up
and untied her gown
and guided her arm through
the strap of her bra

I saw my birth in her breasts:
my origin, my nourishment,
my comfort...myself.

Her body is my own.

This the beginning,
soon a space will remain
to give more land
for love to create
greater change
in my blood's time.

Fort Worth Latino Youth and a Revolutionary project

2006-04-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

RAUL Y JULIEWritten by 1440 Experience
Directed by Claudia Acosta

Staged Reading: MAY 17th 7pm FREE

Rose Marine Theater
1440 N Main

Talk back session immediately following.

Teatro de la Rosas teen theater troupe, 1440 Experience, is proud to present the collaborative writing project: Raul y Julie. This bilingual play, based on Romeo and Juliet, takes a look into the contemporary Latino youth experience. Set in Fort Worth, Raul and Julie must face language, class and race issues in school and at home. Their purity aims to survive through these barriers, only to leave them with life changing consequence.

Our youth is speaking out. Our Latino youth are here to tell their story. From their minds, in their words, this original play will mark a monumental point in Northside history. Please come and support this phenomenal talent here in Panther City

Stoogeaphilia fourandtwenty welcome

2006-04-20T15:26:00.000-07:00

Wednesday at the Wreck

Inspired by the well slung tunes:

heavy
thunder,
rich thick red velvet
and silky honey
over warm bread

let wind fall in
over hard lines
to calm through
its breath's blow

jumpin' flames
on wood,
through paper
and concrete-
flames grab veins
and blood
with grumble
and growl

beating ancient hands
on heart
thud upon thud,
a cry from string and pulse
with a wandering eye
lost with lost of dress
found with found
closed lids
and the metal grasp
of beer held verse

and sweat
turned back
with clenched fist
over phone

finish strong
finish wild
finish hard

-4/20/06

G III in my rush...

2006-04-18T21:14:00.000-07:00

I was in a rush posting GIII and should have made corrections.
It has been revised excuse me

Guerillera III

2006-04-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

This came from one of my myspace bulletins, Jinks . A very worthy read. This is a recurring nightmare. This is one of history's most challenging lesson. First, the anihilation of Mayans and the Aztec nation (Aztec avarice became it's own demise). Native Americans in the north stripped of their lands, brutally left to crumble by disease. Africans, tossed from one country to another to serve as machinery, nothing more and still thought of as nothing more. Here, when Texas became a country, I believe the Rangers rid THEIR lands of MEZKINS:

Texas Rangers, U.S. History

Related Category: U.S. History

Texas Rangers, mounted fighting force organized (1835) during the Texas Revolution. During the republic they became established as the guardians of the Texas frontier, particularly against Native Americans. The Texas Rangers at first consisted of three companies of 25 men each. Said to "ride like Mexicans, shoot like Tennesseans, and fight like the very devil," the rangers were unique as a police force in that they never drilled, were not required to salute officers, and wore neither uniforms nor any standard gear except the six-shooter. In their first decade of operation, the rangers effectively quelled lawlessness in Texas on frequent occasions, and in the Mexican War (1846–48) they served as scouts and guerrilla fighters, gaining a wide reputation for valor and effectiveness.

In the late 1850s the rangers fought vicious battles with the Comanche, and in the Civil War, Terry's Texas Rangers gained renown. In the Reconstruction era the Texas Rangers were engaged to control outlaws, feuding groups, and Mexican marauders and were responsible for keeping law and order along the Rio Grande. In 1874 the Texas Rangers were organized for the first time on a permanent basis in two battalions; one was assigned to arbitrate range wars on the frontier, and the other was sent to control cattle rustling on the Texas-Mexico border. The heyday of the great cattle business, with its feuds and shootings, its outlaws and rustlers, was also the heyday of the Texas Rangers.

This reference was the first listing on a google search. That is in the texts books. They don't call the Texas Rangers a "vigilante violence" (artical makes an interesting statements about the sanction of minute men). They were created to protect their rightful borders by shooting any Mexican or Native American found.

I hope that this time, the endurance built by the sweat and blood of oppressed generations, will culminate to a full shift of power, a revolution that begins with the death of apathy and insular living, with offering more fine combed perspectives on the traditional glorified history to our students. Time to learn. Time to evolve:

US Deported Mexicans Before - American Dream my ass...
Body: US Deported Mexicans In Masses Before-It Was Bad Very bad
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
www.usatoday.com/news/nat...over_x.htm

His father and oldest sister were farming sugar beets
in the fields of Hamilton, Mont., and his mother was
cooking tortillas when 6-year-old Ignacio Pina saw
plainclothes authorities burst into his home.

"They came in with guns and told us to get out,"
recalls Pina, 81, a retired railroad worker in
Bakersfield, Calif., of the 1931 raid. "They didn't let
us take anything," not even a trunk that held birth
certificates proving that he and his five siblings were
U.S.-born citizens.

The family was thrown into a jail for 10 days before
being sent by train to Mexico. Pina says he spent 16
years of "pure hell" there before acquiring papers of
his Utah birth and returning to the USA.

The deportation of Pina's family tells an
almost-forgotten story of a 1930s anti-immigrant
campaign. Tens of thousands, and possibly more than
400,000, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans were pressured
-- through raids and job denials -- to leave the USA
during the Depression, according to a USA TODAY review
of documents and interviews with historians and
deportees. Many, mostly children, were U.S. citizens.

Related story: Some stories hard to get in history
books

If their tales seem incredible, a newspaper analysis of
the history textbooks used most in U.S. middle and high
schools may explain why: Little has been written about
the exodus, often called "the repatriation."

That may soon change. As the U.S. Senate prepares to
vote on bills that would either help illegal workers
become legal residents or boost enforcement of U.S.
immigration laws, an effort to address deportations
that happened 70 years ago has gained traction:

*On Thursday, Rep. Hilda Solis, D-Calif., plans to
introduce a bill in the U.S. House that calls for a
commission to study the "deportation and coerced
emigration" of U.S. citizens and legal residents. The
panel would also recommend remedies that could include
reparations. "An apology should be made," she says.

Co-sponsor Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says history
may repeat itself. He says a new House bill that makes
being an illegal immigrant a felony could prompt a
"massive deportation of U.S. citizens," many of them
U.S.-born children leaving with their parents.

"We have safeguards to ensure people aren't deported
who shouldn't be," says Jeff Lungren, GOP spokesman for
the House Judiciary Committee, adding the new House
bill retains those safeguards.

*In January, California became the first state to enact
a bill that apologizes to Latino families for the 1930s
civil rights violations. It declined to approve the
sort of reparations the U.S. Congress provided in 1988
for Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.

Democratic state Sen. Joe Dunn, a self-described "Irish
white guy from Minnesota" who sponsored the state bill,
is now pushing a measure to require students be taught
about the 1930s emigration. He says as many as 2
million people of Mexican ancestry were coerced into
leaving, 60% of them U.S. citizens.

*In October, a group of deportees and their relatives,
known as los repatriados, will host a conference in
Detroit on the topic. Organizer Helen Herrada, whose
father was deported, has conducted 100 oral histories
and produced a documentary. She says many sent to
Mexico felt "humiliated" and didn't want to talk about
it. "They just don't want it to happen again."

No precise figures exist on how many of those deported
in the 1930s were illegal immigrants. Since many of
those harassed left on their own, and their journeys
were not officially recorded, there are also no exact
figures on the total number who departed.

At least 345,839 people went to Mexico from 1930 to
1935, with 1931 as the peak year, says a 1936 dispatch
from the U.S. Consulate General in Mexico City.

"It was a racial removal program," says Mae Ngai, an
immigration history expert at the University of
Chicago, adding people of Mexican ancestry were
targeted.

However, Americans in the 1930s were "really hurting,"
says Otis Graham, history professor emeritus at the
University of California, Santa Barbara. One in four
workers were unemployed and many families hungry.
Deporting illegal residents was not an "outrageous
idea," Graham says. "Don't lose the context."

A pressure campaign

In the early 1900s, Mexicans poured into the USA,
welcomed by U.S. factory and farm owners who needed
their labor. Until entry rules tightened in 1924, they
simply paid a nickel to cross the border and get visas
for legal residency.

"The vast majority were here legally, because it was so
easy to enter legally," says Kevin Johnson, a law
professor at the University of California, Davis.

They spread out across the nation. They sharecropped in
California, Texas and Louisiana, harvested sugar beets
in Montana and Minnesota, laid railroad tracks in
Kansas, mined coal in Utah and Oklahoma, packed meat in
Chicago and assembled cars in Detroit.

By 1930, the U.S. Census counted 1.42 million people of
Mexican ancestry, and 805,535 of them were U.S. born,
up from 700,541 in 1920.

Change came in 1929, as the stock market and U.S.
economy crashed. That year, U.S. officials tightened
visa rules, reducing legal immigration from Mexico to a
trickle. They also discussed what to do with those
already in the USA.

"The government undertook a program that coerced people
to leave," says Layla Razavi, policy analyst for the
Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund
(MALDEF). "It was really a hostile environment." She
says federal officials in the Hoover administration,
like local-level officials, made no distinction between
people of Mexican ancestry who were in the USA legally
and those who weren't.

"The document trail is shocking," says Dunn, whose
staff spent two years researching the topic after he
read the 1995 book Decade of Betrayal: Mexican
Repatriation in the 1930s, by Francisco Balderrama and
Raymond Rodriguez.

USA TODAY reviewed hundreds of pages of documents, some
provided by Dunn and MALDEF and others found at the
National Archives. They cite officials saying the
deportations lawfully focused on illegal immigrants
while the exodus of legal residents was voluntary. Yet
they suggest people of Mexican ancestry faced varying
forms of harassment and intimidation:

*Raids. Officials staged well-publicized raids in
public places. On Feb. 26, 1931, immigration officials
suddenly closed off La Placita, a square in Los
Angeles, and questioned the roughly 400 people there
about their legal status.

The raids "created a climate of fear and anxiety" and
prompted many Mexicans to leave voluntarily, says
Balderrama, professor of Chicano studies and history at
California State University, Los Angeles.

In a June 1931 memo to superiors, Walter Carr, Los
Angeles district director of immigration, said
"thousands upon thousands of Mexican aliens" have been
"literally scared out of Southern California."

Some of them came from hospitals and needed medical
care en route to Mexico, immigrant inspector Harry
Yeager wrote in a November 1932 letter.

The Wickersham Commission, an 11-member panel created
by President Hoover, said in a May 1931 report that
immigration inspectors made "checkups" of boarding
houses, restaurants and pool rooms without "warrants of
any kind." Labor Secretary William Doak responded that
the "checkups" occurred very rarely.

*Jobs withheld. Prodded by labor unions, states and
private companies barred non-citizens from some jobs,
Balderrama says.

"We need their jobs for needy citizens," C.P. Visel of
the Los Angeles Citizens Committee for Coordination of
Unemployment Relief wrote in a 1931 telegram. In a
March 1931 letter to Doak, Visel applauded U.S.
officials for the "exodus of aliens deportable and
otherwise who have been scared out of the community."

Emilia Castenada, 79, recalls coming home from school
in 1935 in Los Angeles and hearing her father say he
was being deported because "there was no work for
Mexicans." She says her father, a stonemason, was a
legal resident who owned property. A U.S. citizen who
spoke little Spanish, she left the USA with her brother
and father, who was never allowed back.

"The jobs were given to the white Americans, not the
Mexicans," says Carlos DeAnda Guerra, 77, a retired
furniture upholsterer in Carpinteria, Calif. He says
his parents entered the USA legally in 1917 but were
denied jobs. He, his mother and five U.S.-born siblings
were deported in 1931, while his father, who then went
into hiding, stayed to pick oranges.

"The slogan has gone out over the city (Los Angeles)
and is being adhered to -- 'Employ no Mexican while a
white man is unemployed,' " wrote George Clements,
manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce's
agriculture department, in a memo to his boss Arthur
Arnoll. He said the Mexicans' legal status was not a
factor: "It is a question of pigment, not a question of
citizenship or right."

*Public aid threatened. County welfare offices
threatened to withhold the public aid of many
Mexican-Americans, Ngai says. Memos show they also
offered to pay for trips to Mexico but sometimes failed
to provide adequate food. An immigration inspector
reported in a November 1932 memo that no provisions
were made for 78 children on a train. Their only
sustenance: a few ounces of milk daily.

Most of those leaving were told they could return to
the USA whenever they wanted, wrote Clements in an
August 1931 letter. "This is a grave mistake, because
it is not the truth." He reported each was given a card
that made their return impossible, because it showed
they were "county charities." Even those born in the
USA, he wrote, wouldn't be able to return unless they
had a birth certificate or similar proof.

*Forced departures. Some of the deportees who were
moved by train or car had guards to ensure they left
the USA and others were sent south on a "closed-body
school bus" or "Mexican gun boat," memos show.

"Those who tried to say 'no' ended up in the physical
deportation category," Dunn says, adding they were
taken in squad cars to train stations.

Mexican-Americans recall other pressure tactics. Arthur
Herrada, 81, a retired Ford engineer in Huron, Ohio,
says his father, who was a legal U.S. resident, was
threatened with deportation if he didn't join the U.S.
Army. His father enlisted.

'We weren't welcome'

"It was an injustice that shouldn't have happened,"
says Jose Lopez, 79, a retired Ford worker in Detroit.
He says his father came to the USA legally but couldn't
find his papers in 1931 and was deported. To keep the
family together, his mother took her six U.S.-born
children to Mexico, where they often survived on one
meal a day. Lopez welcomes a U.S. apology.

So does Guerra, the retired upholsterer, whose voice
still cracks with emotion when he talks about how
deportation tore his family apart. "I'm very resentful.
I don't trust the government at all," says Guerra, who
later served in the U.S. military.

Pina says his entire family got typhoid fever in Mexico
and his father, who had worked in Utah coal mines, died
of black lung disease in 1935. "My mother was left
destitute, with six of us, in a country we knew nothing
about," he says. They lived in the slums of Mexico
City, where his formal education ended in sixth grade.
"We were misfits there. We weren't welcome."

"The Depression was very bad here. You can imagine how
hard it was in Mexico," says Pina, who proudly notes
the advanced college degrees of each of his four
U.S.-raised sons. "You can't put 16 years of pure hell
out of your mind."

Guerillera II

2006-04-18T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is a tricky situation. I do understand this logic: to see ESL classes as a form of segregation, but is that REALLY the case? Is student advancement TRULY compromised if the assimilated are taught along side the nonassimliated?

Preston Hollow is the first suit that could spawn more research on the effectiveness of ESL programs. Is it a tool handsomely formed to protect its true functions? Or does it allow a transition from culture shock? How and why could this program differ from school to school? What other factors are contributing to minimal success of Latinos in school? Is the feared and small perception of what it means to come from another country, separated by us and them, the fundamental issue?

How can we solve multilingual education? What if all classes were taught in both languages by students teaching each other with a proper guide?

Source: "Nina Perales"

MALDEF
Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund

110 Broadway, San Antonio, TX 78205 Office: 210-224-5476 www.maldef.org

NEWS RELEASE CONTACT:

FOR IMMEDIATE DISTRIBUTION David Hinojosa: 210-224-5476

April 18, 2006 Laura Rodriguez: 213-629-2512 ext. 124

MALDEF FILES SEGREGATION SUIT ON BEHALF OF LATINO CHILDREN

Lawsuit alleges ESL used as a proxy to discriminate against minority students in
Dallas public school

SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS - Today, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational
Fund (MALDEF), the nation's leading Latino legal organization, filed suit in federal district
court against the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) and the principal of Preston Hollow
Elementary School alleging civil rights violations by segregating and discriminating against
Latino schoolchildren.

The Latino parents represented by MALDEF, Organizaci*n para el Futuro de los Estudiantes
(OFE), allege that Preston Hollow illegally uses its English as a Second Language program to
segregate Latino and minority students from Anglo students, irrespective of their language
abilities. The documents in the case show that Latino students who are proficient in English are,
nonetheless, channeled into classes masked as "English as a Second Language." Preston Hollow
organizes its general education classes and even combines some grades to ensure that Anglo
students, who comprise just 18 percent of the school, sit in majority white classrooms.

"Fifty years after Brown v. the Board of Education, it is a shame that segregation continues to
plague our schools," said David Hinojosa, MALDEF staff attorney and lead counsel in the case.
"Using ESL as a proxy to segregate schoolchildren can not be tolerated. This lawsuit is intended
to send a message that there is no justification for any school to treat Latino students any
differently than white students," Hinojosa added.

Ms. Lucresia Mayorga Santamaria, lead plaintiff and mother of three children attending Preston
Hollow, stated "The school attempted to omit Latino children from the school brochure because
they did not want the surrounding neighborhood to get the wrong impression. Well, I hope they
all get this impression: we will not stand by any longer because our children deserve the same
opportunities as all other children of Preston Hollow."

Calling on the leadership of Dallas ISD to now answer Latino parents' calls for justice, Mr.
Hinojosa added, "We condemn efforts such as these to keep white students together for the sake
of deterring white flight. We call on the superintendent and the Dallas Board to swiftly end the
segregation at Preston Hollow," Mr. Hinojosa added.

Founded in 1968, MALDEF, the nation's premier Latino civil rights organization, promotes and protects the rights of Latinos through advocacy, litigation, community education and outreach, leadership development, and higher education scholarships.

Guerillera

2006-04-13T13:15:00.000-07:00

Here I have a new mission: pharmaceutical companies!

Bush stopped them from negotiating with medicaid
The same medicine in Mexico and Canada is waaay cheaper and illegal to buy.
They set their own prices
Their medicines create a vicious cycle of consumption and poison.
AND WE BUY IT

We don't want to be in pain
We don't want to die too young
We can't afford to be ill
We are pushed to unhealthy limits
Somewhow some of us still survive
What the hell can we do?

History made

2006-04-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

Finally, a beautiful representation of the Latino Community in Texas left it's imprint today. Today, the biggest rally Fort Worth has ever seen, captured time, progress, and hope. It was about family, dignity, courage, recognition, an empowered Latino voice. Today we took a stand, today we marched in silence to make our presence stronger. This tall and peaceful stand left the media with nothing to say but, "All went smoothly". We are not animals, uncivilized and not all uneducated. This fearless day showed the world our unity, clarity and power.

Children holding signs proudly smiling, I saw familiar faces from the community I serve, restaurant workers stepping out to support, Spanish and English words painted the air together helping each other. I was shaken with an invigorating jolt of solidarity with my Fort Worth family.

A wondrous sense of honor and pride filled our Panther City streets. Flags, red, white, blue and green, washed the town with respect and duty.

Abril 9 2006

Orgullosa de ser Latina-Americana
Aqui vengo con solaridaridad
To honor the sweat and blood
gone so long unrecognized
A river of paz fertilizing
Dry lands
Planting the semillas of our dreams
Breaking ground
Celebrating opportunity
and el sueno universal
Aqui en Fort Worth
Pantera City
Took the day as the day to
Honor justice
Humanidad
Rights and dignity
Unidos hermanos, together
we left with change in our hands
Today we grabbed hold
Today it became ours
Que esta trompeta
harmoniza
with our nation of Latinos

what are they thinking?

2006-03-28T13:07:00.000-08:00

I mean really, have they a clue what they would be up against? If this immigration policy criminalizes immigrants?

here is an email I read:

Source: Rodolfo F. Acuna
>
>
>Rough Draft
>
>Nativism is Racism
>
>By
>Rodolfo F. Acuña
>
>I am the first one to criticize Chicano/Latino politicos when they don't
>defend the interests of the community. However, during the present
>crisis, the Mayor and most Latino elected officials have acted in a
>principled manner, forcefully speaking out against the racist nativism
>that is gripping the country. The same can be said of the Catholic
>Church and its refusal to go along with the hysteria.
>
>If the actions of right wing radio hosts, virulent anti-immigrant
>groups, and opportunistic politicos were an aberration, there would be
>hope that people would come to their senses. However, this form of
>nativism has infected the United States since the birth of the Republic.
>It led to the persecution of Irish immigrants, the burning of a convent
>in Charleston, Massachusetts in 1828, the burning of Catholic Churches
>in Philadelphia in 1842, and fueled the illegal invasion of Mexico and
>the theft of fifty percent of its land. This was topped off with the
>creation of the Native American party of the 1850s which became known as
>the Know Nothing Party and later the Republican Party.
>
>Every time that the nation had an economic depression or recession the
>Greek Chorus pointed at the immigrant. Thus the Chinese were excluded in
>1882 and in the 1920s immigration acts made national origins the basis
>of admission. The expressed intent of these laws was to keep America
>white by giving preferences to northern Europeans who the politicos said
>were blonder, taller and had bigger brains.
>
>In 1965, the nation went through an examination of conscience and passed
>an amendment to the immigration act based on family preferences. The
>result was that too many Asians came in and Latin Americans continued to
>migrate to this country.
>
>Almost immediately after the passage of the 1965 amendments, racist such
>as Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) and ex-California Pete Wilson built
>careers on baiting Mexican immigrant. They criminalized them, calling
>them illegal and dehumanized them, calling them aliens. With the advent
>of the right wing think tanks and the internet, immigrant bashing became
>an industry. Playing on the fears of white Americans who have
>historically been narcissistic and consumed by angst, these groups have
>made millions by creating a living hell for people who just want what
>others want - a place to live in peace and educate their children.
>
>For too long the Mexican/ Latino community has been silent. This has
>encouraged bullies and wannabe brown shirts to come out of the woodwork
>and prance around like Minute Men. Most of these patriots like the
>President and vice-president of this country have never served in the
>military. Immigrants were welcome as long as they did the fighting for
>them.
>Samuel Johnson in 1775 said that patriotism is the last refuge of a
>scoundrel. History will bear out his wisdom.
>
>Aside from the mendaciousness of the nativist, their stupidity is mind
>blowing. The truth be told, the United States has been criminally
>negligent when it comes to Latin America. Its drug market has converted
>many Latin Americans into suppliers of American demand for drugs. As a
>result the governments of these countries have morally decayed. The
>U.S.'s green revolutions have destroyed agricultural subsistence, and
>the North American Free Trade Agreement has destroyed nascent
>manufacturing industries.
>
>Today, the only thing that is sustaining Mexico and Central America is
>the remittances sent back annually by hardworking compatriots. If it
>were not for these remittances those economies would crash and there
>would be many more immigrant workers coming into territory that was
>illegally taken from their ancestors. They are illegal because the
>border was moved.
>
>The truth be told, the demonstrators had no choice but to protest. I
>have no other choice but to urge my students and community to resist
>immoral laws.
>
>As a historian I remember the words of Martin Niemöller, a Protestant
>pastor and social activist, who said:
>
>When the Nazis arrested the Communists,
>I said nothing; after all, I was not a Communist.
>When they locked up the Social Democrats,
>I said nothing; after all, I was not a Social Democrat.
>When they arrested the trade unionists,
>I said nothing; after all, I was not a trade unionist.
>When they arrested the Jews, I said nothing; after all, I was not a Jew.
>When they arrested me, there was no longer anyone who could protest.

open mike

2006-03-14T15:38:00.000-08:00

hosting open mike tonight at the Black Dog

Cheesnrice

2006-03-09T20:26:00.000-08:00

Well, the show opened. I couldn't breath for a few days and just now found the space. Talk about freakin intense. It hit right when I wrote the the director's notes openning morning. The night before, the stage was taking it's final shape, I sat chilly-tired watching the boys hang the leaves, "Here? Like this?". Two men who stepped up and wanted to be more than an actor. Creators, visual artists, adding their flare to the experience, leaving their imprint. It was finally becoming their too. As all the rest did. My two teens working alongside with us as part of the company. My rumbera, a steady a growing flame. My girls, my little gems, jewels I get play beauty parlor with. The boys strut, my ladies burn. All in love and sweetness, excited. They all trusted my ship and were about to sail off with me.

When my parents left me the Perez Prado Collecion Original, I was lonely, homesick, living in Lubbock with more empty vessels than I could handle. With this music, my own well filled. Pictures, the story, the movment, the grand time, all opened to me. I was home again, somehow remembering everything. It had to be cooked at slow simmer. I had to see it someday. Then there it was, the water broke the day I saw my actors for the first rehearsal. I hadn't written it. I wrote it as we worked, watching them: dancing lessons, ensemble exercises, knowing some of them for years. I used everything I had learned up to that point and it magically all fit together.

So I sat there night before we opened, barely realizing earlier that week, my children's piece Teatro produced, was performed at the Eisenmien Center in Plano for a 8,000 kids in two days. Four of my most trusted actors and I, led by Yvonne, got to tell a story about ancient mexican gods, shapeshifters, dreams, roars, and a hero. All those kids. At that moment, Yvonne sat next to me, and we just smiled. Too numb to fit the magnitude of what we had accomplished. One last push. Clean up, go home, go to bed.

I woke up and got the notes in at the last possible second I was allowed to. I am just now swallowing.

There is something so elegant and electrifying about mambo. The music's grand landscape has always capitvated my imagintion since I saw my Mother and Father sail across a dance floor for the first time. I would learn the little steps, the hips, the feet all moving to savor a sound that was simply majestic to a young girl's mind. Seeing two people dance with such grace and pride, only love could inspire, left me with a romance to tell.

The play came on a night spent with the music. The legendary icons of the Epoca de Oro dazzled in my mind. Only latino blood can capture such a grand style of dangerous and honest intensity. It was the stuff the heart melted to; the stuff that made you stop your breath or burst into raucous laughter; the stuff that celebrated life to its fullest. The Rose Marine with it's latino history, was the perfect place to remember those days. All I had was pieces of stories, songs, and the generation's reverance for this time. The rest, as they say, was history.

Mambo inspired freedom and discovery when it arrived in Mexico. A time when Mexico was achieving progress and prosperity, modernity. The cinematic movement of the Epoca de Oro gave the people dreams, possiblities grew, a voice was heard. This tribute, inspired by my Mother and Father, is meant to recall those dreams that can hopefully claim time again now.

Please come

2006-02-24T22:11:00.000-08:00

Recuerdos de mi Mama: Tributo a la Epoca de Oro
March 3rd - 19 Fri, Sat 730pm Sun 2pm
Rose Marine Theater
1440 N Main
Fort Worth TX 76106
(817) 624 - 8333

My dream of late

2006-02-17T16:30:00.000-08:00

Un descubrimiento

Suelta en Bembe's y ron,
alli,la dulcura de tambores
desperto ritmos serpentinos
en mis caderas y mas.

Vei la cara de Chile,
acaricie sus playas con los
ardientes suspiros de mis mares.

Alli bailamos,
alli cantamos,
alli me dio su regalo:
un pedazo pequeno de su mundo ya solo
perdido en anhelo.

Luego,
el liston de palabras
que nos enredo el ruletero,
nos llevo
a una isla con cama y puerta.

Alli compartimos piel y suenos.
Sus canciones
descansaron
sobre mis cenos
y me arrullaron.

Las aguas turbientas
encontraron paz en los rios de Chile.
Pero como humo,
el refugio se deshila a solo un bulto de memoria,
con aliento dulce que llama a
las mas tristes confesiones, apenas reconocidas
y ahora recibidas con el miedo
de esperanzas primavernales.

Buzco el abrazo de sus dos condores de ojos
calmantes y profundas, directas en sus viajes

Buzco el calor de sus manos eternos
manos como las piedras que levantaron
los muros de Machu Pichu.

Buzco las estrellas de sus besos
azucaradas con la luz de fuegos.

Me quedo con sus huellas, solo sus huellas.

FEB 2006 This poem was mentored by Pablo Neruda

test this is a test

2006-02-17T16:23:00.000-08:00

Lahib Jaddo

2006-02-09T12:37:00.000-08:00

Found

Delirium in my bones,
a wake …a rush.
How far will this hum go in the stillness
of heavenly order, of majesty –grandieur?

For a moment I capture the soon future in my eyes
The bones are set for the hard way down
Then its gone like blown powder.

I wear my welcomes so fast
I speed up to find the cure to my innocence
My lust and confusion is trembling,
falling forward past my secrets of bad visions,
falling to meet those transparent eyes of change

known only in darkness.

To wait for a sign,
where touches are too much
for a delicate mind
to savor
And I beg:

Let me find a home
Let me find my peace, my courage…
In smiles and patience,
In lost lorn looks of loves
and impatience.
It all seeps in just to float away.

I find this mystery -
this certainty I don’t know how to name
Here, I find faces in grains of wood panels
shapes brought together by lights and simple shadows
to create the familiar image lost in the everday mind
the image woven into our reality now from long ago

While fractions of seconds climb high into the smoke of my prayers,
wishes wrap themselves in the tree limbs of old breath
breath purified to its maximum form,

I see truth in the veins of fallen leaves,
I see truth in the stains of a yellow smile,
I see truth in the lines of my palm.

Mysteries can only be captured in a
lightning’s fast decent:
a speck of time where you can make out a face in the shadows,
a face no other eyes can find like your own.

Claudia
SUMMER -'05

Some poetry

2006-02-09T11:49:00.000-08:00

American Way
On a lonely night of wine and CSPAN
Two words rattled down inside,
Clunky and heavy like a bad supper
Two words too disturbing to ignore:

Patriotic Assimilation

It came from the lips
of a consummate conservative’s
observations of American immigration:

Patriotic Assimilation

Recalling images of a fevered soldier’s robotic replies,
of passionate sermons over raised fists and flags,
booming cries of leaders wanting no other way...
but their own so-called American way

Let’s assimilate patriotically!
Lets have our houses all painted
in tight lipped hues.
No more
hot greens, rose petal pinks or electric blues
or anything that might suggest
a different anthem.

Better yet,
have the stars and stripes tattoed as
barcodes on our necks…
for are own safety.
English as a language is too foreign,
Why don't we speak American!

Patriotic Assimilation

Lets not treat the these applicants as consumers
shopping for citizenships like Christmas slaves at Walmart,
but lets mouth the language of country and nation.

Letting the infamous trumpet of our forefathers
shake the core of a hopeful individual
down to his knees with clasped hands
for three Hail Lincolns and one Star –Spangled Banner.

Mouthed prayers
shimmering with passion
school children with hands on their hearts
singing words that have always been just a vacant promise
“I pledge allegence to the flag... ”.

The American way they say
of TV’s, football, Big Macs, and malls.
Only here can we consume -democratically.

Let’s live the dream,
The American dream:
the self-made, self sustained, self-contained capital way
of the white picket fence around
acres that promise an estate
stuffed with good life and easy money.

We all can be kings and queens here!
No worries, the pons of your kingdoms will come
all with backs wet and broken tongues.

No fear!
Patriotic assimilation will fix it all.
Like a dry blanket and super glue.

The American way:
the dry turkey on Thanksgiving,
the stale donut,
the cracker taste of dry ramen noodles.

The American Way:
it’s an msg headache during rush hour,
it’s the beer goggled babe,
it’s the sweat of an immigrant’s brow… hoping.

-Claudia Acosta 12/14/05

Time gives me a slap in the face

2006-02-04T09:53:00.000-08:00

I work a lot. I end up staying within a 10mi radius of my home. The theater, the 7th st/University bars, a friend's house on occasion. It is mostly the gas price's fault. Anyway, I try to see my family once a week, which suits me just fine because it does take a bit to handle them. I do talk to someone in my family at least once a day. Should be enough, right? No, I love 'em they are everything to me. I am damn lucky. Sometimes we forget.

I wake up Fri to enjoy a day off and do nothing but putter around the house, make myself lunch, work on some poetry, snuggle in bed with my book and pen before I run the box office again. The last of my personal days for six weeks or so. I thought about my folks, I hadn't seen them lot even though they drive me crazy. I get a text tellin me my Mom is in the hospital. My Mom hasn't gone to the hospital in ten years or so. Blood clot. Thats freakin serious. (My Grandma had one sneak up on her and went straight to her lung, thats why she left.) This was not good, not in conjunction with her diabetes. I couldn't really move fast enough because my mind went a way that wouldn't really serve a purpose. I saw life without her. I was just working on a scene with her voice telling her memories in my mind. I saw myself sitting with my father next to an empty seat watching the show I wrote for her, inspired by her and having to make it happen knowing she couldn't see it with us. Oh God sometimes my imagination doesn't do me me any good.

(Here I am thinking this all over again with a lump in my throat while she's taking a nap in the other room.)

My Aries mind tends to see nothing but the immediate moment. Watching the progress of time is frightening when it reveals itself this way. Not that Age is unknown to me. I forget, then reminded again, when I hug my Dad and my head doesn't rest on his chest anymore, when my Mom gets tired more often now than I remember. My Mom would wear me out at the malls when I was a kid. I never go now, but when I had a quick run to make recently, and she had to sit down and wait for me. I cried on the way home. They are getting older, they won't be around much longer. Time is now.

I had to wait for my sisters to let me know what was going on before I could speed down to Arlington. It ending up being a much appreciated warning and nothing more. We all saw it though. I practice visualizing your wanted reality, but these dark pictures in my mind are hard to shake off at the moment. I guess a glimpse of the future can give the present a slower, deeper life went you let it.

We are stronger than we think. I know this. I do.

suprises

2006-01-30T00:11:00.000-08:00

My partner in crime from the Rose calls me for a drink. A quiet night at the wreck might be a nice end to a solid weekend of box office managing madness and reverie.

To my surprise there was a kickin reggae-latin-ska band Liquid Cheese . A savvy group from my home town of El Paso. Man these guys are a good party. There were maybe thirty people at the Wreck, but you know a good band when numbers don't matter them. Showmanship and class with grooves that reminded me of where I came from.

Another surprise that wasn't as nice this weekend...

Late, drizzly Fri night I come home and before I reached my stairs that are tucked into an alley, the homeless couple, that I had previously mentioned, stops me again with the same story: need gas money or help. Now they know where I live. Now I really wonder what there story is. Needless to say, I couldn't sleep. Should I feel that paranoid?

By the way, Teatro de la Rosa's CASA RIO runs for one more weekend at the old Rose Marine Theater. Local playwright, great fun.

latest and greatest

2006-01-26T21:04:00.000-08:00

I wasn't able to make it to last weekend's Teatro Dallas International Fesival. I missed the show I was really looking forward to. The tight cash flow broke my heart.
Teatro de la Rosa's Casa Rio had a good opening. Two more weekends to go at the old Rose Marine Theater. Check it out...it is quite hilarious!

I attended the latest FWAC meeting Monday and met with Lori Thompson from Firehouse Gallery. She mentioned something very, very interesting. She has a collection of old 40's artwork that served as posters for local Mexican bands that played in the Northside area. She wants to do a five year long project to commemorate the musicians and find them or their relatives by displaying them all over town etc. Well when she tried to find old Spanish Newspapers or was it she spoke to our Exective Director who researched the Rose Marine (I swear this wet brain is gonna get worse, its a wonder how I memorize lines). The important detail is that the city never archived these Spanish newspapers. Apparently that part of history didn't deserve to be archived. So Lori wants to force the city to place this story in Fort Worth's history. Those girls at Firehouse are the coolest.

This sorta ties in to my play which is a Tribute to this Golden Age of Mexico which found its height right after WW2. Mexico was doing very well and everyone was celebrating the modern, progressive glamour of the times. Like our 1920's. Mambo took over about the late forties right at the climax of Mexico's American inspired cinema that garnered international acclaim. Yes, anybody who lived then was very proud and regard the time with a strong reverance, a golden splendor. It was all downhill from there. There is no tellin why...

What is amazing is that the Rose Marine has pictures of some of the icons of this time. Cantinflas, known for his brilliant banter, the heroic everyman. There is a photo of Resortes, the great Mambo King of Mexico, among other famous Epoca actors. It all happened here. There used to be this old white man, a former box office attendant, who'd visit from time time last year and would show me his little pictures. One is of his daughter with Resortes. "I knew them all" -he'd say. There might have been such a goldmine of history in these local papers, but not considered worthy enough for the City to handle. It's all memory now, making its way to myth. Three years ago this play found its home in my mind, before the Rose became mine. Now, stronger than ever I feel fate knows more than me. I am happy to follow those stars. The Latino image and historical presence in Fort Worth is undergoing some serious tranformation, thanks to an army of guerilleros culturales.

In the Harmony

2006-01-24T22:43:00.000-08:00

Things can happen so fast. Then there is a glimpse of magic,
something so tangible you can taste it....

It was a frantic start to a week. Eye twitches and a pounding heart throb about reminding me to breathe. Visions and to do lists swirl in my head so fast that I can't seem to catch up. Distractions grab my attention so easily. Something tells me to get those things out of the way for a clear mind on the days to come. Cara Mia's David said, "work hard, be humble -just don't forget to breathe". I love that boy - what a comrade.

Scrambling for teachers for our afterschool programs, then they appear
Biting nails over an incomplete cast...then its there
A beautiful afternoon teaching along side a beloved mentor
Seeing young minds find a way to their voices.
A rehearsal that flowed into whispers from a muse.
The dozen of deja vus since Sat, the roadsigns I am happy to see
The fears just seem to just wash away.
Doubt is more trouble than apathy.

Maybe I chose to hold on to fear thinking its humility
Maybe humility simply comes from true gratitude.

Then one last fear I charged through: I got to sing with the Wreck Room jamsters. Not in my shower, not in my car, not spoken word but on a stage carrying tune with the badd asses of FW. I am not a singer. It was the running joke in college. These guys just let me jam with them. I would come home always kicking myself for not having the guts to just get up there. The song is of my most treasured tunes: Portishead's Glory Box.

I was shaking like the first time I read one of my poems for an audience. Blast your own Breath, ran by Tammy Gomez five years ago. My hand couldn't keep my sheet of notebook paper steady the whole two minutes. That poem became a play that made it to a College Theater Festival and due to an emergency I had to replace an actor with an hour's notice...that was even scarier.

I know I was shaky and lacking the proper notes. It was hard to find the bridge between their sound and mine, but eventually I felt the separation dissipate. From my point of view at least. I worried about what I sounded like, then it just didn't matter anymore. The flow took over and I couldn't really hear my self anyway. The lyrics got jumbled up in my memory but they found their way out and it felt freakin good. I don't know how it went, but I did it. The musicians were kind enough to humor a girl like me.

I teach kids to not be afraid of their voices. The first thing I do is have them say their own name, nice and loud, center stage. It is amazing seeing a youngun battle for that kind of expression of pride. So why the hell should I be afraid? I gotta walk the talk.

On intentions

2006-01-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

Around September I had finally settled into my new westside space. Two in the morning, coming home from Hip Pocket after an emotional shredder of a show, I was about to turn onto my street from Montgomery and a couple flagged me down desperately. Their smiles appeared honest, so, I stopped. The woman was friendly-faced, Latina, petite, pretty, the stories on her skin seemed to show her true age. She was with a white man, could be 30 -35? Apple pie, descent looking. Their approach seemed simple and familiar, "We are out of gas, could you help?"

They mentioned they left a wedding that was held at the Will Rogers center and needed money for gas or if they could get a lift to Horne St. Alright. Their story made me think for a second, but the nature of the show I was doing at the time had me in an omnipotent hold. I felt confident and really pushed the energy of a good intent against any harm. I accepted the task of taking them to Horne.

They introduced themselves as a married couple. Small talk ensued: they asked me what my name was, what I did for living, where I lived. None of what I told was true. I was polite clearly giving them a ride not building any bond. I started imagining the story of the assault on the news, the bruises and losing my newly, well-earned solitude because my parents lives would be on the line of they couldn't watch over me through trauma therapy. I lit a cigarette, blaming my generosity on the few wines I had, wondering if the essence of my intent was compromised with those ill thoughts.

My lighter flame cued relief and they where excited to know they could smoke along with me. I recalled stories of teams of two that prey on easy targets, me. Imagined her a prostitute and him, her pimp. Maybe they are a real couple into a questionable line of work. I was a alone, hoping I met the right people. It reminded me of the lady that warmly worked her way to my table at the Black Dog, angry at Big Time for disrespecting her and needed ride. Something told me to be diplomatic with my refusal.

The gentleman grew a little uneasy as I grew colder to the small talk. I stepped on the gas a bit to make the car a bit shaky down Camp Bowie's bricks. Maybe if they see that I am a bit unsafe the less likely they would want to mess with me. It was the best idea I could think of. My naive paranoia was not helping the situation...if there was really any situation to help at all. The man's eyes grew harder then he asked to stop in the middle of a residential area down Horne. The woman responded to his decision with a concern and suggested a gas station. He shook his head. "This is fine. Thank you", he said. They got out, I left them. Came home, relieved, but I felt the way it ended was not the ending to my wish. Somewhere it became two and the latter was selfish.

A couple of days later, I picked up the fweekly to see the cover story of Katrina victims in Fort Worth housed across the street. I attempted to blame my schedule for not knowing what was going on. After weeks of some serious disbelief, anger, horror, empathy -I had to turn it off. I had to save something for a play about a sex offender. I remember one afternon seeing a big long line outside the Amon Carter
Jr Hall. Last I had heard, Houston was waiting for them. Oh.

The next week I saw them again. We recgonized each other. His look was hard. A split second of contact as I drove down the same spot I met them. I wondered. I saw them later on the afternoon before the big freeze. She was just wearing a thin green windbreaker jacket with her hands tucked in the sleeves. He was wearing a polo, head down bracing the wind. Then tonight, I saw them. He was carrying something that looked like a bucket and a shirt that reminded me of Sardine's sign.

I only wonder because a couple like that doesn't seem common in westside, or is that me imagining again? My guilt and embarrassment can't seem to be enough for me face them without feeling unbearably vulnerable. I run around hoping my other little intentions can restore a karma I think I made. Hope so or I hope my imagination is responsible.

What a buzz

2006-01-16T15:31:00.000-08:00

Here at the Rose fort, much has been transpiring. Art openings, serious organizational stuff to get the gallery running, theater company plans. I have been doing researching, dreaming, breathing, finding the bricks and mortar to build my play. (It's so freakin scary...) We open Casa Rio this week and tech weeks (week before a show opens) can be brutal, but we are steady busy and very positive.
While hanging out with a friend yesterday, I thought of an artist I new in Lubbock that was very, very, I mean, very good. Check it....quite intense, quite prolific:

www.jameswjohnson.com

hehe love this one:

At least something is being done!

2006-01-15T20:12:00.000-08:00

Last night's performance was not what I was hoping to see in an international theater festival. My mixed emotions about the piece still have yet to settle. Let me give you the set up:

Teatro Dallas and some pretty awesome grants (it seems like) has made this festival possible,hosting acts from the U.S. Mexico and Venezuela. I was looking forward to some innovative work to shake down Texas. Cora Cardona, artistic director of Teatro Dallas, is an international artist and just had a theater school named after her in Venezuela. Her partner in crime, Ygor Zamora, a man with outstanding credits, is conducting a physical theater workshop that will culminate in a performance at the end of the festival. Sounds interesting right?

I went with three good friends: Artistic Director of Cara Mia, David Lozano (a brilliant actor and clown), and his tremendously talented Mexican actress and better half, Frida. Also my good friend Darryl,Confustron DJ extrordinaire,was brave enough to accompany me.

Well, the festival opener was overall disappointing, but the attempt and spirit of the piece merited applause. Lilian Tapia, actress(with a very impressive bio), has trained with the "masters" of Mexican theater. The show was a cabaret, opening with a sexy salsa couple moving in ways us normal folk would only find in our own minds while swirling in a drunken rhumba. Beautiful chemistry, clean footwork...hot. Then comes Lilian Tapia shaking audience members hands interrupting the dancers to take over the stage. She is a bawdy gal, busty, thick, older, but with a sultry confidence that would make a white man shake and Mexican man hungry. She opens with the rhythms and comic style of raunchy comedy shows seen on Spanish TV. It was refreshing to see a female with a sharp tongue and spirit, a formidable contender in a mostly male dominated Latino comic ring.

Two minutes into her opening, I realized I was going to have to play double time. Darryl needed some assistance which developed into a crick in my neck from whispering English without being annoying. The jokes were very colloquial and were hard to translate sometimes missing my POCHA mind.

"De Amor Y de Mordidas"

Lilian's comedy discussed the battle of the sexes: why men are they way they are and why women do what they do. An exploration of the pain in loves and expectations. Typical, easy I thought- with cheap jabs at the sexes. She took us through realms where she thought the answer might be. She blamed it on God, on science, women themselves, and even the Spanish conquest (an easy segway to a flamenco castanet number that was too long and a little painful to watch). She plowed through with consistent energy and a great voice. I felt encouragement when the dancers where brought on to enhance her philosophy on the difference of eroticism and sex, but it was murdered when she went on to agonize in her final cry to understand the male unresponsiveness to romance in a poem that shredded the show to its lowest Spanish soap form. Then went to the mirror for a "it's me..I need to look inside myself" glory moment.

I will say, the energy did give me a little shiver because of its bravado and courage in her last line, "I have to love myself before I can truly love another" (damn it- it struck a cord). She crawled through the stages of love: the carnal, the superficial, the masochist, the conditional, the manipulative...realizing she really never new true love. That moment was honest.

Later during discussion time..
Frida found the show disappointing. Her logic: This is type of comedy is already saturating TV. For an international theater festival this was not something worthwhile. There is place for blue humor, for her, theater should stay away from what can be too easy. David, enjoyed the spirit and courage of a feisty one-woman show at her age. Darryl, well...didn't get his culture fix. Me- mixed. I wished to see her truly commit to her darker moments so the light would pierce through, Leguizamo style.

I want to support full Spanish presentations, but no warning was given. I felt bad for the some of the patrons who had to walk out. How do you not alienate an audience without compromising some artistic integrity? I like a challenge. As an artist, I tend to want to challenge an audience, but I have seen how self-indulgent that can get. It also made me question how much to trust a laundry list of accomplishments on paper. Proof is in the walk. At least this art has spurred a discussion. We ask questions, we discover more of ourselves with what we find is worth absorbing, and hopefully ask why.

Next week: Mujer on the Border Marta Aura (Frida mentioned she was quite an actress)
A piece on the life of women whose men leave for the states to work in order to support their families. Whole pueblos left to women and how do they cope? That sounds more along my flow.
Stay tuned.

Checkin the Dallas Scene

2006-01-14T12:38:00.000-08:00

I am headed to the Teatro Dallas International Festival.

go to: www.teatrodallas.org

(my link thing is giving me issues- once I figure it out...)

There was a workshop I would have loved to take but I am working on my show. Tonight we have "De Amor Y de Mordidas" Of Love and Bites . Hopefully it will be good.

Still learning now to use the puter..

Painful skin to shed

2006-01-13T23:58:00.000-08:00

Help. I need a freakin waambulance. I am dancing at my own pity party! I decided I should have one when I realized I grew hard with life. My hopeful outlook was exciting, thrilling, motivating as youth is. When did I get hard? How did that happen? Hard on people, on any weakness, my own ambitions, love. Like if this was the last game of the season, almost cutthroat. Got carried away with the ideal for the rational mind. I kinda miss whoever I was. What is this? I don't feel things with wild wonder, with tenderness, with romance. It grew wreckless after awhile, then I needed a somewhat numb time. Worked, but now I am not quite comfortable in this skin. Geez, "growing pains" how typical. I know I know nothing and that is the bit of innocence I am hanging on to. I'll stop before this gets Plath-ugly.

but seriously folks, late solitary nights can do terrible tricks on a mind
pardon me..all storms pass

Art Openings

2006-01-13T13:25:00.000-08:00

Victor Trevino Jr, a local actor and photographer opened his exhibit at the Rose Marine Theater-man what a magical night for him. It was big success. His work is quite exquisite for a budding artist. I spent some time helping him frame and hang. Miss Alyssa Banta, www.alyssabanta.com an incredible artist, mentored him through his first show and the result was moving. The collection features experimental pics of the ruins of Chichen Itza. He successfully captured the mystery he set out to immortalize. He is also acting in my children's piece and it is so amazing seeing a talent find their light. Proud of him. I will find his website to post. On the other end of the theater we have a another young artist Breanna Abrahim who found a much more modern view to question. Both worth the time!
check it out: www.rosemarinetheater.com for details on our happennings and directions

I hope Fort Worth will start making art events the thing to do and support without getting that Dallas snobbery. I like to think Fort Worth stays as real as it can, but dreams to be as cultured as possible.

New York

2006-01-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

I just recently arrived from a magical trip in New York. My dearest most loved friends all convened in NYC for New Year's. I must admit it was a decadent week, but most enlightening. I got to read some poetry at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the amazing breeding ground for Latino performance artistry and read Para las Muertas de Juarez (For the women of Juarez). I felt it was the most appropriate since it represented the border, the fact that it is still an issue that lost its press.... I got to see some really good poets but thanks to the daubachery that took me hostage, I could only remember one name. I do remember a line from a poet that should have won in my opinion when he was talking about standing up to be a man despite the disentegration of urban families: (a reference to masturbation then) "I am no palm reader but I can see the future in my hands". Another poet's work touched on her experience with AIDS from an abusive father. All of liberal views and the music guy that wrote a DR Pepper jingle that really worked the "I am a white guy but I support" with excellent sensitivity and sincere thought that was very welcome in a mostly afro-latino-muslim audience. All were very supportive and surprisingly unpretenious (which sometimes tends to find it's way here) and I popped my Nuyorican cherry and recieved a sticker for my piece, proof that Fort Worth was represented. l saw a cabaret show at the shwanky, all class -Duvet. It
was visually stunning: singers and dancers, beautiful costumes and very very hot ladies enjoying their sass. After our bottle service arrived, it was on.
The place turned to a sexy gay mecca, our server (friend of my firend) reported John Leguizamo was there. I spent the rest of the night with a roving eye...never saw him, but I was ready.

I rocked in the Eve with an Irish freedom rock band Black 47. All I remember was dancing my butt off with a very beautiful Irishman
and yelling freedom at the end of the night while twirling to a reggae spiced tune. Saw some good 'ol Irish brawls...passed out.

I saw an off Broadway play that was very interesting. "Apparitions" was a collection of ghost stories, some modern some older but it was confusing to understand why we needed to listen to them and who were these people that were telling us their tales. The credits of those involved were impressive but the writing was difficult to follow. I find non-linear plays are the new language thanks to film, but when you add poetry that is hard to hear..well you lose the audience. A couple of the actors were amazing, handling subtleties with grace, transitions with such skill all in very voluminous monologues. Most of the show was in the dark which made it hard to stay awake and the sound was trying to be tantalizing. It left me wanting more. One of the actresses I knew had to be dating the director, there was no way. All in all once again, I was encouraged with our work here in Fort Worth.

The Thai food, the pizza, the drizzle and music. The hard straight forward attitudes that softens more often than expected...
I love it. Here is my ode:

City of promise, of people,
of puddles and teaming lights,
of cold January winds
like simple arrows aimed to find warmth.
Inside worlds tucked into streets
like Christmas stockings,
surprises are wrapped in lands as quilts,
sewn together with threads of common dreams.
Here the pulse throbs around you
breathing through the rhythms of pavement, heartbeats and steel.

Why not?

2005-12-27T14:04:00.000-08:00

817 There is room here to create. I've been saying that a lot lately, but its true. Room to fight a good fight. Mine:

getting kids to listen to believe in something bigger than a TV screen,
getting asses in seats to see play, a different world that can question ways or celebrate them
pushing for awareness and critical thought

Fort Worth is really good to me.

Our little theater company is pluggin' along making, it happen. It is very scary having to prove yourself as an artist without that college receipt. It is scary putting your own living breathing brain baby out here to be heard and seen. I am currently in the midst birthing to two of them. I just have to trust whatever propels the artist's wheel. For a small theater company, its hard to convince people you are worth watching when your budget can't dazzle like a Casa dome, or when you can't identify with white bread shows like Music Man or Moon for the Misbegotten , but then challenge is so delicious, rewarding, savory. We get to provide something different, a stage for the non-represented. Hopefully relating to audiences warmly and truthfully so they can value the power of the collective experience of human reflection.

Theater of bare bones and real people
no gloss, no exclusivity,
but honesty, grit and mindful artistry.
for the people, by the people
to say we are here
we exist in this world
these are our stories
these are our voices- these our lives
lets look, lets listen, lets learn.