Un-Notes on Unutopias | Unlike me or others

Unlike unme unyou unothyers unyoke
uncola unthink unenemy unstranger unpasserby uncitizen unimmigrant
unart unpoetic unlove unhate unindifference
unstruggle unliberate
unwalk ungestate unborn
unsmile unlink unsmirk
untweet unspam unhand unhug unfuck
unsing unerase unwrite unread
unfight uncheat unchew unthrow-up
unrainbow unblush unlaugh unemail
unfinger unhand unspit unsnitch
unstrum unstrung unlynch unrace ungender unclass unconsciousness
undeath unlife unalone unloan unloner
unteach uneducate unliterary uncommunicate
unspeak untongue unswallow unstupid unsmart
unwash unclean undirt undirty unshit
unfool unface unspy unwear unstare
unpage unfan unlist unserve unlick unfart unsmell unsquelch unbelch
unpregnant unquote uninseminate
unvote unbomb uninvade unoccupy unassassinate unnuke unstate unpower unexploit unoppress
unsex uncolor unlanguage unclass unpigment unskin unborder unmilitarize
unmigrate unmigrant undisplacement
unneoliberalism unimperialism
unpioneer unpilgrim uncowboy unbuffalo ungenocide unfemnicide
unwarm unclimate unglobalization uninjustice uniequality unfreedom unrights
unguns unkill unwound unheal undrive-by-shooting
untag ungraffiti unheart unburn unleave unabandon
unproletarianize unbourgeosie unroot unforget unmemory
unfist unviolence unpeace unwar
unfront unliberation
unearthquake untsunami untide
unsuck untuck unplastic
untrash unflash unarm
unhorizons uncosmos unnations
unweapons unmanifestos
unzoo unpollution uncontaminate unhear unfear unbit
ungallop unfast unslow undie unold unage unyoung ungreen
undentures unfang unraid unhuman unwoman unman unboy ungirl
untongue unargue undebate undefine unjoke unwhere unhere unthere uneverywhere
unmarichi unson unzapatista unqueer uncorrido unhuasteca undance unhip-hop unrap
unmexicanize unmexican unearth unmoon unsun unplanets
unwinter untragedy unbreak-up unhook-up unone-night untype
unwipe unsurrender
untenderness unharshness unpoet ungods unchurch unpriest unnun unaltarboys unbelievers
unsaints uncommunion unlevitate unjesus uncross
unterrorist unwar-on-terror unabu-ghraib
unjail undeport unnaturalize uncitizen unresident unwelfare
uncapital uninvestments
unvirgin unwhore unmother unlady unscrew
unadmit uncomment unpost unthanksgiving unX-mas
unrock-n-roll unjazz unmix unears unclick unsew
unsing uninvent unclap unnote unscream unerror unferal unbreak
unsteak unvegan unsquash unsunset unwake unsleep unthroat
unaztec unaztlan untwirl unfurl unyou unme unus unasshole
uncondemn unbury unship unletter unbreath unsmoke
unhigh unlow unaddict unscreech undrunk unhangover
uncry undump unhump unbruise
ungoodbye unforever unvow unmarry undivorce unpregate
unerection unerectile unfunctional unviagra unsmooch
unsting unscammed unscar unbar unculture unignorance unclassconscious unimagine
untime unclock undeposit
unwork unemployed unstrike
unslap uninsult unlusion undeception undeceive
unmoan ungroan undespair unweary
unalone untogether uncollective unfamily unhome unhouse unhomeless
unmop unsweep unclean unutopia unleft unright unmiddle-class unday-laborer unservant
unwarmth uncold unwow unmow unkick unhistory
unrain unsnow unscarce undrought unshortage unflu unpoor unpoverty unillness uncommunity
unpurity unpeople unbatter unpolice unresist unfist unfightback unmarch unprotest unslogan
undogmatic undogma unchrist unkneel unprison unclouds unaccident
uncall untext unpicture unbed undream unnightmare unsnore unanxiety unanxious
undownload unupload unradio untv uncommercial unactor unsit-com uncapitalize
unpride unbrown unsleep unmurder unbrand unwhite unblack unputdown unfalse-consciousness
uncortez uncolumbus undisappear uncolonize unempire unracism unclassism unsexism unheterosexism
unagonize unhurt unhibernate uninsured uncorporations unfreetrade unponzyscheme unscheme
unshame unfallapart unaccent undiscriminate unlead unhello uncontrol
ungrey unagism unhomophobia unxenophobia unborders unlimited
undependent unco-dependent undocument unillegal unminority
unlast unfirst unalone unbetter unindividualism ungatedcommunity
unbarrier unprofiling unpush unhush
unchachacha unipod undisaster unpredictible unstoppable unutopias

what is lost | arnoldo garcía

I cannot take back
what I lost
what I lost
now belongs to another
If I take back
what I lost
I will have to take it away
from another I
I cannot take back
what I lost
what I lost
is only found in my memory
a body that needs another
to be found
to be whole
to be un-lost
without having to take back
from another
who is just
another I
Another I
who is lost
And cannot take me back
without taking away from me
what is lost...

my status is Palestine

My status is Palestine
There are no walls between our lands, our skins, our hearts
Palestine is the horizon of humanity
I am Palestine
I am nomad on the longest walk to return to her
Palestine: either we are all free or we are all fucked.
Hold my hand
Hold my body
Hold my head
Hold my tears
From your bed to the workplace
From the long-distance phone calls to your voice
Hold me Palestine
Her first name is love
Her last name is peace
She will hold me
For she is Palestine
The land is Palestine
The sea is Palestine
The sky is Palestine
The moon is Palestine
The sun is Palestine
And
wherever I stand
wherever I dream
wherever I cry
wherever I love
wherever I live and die
Palestine

My status, write it down, is Palestine ...

I am Oakland | 1

I am Oakland.

A day laborer, un jornalero, working at night
stands in the middle of an intersection under cold rainfall
selling light-sticks to fans going to a game at the Oakland Coliseum.
I stop at the red light. He looks over at me, waves the lights.
He is only wearing a hip-length yellow rain-coat.
The rain, the cold, survival, cross-border love, family, community.
Oakland is my home away from home.

 I am Oakland.

An artist makes Oakland his place, his home, his art.
He brings Frida Kahlo, levity, busts open multi-cultures, paints, listens to music as he excavates images with his pencil, poetry abounds, friends surround him.

Day laborers need art; artists are day laborers, too.
Day laborers are artists, too; they make Oakland street corners into familiar places, into a community that serves community.
Both lead a precarious existence of dreams beyond survival.

I am Oakland.
Where are the Ohlone?
Where are the Hills?
Where are the Flatlands?
Where is Chinatown?
Where is uptown, downtown, Jingle Town?

Our hands are the same, our hearts pound for the same joys and against the same sorrows.
We are Oakland?
Can we make Oakland a place for everyone, rich or poor, young or old, white or black, English-only or bilingual, indigenous, homeless, murmurers, working class? Women house workers, young men in hoodies & fedoras?
Where are you in this beautiful contradiction of art and day laboring on someone else's land?
Who will come to stay a while and who will disappear?

The living blues

I don't celebrate my dead
My dead celebrate me
My dead have a hard time being dead
(Just like sometimes I have a hard time being alive)
My dead love being alive
My living abhor death
Life banishes death
Death accepts life
My dead and living love each other
A clacking embrace of skeletal desires
We each practice sleeping without breathing
We each practice breathing without sleeping
We each practice holding each other
We lie and live in a bed of blues
The skin of dreams is black
Our words are our memory of the first kiss
Our lips glazed with blue rouge offering an eternal kiss
I honor my dead by staying alive beyond my means
I carry my dead
in my love,
in my hair,
in my eyes,
in the palms of my blood
I am my dead
I am alive through them
My dead sway in the maize stalks
My dead roll around in the dust and the rain and the mud
My dead flirt, fool around, make fun of the living, they say:
You haven't lived until you've died!

*

The Sonora desert

is the endless dust

of migrants

dead

of stars

banging out

of the walls of deception

Devotion

is the longest walk, the longest memory

of humanity

a milk way of blood and bleached skulls

to arrive in your prickly arms

Our dead

just want to get home

Our living

just want to become dirt again

What men think it strange and crazy

that our bodies feed verdant fields of dirt?

What men carry guns

to herd us into the rows?

What men have lost

their bearings

their roots

wearing nothing but our soil?

A migrant child wails into the stars

A migrant woman places her mouth over the land

A migrant man, made of soils, waters and winds

pauses
before becoming another plant in the sun ...

From somewhere in East Oakland, imagining a different community of communities

Arnoldo Garcia

Blinded by Color, Unbound by Place: Trayvon Martin

Dedicated to my children and our future together

To the youth, the boys and girls in my neighborhood struggling to live and to their present together.

We must defend ourselves, you and me, from whiteness, white supremacy.

George Zimmerman was Latino? Was Zimmerman a white Hispanic? No. Zimmerman is a Hispanic/Latino mask with a white soul. There are no such humans, Latino, white. (There are Hispanics, but he isn’t one.) Additionally, there are few if any Latino or Brown on Black killings. This is another subject we have to talk about, when our Mexican youth hurt and kill other Mexican youth, when our African American youth hurt and kill other African American youth. Where is the outrage, the breaking of windows, the marches, the call for responsibility and safety, the disarming of the violence when Norteño kills Sureño? Black on Black, Brown on Brown violence is also police violence. Where do the guns and ammo come from, who licenses the arms and weapons that flood our communities, who regulates and distributes the guns, rifles, the violence and coercion that make our neighborhoods unsafe?

The Zimmerman murder of Trayvon Martin was a racist murder, a white violence that is terrorizing us all, a white supremacy that has hundreds of years of violent practice in violent subjugation and genocide and prisons and schools and the mentalities that permit them. Whiteness is not an illusion; it is very real and yet it is a delusion.

We are all very specific, concrete people. If you consider yourself white and antiracist, you are still part of the racist problem. If you consider yourself Latino and are antiracist you are still part of the racist problem. I feel troubled when I hear partner activists, who are progressive and still say they are white. Whiteness must be berated and negated, not the people who claim that identity. We have to separate the whites from the whiteness and that will take some real work. Whiteness has caused and continues causing harm and trauma to our communities of colors. Whiteness is a bipolar world, i.e. insanity with state power and institutions that make us believe, coerces us, imprisons us in cages or classrooms, that whiteness is the ultimate form of humanness.

White is a color, not a culture, not a people. The same goes for black. Black is a color, not a culture, not a people. White, black, brown, these are the identities of racialization, homogenization, which are the function and power of colonization, empire and imperialism over our consciousness and communities, the destruction of our very being and powers.

I am not oblivious (or too ignorant either) of the historical nature of these identities. To destroy and dismantle whiteness, it is not enough for us to call ourselves people of color, Black, Brown. Whites have to stop calling themselves whites and take responsibility for the legacy they have lived and are living under, the privilege of racialized empire-building and the American dream.

Black is beautiful. So is white beautiful? Brown is beautiful. Are those the only colors of the rainbow and the natural world that are beautiful? Is beauty in the gaze of the beholder? Is beauty a racial justice struggle like demanding justice for Trayvon? If Zimmerman is Latino, does that change the nature of the murder he committed against Trayvon Martin? Or must he be white, as I am arguing, for the nature of the killing to change?

What the verdict does not change and can never change is that a white man killed a Black, African American teenager. This story will never change. This is the story that we must change.

So many questions; so much rage and so little time to answer all of them. And Trayvon Martin and hundreds of other African America and Mexican, Salvadoran, Guatemalan, Honduran, Purepecha, Mixtec, Zapotec, et. al., are still dead from police violence or zombies in perpetual prison or endless criminalization.

We are not minorities either. Minority is a political project of colonialism and then U.S. imperial designs. A minority is a person, a place and a people who lack self-determination and vision – which are imposed by the so-called “majority.” The U.S. plans the future of all peoples and that future is for them to become minorities. (Note: if we count all whites the way whites count us in the Census, whites would be the minorities: 5% German there, 5% Irish there [I know, I know, Irish are not white, but who’s counting?], 5% Anglos here, 5% French, 3% Scottish, 15% Indio or Mexican – boom!)

We are not undocumented. We have enough documents to proof our history and existence that goes back at least 15,000 years. We just do not have the documents that prove we are a minority that knows its place in the uni-polarized world of the U.S. That is the purvey of immigration authority: you are not here and you do not exist until we say who you are and that you exist to serve us, disposable, deportable, guest worker, bracero, immigrant.

I am not a Latino. I am a Mexican. And even then I am a very specific type of Mexican, descended from Palestinian and Purepecha black and indio roots.

In the struggle for liberation and clarity in revolutionary transformations and reforms, civil rights and human rights and neo-liberalism, I have been dubbed Mexican, white, Mexican-American, Mexican American, Chicano, Hispanic, Latino, Brown (another color of racialization, etc.). Now we have the choice of Hispanic. Oh, I am not nor ever will be from Hispania.

In another country in the Americas, for example, you can buy your whiteness, literally, without changing your color. You have money, you buy a document that declares you white.

You can do the same thing in the U.S. You can get your whiteness in the U.S. in one of two ways: With money and with identity (or both). What we are called, what we call ourselves, is the struggle for a new type of self-determination and liberty.

First strategy: Get rich (or die trying?) – or at least become part of the stable working class, i.e. middle class. And you buy your way into the gated communities or at least afford to live in the gentrified neighborhoods or districts where at least 12-15% of the residents are white. Violá – you are not white but you have bought the trappings of safety and wellbeing that whites enjoy without even a second thought about how they got this way.

How do you know you live in a gentrified neighborhood or district? Call the police for assistance and see how long it takes them to arrive or if they even show up.

The second way to buy whiteness is through identity.

Call yourself Hispanic, Latino. Poof you are white. Hispanic, Latino means: “Hey, you can’t deport me! I pay taxes; I work legitimately. I am not ‘Black.’ I am hard working, tax-paying family man. I am not a criminal!”

Agree to forget your history and your past and delude yourself into thinking that you are not the color of your dark skin, that you are not from here, and no one else will notice because you say who you are and you live in the right neighborhood.

And both of these and other ways are delusional. You are not white, you are black. You are not Hispanic, you are Mexican.

You are not Mexican, you are an Indio, an Indian who has been here longer than anyone else who is NOT Indio.

Your are not middle class, you are not rich; you are hand-to-mouth, paycheck to paycheck working class bum, filled with anxiety and worry that you will become unemployed, unemployable, homeless and black or worse end up in the barrio or ghetto.

I am not a Hispanic. Note: There are Hispanics, people who are from Spain or descended from Spanish who settle her in colonies and made colonization a way of life; who spoke Castilian, the language of the castle-imperial kings/queens. There is a 350+year old Hispanic community that settled and continues living in a region straddled by New Mexico and Colorado in the U.S. southwest. The royal academy of the Spanish language has studied this Hispanic region for years because 15^th or 16th century Spanish is still spoken there.

Hispanic is also a synonym for whiteness; Hispanics are from Europe, hence white. To erase Indios and Mexicans from the U.S., sometime in the 1960s and 1970s, the state power decided to count us Hispanic. Poof, you’re gone.

When dark-skinned Mexicans want to delude themselves, they say they are Hispanics, when they are indigenous and have been here longer than anyone else, free or slave, black or white, European, Asian, African.

Hispanic is a very recent creation, a tool of subordination, domination and soul crushing destruction of people. The Hispanics themselves, Spaniards, Spanish, created this identity to crush the indigenous peoples of what is now Spain: Basques, etc.

I am not an American in the U.S. “American” as an identity in the U.S. has been confiscated, expropriated, corroded and made unusable for everyone except whites. In my world, América is a continent not a country.

American is a synonym for whiteness and Americans barely tolerate anyone else using it. In their imperial, neocolonial kindness, whites are doing to us what they did to themselves. By changing their names, they gave themselves the authority to take whatever they wanted, all for short-term gain and long-term, continual disaster upon the world’s peoples and the natural world herself.

In the end, none of this is important if we do not stand up for Trayvon Martin and hundreds, maybe tens of thousands of other victims of racist violence. More critical, can we prevent this from happening again? Will you befriend, mentor all the Trayvon Martins of my neighborhood or are you afraid of Black and Brown Buffalo youth, boys and girls, men and women, hooded and unhooded, middle class or homeless?

I do not want to see another movie of our tragedies made. Why didn’t anyone make a movie of Oscar Grant when he was alive? Why didn’t we care nationally or even locally about Trayvon before he became Trayvon? What about Zimmerman? He is still the killer and will be for all time. Will he find redemption? How does he continue living with blood on his hands? How does the U.S. continue functioning with so much war, blood, injustices and suffering at home and abroad? Will we prevent another Zimmerman from appearing? Will I throw myself in front of the bullets meant for my Trayvon, will you?

*

P.S. we must talk, all of us of all the colors and pigments. We must talk to say who we are, where we are at and where we are going. We can exist without this world, we can thrive as communities in a different relationship. The U.S. formation is not the only world possible. Our language, our vocabularies, our self-determined beings, our relationships can change to make good our lives; we all want to be in a better relationship than the ones that permitted the emergence of Zimmermans and the criminalization of the Trayvons and the violence and coercion that codified it. We are the ones who can make this possible by being different and sometimes just by being who we are supposed to be.

Notes, Oakland, July 14, 2013.

[Poema 3] 2 Poems 3: Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean | Human morning

Cloud Serpents, Cloud Ocean

I have discovered

the cloud ocean

where my grandfather's people live

wave after wave

of cloud

of clouds

I am

their commodore

their stevedore

their day laborer

their migrant campesino sun

the eleventh comandante

of the open cloud sea.

My grandfather

belonged to the serpent cloud people

the clouds,

he always smiled as he proclaimed his roots,

are the most powerful of all gods

and goddesses

natural deities

and forces, animals and

creatures, human

and inhuman,

he said.

The cloud ocean

dominates

the blue and the brown,

the cosmos

and the molecules

Yes, you can fly

right through them

because nothing can harm, destroy or burst

them

wave after wave of cloud

relentless colorless

now retreating, now attacking

now nowhere to be seen

suddenly they ambush the sky

and flood the land

with their transparent blood,

which regroups

shape shifts

are resurrected

reincarnated

reclaiming the liquid light

front and rises again

and again and again

complete hegemony without end

or beginning

The clouds will

blind you

extinguish the sun

make you crash or slow down

they make you forget

which way is up, which way is down

the clouds take your north, your south, your west, your east

make you lose your place

they make you forget where you are

where they sky is

where the earth used to be.

Flying instruments, compasses and sextants are usless

in the cloud ocean

She is a deadly quilt

or a serpent whose skin

wraps around the whole horizon,

asphixiating the sun

till you freeze and sunburn.

The cloud ocean is no shield

a stampede that fools you

because she just floats by.

The cloud ocean lulls you

into believing in rain,

a rain-goddess,

into believing in planting

into treading mountains

into precarious ceremony

into believing you can

channel her

claim her

drown her in fields of maize

devour her in revolutionary theory and hunger

bath in her

cloud ocean is humanity's

complete passage

She is snow-peaked mountain

She is reservoir

She is snowline

She is transparency of winds

the turbulence of human migrancy

tornado, whirlwind, hurricane, tempest

lightning, thunder,

bed, springboard

air current-serpent

whirling slithering deity of complete flight

She is faithful

to her people

and eternal blindness

to those who do not recognize

her world as the real

that decides the faith

of the unbelievers

She translates light

She is the biggest living organism

in the earth cloud ocean

nothing no one can

stop her

resist her

Submit, submission

is the all

She takes her time

because she created time

She defines space

because she is space

She has carved grand canyons

and birthed grandfather

She is ancient riverbed

She is Mississippi on her curved hips and back

the place we we worship pray

become human cloud

She is ancestor seabed

lashing out forever

to the meteor wall

the unforgiving wound

She resists, plays with us

makes us stumble

The plane slashes her skin, her flesh

she heals as fast, faster than our flight

That's what my grandfather,

son of the cloud serpents,

told me

to remember

to live

to become

a cloud

as he exhaled smoky clouds

from his cigarette...

*

Human Morning

I am suffering
from a deep sadness

rooted in the Atlantic salt

of chains dogs

the corpse of our lands

and police fields,

the honor of separation.

I remember everything, everyone

this deep sadness

of sunsets in strange lands

that

slap me

work me

into the oblivion of winter.

Right now

Only

your tenderness

your unconditional embrace

your mouth over mine

only you could heal me

no one else

not I alone,

two or more to build

an endless embrace

an infinite tenderness

to counter the bleak horizon

of those I've lost

of those who have lost me

in the dust of migrant implosions

only tenderness

your body against and over mine

to protect me

to save me

from the hole

they've dug

in my body

emptying me

of myself

emptying you

from me

and

filling me

filling us

with their despair

with their rage

against us

who ignore their destruction

An embrace

gestating an inheritance of a new land, a new house, a new home, a different horizon

from the splinters of our skin

from the shadows of our revolutions

from the iris of our smile

Put your arms around me

Put yourself in my arms

We become a weapon

a human bomb

a human bond

a human fault-line

the geology of our veins

that topples walls

that lacerates dictatorships

with the callousness of a new human tenderness

to rise up a new morning...

*

Rolling hills

Arnoldo García

Rolling hills

Rolling hills
ondulating around the sun
shredding the light
Toppenish became my home
drunk Indians and Mexicans
(that is, drunk Indians all)
Three syllables
three roots
dirt roads
hop fields
cornfields
sugar beet
mustard
asparagus
green beans
watermelon
the ranchers
drained the Yakama's river
to irrigate cash crops
White Swan stranded in the desert
three seasons and every winter
putting us in our place
My grandmother and my grandfather who took her lead
thought this better than Texas
where whites lynched Mexicans.
Here they strangled us
with hard field labor
Even the Indians had to changez
the spelling of their names, their homeland
so no one would confuse
Mexicans from Yakamas
Yakamas land forever from Yakima lands for sale
That is whites only
took their lands
and made us work it
made fertile volcanic dust
mesh with our sweat,
our dream of return
only to die paupers
without land, work or home
except in the cemetary.
Toppenish, rolling hills, makes
me dizzy
swallows me up
my soul is a tumbleweed
dried up at the mercy
of lost northern winds
Toppenish is my home
my horizon my word
my roots are also
buried there.
My hands lie fallow
I hibernate in dreams
of toxic-free seeds
and uneven rows
meant for walking
and not tractors
we grew up walking
migrant comet trails
blazing cornstalks,
green beans, hops
orchards across
the brown sky of the land
In Toppenish
you see everything
and you see
what you need to see
You cannot ignore me
or forget me in Toppenish
I did not choose this land
This land did not choose me
or my people.
Now she is mine and I hers
Toppenish is the wind become
mountains, hills, vallety,
volcanic path, migrant tomb,
laughter and bully.
the hills ondulate
cutting the horizon into my eyes....

Prohibido no ser humano | Being Inhuman prohibited

 

Arnoldo García

Prohibido no ser humano | Being inhuman prohibited

It was never allowed

Hablar español en la escuela

The white monolingual English-only teacher hit us with rulers, hands, swat-boards

Just for being Mexican

We were human, yet not human enough.

It was never allowed

You couldn’t get away with entering a room and not greet your elders with respect and reverence

To forget your dead, your ancestors and your ancestors to be

To forget the land, the gardens, the fields, where maize, watermelons, frijol grew underneath rooted to the ancestors, all of them

It was never allowed

To forget to pray, to mourn 40 days, 40 nights

and not be de luto for one year

It was never allowed

To talk first and not listen to the elders, the women, the viejitos, the infirm, those on their deathbed

It was never allowed

To receive pay, recognition or praise without work, without sweat, without sacrifice first

To put yourself forward ahead of others

To choose your friends

The squeaky wheel rolled away by itself

It was never allowed

To ignore the people, the community, the viejitas, the matriarchs, with their guidance, their good and best words

Who made us dream together

Who made us work together

Who made us live a shared vision

Who made us share a home, the food, the laughter

Who gave us life

Everyone else was first, you made room for them

Because you knew they were the other you.

Pueblos emplumados

Arnoldo García


Pueblos emplumados

Voy a cantar la historia
de nuestro pueblo sin tierra
Que dolor éramos indios
con toda una geografía

Nos arrebataron el suelo
nos deplazaron del cielo
para explotar a la tierra
y de privarnos de ancestros

Los indios arrodillados
los horizontes sin cantos
nos expulsan a fuerza
haciéndonos extranjeros
en nuestras tierra ancianas

En esta caminata
atravesando desiertosd
cultivando labores
no olvidamos las raíces

Somos los pueblos obreros
Desde mesoamérica
a las calles y esquinas
trabajamos contra las sombras
desprecios, maldiciones
y fregones explotadores

Para recuperar la tierra
volver a ser pueblo emplumado
Sembradores descalzos

Me gusta cantarle al viento
porque vuelan mis cantares

Mis plumas son los cantos
de mi puebli
cortando y cosiendo las heridas
del viento

*

La revolución emplumada
es la revolución humana
es volver volver volver!
a las raíces de la tierra
a las raíces del agua
a las raíces del viento
a las raíces del cielo
para volver volver volver!

Con los pies enlodados de humanidad
con los pulmones llenos de estrellas
y la sangre derramando soles.

*

Donde están los pueblos emplumados
con sus alas de polvo
y sus cantos de lluvia?

Vuelo y voces llenas de lodo
inundan mis oídos, mis sentidos, tu cuerpo

Quién dijo que el horizonte
nunca podría alcanzarse?
El horizonte es el muro
de mis sueños
La primera línea de mis milpas
donde las cárceles se desmoronan
y la esperanza nos abraza y abriga
sin temor a nada y nadie
Allí están los pueblos emplumados
juntándose uno por uno
para acabar con el desvelo de la guerra
para cuidar las semillas
para alzar el polvo con nuestras danzas

*

Neither Spanish nor English
will serve to break us out of this jail called empire
El inglés el español los tenemos
que echar de nuestra lengua
desenraizarlos deslambrarnos
uproot upend unwire unlock
In english you can love cars
and not the homeless
En español te pueden gustar
los carros y no los ancianos
How can English free us?
Como podemos liberarnos
con el español?

"Land, like language," dice Mahmoud Darwish
"is inherited."

Heredé un inglés mochado un español pocho
Una tierra cercada, envenenada, un code switching para evitar el castigo
Construí paredes que muy poso quieren cruzar
Heredé una tierra perdida,
una tierra envenenada, sorda,
casi muda,
que tatarea cantos en el viento
lee labios como zurcos
Pierde conciencia,
se desmaya
mi tierra
en mi lengua

*

Molting
feathers
painted
tongue
ready
to bury
the invaders
the occupiers
the colonial settlers
the imperial national guard
the anti-dog soldiers
the gas guzzlers
they have us
plucking chicken
speed-up's
carpel tunnel
repetitive
global assembly-line
stress
when will we bury the pestilence?

*

Ah
farmworkers
we believe
the land
is trembling with cold
so we cover her
in quilts of crops
canals to anchor her soul
at night when she dreams
and will not be thirsty
patches of green yello black
red flowers, maize, potatoes,
beans, berries, apples, squash,
pumpkin, we cover her
so she is not cold
in the winter of our trails and tribulations
ah, migrant land workers
we make the land by walking
we make the land warm with our sweat
we make the land ours
embraced by hands, seeds, roots
and walks
we make the land ours with our work.

*

Where is our land
what happened to our seeds
why does my grandfather
plow with clouds
How did we get this way
plucking chickens, dismembering cows
processing apples, laughing drunk,
stuttering as if the dust did not speak
for us
My grandfather always reminded me
that the strongest deity, the most
powerful force in the natural world
were the clouds
The clouds carried rain, sunlight and our ancestors
on their backs.
The clouds, he said,
could blind you in fog or burst
you in rain and sunlight
He especially warned us of the serpent cloud
that zig-zagged its belly on the sky
descending on rivers and lakes
to drink water, quench
its journey.
(My grandfather, of course,
came from the place of clouds,
he was a son of the cloud people.)
Now his cloud people are no match
for the mushroom cloud
The serpent cloud hides in the stratosphere
afraid to drink the water
humans have dammed and made
Jetplanes slice with their turbines
the clouds,
no respect for their pilgrimages
between suns, rains, people,
Their only sorrow is not being able to connect
us once again.
The army of clouds only weapon are raindrops,
winds, the kiss between dirt and sky called lightning,
thunder. She does bit
march her armies, they walk, glide,
dance, rest on their backs,
looking down at humans
trying to see them as clouds, funny clouds,
serpent clouds, galloping to work
on the highway commute.
The clouds are perfect guerrillas
we slash them with our jet-wings
they envelope us, overwhelm us
make our landing instruments obsolete
We can't hear their demands:
stay out of my way,
get out of my body,
stay down there,
take care of your roots,
plug the smokestacks,
stop the carbon monoxide,
plug the tailpipes,
leave the rivers alone,
tear down the damns,
smash the human borders
that imperil
all clouds,
all cloud people,
all living beings
all of us.

*

"The universe is not made up of atoms," declared Muriel Rukeseyer, "It is made of stories."

When my story ends
she ends in the big bang
the big bang pounds on the drum
of my tongue
spitting and vibrating atom-stories, atom-words, atom-exclamation points
putting together molecules
onto paper, bark, howling waves
under the moon
the comal where I toast
my bread, my maize, my stories

*

Don't be afraid
of how I pray to my gods
Don't be afraid
of my prayers
don't be afraid
of those who believe
in different ways
to yours
Don't be afraid
of the reverent
of a god
you do't recognize
Don't be afraid
of how I pray
to our gods
but be very afraid
of my gods
be very afraid.

*

I invented English
so that my family
would not be mute, not hungry
I learned English
because Spanish
was beat out
of me.
My grandfather
learned Spanish
because Purépecha
was beat out
of him
Then I forgot
English because
I was kept out
of Purépecha
The I forgot Spanish
because English
drowned me

I vist my prison languages
every day
taking them out from behind the bars
one word at a time
one syllable at a time
My tongue will be free
My English'My spanish
My Purépecha
a cosmos for my next dream
of no jails no boundaries
no one telling me
not to talk.

*

Quetzalcoátl
jumps into the iron foundry fire
to save the world, the people
from the industrial smokestack cycle
of wars
Quetzalcoátl returns
as an urban pigeon
ill, can't fly, picks through the garbage
or waits for bread crumbs
from the homeless, Quetzal-
coátl's people
pigeoncoátl, snake-rat with wings
jumps into the smog
so that we are safe, reborn

*

The wobblies

Traversing the dust of my self,
my ancestors, my future seed
I claim the earth
I claim the spin
I claim the sun
I claim infinity
not for my self
but for her self
for earth
for the wobbling
for the sun
for space
have their own self-determination
as I have mine
because I am their offspring.

*

Todo
será
emplumado
o todo
será
destrozado:
vuelo
polvo
nubes
cuerpos
lenguas
lenguajes
serpientes
pájaros
tu sexo
tu amor
unión
de
tierras y cielos
abrazos y despedidas
auroras y desvelos
palabras y lodos
mujer y hombre
jotos y jotas
transversos humanos
voladores y arrastrados
espacios infinitos
encarcelados humanos
todo será emplumado
toda será emplumada
Dos, tres seres en mí en tí

Hispanics.

Hispanics
NOTES.
arnoldo garcía

When you do not know the U.S. racial history of words, U.S. racial history period, and continue using them uncritically, the danger is that you will reproduce racism at a higher level.

Recently, (see my  twitter timeline for 140 character rants), I replied to an Occupy Oakland tweet that referenced an article about Bank of America ripping off African Americans and [sic] Hispanics. I replied: Decolonize occupy plus something to the effect that majority of us "Hispanics" are not "Hispanics" and majority are indigenous and Afro-descendents. There are Hispanics in the U.S. just like there are Mexicans, Salvadorans, Guaremalans, Cubans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, Brazilians, Colombians, etc.

So lumping us together as "Hispanics" is not accidental -- why not lump us as "Mexicans," the majority of "Hispanics" in the U.S.? I bet you the Hispanics would be up in arms -- which wouldn't be a bad idea; they have done that before and beautifully.

 Don't get me wrong. I don't believe for one moment that the U.S. Southwest belongs to Mexico -- or the U.S. Here in Oakland, we are on Ohlone land. You can't erase the past. It might take a long time to retake it, relocate ourselves in the natural world. The triple conquest, the triple occupation of Indian lands and the colonializaion of many mentalities to make some believe they're white and others Hispanic, won't be overcome easily.

The history of anti-Mexican racism in the U.S. needs more action and discussion. In sum, why Hispanic and not Mexican, or Indian... to name us?

Before the 1960s came to a head, Texas and the rest of the U.S. used to count Mexicans as "white" during the Census. After the 1960s civil rights movements rocked the foundations of the U.S., we started being counted as Hispanics. Before the government christened us "Hispanics," to count Mexiicans would have been political suicide for Texas and other regions of the Southwest where we have been the "majority" for decades or what seems like forever.

When the U.S. government decided to name and lump us as Hispanic, the (internalized and not so internalized) racism we have all been subjected to made self-hatred and racism easier to maintain. Because Hispanic divided us racially and helped whiteify or bleach the mentality of the darker, indian and black Mexican and others who maybe did not want to be dark skinned, black in a white hierarchy of pain. Hispanic, now you're one of us, white, well almost white, if you can act like there's no Border Patrol and race police checkpoints....

Oakland Has Disappeared: Record Deportations

On September 30, 2010, Oakland, California closed its doors; the elections were canceled; property tax notices stopped being served, street sweepers stayed motionless, teachers and students, families all gone.

The power was turned off and what remains of the city government, elected officials are claiming that Oakland crime is no more. Gentrification is now the good word, the savior. But there's a problem, Houston.

Oakland is off the grid.

Oakland decimated by deportations! A total of 392,862 residents were deported during the last twelve months.

Through an assortment of immigration-police programs, employer sanctions and E-verify programs that allow the employers and the government to check if a worker is authorized to work in the United States, through ICE carrying out illegal street sweeps targeting day laborers, mothers with children in tow on their way to school; at community health clinics, at church services, at funerals, in houses and apartment homes, at "DUI" check-points where anyone without a license was arrested, ICE picked up an average of 1076 residents per day. hauling them away to Mexico, Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, the Philippines, China, South Korea, Ecuador, Burma, Nigeria, Poland, and at least one family from Bosnia.

Oakland Now Belongs to the "Secure Communities" Family

Former Oakland Mayor, now California Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate, Jerry Brown was a big player in Oakland's demise.

As Attorney General, Brown signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that allowed the Oakland police to send the fingerprints of all persons they arrested directly to DHS to check their immigration status. This turned out to be a gold mine.

Called "Secure Communities," Oakland police was able to get tens of thousands of Oakland residents who are legal permanent residents fingerprinted. Because of the 1996 immigration and welfare reform laws, the police were able to entrap many residents because they had committed an "aggravated felony" some time in their lives and got them automatically deported.

This is a nightmare.

The Fruitvale District, once a thriving neighborhood struggling with crime, first saw street vendors and their customers disappear.

Then ICE and Oakland police agents starting going into grocery and clothes stores: clerks, customers, owners feet first.

When the Fruitvale went kaput, ICE and local police began picking up anybody who looked like an "immigrant" somebody: passer-bys including hipsters claiming to be from the Hills, transit village voyeurs, wanna-be artists living in warehouses from West Oakland to Jingle Town, late night taco truck and Meso-American vegan burrito connoisseurs all rounded up indiscriminately.

A policeman was overheard telling one of the persons being handcuffed, "If you're in Oakland, you must be illegal," -- this according to one lucky hipster who happened to be carrying his passport and spoke impeccable English.

ICE and Oakland Police also scoured quineceñeras, weddings, funerals and rosary services, and Buddhist temples. ICE found a mother-lode at St. Elizabeth Church that has three Spanish Masses on Saturdays and nine masses on Sunday, starting at 6:00 a.m. and ending with the last Spanish mass at 7:30 p.m.

The Evangelicals went flying into the DHS buses; norteños, border-brothers and sureños shared aisles.

Refugees were easy targets. After ICE deported their fellow churchmembers, legal services providers, neighborhood health clinic workers, refugees stood out like a sore-ass thumb.

ICE and company hit high schools, the charter schools, elementary schools, childcare centers and arrested anyone remotely suspected of being a gang-member or didn't look white.

Chinatown is a ghost town, too. Korea-town, Little Saigon, Old Oakland, even Piedmont restaurants, where all the food and service workers were immigrants, are closed down.

A few U.S. citizens and quite a few legal permanent residents were picked up and deported. No more morning lattes, no more cheap Vietnamese sandwiches, no more Oakland the most diverse city in the universe. Even former California Governor and immigrant Arnold Schwarzennegger was stopped at the Oakland Airport. Lucky for him that Jerry Brown vouched for him.

Oakland Police Department is largely intact; the overwhelming majority of Oakland police do not live in Oakland. They were right. It's not safe to live in Oakland, unless you're a cop with a gun patrolling the 'hood.

There are only 4,205 residents left, wandering the streets like nuclear war or zombie virus survivors.

They are not lucky; all of them do not know how to plant seeds, wouldn't know a planting season if it hit them in the stomach. None have ever tended or grown a vegetable or even a flower garden.

Most have not cooked in years -- and there's no children among them. The youngest one is almost 40. Their maids and other domestic workers were all rounded up.

They will die off one by one.

Does anyone think we can get some French or British to migrate to Oakland?

The Presence of World Culture, starting in East Oakland

There's a something culturally afoot in Oakland and it promises to shake, rattle and roll you. Let's take a quick tour.

Shake: Corazón del Pueblo, literally "Heart of the People," is a locally owned store whose nondescript status ends at the sidewalk.

Corazón del Pueblo is a sanctuary of art and culture. Corazón offers fine art, handmade jewelry, huipiles (hand-embroidered Mayan blouses) and ceramics and books from Latin America. Corazón also has an incredible gallery space in the rear that has showcased local Chicano, Latino and Indigenous painters and cultural shows and performances.

Corazón del Pueblo is the place to hang out, buy gifts for your loved ones or for yourself and talk with the owner Josefina Lopez about what’s happening in the neighborhood. Afterwards, treat yourself to a delicious meal at any of the local restaurants or taco trucks featuring Mexican cuisine.

Visit Corazón del Pueblo, located at 4814 International Boulevard, in the heart of east Oakland.

Rattle: On any given night, the EastSide Cultural Center, at 2277 International Boulevard, is featuring world class acts of poetry, music and art.

EastSide Cultural Center is the place where you can listen to David Murray blowing wildly on his saxophones or the international tour de force, Amiri Baraka, reading his poems for a different more just, peaceful world living in color.

Every Thursday night, EastSide Cultural Center busts open its doors and turns on its microphones to broadcast the voices and words local and featured writers, slammers performers, musicians and poets sharing their stories and craft.

EastSide features documentaries and films that hold back their political punches on Friday nights. The EastSide Cultural Center also offers on-going workshops on hip-hop, art and writing. There's always great photography and paintings exhibited on their walls, too.

Roll: Let's roll! From east to west, north to south, Oakland’s artists, poets, writers and musicians are changing the colors, imagination and sounds of our communities. Without the work and vision of cultural workers in Oakland, our neighborhoods would be less livable, less vibrant.

Shake, rattle or roll – Oakland is teeming with a dynamic art and cultural movement that is creating the new there here in Oakland!