International human rights day | Día internacional de los derechos human

Welcome

to international human rights day:

Human rights day is

the day

when you
can be fully human,

imperfect,

immigrant,

imbecilic,

important, 
impotent

to stop the U.S. disaster,

immune

to the past,

immured

with the possibilities

of liberation,

human liberation,

in the new day.

When indigenous

indios

are

The People of the Earth

The original human

The human emblem of humanness

When migrants

are the norm

for humanity

To be fully human

is to be a nomad, a migrant

to walk without weariness

to the define the horizon of liberation

I am 
therefore

we are

human,

humane,

humanity.

A little ration

(of humanness)

never hurt anyone...

*

Bienvenidos
al día internacional de derechos humanos:

El día de los derechos humanos es

el día

cuando
puedes ser plenamente humano

imperfecto,

inmigrante,

imbecilico,

importante, 
impotente

frente al desastre estadounidense,

inmune

al pasado,

emparedado

con las posibilidades

de la liberación,

la liberación humana,

en el día nuevo.

Cuando los indígenas

los indios

son

El Pueblo de la Tierra

los humanos originales

La bandera humana de la humanidad

Cuando las migrantes

son la norma

de ser humano

Y ser humano integral

es ser nómada, es ser migrante

es caminar sin cansancio

para definir el horizonte de la liberación

Soy
por lo tanto

somos

humanos,

humanamente,

humanidad.

Una pequeña ración

(de humanidad)

nunca ha lastimado a nadie ...

human status for all

human status for all:

birds,

oceans,

mountains,

uranium, 

rivers,

deserts,

worms,

jaguares,

bears,

fish,

whales,

wind,

soil,

waters,

migrants,

hummingbirds,

butterflies,

snakes,

insects,

bacteria,

germs,

shells,

mammals,

amphibians,

bipeds,

quadripeds,

all animals,

insects,

dogs,

coyotes,

wolves,

plants,

cats...

Animal status for all:

humans,

whites,

blacks,

browns,

yellows,

greens,

teas, republicans, democrats,

communists,

anarchists,

our languages

transmen, transwomen, queers, straights, curved,

the border patrol

the police

the homeless,

the rich,

the technocrats,

the evil bankers,

the corporativists...

On earth day,

all power to the animal people,

the web of life,

All power to the natural world without us...

poem & photograph: arnoldogarcía
Detail of mural on MacArthur Boulevard (near Mills College) in Oakland, California.

If I were human | day one poetry month

If I were human
I would be a woman
Whose fists would be tenderness filled with thorns.
I would worry about nothing except my daughters

I would love freely
The man who would make me laugh at philosophy
The man who would not hurt ants or my tears.

If I were human
I wouldn't fear unemployment
I wouldn't fear the distance that keeps me from her
I wouldn't fear anything except not being able to love
in the rain of winters without hope

If I were human
You would be happy, more fearless than you already are
You would be able to live
where the sun sets & rises without losing your place.

You would say:
Your wrinkled skin,
your battered lungs do not matter
Only that your heart pounds in my hands
Only that your smile is a machete to wield against my darkness
That your scars are the DNA of my pleasure

If I were human
Utopia would be now
Wherever we go,
wherever we are...

Notas sobre "Standing Bear is a Person: The true story of a Native American's quest for justice" ...

I
El derecho de existir
como humano,
en cualquier lugar del mundo,
en cualquier tiempo de la tierra,
es la revolución es ser humano...

II
Pasaportes de la piel
costumbres de clases sociales
el gruñir de los géneros
esto no durará



III
Dos estrategias
frente a la expropiación, la apropiación, la anexión
sin consulta, impuesta:
1. Asimlarse, "civilizarse:"
ciudanizarse para prosperar
acomodarse al lugar que le dan

2. Autonomía, resistencia, resistir
a ser iguales para ser diferentes, consultar, proponer
desciudadanizarse, reconocer,
practicar ser humano,
practicar los derechos humanos
cuidar la tierra, el agua, el viento,
que es cuidar a las y los antepasados,
la sangre, los lugares ancestrales, sagrados, los pulmones--las redes
humanas que como las velas
de las carabelas toman viento
y transforman
o hacen a las y los de arriba incómodos,
desacomodadores humanos.



IV
Tenemos que insistir en nuestros nombres
en nuestra autodeterminación,
en nuestro autorespeto, autodefensa, el único
auto
en que nos subiremos
para emprender este viaje,
que nos puede llevar de viaje,
la autonomía.

V
Todas las ciudades y poblados
sin importar que importantes
sean o marginalizados e
insignificantes,
están rodeados
de labores agrícolas, agua
y la mano de obra para que
florezcan:
Tambos de agua,
árboles, verde y verdura,
colchas de zurcos, canales y arroyos
de agua, manos que hacen los
tubos sorber y ahogarse, lodo (xocolatl)
las y los antepasados en flujo
desplegándose hacia las semillas y las estrellas

VI
La norma humana, la persona, la personalidad humana
no puede ser el blanco, eurocéntrico
monolingüe ciudadano estadounidense.
EEUUtopía es la globalización gabacha,
gabacha en su sentido original,
(en inglés le llaman "ecological footprint,"
es decir la huella
o el peso sobre
o la ocupación de
o el consumo
de la naturaleza):
las y los que con sus patas grandes
pisan y machucan
a las plantas,
a los animalitos y
a los lugares sagrados
a las y los humanos
y pisotean y dan patadas
con los dedos gordos
de sus pies y manos
a las y los demás
para servirse primero...

[Poema 2.5] Laura Rivas: Una xicana exiliada en Oakland

2.6.09

A Xicana exile in Oakland
There are some things that shouldn’t be written
And can only be felt

And there are other things that must be written
Are already written
That we cannot afford to feel

I don’t like writing and yet it carries me like water
All my favorite writers
Use metaphors of water, light, food,
Things that awaken our senses

Why exiled? Because I cannot return
Or because I was forced to leave?
In resistance I chose never to return
And at times I feel I never really left

The Roma say nostalgia is a longing
For a home one never really had
A return that is impossible
After generations displaced and dispossessed
The journey is our home
Migrations and movements
Nos alimentan

###

I want to write a poem about survival
But I want it to be strong
Like my ancestors in the past
Who fought and resisted
the annihilation of our people, culture, mother tongue
Like my ancestors today
Who stand on street corners selling oranges
looking for work, cleaning your homes, raising your children.
Resisting death every day
Resisting the heaviness of poverty
Resisting depression, anxiety, isolation
Fighting to live, breathe, smell clean air

Survival

###

How long would it take me to write a poem?

20 minutes
20 hours
20 weeks
or 20 years

I started writing about my life at the age of 10.
My first journal my refuge
For an isolated child
No warm hand to hold
Shoulders too tired to lean on
Ears too busy for me
Spilled out words
About what she had to survive
Endure
Hide
And struggle with for the rest of her life

My pen and paper took me places I could never afford to go
In my mind I wandered off the map
Got lost and didn’t care that they may not find me
That I might go hungry or get cold

###

2. 10. 09

last night an unexpected reunion
of exiles
wordsmiths
crafters of imagination
words take flight
from underneath dim lights
spilling warmth
comfort
art.

Poetry of place
You mean I can write about that place
That sad buried place
I carry in me like marrow?
Bone marrow.
It’s in my bones, she said
And I felt shivers

Lynwood is a small place
Like Antigua
A small place in the middle of an urban ocean
“The armpit of L.A.”

Where metal birds swoop low
Overtaking sounds of children playing
Laughing señoras with colorful mandiles
Hanging from jiggling bellies

Where nopales and rosales grow
In the midst of grafitti, LA smog, drive-by shootings, and droughts
Teaching persistence and survival

Where children ride skateboards on their knees
Wear rollerblades 3 sizes too big

Where bottles and cans decorate lawns
Yellow, green, and brown with wooden sticks to hold up skinny trees

A small place where I was born
A small place that raised me
To see with my heart and act with integrity
A small place that could not hold me anymore
A small place that exploded with urban uprising in the 90’s
And spit out children with fear in their eyes
Violence on their minds
Resistance in their hearts
Songs of hope on their tongues

A small place where we looked up and saw stars
Lined up perfectly in the sky
Connect-the-dots one by one
A little closer a sparkle and then another
O wait! It’s an airplane not a star

A small place ‘mistaking planes for stars’

-
References made to poems by Aida Salazar and Raquel from Butchlalis of
Panochtitlan, from the reading at Galeria de la Raza one chilly Monday evening
at an event called “mistaking planes for stars”
------

Migrante (In)migrante quieres ser mi amante?
2.17.09

Por el día del amor y la amistad
Porque nuestra gente se dispone a dejarlo todo, hasta su propia vida… por amor
Porque mi gente me sigue enseñado todo lo que es del amor y la amistad
Una jornada imposible al parecer
Te enfrentas a riesgos inolvidables
Inaguantables
Intolerantes
Inevitables

Porque aquí no te abren las puertas
Barreras sobre barreras
Sobre tierra y dentro del mar
Bajo cielos azules y estrellas conmovedoras

Paredes y fronteras te dicen que no
Tus niños familia demuestran que sí
Es posible pero más que nada es
Necesario
Para llenar esos ojitos de esperanza
Con un poquito de pan
Y leche para nutrir un corazonsito que solo sabe de
Su padre dentro de marcos decorados
por fotos y recuerdos guardados en el alma de su madre
y de su abuela

por allá dicen que somos indocumentados
entre mi gente somos los que aguantan
somos los que luchan
somos los que sufren
y despiertan con hambre
se acuestan con frío

trabajan sin protección sin derechos sin exigir demasiado

Pero también somos dignos
De una vida justa y humana
De darle a nuestros hijos
El sudor de nuestra frente en forma de un tierno abrazo y un ‘te quiero’

Somos un pueblo de buen Corazón
Somos de canela pura
Somos la sal de la tierra
Somos la caña dulce de un dia largo y asoleado

Somos el hoy ayer y mañana
Somos el Nuevo amanecer
Somos la nueva luna
La luna llena
El tochtli aventurero
Que canta con las estrellas

Somos el fuego que arde
Que consume
Que deja todo
Y abre caminos para poder empezar otra vez

Somos desierto, mar y montaña

Somos los hijos y los nietos soñadores
Ilusionados con la vida a pesar del profundo dolor
De la separación y la distancia

Somos aquí y somos allá
La lucha seguirá!

Somos amor
Somos cariño, ternura e ilusión
Todo por una vida mejor
… por un pequeño mundo mejor
Donde el amor no nos cueste la vida
Donde el hambre no nos lleve a la muerte bajo un sol ardiente
Donde el trabajo no nos desbarate los pulmones, brazos, espaldas, cuellos, cinturas,
ojos y organos digestivos.
Donde el miedo y las preocupaciones de la vida no nos llegue a destrozar el corazon.

Donde nuestros hijos e hijas ya no tendrán que esperar un docena de años para
volvernos a ver… a acariciar… a abrazar… a disfrutar

Donde nuestros padres no mueren solitos… sin la tierna caricia de sus hijos, nietos y
sobrinos.

Migrante… eres amor, ternura, canela pura
Migrante (in)migrante… no quieres ser mi amante?

###

“No hay cien años que no reviente … ni esclavo que lo aguante”

*

Laura Rivas es una activista de derechos humanos y poeta en desarrollo. Ella trabajó por la Red Nacional Pro Derechos Refugidos e Inmigrantes (www.nnirr.org), organizando con comunidades y documentando violaciones para defender nuestros derechos humanos.

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.

Sign

OPEN LETTER

To President Barack Obama

Visit

www.nnirr.org

You are invited to sign the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights "Open Letter to President Barack Obama," which calls on his Administration to end immigration raids and suspend all detentions and deportations as the first step to restoring due process rights and implementing humanitarian policies, measures and practices in the treatment of all immigrants.

To read or sign the letter, please visit www.nnirr.org

Thanks!

Three Poets, Four Poems for Gaza

Note from Arnoldo Garcia, EL FEO: These poems were sent to me by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, author of Sweatshop Warriors and co-author with Beth Ching and myself, Arnoldo Garcia, of XicKorea: poems rants words together.

These four poems denounce the Israeli war against Palestinians and Palestine in Gaza. There are two poems by Suheir Hammad, noted Palestinian poet; one by Miriam Ching Yoon Louie and Janine Mogannam.

Why must these poems be written, read, disseminated, memorized, exchanged, lived? Israel launched a military invasion of the Gaza Strip on December 27, 2008, a seige that continues to this date and with no end in sight. Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed (a third or more of the casualties are women and children) and thousands more wounded, maimed and traumatized. Israeli F-16 jets are bombing Gaza cities and towns into rubble, tanks and soldiers follow with shells, mortar fire and weapons firing against the people, whether they are in mosques, schools, homes, apartments, U.N. buildings and schools. Israel is carrying out a massacre, with the deliberate intention of a holocaust. The carnage must stop; Israel must be disarmed and driven back, driven out. Gaza must live.

Here are three poets aiming their words, their only weapons, for peace, justice, for those who have been buried and are dying in Gaza under the rubble of Israel. What will last longer? The Israeli siege and destruction of Gaza? Palestine? These poems? Who will remember forever, who try to forget today the Israeli killings? If Gaza is destroyed, I will rename Oakland, Gaza. I will name my home Gaza, my mourning, my happiness, my migrancies, my displacements, my love, my tenderness -- all Gaza.

*}*{*

Miriam Ching Yoon Louie

GazaNam

White phosphorous means
Napalm means VietGaza means
Child aflame run Korea

Survive Holocaust/ how
Collective hungerment/ can you
Smell charred flesh again?

Scorched root still grows
Bay night luminous with kaffiyah moms
Hoarse chanting babies

Eyelash boys beat buk thunder
Drum witness big bros rippling Leila
Wings from bus shelter roofs

Red black green white prayer
Cape catches my drumstick—kung!
End—the occupation

Now—a lil bit louder
Stop—the genocide
Free—free Palestine!

Hope pray hope
March hope please hope means
Stop burning children want peace.

*}*{*

Suheir Hammad

gaza

a great miracle happened here
a festival of lights
a casting of lead upon children
an army feasting on epiphany

i know nothing under the sun over the wall no one mentions
some must die wrapped in floral petroleum blanket
no coverage

i have come to every day armageddon
a ladder left unattended
six candles burn down a house
a horse tied to smoke
some must die to send a signal

flat line scream live stream river a memory longer than life spans
the living want to die in their country

no open doors no open seas no open
hands full of heart five daughters wrapped in white

each day jihad
each day faith over fear
each day a mirror of fire
the living want to die with their families

the girl loses limbs her brother gathers arms
some must die for not dying

children on hospital floor mother beside
them the father in shock this is my family
i have failed them this is my family i did
not raise their heads i have buried them
my family what will i do now my family is bread
one fish one people cut into pieces

there is a thirst thefts life
there is a hunger a winter within winter

some must die to bring salvation
i have come to end times always present

the woman lost parents her children and screams
my sister i have lost my sister i want to die
my sister’s eyes were honey her voice mine
i can’t face this only god only god my sister

medics killed schools hit convoys bombed
the injured are dying the dead are buried in three
hours the people pray together and curse the people
mourn loud and quiet always too loud not enough

some must die because they are the vicinity
some must die because it was written

no army does not apologize has never
apologized authority chases paper assembly
occupation settles deeper

a great miracle here
the living are dying and the dying living

a festival of lights
a strip a land a blaze
the sea a mirror of fire

a casting of lead upon children
their heads roll off their shoulders into streets
their tops spin in hands

an army feasting on epiphany
driving future into history
carrying torches into women


*}*{*

Janine Mogannam

for gaza

ya allah what
is there is anything
left

allahuakbar

scream cold into cobalt darkness
frigid breath cannot temper
the fury of earth betrayed
ablaze her children only human
orphaned to her now

land of ghosts hollow
cost of growing up cactus
fruit people knew
what the war
saw replanted advantage over
wheat and olive
people always without

i know that cool midnight
sky navy royal
purple alight by
stars struck the gash
of rockets mortar fire
and brimstone paradise
lost children and limbs
reaching for home phantom
fragment gory spilling
insides endless vultures
circling for the kill

the city
in shambles city
of the dead gaza
a graveyard tumbled
walls are tombstones
marking graves anonymous
babies mothers scream
into the sunlight i
can't believe
in the sky anymore

but the light
persists waiting to be
found the sun
still rises in gaza nablus jenin
haifa ramallah bethlehem points
in between stars
still twinkle unknown
signs in three
languages point nowhere
into the trees or into
the sea the river rebirth
its children false witness
history rewritten
so that every town bears
a different name
a different scar slashed
swift and sweet into
the skin of this land

bring me to her break
my heart in two
bury it half
here half within me
so i always feel
her pain always
remember fortune born
on the right end
of the flat earth
as i return
in my mind faces
at qalandia expressions
cannot be translated
into words eyes
wide as the moon or
fallen trees lips parched
feet cracked and
aching to return
to remain
still and i am speechless
with sorrow with guilt pushing
away the sesame jerusalem loaves
warming my lap there is
no bread enough
to feed those eyes
those feet these memories
these horrors push
bodies push away my hand my chair
away from the table the television terror
i remember i cannot DO anything
push away palestine push

make use
shoot
my arrow at the stars
make light rain onto her
rebuild
take the pebbles splinters
shrapnel (once home)
mix with water
mix with blood mix
until hands are crimson
and raw as hearts as insides
laid bare and open flesh
wounded against rocks feeding
the soil
the rage feeding
another day
rebuild
rebuild

*}*{*

Suheir Hammad

jabaliya

a woman wears a bell carries a light calls searches
through madness of deir yessin calls for rafah for bread
orange peel under nails blue glass under feet gathers
children in zeitoun sitting with dead mothers she unearths
tunnels and buries sun onto trauma a score and a day rings
a bell she is dizzy more than yesterday less than
tomorrow a zig zag back dawaiyma back humming suba

back shatilla back ramleh back jenin back il khalil back il quds
all of it all underground in ancestral chests she rings
a bell promising something she can’t see faith is that
faith is this all over the land under the belly
of wind she perfumed the love of a burning sea

concentrating refugee camp
crescent targeted red

a girl’s charred cold face dog eaten body
angels rounded into lock down shelled injured shock

weapons for advancing armies clearing forests sprayed onto a city
o sage tree human skin contact explosion these are our children

she chimes through nablus back yaffa backs shot under
spotlight phosphorous murdered libeled public relations

public

relation

a bell fired in jericho rings through blasted windows a woman
carries bones in bags under eyes disbelieving becoming
numb dumbed by numbers front and back gaza onto gaza
for gaza am sorry gaza am sorry she sings for the whole
powerless world her notes pitch perfect the bell a death toll

*}*{*

We are all Oscar Grant! ……………&, BTW, can we please not vilify the vandals?

My thoughts on today’s protest, while they are fresh…

11pm, January 7

By Rise Up [continues below]

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:
Here are a couple of posts written on the evening of the January 7 gathering at Oakland's Fruitvale BART Station to protest the BART police shooting and killing of Oscar Grant, which turned into a confrontation with the Oakland police. Oscar Grant was killed on New Year's Day at the Fruitvale station and was videotaped by various passengers who were on the stopped train as the BART police were handcuffing several young men involved in a fracas. Oscar Grant was on the ground face-down with three police officers on top of him, when one of them stood up, unholstered his gun and shot him in the back.

See the video documenting the police shooting Oscar Grant at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAHjhtYZpX0

Read a report by Davey D: http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/did-bart-cop-who-killed-oscar-grant-mistake-gun-for-taser/

*

We are all Oscar Grant! ……………&, BTW, can we please not vilify the vandals?
My thoughts on today’s protest, while they are fresh…

11pm, January 7

By Rise Up

So, wow. I’m listening to the ghetto birds still outside my Oakland apartment while I listen to them on the live news at the same time. I’m nursing the blister I got marching and running around 5 or so miles. I’m charging my phone ‘cause I over texted with people coming to or worrying about the protest or trying to decide what to do next at the protest.

At 11pm, they started to make mass arrests. Before that, there were 14 adults and 1 juvenile arrested. Supposedly, someone is being charged with “assaulting an officer” tho the news reports no officers were hurt. Half of us stayed at the BART station and half of us marched, putting 500 or so people in each place at some point in the evening by my estimation and the estimations of my friends.

A cop car got jumped on and its windows broke and some folks tried to flip it. Some dumpsters and garbage cans caught on fire. Later, some restaurant windows were broken and a few people’s cars were smashed up and burned. Here’s some video: KTVU Video of cop car getting tore up http://www.ktvu.com/video/18435145/index.html

After the window of the MacDonald’s on 14th & Jackson got broken, Mayor Ron Dellums, Black man and old school activist turned politician, came to that spot to try to talk to the protesters and calm them down. That was actually a pretty smooth move for a mayor I must say. Alas, after a few handfuls of folks listened to him and followed him like the Pied Piper back to City Hall, they decided that his words were not so consoling, booed him, and went on to tear up Oakland some more…

But, back to the beginning……
I loved the people who showed up! We were so diverse and beautiful, and all of us there, UNITED against that police murder, all of us, regardless of background, really angry and fed up with the mistreatment of black (and brown) people by the police from our different perspectives on that.

I loved the connections drawn between Gaza and Oakland. I loved that we were reminded that the Black Panthers started as a self-defense group against the police. I loved the young people and I loved all the heart and heat from the stage. I loved the sign that said “fuck the police, no army in the streets!” I loved the defiance of people lying in the streets on their bellies as if hog tied in front of the cops and telling them to shoot. I loved the fearless emotions cutting loose, and I loved it when we all chanted, “We are all Oscar Grant!” every time the police tried to face us down in the street. “Whose Streets? Our Streets! No Justice, No Peace!”

The news from 9pm or so kept saying that the protest was so dispersed and disorganized that the cops were struggling to contain it. For hours, in fact, the police really could NOT contain it. I have to admit how much I love that. I mean, it’s not really an end point or anything, but it’s so empowering for us to see some of the possibilities! “Ain’t no power like the power of the people and the power of the people don’t stop!” Here’s to a lack of organizing or whatever you call that!

There was a little internal conflict over whether we should have marched. That’s too bad since we really need all kinds of protest. I was personally not sure which group to hang out with. In the end, I marched.

Already on the news they found someone to say that it was “the anarchists” who weren’t part of organizing the protest who were responsible for both the march and for the bulk of the “violence”. But by now we expect this, no? I assure you, both groups were diverse in the end.

So we did this beautiful thing today and the unity was deep and it really had a feeling, like someone said from the stage earlier in the day, that we were at the beginning of something new, or something renewed, like the next round of a serious civil rights movement. And really, to me, this is what will “fix” it more than anything very immediate, like $25mil, or jail time for that cop. Those things should happen too, of course, but we need some very serious and deep ass change and that’s gonna start with movements of people, if you ask me, not with electing Black poster boys for president or putting bandaids on things. I have to say again, tho, how we were really diverse. I think that this will be a marker of the difference between the 60’s & 70’s and “the next movement”, whenever it is we feel able to claim that title.

But I left when folks started messin’ with people’s personal property. Well, actually, my cell battery ran out and I lost my folks so there was no one I knew havin’ my back, plus that blister on my heel was starting to get to me and I was starving and I really had to use the bathroom… but I still, I left because I didn’t really wanna be a part of attacking other peoples personal stuff or even messing with small businesses.

OK. So, someone might assume that I wanna call those people crazy, and certainly the media is going to tear into them a lot; someone will press charges, and someone will discredit the whole action due to the fact that some people expressed their rage more carelessly than others. Even parts of the left are gonna be really mad at those folks, I know.

But does anyone remember Reginald Denny? Wikipedia on Reginald Denny [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Oliver_Denny ] Well one of the people whose car got burned has already said on the news – an elderly white man – while he is upset about his car, he is really upset about Oscar Grant being murdered and understands.

It’s controversial among the people who were at the march and sparked discussions about what kinds of property destruction is ok and what kinds are not.

I want to call on people to think out this issue of “violence” and keep in mind that this was PROPERTY destruction, and not PEOPLE destruction like shooting Oscar was. And I want to call on people to keep the high spirit of ALL THE FORMS OF PROTEST AND RESISTANCE we were a part of today and tonight, and not to feed those who chose to destroy property of individuals to the wolves. We should seize the opportunity to talk among ourselves about the difference between someone breaking the windows of a City Hall or BART headquarters or a cop car, and someone breaking the windows of small restaurants and stores. We should use this as an opportunity to teach that breaking the windows of the cars of individuals doesn’t really send the message we want to send. But lets not feed those people to the wolves. OK? We have youngsters and noobs in our midst. I don’t wanna treat them like “agent provocateurs” [ http://www.answers.com/topic/agent-provocateur ] unless they actually are and in the meantime, we need to embrace them and teach them.

Yeah, I’m kind of responding there to some specific things I heard out of some particular mouths tonight, but it’s important.

The news was also showing things I saw myself but didn’t have the camera to record – a young black man lifts his shirt to bare his chest to the police and yells to shoot him now. And that young woman who said, “We live our lives in fear and tonight we want them to be afraid!” How many did she speak for?

there will be more.....

yo vengo de un pueblo sin fronteras

Arnoldo Garcia

yo vengo de un pueblo sin fronteras
soy africano
soy palestino
soy pure'pecha
con destino a la liberacion natural.
soy mexicano
soy hasta chicano
negro de raices huastecas
mestizo con raices mundiales
he cruzado mares y olvidos
he hundido arados en el vientre de la tierra
plantando semillas y esperanzas
cultivando corazones y alabanzas
ningun humano es inmigrante
ningun humano es minoria
ningun humano es indocumentado
ningun humano es ilegal
somos todos ciudadanos
o somos todos indocumentados
somos todas juntas
o somos todas rebeldes

mi piel es el color de las tierras
mi lengua son los rios y los mares
hablando palabras cristalinas
cantando lluvias y huracanes
soy fragil como un otonyo
soy la primavera que nada ni nadie puede detener
soy jornalero de los horizontes
costurera de la ternuras humanas
campesino del amor a las raices y los abrazos profundos
contesto todas las llamadas de la libertad
y solo me gusta provocar la risa
para desafiar a las puas del odio
todas las fronteras son inalambricas
todas las fronteras son virtuales
la tierra no tiene fronteras
tiene esa enfermedad de humanos
que padecen la enfermedad de la propiedad privada
padecen la enfermedad del color de su piel
padecen la enfermedad del genero hombre macho
somos un pueblo que trastorna fronteras
somos un pueblo que nacio en milpas y limpia rascacielos
somos un pueblo que sabe labrar tierras y curar enfermedades
Yo vengo de un pueblo sin fronteras

Photos by arnoldo garcia, hands of young writers

The B Word (part 2)

By Arnoldo García

Freedom does not ask for a visa.
Justice doesn't need a passport.

Human rights are our only borders, our only country, our only security, our only nationality.

Human rights is the color of our skin, the pleasure of our bodies, the place where class does not matter, where class begins and begins to end, where clean air, water and soil conspire with us, where the natural world takes over and we take our place in the web of life called time, space, cosmos, universe, the Milky Way, la Vía Lactea.

In community and through communities, can our words and actions for a different, more just, fair world not only make sense but also stand up and start walking.

Everyone is a border brother, a border sister; you carry the U.S.-Mexico border wherever you go. The border follows us wherever we go:

There's the 1492 border, the mother of all borders that we know.

Racial slavery began in 1492, when a small group of white men thought they could own the world and whoever lived there by declaring it so, by declaring it theirs.

There's the landing of the Plymouth Rock border. Malcolm X was right: "We didn't land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on of us."

There's the 1776 border; the 1848 border; the 1865 border; the 1880 Chinese Exclusion border; the 1890 Wounded Knee border; the 1905 border of not-so Gentleman's Agreement border to keep Japanese and Asians out.

The 1905, 1910, 1917 revolutionary borders when czars everywhere were overthrown and Bolsheviks, Zapatistas and Villistas called for new human borders everywhere

The 1492 border showed up again as World War I. The 1929 crash border that brought us World War II crushed humanity with hunger and desperation of their borders; the 1936 Spanish Civil War border that called for internationalists to cross and double-cross all borders. The 1939 border of running over everyone and everything with tanks, storm troopers, blitzkriegs and concentration camps for our border brothers and sisters. The Soviet Union and the U.S.A. had their own brand of forced laborers, braceros are braceros regardless of who's in charge of the border.

The Nazi-Fascist borders paled in comparison with the Nagasaki-Hiroshima atomic bomb borders. Capitalism's 1492 borders made full circle when they ended World War II.

The Jim Crow borders, the maquiladora borders, the bracero borders, the military-industrial complexion borders.

The military industrial complexion? Whiteness. For those who think that race, color without class analysis is poor, they have yet to learn that if you aren't color-conscious your class consciousness will be white, Eurocentric, ignoring more than 95% of world history and the movements for liberation, land, justice and humanity. Because when I say border, I am saying Europe, I am uttering Christopher Colombus, I am raising fists against colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, empires, I am speaking in silenced languages, disappeared peoples, destroyed natural worlds,

Color is class; the darker colors the darker and lower you find yourself in the working classes, the poorest are darkest, Indigenous peoples, Africans, mestizos, Asians, Arabs, Muslims, Mexicans, Salvadorans, Mayan, Lakota, Tohono O'odham, Yaqui – when you see us you see the landless, the perennially sub and unemployed, the homeless (but not without a homeland, even if it is the perenially imaginary Aztlan), who have no representative in Congress, have never had one in the White House. Have been thrown off their lands, treated as strangers, as minors incapable of managing their own dreams, experimented on with small gifts of small-pox, poisoned with siflis, cast off, put in reservations, ghettos and migrant labor camps in the U.S.

In Mexico, Meso-America, Canada, France, England, Spain, Nicaragua, Cuba, and elsewhere, the history of the struggles for freedom are inscribed, tattooed, branded, insinuated, instructed, breathing through our pores, in our pigmentation. This is the pigment of our imagination.

For poor and working class whites, their whiteness is aspiration to and sentinel of power and powerlessness to keep the darker brothers and sisters down.

Every border since 1492 has been imposed to quash the natural world and our place in her. Every border has been used to impose a redefinition, a refinement of whiteness.

Tonight I take back their words and erase their presence, erase their violent system of conquest, occupation and spiritual deceit; resurrect the Tainos, the Caribes, the Haitís, the guajiros, they who welcomed lost strangers, fed them, gave them fresh water, nourished them back to health – and lost everything for it.

Tonight let our borders sleep together, gestate, dream, make love together.

My border is my skin, my ancestral skeleton walking across fields and waiting on street corners for work.

Let the cosmos with its biggest bang pull apart the 1492 borders, until they burst in the sixth sun, scattered without redemption or hope. Leave us behind in the MesoCosmos of our borders, our lives to till the stars and regain our place in the natural world ...