and I had a relevation!!

and so we were safe...

comfort in my skin color

a message to my professor

Later on, way after class I wrote this in my Ethnic Studies Journal

This Ethnic Studies Journal for class

Is actually my journal in real life. Not just for academia. I talk about Race and Class and Gender. How it intersects in my life. How it feels to be in this body- queer woman of color-Xicana reborn into white american culture society that is corrupt and penetrating every inch of my life in this reality.

You need a journal like this to document your experiences.

WRITE IT IS ESSENTIAL TO YOUR EXISTENCE!!!

The information is out there

I don't agree this is video above but I can see from where they are coming from. It's a shame that there aren't more women in mainstream hiphop and Nicki Minaj is a poor example. But hey, to each their own.


http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_15817057?nclick_check=1

And now you don't have to go looking for it. This is all of the videos for one semester of a class called Sociology of HipHop.
I know it's a lot but it's beneficial to your mind. up uP UP AND AWAYYYY!!

Notebook Pages 9/24/10

Who am I writing this to?!

the trees had a message for me

I was lead to the trees.Here I watched a single string of web dance in the small breeze. I was peaceful and quiet, listening to the russle in the trees--the falling of the leaves onto the ground--crackling and whispering to each other. I am completely present in this moment. only one voice. Loving. Being. Present. Reflecting.

Even nature can be cruel sometimes. The vines corrupt the trees all around me. They creep everywhere at their trunks; slither around them. Squeeze and drink they dry over a period of years. In the Fall the only things that look alive are the vines; proudly proclaiming their green and living vibrance! Especially over the trees--dead and bare/naked. People use this pathway at the bomb shelter for jogging.

There's a bridge in front of me over a river of vines. I have no concept of time. I listen as the cars drive by to the hill, next to this sacred place. The joggers run by to find their cars in the parking lot. And a single string of web still dances to the small breeze; the path of the tiny spider that lives in the trees. The leaves are browning at their edges clinging to their branches in the face of their death. Oh, nature can be so cruel (!) in its majesty of rebirth.

The Branches reach out at me, "Embrace me. Surround me. You are water and I love you and you keep me alive as I breathe and keep you alive."

Today on the bus I drew.

in case you haven't already

sleep

I feel as though sleep does not rest me. My dreams are so heavy they weigh me down through the bed to the floor and that's where I sleep. I sleep on the floor because the bed cannot hold me. And the pillow goes through my head and the blankets fall off while I'm dreaming. My mother was a demon last night who was going to kill me. She sliced open my eye and then planned my suicide. I woke up to one BEEP my online alarm clock and I was ripped apart from her. And my girlfriend is in our bed in the magical house, tending to our cat's wounds. I miss her warmth and I think I'm going home tonight because Hazel will get me sick otherwise. I need to carry a yardstick. I hate waking up this early for class.

words like mine

These words; like oceans.
they are vast,
               huge,
                        so deep
they fathom reality.
My thoughts form connections;
it is a million sparks of energy.
These words;
true like rain. True like gold.
True like atoms.
They stick and there are more than enough to share with you.
So please, here
                   are
                                  my
words;

these words can carry their weight and hold their head high above oppression.
Show me yours?







*small note to myself.

I was searching Native American Indians and all of the pictures looked like white people impersonating Native American Indians.

Arellano Name Meaning and History
Spanish: habitational name from Arellano in Navarre, named in Late Latin as fundus Aurelianus ‘the farm or estate of Aurelius’.


My Philosophy in a nutshell
We are all creators. Gods of our own universes. We make reality. The soul grows as we go through animal/plant lives. We are recycled. We are young. And the creator was not satisfied with nothing so we became split. But I am God, as are you and him and her. All of us are God. Science is in fact, true. Everything lives even at a molecular level, working together to function, sparks of energy. That's all we are; energy that creates the very fabric of reality. It can tear; ever notice how some people see reality differently? People who can see ghosts regularly. People who can meditate so deep that they can travel dimensions of realities, meet others. Or time, how it travels for some people is different than other people. Time for some drags on and on and others it flies out of your hands; never enough. never enough. So then, we are God and I am you, as you are me, and everything is connected because we function that way. The air you breathe is elements, not just oxygen. Trees make your air from your breath which is COtwo. We are not separate from the earth or anything else for that matter. We exist here because we have created it; all of us together. You him/her i. God.

Seaweed from Tell No One on Vimeo.

a direct link to my soul

I uprooted the plants by the root of x with my mind
to be replaced with roses like me, red white and lavender--
with no one to care for them
everyone is busy sitting down or running in place,
or running in circles even.
Up the stairs to the front door that doesn't shut properly,
a hundred years plus history glues my essence to the floor.
The cats take her to the basement-
a flood of tears and privilege.
Water, water everywhere-knee high and damaging everything.
i feel it in my bones;
shaking its way up to my soul.

Personification of the sunflowers

The sunflowers in the front by the mailbox
are being decapitated nightly by the urban skunk
and daily by the squirrels. Their smiling faces have been mutilated--
it's a mess of shells on the steps to the front door.
And a murderer lives next door.
There's a ghost in the walls that shakes the floor.
And every wall is a different color.
This house is magical and here I float.
This house has an energy on its own--
pulling at your fingers and pant legs
and it won't let me go.

Gosh, it feels so good to be here.

blast from the past

Hello, Buddy.

the teachings

"Think simple like a buddha. Have childhood eyez. Take back what is yours. Get to know your Self. Love those around you. Sing positive tunes. Be good to your body. Love this life. You are the God of your own universe- we are all creators. Make your life what you want it. Thank you, Andrea Danielle Selva.

9 hours ago

Early early morning before the sun woke up

I got onto the bus and wrote this.

8am.

"I stare at myself in the reflection on the bus glass panels next to the door to exit. Today I forgot to kiss her goodbye before I left. She feels misplaced here, with no purpose. In reality, I'm not who I say I am. I have selfish impulses just like regular people. There is no good semaritan here. I am at times rude and senile, a lost soul, just like you. My fantasy image inspires greatness apparently. Everyone sees their human potential. I've seen mine. I live through my potential. I stare at myself in the reflection on the bus glass panels next to the door to exit. As MacArthur stretches into forever. Past High St back into the bomb shelter."

Then again at 11am

"I think about whether my behavior is sporatic or just rebellion against routine. I've never liked doing the exact same routine, day in and day out. I'm back on the bus in the middle across from the door to the exit. A light skinned dude with his homo erotic fashion; glasses and skinny jeans, raps about his self esteem. And the bus is filled top to bottom with chit chat. I am in a bright red dress and sandals, I look pretty stupid, its overcast. The air is moist outside--a slight mist as you stride. This bus routine is so familiar. But I have yet to recognize a driver; where do they all go everyday? And the people are always different. Very seldom do I see a familiar smiling face. We're passing the tattoo shop now. Im not even close to the house yet. My lover told me last night that my eyez looked like a zombie's from 28 days later. I took 3 rips off the bong and I know she disapproved. Relationships are about compromise. Never once until now have I ever felt selfish. So now that I've pieced myself together, will I ruin this? Because I've always given away my self-worth and now it was built. I thought the whole point of getting me healthy was to make me eventually do it myself-- SUSTAINABILITY!!!"

I'm going to sleep until Jack takes me shopping. Today I am a cumslut femme-- only a fraction of myself. I made $20 today. I have $320 saved up, we need $380 more for rent. I have to figure out how to make rent money.

A Tribute to My Well-Being

Well, a cumslut femme lesbian sexy Latina; ripe and ready for the picking needs her weekly manicure, tri-weekly bikini wax and pedicure, fresh socks, panties and bras, lingerie (to tease you with, my dear!). More jeans that fit. More shirts. More makeup. More material goods to play the part...if that's who you want me to be..

fridge poetry

you wanna break the law?

you can have my password.

..1love.

Let's have a million ideas right now about saving the planet.
(and yes, I know that sounds cheesy.)
In three easy steps.
One. Smoke weed. Brainstorm. Write down.
Two. Start a movement and allows others to be inspired. MUST BE PEACEFUL. NON-VIOLENCE.
Three. SUSTAINABLY for the people.

"The government does NOT want a sustainable citizen or economy." -thesis statement.

make a video about a movement. the movement will be about obtaining free education. A whole movement that starts with the younger generdation (seniors and juniors get high school kids involved.)

What colleges, what books, what institutions have merrit? trade? List of ways that people can learn and places where we can recognize credit for.

Introduce Spankie's kids cartoon.

Legalize marijuana.

because I am a nosy bitch that's why

Create your own visitor map!

coaster

She tells me I'ma bad bad man
the rules don't fall under neat organized categories
and i change as the environment does,
my comfort level rises and falls
because I am angry deep inside.
I am lonely deep inside.
A place in my life that has always remained real and stable and unmoving.
I am only little atoms of hydrogen and oxygen mixed up,
little bubbles of anxiety that make me alive.
Living and breathing in elements name after greek words/gods.
I guess I don't confess my love to you through mariachi songs
but I could sing outside your window next to the freeway exit ramp.
maybe a trip to san fransisco for a nightly star gaze.
Would you like that, beautiful?

I'ma mad woman, can't you see it?
Normal only when a peek is seen through curtain eyez.
I am not hollow.
I've got an itch I need to scratch.
I've got a crazy sensation in between my thighs
stuck in between my brain cells.
Head to toe, baby,

I'm floating one minute and sinking the next.
Just enjoy the ride...

Today instead of eating lunch, I went to my bedroom to write to you.

my limbs fall heavy onto you, my lonely angel
distant and hollow falling into my Self
a moment of crisis, the clouds that appear
a rain that falls into the pit of my stomagh.
Selfish impulses rush in my blood;
the world through new eyes.

Where did my heart go? Where did my heart go?

a note on the bus to class

Two nights ago,
my lover and I slept back to back.
Last night,
we were a pile of legs.
I know that she is mine
but how am I deserving?

"I'm not supposed to listen to liars. If you lie to me, I can't love you." Flight Patterns.


9/10/10

I live in a magical house in the clouds number 9, way up far past blue skies, right off the freeway 580. It's mostly yellow in color, shy a block from the paintings of giraffes on the walls. We share the room with the windows right next to the freeway exit ramp. An ocean of tires, day and night. Cars that feed the waves that crash on the shore outside my window. If you close your eyez and forget where you are, you can hear the ocean. I lay underneath her black sheets with my eyez closed and forget where I am. I disappear into everything, go everywhere and stay in place. The pieces of me go everywhere--becoming a part of who I am. And I float here

and sing a little tune/hum a little song to my lover.

"He was bemused and slightly embarrassed owner of a twenty-first century American mind." (49)

"Who cares about uranium mines and nuclear-waste-dump sites on sacred land?"(49) "A triathlon was a religious quest." (49 "master practitioner of white middle- chiropractic voodoo" (50)

"I dont want long hair, I dont want short hair, I dont want hair at all, and I dont want to be a girl or a boy, i want to be a yellow and orange leaf some little kid picks up and pastes in his scrapbook." (51)

"William himself was a little brown guy, so the other travelers were always sniffing around him, but he smelled only of Dove soap, Mennen deodorant, and sarcasm." (52)

"If norwegian terrorists had exploded the World Trade Center, then blue-eyed blondes would be viewed with more suspicion. Or so he hoped." (52)

"he dreamed of mutilating the rapists, and eating them alive while his wife and daughter cheered for him." (54)

"I am a Native American and therefore have ten thousand more reasons to terrorize the U.S. than any of those Taliban jerk-offs, but I have chosen instead to become a civic American Citizen, so all of you white folks should be celebrating my kindness and moral decency and awesome ability to forgive!" (54)

"I start thinking I'm going to disappear, you know, just vanish, if I'm not home. Sometimes I worry their love is the only thing that makes me human, you know? I think if they stopped loving me, I might burn up, spontaneously combust, and turn into little pieces of oxygen, and hydrogen and carbon. ...I understand love can be so large." (55)

"two dark men laughing at dark jokes" (57)

"tribe" "brotherhood"

So lately baby I've been thinking about artists, lost souls. The straving artist that plays in the dark and the light. The shadow man and dark passenger. I was thinking about how I seem to have one of those personalities in me. That maybe G. Libre is in love with you too. The straving poet that longs for you. Or else why would she have wrote you this...

Rose Angélica Arellano Ramos Sauce Ross:

Mi Amor,
What on your mind? Tell me your dreams.

I know you feel the distance launching itself out off the cliff so far from me. I feel that space, giant huge elephant in the room, singing in white elephant hills. Just talk, mami. Speak freely. I wish you could just accept. Bloom to the sky like you were before. I want you to get modi...vated to reach the sky, go beyond. We are roots growing in soil deep into the crusts of the earth. Baby, let me wrap my roots and branches around you and keep on growing.

-Siempre,
G.Libre

18 minutes ago · Comment ·Like · See Wall-to-Wall

more info for your brains

Seeing More Than Black & White
(Latinos, racism, and the cultural divides)

by Elizabeth Martinez

A certain relish seems irresistible to this Latina as the mass media has been compelled to sit up, look south of the border, and take notice. Probably the Chiapas uprising and Mexico's recent political turmoil have won us no more than a brief day in the sun. Or even less: liberal Ted Koppel still hadn't noticed the historic assassination of presidential candidate Colosio three days afterward. But it's been sweet, anyway.

When Kissinger said years ago "nothing important ever happens in the south," he articulated a contemptuous indifference toward Latin America, its people and their culture which has long dominated U.S. institutions and attitudes. Mexico may be great for a vacation and some people like burritos but the usual image of Latin America combines incompetence with absurdity in loud colors. My parents, both Spanish teachers, endured decades of being told kids were better off learning French.

U.S. political culture is not only Anglo-dominated but also embraces an exceptionally stubborn national self-centeredness, with no global vision other than relations of domination. The U.S. refuses to see itself as one nation sitting on a continent with 20 others all speaking languages other than English and having the right not to be dominated.

Such arrogant indifference extends to Latinos within the U.S. The mass media complain, "people can't relate to Hispanics" - or Asians, they say. Such arrogant indifference has played an important role in invisibilizing La Raza (except where we become a serious nuisance or a handy scapegoat). It is one reason the U.S. harbors an exclusively white-on-Black concept of racism. It is one barrier to new thinking about racism which is crucial today. There are others.
Good-bye White Majority

In a society as thoroughly and violently racialized as the United States, white-Black relations have defined racism for centuries. Today the composition and culture of the U.S. are changing rapidly. We need to consider seriously whether we can afford to maintain an exclusively white/Black model of racism when the population will be 32 percent Latino, Asian/Pacific American and Native American - in short, neither Black nor white - by the year 2050. We are challenged to recognize that multi-colored racism is mushrooming, and then strategize how to resist it. We are challenged to move beyond a dualism comprised of two white supremacist inventions: Blackness and Whiteness.

At stake in those challenges is building a united anti-racist force strong enough to resist contemporary racist strategies of divide-and- conquer. Strong enough, in the long run, to help defeat racism itself. Doesn't an exclusively Black/white model of racism discourage the perception of common interests among people of color and thus impede a solidarity that can challenge white supremacy? Doesn't it encourage the isolation of African Americans from potential allies? Doesn't it advise all people of color to spend too much energy understanding our lives in relation to Whiteness, and thus freeze us in a defensive, often self- destructive mode?
No "Oppression Olympics"

For a Latina to talk about recognizing the multi-colored varieties of racism is not, and should not be, yet another round in the Oppression Olympics. We don't need more competition among different social groupings for that "Most Oppressed" gold. We don't need more comparisons of suffering between women and Blacks, the disabled and the gay, Latino teenagers and white seniors, or whatever. We don't need more surveys like the recent much publicized Harris Poll showing that different peoples of color are prejudiced toward each other - a poll patently designed to demonstrate that us coloreds are no better than white folk. (The survey never asked people about positive attitudes.)

Rather, we need greater knowledge, understanding, and openness to learning about each other's histories and present needs as a basis for working together. Nothing could seem more urgent in an era when increasing impoverishment encourages a self-imposed separatism among people of color as a desperate attempt at community survival. Nothing could seem more important as we search for new social change strategies in a time of ideological confusion.

My call to rethink concepts of racism in the U.S. today is being sounded elsewhere. Among academics, liberal foundation administrators, and activist-intellectuals, you can hear talk of the need for a new "racial paradigm" or model. But new thinking seems to proceed in fits and starts, as if dogged by a fear of stepping on toes, of feeling threatened, or of losing one's base. With a few notable exceptions, even our progressive scholars of color do not make the leap from perfunctorily saluting a vague multi-culturalism to serious analysis. We seem to have made little progress, if any, since Bob Blauner's 1972 book "Racial Oppression in America". Recognizing the limits of the white-Black axis, Blauner critiqued White America's ignorance of and indifference to the Chicano/a experience with racism.

Real opposition to new paradigms also exists. There are academics scrambling for one flavor of ethnic studies funds versus another. There are politicians who cultivate distrust of others to keep their own communities loyal. When we hear, for example, of Black/Latino friction, dismay should be quickly followed by investigation. In cities like Los Angeles and New York, it may turn out that political figures scrapping for patronage and payola have played a narrow nationalist game, whipping up economic anxiety and generating resentment that sets communities against each other.

So the goal here, in speaking about moving beyond a bi-polar concept of racism is to build stronger unity against white supremacy. The goal is to see our similarities of experience and needs. If that goal sounds naive, think about the hundreds of organizations formed by grassroots women of different colors coming together in recent years. Their growth is one of today's most energetic motions and it spans all ages. Think about the multicultural environmental justice movement. Think about the coalitions to save schools. Small rainbows of our own making are there, to brighten a long road through hellish times.

It is in such practice, through daily struggle together, that we are most likely to find the road to greater solidarity against a common enemy. But we also need a will to find it and ideas about where, including some new theory.
The West Goes East

Until very recently, Latino invisibility - like that of Native Americans and Asian/Pacific Americans - has been close to absolute in U.S. seats of power, major institutions, and the non-Latino public mind. Having lived on both the East and West Coasts for long periods, I feel qualified to pronounce: an especially myopic view of Latinos prevails in the East. This, despite such data as a 24.4 percent Latino population of New York City alone in 1991, or the fact that in 1990 more Puerto Ricans were killed by New York police under suspicious circumstances than any other ethnic group. Latino populations are growing rapidly in many eastern cities and the rural South, yet remain invisibile or stigmatized - usually both.

Eastern blinders persist. I've even heard that the need for a new racial paradigm is dismissed in New York as a California hangup. A black Puerto Rican friend in New York, when we talked about experiences of racism common to Black and brown, said "People here don't see Border Patrol brutality against Mexicans as a form of police repression," despite the fact that the Border Patrol is the largest and most uncontrolled police force in the U.S. It would seem that an old ignorance has combined with new immigrant bashing to sustain divisions today.

While the East (and most of the Midwest) usually remains myopic, the West Coast has barely begun to move away from its own denial. Less than two years ago in San Francisco, a city almost half Latino or Asian/Pacific American, a leading daily newspaper could publish a major series on contemporary racial issues and follow the exclusively Black-white paradigm. Although millions of TV viewers saw massive Latino participation in the April 1992 Los Angeles uprising, which included 18 out of 50 deaths and the majority of arrests, the mass media and most people labeled that event "a Black riot."

If the West Coast has more recognition of those who are neither Black nor white, it is mostly out of fear about the proximate demise of its white majority. A second, closely related reason is the relentless campaign by California Gov. Pete Wilson to scapegoat immigrants for economic problems and pass racist, unconstitutional laws attacking their health, education, and children's future. Wilson has almost single-handedly made the word "immigrant" mean Mexican or other Latino (and sometimes Asian). Who thinks of all the people coming from the former Soviet Union and other countries? The absolute racism of this has too often been successfully masked by reactionary anti- immigrant groups like FAIR blaming immigrants for the staggering African-American unemployment rate.

Wilson's immigrant bashing is likely to provide a model for other parts of the country. The five states with the highest immigration rates - California, Florida, New York, Illinois and Texas - all have a Governor up for re-election in 1994. Wilson tactics won't appear in every campaign but some of the five states will surely see intensified awareness and stigmatization of Latinos as well as Asian/Pacific Islanders.

As this suggests, what has been a regional issue mostly limited to western states is becoming a national issue. If you thought Latinos were just Messicans down at the border, wake up - they are all over North Carolina, Pennsylvania and 8th Avenue Manhattan now. A qualitative change is taking place. With the broader geographic spread of Latinos and Asian/Pacific Islanders has come a nationalization of racist practices and attitudes that were once regional. The west goes east, we could say.

Like the monster Hydra, racism is growing some ugly new heads. We will have to look at them closely.
The Roots Of Racism And Latinos

A bi-polar model of racism - racism as white on Black - has never really been accurate. Looking for the roots of racism in the U.S. we can begin with the genocide against American Indians which made possible the U.S. land base, crucial to white settlement and early capitalist growth. Soon came the massive enslavement of African people which facilitated that growth. As slave labor became economically critical, "blackness" became ideologically critical; it provided the very source of "whiteness" and the heart of racism. Franz Fanon would write, "colour is the most outward manifestation of race."

If Native Americans had been a crucial labor force during those same centuries, living and working in the white man's sphere, our racist ideology might have evolved differently. "The tawny," as Ben Franklin dubbed them, might have defined the opposite of what he called "the lovely white." But with Indians decimated and survivors moved to distant concentration camps, they became unlikely candidates for this function. Similarly, Mexicans were concentrated in the distant West; elsewhere Anglo fear of them or need for control was rare. They also did not provide the foundation for a definition of whiteness.

Some anti-racist left activists have put forth the idea that only African Americans experience racism as such and that the suffering of other people of color results from national minority rather than racial oppression. From this viewpoint, the exclusively white/Black model for racism is correct. Latinos, then, experience exploitation and repression for reasons of culture and nationality - not for their "race." (It should go without saying in

Does the distinction hold? This and other theoretical questions call for more analysis and more expertise than one article can offer. In the meantime, let's try out the idea that Latinos do suffer for their nationality and culture, especially language. They became part of the U.S. through the 1846-48 war on Mexico and thus a foreign population to be colonized. But as they were reduced to cheap or semi-slave labor, they quickly came to suffer for their "race" - meaning, as non-whites. In the Southwest of a super-racialized nation, the broad parallelism of race and class embraced Mexicans ferociously.

The bridge here might be a definition of racism as "the reduction of the cultural to the biological," in the words of French scholar Christian Delacampagne now working in Egypt. Or: "racism exists wherever it is claimed that a given social status is explained by a given natural characteristic." We know that line: Mexicans are just naturally lazy and have too many children, so they're poor and exploited.

The discrimination, oppression and hatred experienced by Native Americans, Mexicans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, and Arab Americans are forms of racism. Speaking only of Latinos, we have seen in California and the Southwest, especially along the border, almost 150 years of relentless repression which today includes Central Americans among its targets. That history reveals hundreds of lynchings between 1847 and 1935, the use of counter-insurgency armed forces beginning with the Texas Rangers, random torture and murder by Anglo ranchers, forced labor, rape by border lawmen, and the prevailing Anglo belief that a Mexican life doesn't equal a dog's in value.

But wait. If color is so key to racial definition, as Fanon and others say, perhaps people of Mexican background experience racism less than national minority oppression because they are not dark enough as a group. For White America, shades of skin color are crucial to defining worth. The influence of those shades has also been internalized by communities of color. Many Latinos can and often want to pass for whites; therefore White America may see them as less threatening than darker sisters and brothers.

Here we confront more of the complexity around us today, with questions like: What about the usually poor, very dark Mexican or Central American of strong Indian or African heritage? (Yes, folks, 200-300,000 Africans were brought to Mexico as slaves, which is far, far more than the Spaniards who came.) And what about the effects of accented speech or foreign name, characteristics that may instantly subvert "passing?"

What about those cases where a Mexican-American is never accepted, no matter how light-skinned, well-dressed or well-spoken? A Chicano lawyer friend coming home from a professional conference in suit, tie and briefcase found himself on a bus near San Diego that was suddenly stopped by the Border Patrol. An agent came on board and made a beeline through the all-white rows of passengers direct to my friend. "Your papers." The agent didn't believe Jose was coming from a U.S. conference and took him off the bus to await proof. Jose was lucky; too many Chicanos and Mexicans end up killed.

In a land where the national identity is white, having the "wrong" nationality becomes grounds for racist abuse. Who would draw a sharp line between today's national minority oppression in the form of immigrant- bashing, and racism?

None of this aims to equate the African American and Latino experiences; that isn't necessary even if it were accurate. Many reasons exist for the persistence of the white/Black paradigm of racism; they include numbers, history, and the psychology of whiteness. In particular they include centuries of slave revolts, a Civil War, and an ongoing resistance to racism that cracked this society wide open while the world watched. Nor has the misery imposed on Black people lessened in recent years. New thinking about racism can and should keep this experience at the center.
A Deadly Dualism

The exclusively white/Black concept of race and racism in the U.S. rests on a western, Protestant form of dualism woven into both race and gender relations from earliest times. In the dualist universe there is only black and white. A disdain, indeed fear, of mixture haunts the Yankee soul; there is no room for any kind of multi- faceted identity, any hybridism.

As a people, La Raza combines three sets of roots - indigenous, European and African - all in widely varying degrees. In short we represent a profoundly un-American concept:

Mexicans in the U.S. also defy the either-or, dualistic mind in that, on the one hand, we are a colonized people displaced from the ancestral homeland with roots in the present-day U.S. that go back centuries. Those ancestors didn't cross the border; the border crossed them. At the same time many of us have come to the U.S. more recently as "immigrants" seeking work. The complexity of Raza baffles and frustrates most Anglos; they want to put one neat label on us. It baffles many Latinos too, who often end up categorizing themselves racially as "Other" for lack of anything better. For that matter, the term "Latino" which I use here is a monumental simplification; it refers to 20-plus nationalities and a wide range of classes.

But we need to grapple with the complexity, for there is more to come. If anything, this nation will see more

A glimpse at the next century tells us how much we need to look beyond the white/Black model of race relations and racism. White/Black are real poles, central to the history of U.S. racism. We can neither ignore them nor stop there. But our effectiveness in fighting racism depends on seeing the changes taking place, trying to perceive the contours of the future. From the time of the Greeks to the present, racism around the world has had certain commonalties but no permanently fixed character. It is evolving again today, and we'd best labor to read the new faces of this Hydra-headed monster. Remember, for every head that Hydra lost it grew two more.

Sometimes the problem seems so clear. Last year I showed slides of Chicano history to a Oakland high school class with 47 African Americans and three Latino students. The images included lynchings and police beatings of Mexicans and other Latinos, and many years of resistance. At the end one Black student asked, "Seems like we have had a lot of experiences in common - so why can't Blacks and Mexicans get along better?" No answers, but there was the first step: asking the question.

idea for photoshoot

sugar skull makeup
high contrast
white backdrop
in my underwear
symmetrical arms out to the sides like Da Vinci
tattoos visible, hair done in fawk

on the words Libre (block letters)
looking back
bare assed

over the shoulder

head cocked to the side
silly outrageous goofy

looking down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaknDiYgZ64

What does it mean to have social justice?

This white privilege we are constantly speaking of,
deconstructing and reconstructing trying to make sense of
this ginormous power at hands of old white men.

Everything is tied to money and lots of greed.
Green greedy money like a little goblin
that chases diamonds and gold and blood.

Everything is covered in it.
Old old blood from my ancestors
(Mexicans were slaves once, we all have our histories/herstories),
black blood thats made invisible and permanent on crisp
dolla dolla bills y'all!


I'm still grasping vocabulary to express my oppressions here in this little 115lb body.
Little mexican salvadorian body.
this little 20 going on 21 year old body.
this 5'2'' but suddenly I feel a lot shorter body.

This gayness thats stuck en mi corazon.
This melanin thats stuck en mi piel, en mi sangre.
This genitalia stuck conveniently in between thighs and piernas buenas.

At least I can walk and talk right?
At least I can spell my name right?
At least every time I was raped I didn't end up pregnant
or I mean in a pool of blood at planned parenthood right?
RIGHT?!!!
Those are my privileges;
to be able bodied and intelligent enough to go to school here,
a slice of white resources,
to pull up the rest of my people
and hold a sense of guilt for eating 3 full meals every day.

How it all gets started

"The breakdown of women.

First goes your outsides.
everything about your outsides from your eyez and their color to the layers of skin layered on you.
Everything needs to be woman, submissive, passive, kitchen, mother, wife, feminine, lipstick, virgin and innocent.

Girls as young as 6 years old begin to be body conscious.
By 12 its about weight and diet and figure.
Before puberty we are conditioned into pink and lace.

delicate creatures of beauty and value.
In other words property
(psst guess what! still alot of fucked up laws throughout the United States...just the facts...)

it's all about telling you how to do your hair and what you should think to do with it;
color it perhaps?
Keep it long?
Luscious and wavy or straight and eurpoean.
So sexy so beautful that way.
Thick curls get in the way, don't they?

And then your toes,
all ten digits polished perfect dolly toes
in whore-of-the-corner heels.
Keepin' it classy, ladies. ;)

Second, it's about your insides.
How do you FEEL about yourself when you look in the mirror?
Feel ugly, feel worthless
BUY THIS PRODUCT, YOU OGRE!!


Then you plan for kids
and then you plan for a man
(if you can find one that doesn't beat you too often with fists and/or words)
and then you live happily ever after.

The End."



Now GO TO BED!!!

the letter I wrote to my sister when I got high last night

i feel like I'm onto something deep about the universe;
some kind of real break through for humanity.
I can't put my finger on it quite yet

I believe I should write more often by hand the way i used to when i was a kid.
i've lost that ability, sad thing to lose.
I have to start being better to my friends-Listen.
I need to try to support my brother more, and try more with Mely.
Maybe I should try the little things. Like this letter. I hope that works.

Mely is very intuitive but she's very prideful. I know who she is though.
And shes my little sister, same as like before when we were kids.
i do sincerely hope that we will try to forgive each other for this dumb shit.

I wish I could remember more about my childhood.
I know we were close once (sharing secrets even) but I can't quite remember when, where, why.
Memories lost from those years like they were stolen from me along with her.

Melissa, come on.
Its still me and you're still you and we've known each toher for our whole lives.
I work everyday mostly for that forigiveness to what i did to you.
I have matured a lot since then I'm hoping that you did too
so that we can at least speak and understand this silence so loudly between us.
i just want to show you that i love you some how.



-End. 9/5/10

the night of my mental break down

thank you for catching me when I fall




sometimes.

Now that I'm home nobody needs to check up on me through this blog.
Be at peace. All of my secrets are safe with your eyez only, internet.



Hide. I'll find you.

I've been thinking lately about the pieces that make up who I am.

mostly, about the pieces that people want from me. the pieces that people love to idolize as if they are all part of a whole something. I feel the pieces broken and disorderly, scattered and misplaced. Everyone feels that to one extent or another. A missing piece. And I wonder how long it last to realize that there are no missing pieces only lost within the house. I realized this many many years ago as soon as the drugs and cutting and booze didn't numb out the sound of my own voice. and still here I am, listening to that voice again; lost and lonely. Hmm, with everything at hand, how do you love this life? Serve others? Serve yourself? How do I find the time in the day and night to move this heart along and say, "damn it, I love you." that should be the end of the story right?

I refuse to hurt anybody.

do not be afriad of change and then technically I'm a whole other person my cells have regenerated within the last year.



Joey, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
The human body is constantly replacing and regenerating cells to maintain proper and efficient function. I understand that different cells—such as blood cells, skin cells, and bone cells—are being replaced at different rates. How often are the body's cells replaced, and how is this accomplished?


QueeLim Ch'ng
lecturer,
MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology,
Kings' College London
(former HHMI predoctoral fellow)

Cell replacement is accomplished by cell division, which makes more cells to replace cells that have been damaged by wear and tear or senescence (cells growing old and failing to function).

In some cases, a single cell of a certain type can divide to give rise to two daughter cells of the same type. This process allows one cell to replace cells of its own type. For example, a liver cell can divide to generate two liver cells. Another example is endothelial cells, which line the inside of our blood vessels; a single endothelial cell will duplicate itself by dividing into two cells.

In another case, a special kind of cell, called a stem cell, is used for cell replacement. These cells also divide into two daughter cells. Some of these daughter cells become stem cells that resemble the mother cell. Other daughter cells become the cell type that needs to be replaced. For instance, our skin contains stem cells called basal cells. These basal cells divide into daughter cells. Some of the daughter cells become basal cells that retain the ability to divide, and other daughter cells become specialized into skin cells. That way, some of the cells are used for cell replacement, while other cells retain the ability to divide in the future so that we don't run out of skin cells.

In still another case, a single cell called a pluripotent stem cell can divide to generate—and thus replace—lots of different cell types. For example, our bone marrow contains cells called hemopoietic stem cells that can divide to generate the whole range of blood cells. A single hemopoietic stem cell can divide several times to generate red blood cells as well as different kinds of white blood cells.

The rates at which cells are replaced vary quite a bit. For example, in the inner lining of the small intestine, cells turn over in a week or less. In the pancreas, the turnover time may be as long as a year or more.

Sometimes the rate of cell division to replace cells depends on the state or size of the tissue. Liver cells rarely divide, but if there is injury to the liver and the liver is somehow reduced, liver cells will divide to get the liver back to the right size. Similarly, in the skin, the basal cells will divide only to keep the skin at a certain thickness. If the outer layers of dead skin peel away more frequently, the basal cells on the inside will divide more frequently to make up for the lost skin. If a person takes good care of his or her skin and there is little damage and fewer cells to replace, the basal cells will reduce the frequency of division.

For more information on tissue maintenance, I recommend the following textbook:

Alberts, B., and others. Molecular Biology of the Cell . 3rd ed. New York: Garland Publishing; 1994. See chap. 22, pp. 1139-93.



my cells (my essence) looks different depending on how I feel, who I am, where I am.
You sure know that I change
dont be mad about my willingness to explore change
i accept you now I accept you tomorrow i accept you yesterday
Love is about accepting that change.
i love you so much that I can love you from far away.
its a miracle when two people can match exactly but its so complicated.
I refuse to hurt anybody.