Everybody knows Arizona is crazy, but most of us thought it was only the racists and militia types. It seems that maybe some Ariz. Chicanos have also gotten too much of the sun and sand.
But these vatos are a different kind of crazy. The staff of Bad Subjects seem to think that Internet readers might still be interested in a fairer world, one where words like democracy, civil rights, and people power apply not only to Libya and Egypt, but maybe to the U.S. Southwest.
For over a decade Bad Subjects has been publishing a non-commercial news sources deep in the heart of jingoism. Since you might be as unaware as I was about their irreverant, fact-based, scholarly pieces and coverage, below is a message from the Los Tres editors about the website and briefs about their latest issue; it's worth the navigating. Chingau--they even got Rudy Acuña to join them, along with female and some non-Chicanos writers.
"Bad Subjects is a collective that publishes a magazine--Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life--and provides access to it via a public-access website. In 1998, Bad Subjects founded a small educational nonprofit corporation, also called Bad Subjects, which promotes the progressive use of new media and print publications. Donations to the nonprofit go toward funding printed copies of the magazine Bad Subjects (distributed for free), and other related projects, such as Bad Subjects books. Bad Subjects seeks to revitalize progressive politics in retreat.
"We think too many people on the left have taken their convictions for granted. So we challenge progressive dogma by encouraging readers to think about the political dimension to all aspects of everyday life. We also seek to broaden the audience for leftist and progressive writing, through a commitment to accessibility and contemporary relevance. Bad Subjects was founded in September 1992, at UC Berkeley. Since then it has circulated widely, and today we actually have about 250,000 readers from around the world per month."
Dear colegas:
The special issue on Arizona biopower is live. Happy 4 de Julio (let the fireworks begin, grin). Please forward around.
Paz y best
Arturo, Peter y Mike
When Arizona is brought up many scholars, educational and immigration rights activists across the U.S. just shrug and say "Arizona is crazy" or "that is Arizona for you". However, we strongly believe that Arizona is a bas-relief to a matrix of racialized biopower that seeks to criminalize and denigrate subjects based on fear driven paranoia about indigenous and mestiza/o peoples. We sincerely hope that this issue of Bad Subjects will make a positive difference in highlighting the racism, violence, and anti-immigrant hysteria coming out of Arizona today.
Table of contents Issue 81: Arizona Biopower
This issue: Political Education for Everyday Life provides insight into the acts of state-sponsored biopower in the Arizona-México borderlands.
Ya Basta! with State Sponsored Racial Thuggery
Arturo J. Aldama, Peter J. Garcia – We find that when Arizona is brought up many scholars, educational and immigration rights activists across the U.S. just shrug and say "Arizona is crazy" or "that is Arizona for you". However we strongly believe that Arizona is a bas-relief to a matrix of racialized biopower that seeks to criminalize and denigrate subjects based on fear-driven paranoia about indigenous and mestiza/o peoples.
Outlaw Arizona: State Seceding from the United States and Humanity
Roberto Cintli Rodriguez – Over the past several years, Arizona has unquestionably become synonymous with reactionary politics and reactionary anti-Mexican, anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous legislation. Arizona's image has been further tarnished during the past few years by being home to Operation Streamline in Tucson.
The Search for Reason – Rodolfo F. Acuña – Last week I revisited Tucson, where my mother was raised and where at the age of five, when arriving by Greyhound, we stayed in an adobe house in nearby downtown.
No Somos Criminales: A Decolonial Response to Nativist Racism in the US
Arturo Aldama – For all those perceived as illegal, even if their ancestry predates by several generations the arrival of European immigrants, how do we read their harassment, deportation, assumption of illegality? Is this also a predictable outcome of the processes of nativism? Your racialized construction trumps claims to indigenous identity and ancestry?
On Arizona's Failed Democracy: Where is Chicana and Chicano Studies?
Peter J. Garcia – The neoconservative backlash against civil rights and social justice is attempting to criminalize Mexican immigrants and is threatened by any form of decolonial activism or liberation movements that might have prevented the social implosion occurring in Arizona.
Doreen Martinez – When it came to light that Mr. Loughner failed to have any formal political memberships, a shift away from the deeper connection he embodied occurred and one veil of the borderlands was achieved. Therein is a critical failure to understand Jared's racial and gender entitlements e.g., his context or what we could refer to as his borderland status.
Arizona: From Jim Crow to Juan Cuervo
Alberto "Beto" Gutierrez – Unfortunately, the paradigm of race has been historically framed as a Black and White relation, overlooking more subtle forms of anti-Mexican, anti-Chinese, anti-Japanese, and anti-Native American local and national legislation and public policy.
Resisting a Mechanized Consciousness
Christopher Gonzalez – As cool as it may sound, no one in America should want to be a machine. To be a machine means you are expendable and exploitable. It means that you are just a number and that there are a hundred more behind you who are ready, willing, and able to do the kind of work you do. It means having a devalued sense of self-worth and adopted fatalism that speaks to your contribution to the world as being transient. We need to conceive of strategies that limit this sort of thinking in the Chicano/a community which aspires to move thinking beyond the attributes of labor.
Jesus Acosta – The narcocorrido is a drug ballad, yet there is a great deal of multiplicity within these songs.
Danny Trejo's Body: Immigrant Males, the Border, and Citizenship in the American Imagination
Nohemy Solórzano-Thompson, Tia K. Butler
– In this article, we discuss the symbolic and material forms this war against immigrants manifests itself in the United States. Using the films of Danny Trejo and most importantly what happens to his body in these films, we posit that it is possible to read the multiple forms anti-immigrant sentiments are performed and enacted in American popular culture since the late 80s.
Harry Gamboa Jr. – A man and woman are standing on soapboxes with their heads covered by black hoods while their wrists are bound behind them. A hangman's noose is placed around each of their necks.
From This Side: Images on Immigration from the United States
George Rivera – The issue of immigration is evident in many parts of the world. It is part of the human condition. We must intervene on this reality. Artists must do their part too.
Allegory and Alterity: Regulating Labor, Immigration, and the Ruinous Emblems of Hate in Michigan
Mike Mosher
– Michigan is the site for draconian laws from a Republican Governor and Arizona-copying cowboy legislators, yet perhaps the undead symbol of white supremacy should be legislated most of all.
"We Have Found New Homes for the Rich": The Underclass Won't Wait to Join Obama's "Everybody"
Joe Natoli – A "capitalist environment" has socially engineered us as demonstrably as whatever tradition centered gold earrings in the middle of one young Class Warrior's ear lobes.
Jake Prendez – Three works that comment on what's going on.
Normalizing Noncompliance: Militarization and Resistance in Southern Arizona
Geoffrey Boyce and Sarah Launius – Laws like SB 1070 are meant to divide people from one another by reifying fear, distrust and violent the exclusion of some. The We Reject Racism campaign worked to directly confront this process through cross-sector organizing that undermined pre-existing divisions in our communities and worked to mitigate the impacts of the law.
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