"Occupy" relaciona con los inmigrantes

Occupy has forced its way into the news this past month, despite the worldwide embarrassment it's causing U.S. political and financial leaders. Our streets don't yet look like those of Greece, but that's what they must fear most: a movement against almost every tenet the privileges of our economic system stand on. [The photos on this post are from Occupy Miami, Madrid, Mexico, Oakland, L.A., So. Korea, Aztlán and more are viewable here.]

Keith Olbermann's nightly news show covered Occupy Denver on Monday, interviewing protestor Jeannie Harley on the police violence perpetrated on protestors: "We had a perfectly peaceful march, a perfectly peaceful rally, and it turned into something much worse," Harley said.

Sorry, Harley, Occupy could develop into a greater threat than the 60s or 70s movements, which were infiltrated, spied on, framed up on charges, incarcerated, beaten and even assassinated. The worst may be yet to come: "The situation we find ourselves in is absolutely unacceptable," said Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce President Joe Haraburda. "We have made our position clear.… We want Occupy Oakland closed."

Filmmaker, liberal activist Michael Moore stopped by to tell an enthusiastic Occupy Denver crowd of about 1,000 Thursday: "There is no leader to this movement. That's why it's such a large and growing movement."
"He said the rest of the country is watching the Occupy protest in Denver."

Moore's a big-time liberal; Saul Alinsky's definition about the difference between a radical and a liberal [Rules for Radicals] applies to him. Alinsky said something like, a liberal is the one who leaves the room when the fight starts. Moore's hope that no leaders appear to "mislead" Occupy is him wanting to leave a room where there are already thousands of leaders organizing the day-to-day workings of Occupy.

The Wall Street Occupy has been described as "drifters, hippies, college drop-outs, the mentally ill, Harvard graduates, addicts, occasional celebrities, freaks, parolees, middle-aged folks who've lost jobs and homes, and elderly people who've lost all hope in a cold, unrelenting economic malaise. This occupation is basically a microcosm of our current society. Everything that is already wrong with our world is magnified here."

This is not all of the story. Outside of places like Oakland, El Paso and L.A., Occupy has not linked itself to the most exploited, most persecuted and poorest segment of U.S. society: the millions of Latino immigrants. Occupy Oakland, at least, includes significant numbers of working, poor and unemployed Chicanos. But, again, outside of the Southwest, Spanish-speaking immigrants have not swelled Occupy's ranks yet for two reasons. 1. They are marginalized from society, including protest by citizens; and 2. Occupy protestors don't yet recognize how vital immigrants are, not just to the country's functioning, but also to a general strike intended to get the attention of the country's leaders.

Joshua Holland wrote praise of Occupy as “a discussion of the real issues facing Main Street: the lack of jobs... spiraling inequality, cash-strapped American families' debt-loads, and the pernicious influence of money in politics that led us to this point.”
What Holland didn't speak to was the millions of Latino immigrants who suffer most from what he described. But Susan Straight did: "You, me — any parent — would risk it all to cross the border to secure a better future for our families."

The Occupy movement in the U.S. appeared because whatever we've done at the polls has brought American citizens (and immigrants) to our present dismal state.

While Manuel Ramos doesn't always agree with my rantings, he noted in a comment to my last week's post: "I did a bit of research and, lo, discovered that many writers agree that voting is a waste of time and hope. Here are two links to such articles:
http://mises.org/daily/5058
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/magazine/06freak.html?pagewanted=all

Below is the latest article from Frontera NorteSur on Occupy news from Santa Fe to the Valley of Mexico. I leave you with a description of Occupy Oakland: "You cannot beat us into submission," protestor Bolt said. "You are just beating on the bricks of a loose dam."

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(Un)occupying the Camino Real, 11/3//11

Throughout the course of history, countless feet have treaded the long highway between the Valley of Mexico and Santa Fe. Traders, invaders, land-grabbers, smugglers, saints, sinners, visionaries, madmen, oppressors and liberators have all journeyed a binational road that endures over the centuries.

Occasionally, rebellion erupts on the Camino Real, or Royal Highway. In 1680, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico drove Spanish colonizers south to what is now modern-day Texas. In 1810, the Mexican people launched their own revolution against the Spanish crown. And in 1910, Mexico once again rose up against tyranny, inequality and dictatorship.

In 2011 sparks of rebellion are again flying on the Camino Real. On the south end of the highway in Mexico City, so-called indignados, young people disgusted with the prevailing political and economic order, have maintained their camp outside the Mexican Stock Exchange. On the north end of the highway in Santa Fe, people inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement have established their own encampment to protest the big banks and US economic policies.

In between the northern and southern points of the Camino Real, similar camps or protests have appeared in Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso, Ciudad Juarez and Chihuahua. The movement has resulted in some confrontations with authorities, and led to growing debates over the right of people to peacefully assemble versus the perceived duty of officials to maintain public order.

In New Mexico’s biggest city, Camp Coyote was dismantled in an October 25 police raid that ended with more than 30 people arrested.

The eviction was ordered by the University of New Mexico (UNM) administration which claimed that the camp, located on school property at what's left of Yale Park, was drawing a seedy element and jeopardizing public safety.

A center of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture, Yale Park was later largely torn down by UNM in order to make way for a campus book store. Camp Coyote´s protesters disputed UNM’s intentions, and last-minute negotiations between university officials and occupiers failed to bear fruit.

"I made my opinion known that I am a 2002 (alumnus), and I have a right to be on my campus," protester Radonna Stark told Camp Coyote's General Assembly only hours before multiple New Mexico police agencies swooped in and forced the occupiers into the street.

As the clock ticked fast away to eviction time, Camp Coyote activist Sebastian Pais, announced he was going on a hunger strike.

The police action exhibited the latest in militarized crowd control techniques. A helicopter buzzed overhead, while an Albuquerque Police Department (APD) riot squad stood guard ready for further action. Other police patrols were strategically posted on streets surrounding Camp Coyote.

In response to the raid, hundreds of protest reinforcements and onlookers gathered on Central Avenue in front of Yale Park well into the early morning of October 26.

A lively demonstration ensued, with evicted occupiers and their supporters chanting a mixture of 60s’ era and contemporary slogans: "The Whole World is Watching" "Power to the People," "We are the 99 percent" and "Whose Street(s)? Our Street(s)!"

Intermittently, an unusual chant roared from the crowd facing down the APD: "FMB, FMB..."

A reporter was soon informed that the chant was APD's own, coined by officers unhappy with the policies of Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry (MB). For the most part, both protesters and police showed restraint the night of October 25-26. However, on an October 27 listener call-in show broadcast on university-licensed KUNM radio, protester Barbara Grothus, who was among the arrested demonstrators, accused local jail staff of stealing valuables including jewelry and shoes from some of the detainees.

In a subsequent development, UNM agreed to allow Camp Coyote back in Yale Park under certain conditions until November 6. After seven days, hunger striker Sebastain Pais agreed to end his fast pending a meeting with UNM President David Schmidly, according to the latest media reports.

Prior to its eviction (Un)Occupy Albuquerque held a week-long teach-in at UNM on assorted domestic and foreign policy questions. Off campus, movement activists also leafleted one of the city’s Chicano/Mexicano communities in a protest against housing foreclosures.

Still a subject of ongoing debate, the name (Un)Occupy Albuquerque was chosen for the local movement after participants decided to respect Native American concerns about the historical implications of the word “occupy.” In addition to being near Native American reservations, Albuquerque hosts the largest population of urban Indians in the United States.

Raised in Las Cruces and a graduate of the New College of San Francisco, Rachel Matier spoke to a small group at the UNM teach-in about the links between the so-called drug war, mass incarceration of African-American men and the historic role of corporations in many levels of drug-related policy, from banning hemp production to running private prisons.

On a personal note, Matier later told Frontera NorteSur how she completed her education only by going $50,000 into debt. A single mother with two young children, Matier said she was "grateful to have financial support" from the father of her children, an advantage many single moms do not enjoy.

Matier said today's college graduates must compete for scarce jobs not only against their former classmates, but with graduates from the previous few years who are also unable to find work.

Asked about Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain´s recent appeal for anti-Wall Street protesters to blame themselves for their own economic predicaments, Matier responded that she had worked different jobs in her life, paid taxes and voted like any good citizen. "I feel like I really did what they told me to do for the American Dream,” she said.

Four hours south of Albuquerque on the Camino Real, another protest camp is active. Situated smack dab in El Paso's downtown, the occupation is literally taking place in the shadows of the big banks. Flanking San Jacinto Plaza and its Occupy El Paso encampment, stand the local officers of Chase, Bank of America, Bank of the West, Wells Fargo and Mexico-based Banamex USA, which is actually controlled by Citibank.

In Spanish and English, signs greet visitors to a colorful encampment of about 30 tents and a large tipi. "We'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one," reads one sign. "Join the 99% and make a stand," urges another message.

Occupy El Paso has a city permit to operate until November 13, according to occupier Wiley Driskell.

Like Camp Coyote and other Occupy Wall Street-inspired encampments, a plethora of issues and activities are taken up at El Paso's nightly general assembly, where no leaders are supposed to hold sway and decisions are reached by consensus. For example, activists plan to car pool to various sections of the sprawling border city on Nov. 5, National Bank Transfer Day, to urge account holders to move their money from commercial banks into credit unions.

At one assembly, the talk ranged from the high cost of wheel chairs charged to the Veterans Administration to the alienation of high school youth in the age of high-stakes testing. A former full-time teacher, John Russell urged the crowd to consider the systemtic roots of economic concentration as opposed to the individual, moral will of corporations. "Accusing a bank of being greedy is like accusing a fish of swimming in water," Russell said.

Emily Davis, a young El Paso activist, later told Frontera NorteSur that she hoped the occupation would help stir her city out of apathy and political passivity. "Maybe a good by-product of Occupy El Paso would be to make El Paso more progressive,” Davis said.

Not everyone accepts Occupy El Paso´s message. For 24-year-old Eddie Guzman, the words smoldering from San Jacinto Plaza are jumbled and confused. On a recent afternoon, the young man stood with two friends also dressed in black and protested the protesters with vulgar signs.

"They're not accomplishing anything," Guzman contended. A cook in a new downtown restaurant, Guzman said the occupiers were intolerant of skeptics and the "uninitiated" persons like himself who were trying to get honest answers on what the whole commotion was really about in the city square.

Occupy El Paso is taking some steps to broaden its base. On November 2, the Day of the Dead in Mexico and growing parts of the US, a migrant procession organized by the Border Network for Human Rights was scheduled to reach San Jacinto Plaza.

In a press statement prior to the march, the El Paso-based group expressed support for those forces that "stand in solidarity with all who believe human rights matter more than profits."

Occupy El Paso activist Jovanni Flores said the issues raised by Occupy El Paso should "resonate" with Latinos and other people of color who suffer high poverty rates and other effects of capitalism. An offshoot of Occupy Wall Street, a new movement called Occupy the 'Hood is gaining traction in some US cities, Flores said.

"(People of color) need to have more of a presence in the movement," he said. ¨The idea is to get people who are directly affected into the movement."

Like Camp Coyote and other Occupy Movement sites, the El Paso camp has attracted many homeless and other people in need of food, shelter and a friendly word or two.

Smartly dressed and neatly-cut, 52-year-old Wiley Driskell looks younger than his years. Immersed in the occupation, Driskell offered his views in between serving needy comers.

Responding to a constant stream of requests, Driskell dug out money for a coffee run, poured water for thirsty people and directed a man with a court date to the judge's chambers just down the street.

"As disparate as the stories are, it's the same. The source of the problems are the same," Driskell said, citing the lack of social, public, education and transportation services. "I can definitely relate to the service centers," he added. "We need education in the social system so people can understand how to improve their lives."

A borderlander with family roots in Parral, Chihuahua, Driskell said he found Occupy El Paso after a two-year stint of unemployment and different careers in real estate, media sales, television production and commercial loan operations. Driskell said he had "worked hard to develop my skills only to be thrown out into the streets."

After a reflection on his work life, Driskell said he came to the conclusion that he had worked for “people who were ripping off the public” and felt "terrible about it."

In assessing Occupy El Paso's impact, the activist said many people were stopping by the camp with questions about its mission. The movement is “definitely growing,” he said, though perhaps not as fast as desired by organizers.

"We're experiencing the problems of a young growing organization...but all of that was expected.”

- Kent Paterson
Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM
For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

Spending Dia De Los Muertos con “Occupy Lincoln, Nebraska”

(and a short note on Halloween dulces)

By Amelia M.L. Montes

Reporting from Lincoln, Nebraska, “borderlands en medio de Norteamerica,” where yes—Latinos live here—y tambien si, we are involved with “occupying” as are many states in the U.S. y fuera del pais tambien. “Occupy Lincoln” has its own website (replete with video footage) and a Facebook page. Unlike other cities where officials and police are beginning to forcibly move people and tents out, Lincoln’s occupation at the capitol mall continues without harassment.

Occupy Lincoln

The “Occupy Wall Street” discussions on La Bloga (thank you Rudy Ch. Garcia, etc.) and on various other sites, newspapers, media outlets in the U.S., Mexico, España, etc. are invigorating. In last week’s Guardian (October 26), the Slovenian philosopher and critical theorist, Slavoj Zizek wrote: “The true test of their [the protesters’] worth is what remains the day after, how our normal daily life will be changed. The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work—they are the beginning, not the end. Their basic message is: the taboo is broken; we do not live in the best possible world; we are allowed, obliged even, to think about alternatives.”

For Zizek to say “the taboo is broken,” he ignores the fact that working gente from the moment of Spanish colonization (and other) occupations throughout latinoamerica and the U.S., have continually proclaimed that the world placed on them by powerful agents of government creates less than liveable worlds. Chicana/Chicanos and Latinas/Latinos have changed “daily life,” have loudly protested, marched, and offered alternatives in a world which resists encouraging imaginative possibilities for inclusiveness, for equity, for a sane and ethical world. “Occupy Wall Street” is another manifestation and hopefully, as Zizek states, this renewed proclamation regarding a less than best possible world will indeed bring about imaginative alternatives.

Resistance by Barry Lopez

I keep thinking of Barry Lopez’s collection of short stories entitled Resistance. These stories are fictional testimonios of women and men who have fought (in various ways) against mainstream society. In “Flight from Berlin,” one character recalls: “For me, the terrifying part was the ease with which you could lose your imagination—just abandon it, like a gadget. Everything was supplied, even if you had to pay for it all. We were told things would run more smoothly—less crime, less disease, less unhappiness, less trouble—if everyone stuck to the same plan, pursued identical goals. What made me want to run was the ease with which people gave in.

In every quarter of life, it seemed then, we were retreating into fundamentalism. The yes/no of belief, the in/out of fashion, the down/up of pharmaceuticals, the on/off of music, the hot/cold of commitment, the dead/live of electricity, the forward/backward of machinery, the give/take of a deal. Anyone not polarized became an inconvenience for management and its legions of loyal employees. People endorsed the identification of enemies and their eradication, just to be rid of some of the inevitable blurring.

We didn’t hear enough then about making the enemy irrelevant. No one said, loud enough to be heard over the din of pacification, Let’s make something beautiful, so the enemy will have one less place to stand” (149).

No Word For Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy

by Wendy Call

This passage left me shaken regarding what each of us are charged with—our ethical responsibility to speak and protect each other or we can so easily lose our imagination. Last night at Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln, Nebraska, Wendy Call (writer, translator, and a member of Chicana author Sandra Cisneros’ writing community, Macondo) gave a reading from her book No Word For Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy. In 1997, Call had gone to visit the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a small area of land that connects the Yucatan peninsula with Mexico. At first, she was simply the visitor. Then she became more involved when she discovered small communities in a battle with large corporations threatening to industrialize the way they had been farming, fishing, working in the forests for generations. Call saw oil spills, farmlands being paved over, the burning of forests. She also witnessed the innovative ways these communities came together to fight these corporations. “It’s a story happening everywhere,” Sandra Cisneros writes, “including our own backyard.” Call’s book tells me that communities that have a strong historical and/or cultural bond make it easier to remain unified during fights against industrialization. Individuals who cross the border y se van al norte, end up in communities where it is more difficult to easily unify due to language barriers, housing configurations, diverse cultures, leading toward isolation and fear.

from Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food

Edited by Allesandro Bonanno, Lourdes Gouveia, etc.

One such “backyard” (as Cisneros described) is Nebraska. In the book, from Columbus to ConAgra: The Globalization of Agriculture and Food, Dr. Lourdes Gouveia (University of Nebraska-Omaha) uses her research of Nebraska meat-packing plants to describe the struggles that happen when communities are threatened by corporations. “Community fragmentation can indirectly contribute to corporate strategies for demobilizing labor and ultimately reducing production costs. Today, a growing number of meatpacking community members [in Nebraska] do not share a common language, history, or cultural connections for survival. They also misdirect their anger and blame each other for their misfortunes, rather than demand a higher degree of social responsibility from the corporate sector.” These are all overwhelming obstacles that frustrate equity in a working environment and keep the wealthy corporations strong. “States like Nebraska, or for that matter countries like Mexico, transfer funds to globalizing firms in the hope of resolving their own fiscal crises. But in today’s global economy, local and central polities are poorly equipped to secure a return on their investments” (143).

At the end of Call’s book, she summarizes the victories of the istmeños’ (in the Isthmus de Tehuantepec) organizing. Their demands were not all fulfilled, but they succeeded in the following ways: Instead of a six-lane superhighway, they were able to reduce it to four lanes. The steel mill was successfully denied and was not built. They also succeeded in preventing plans for a eucalyptus plantation that would seriously impact the environment. However, along with the four-way highway, there is a Wal-Mart. “Village resistance maintains situations that must be considered better, simply because they are no worse. And yet those unseen victories are crucial: evidence of the success of grassroots organizing, of the village economy’s ability to persist in spite of globalization” (293).

As I write this just a few blocks from where “Occupy Lincoln” residents are preparing their next strategy and inviting me and you to their next protest (check out the website here), I think about what we can learn from the "Occupy Wall Street" movement, and from community organizing groups outside the U.S. such as those in Tehuantepec, Mexico.

So much to think about as well as to act on. We cannot just think and talk. Being active contributors (in imaginative ways) is crucial!

Macondo writers: Belinda Acosta, Amelia M.L. Montes, Wendy Call, Joy Castro

And speaking of imaginative ways—I have one more subject to discuss with you, Querida Reader---

Calaveras para Dia de los Muertos

Halloween y Dia de los Muertos--- y los dulces!!

For me, I have been having a difficult time thinking about what I am going to do when my doorbell rings and lovely ghosts, angels, zombies, and ballerinas come to my door asking for candy. How can I, an individual with type 2 Diabetes, hand out candy to a young population facing a health crisis of epidemic proportions: child-onset diabetes.

Halloween Candy

In 2008, U.S. News and World Report published, “10 Things the Food Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.” The first five “things” on the list are:

(1) Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids

(2) The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products

(3) Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations

(4) More processing means more profits, but typically make the food less healthy

(5) Less processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts

How can you counter the onslaught of the food industry cajoling you to give them money so you can place their product in your child’s hands, which in turn will make your child very sick? I asked a number of friends and colleagues for imaginative alternatives and the best answers I received were suggestions to go to the dollar store or craft store where I could either buy or put together a little gift bag of erasers, pens/pencils, small pads of paper, etc.

Gift Bag Ideas

Now here is where we could all come up with amazing and imaginative alternatives than feeding these children sugar which will keep them sleepless, grumpy, colic, even depressed. This does not mean giving up cultural traditions such as having sugar skulls on Dia de Los Muertos Altares—just don’t eat the skulls. Take pictures with them instead!

If you’re not camping out at “Occupy (name your city)” or have a difficult time getting out to protest—thinking of alternative “safe” and easy items to give trick or treaters is a good activist alternative. You are refusing to fund the corporate food giant in this country.

Sending you all safe and healthy energies para esta semana!

Apropos of Nothing

Manuel Ramos

Apropos of nothing. Always liked that phrase. It’s a ticket to conversation anarchy – everything goes because nothing is implicated.

Speaking of which … there’s an ugly surrealism surrounding the politicos who are praying and preying to unseat Obama. These freaky people grab, punch and pinch for attention, and their audience responds accordingly. Last year, Tea Party goons stepped on the head of a non-supporter; more recently, the Republican debate audience cheered death for anyone too poor to buy health insurance; more cheers for a record-setting executioner; and the pizza guy excused his call for electrocuting people, whose crime is risking their life and liberty to work in the U.S., by saying that he was only joking (or maybe not.)

tricks or treats?

Halloween is coming up and in timely fashion we have an overabundance of monsters. Unfortunately, it's politics as usual. The presidency has always attracted scoundrels and miscreants, but you'd think the modern crop of power parasites would have a bit more class, or discretion at least. Hell, these people attack their fellow contenders’ religion and race, and, gasp, the creation of jobs taken by immigrants! It’s as if these “challengers” have been injected with mad dog serum. The Republicans make it too easy. One of the more ridiculous and highly offensive rants comes from the pizza guy, again – “Jesus was killed by a liberal court.” Good God.

And none of the above crazy examples includes Michele Bachman or Sarah Palin. Talk about wicked witches. Just sayin' ...

I want to grab these misfits and delusional demagogues by their collective throat and give them a good shaking, then send them to the corner of the room to read the collected works of Twain, Spinoza, Sartre, and Bolaño because … well, just because.

The good thing is that we have only another year of this before the election.

“You’re being selfish” used to be a call down. Now it’s a badge of honor. As Tony Garcia, Artistic Director of Su Teatro, said recently, “It's really hard to talk to people who are coming from a place of deep, narrow self-interest.”

Meanwhile ...

Occupy Hawaii

Occupy Denver

Occupy Puerto Rico

Not to be left out of the zaniness, the Democrats are on a magical mystery bus tour when they should be taking care of business. They can’t get a comprehensive jobs bill passed in the Democrat-controlled Senate, can’t defend their health care plan from legalistic attacks (and have already scrapped a major piece of the plan because of inadequate planning and foresight), are willing to “leave no banker behind,” and appear disposed to sell out the elderly, poor, infirm, and uneducated in the name of debt crisis “compromise.” Remember the promise to reform the immigration system? Turns out that meant meeting a quota of at least 400,000 deportations a year. Occupy the White House?

Moving on -

Here's an announcement from Joseph Torres, Senior Adviser, Government and External Affairs, Free Press.

From revolutionary pamphleteers to websites, our media have reflected America’s racial divisions throughout the centuries. Communities of color have confronted prejudice in establishment media by creating their own vibrant alternative press and fighting for a just media system.

Juan González of Democracy Now! and I tell this important story in our new book, News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.

Juan and I will be in Denver on Thursday, Oct. 27, to discuss how our book puts race at the center of the story of American media. We’ll also be signing copies of the book.

Details are below:

What: News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media: Benefit for KGNU Community Radio

When: Thursday, Oct. 27. 6 p.m.: special reception ($100 tickets required. To purchase, visit http://act2.freepress.net/go/6812?akid=2944.9527107.VM89al&t=2.)

7 p.m.: presentation and book signing (Tickets are $10 for KGNU members and $15 for the general public. To purchase go to http://act2.freepress.net/go/6812?akid=2944.9527107.VM89al&t=4.)

Where: Highlands Church, 3241 Lowell Blvd., Denver, Colo.

Who: Juan González, award-winning journalist and co-host of Democracy Now!; Joseph Torres, Free Press senior adviser for government and external affairs and Tina Griego, Denver Post columnist

Finally - we note the passing of Piri Thomas on Monday, October 17. In an introduction to a recording of Thomas reading Born Anew at Each A.M, Neal Conan of NPR said: "Writer and poet Piri Thomas died this week at his home in El Cerrito, California, at the age of 83. As a young man, he robbed people on the streets of New York, used and sold drugs and served seven years in prison. After he got out, he wrote a memoir called Down These Mean Streets, first published in 1967. It described growing up in what was then called Spanish Harlem in vivid, angry language that continues to be taught in universities today."

The N.Y. Times obituary is here.

QEPD

That's it for now. Remember that you can always read a good book. You might check out Down These Mean Streets.

Later.

La Raza occupies & Su Teatro journeys

Daniel Olivas will return next Monday after a brief rest.

Occupy Wall Street movement breaks borders

An unprecedented wave of protest against the international financial elite and prevailing economic policies swept the globe on October 15. And New Mexico, Mexico and the greater US-borderlands were no exceptions. Protests were chalked up in San Diego, Tijuana, Las Cruces, Ciudad Juarez and Mexico City, among many other places. In El Paso, an encampment was announced beginning Monday, October 17, in the city’s downtown San Jacinto Plaza.

In neighboring Ciudad Juarez, protesters from several groups began their action in the downtown plaza but culminated at the US Consulate, where they blasted US economic domination. The world economy, said activist Julian Contreras, was “leaving many people abandoned while privileging the banks and big businessman and not generating employment or letting the young people study.”

In Mexico City, different protests involving hundreds of young people likewise linked issues of violence related the so-called drug war to economic inequities. “We should unite all the young people, use the social networks to make a new revolution, and construct a new democracy in which there is no violence and inequalities,” said one student at a new protest encampment set up at the Revolution Monument.

Other Mexican protests were reportedly held or planned in Guadalajara, Morelia, San Cristobal de las Casas, Oaxaca City, Cancun, and more than a dozen other cities, including Monterrey, Mexico’s violence-torn, old industrial powerhouse of the north.

Two days prior to October 15, more than 100 students rallied at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces in a local manifestation of a new national student movement that’s grown out of the original New York City occupation of Zuccotti Park, now rechristened Liberty Square, on the edge of Wall Street. Other New Mexico cities witnessing October 15 weekend protests included Carlsbad, Roswell, Farmington, Taos, Santa Fe and, of course, the state’s largest city, Albuquerque.

The October 15 Duke City demonstration was a fusion of Americana, Third World iconography and working-class history. Members of the AFSCME and 1199 unions were plainly visible in a highly spirited display of pent-up outrage against the economic powers-that-be. A younger crowd of protesters marched up Central Avenue from the Occupy/Liberate Albuquerque encampment at the University of New Mexico (UNM) to hook up an older, sign-waving group already positioned in front of a Wells Fargo Bank in the Nob Hill district.

A leaflet handed out at the event and bearing a picture of a huge mother pig criticized Wells Fargo’s lending practices and contrasted the earnings between an average bank teller and 2007-2008 company Chairman Richard Kovacevich, who the authors’ claimed made more than 662 times the pay of a teller.

A visual sampling of signs quickly revealed the crowd’s political sentiments: “No One Elected the Koch Brothers, “End Plutocracy,” “Bring Back Sherman Tillman and Glass Stegall,” “My Son Deserves a Future,” “Stop the Wars..,” “Honk if you are Underpaid.”

And numerous motorists honked back, tapping their horns in such a crescendo of bleeps that it was difficult to hear at times. “We are the 99 percent,” “This is what Democracy looks like” and “People Power” chanted a crowd of hundreds made up of the old, the young and the middle-aged. A man was heard urging the return of FDR.

Covered with placards and armed with a list of websites related to a movement that is leaping across continents and rattling political establishments from north to south and from east to west, a woman who identified herself as Tami from Mountainair said October 15 was directed “against globalization and privatization that the banks are spearheading with their massive amounts of money…we bailed them out, we own them.”

Addressed to mayors and police chiefs, a printed message protested the clearing of Occupy Movement protesters in cities like Denver and reminded authorities of the existence of something called the First Amendment. “When people across the Middle East occupied public squares, leaders in Washington mostly cheered these protesters and warned Middle Eastern governments not to use force to clear them…” read the statement.

A one-year resident of Albuquerque, Mirra said she also stood with teachers and other workers whose pensions were threatened. “It infuriates me that that one percent of the people like hedge fund managers and war profiteers pay 15 percent (tax),”she added.

The demonstrators’ demands as well as warnings against state repression were strikingly similar to those heard in Mexican protests that erupted after the 1994/95 economic crisis and bank bail-out, events which ushered in an era of austerity and public debt that is still being paid off years later.

Like other places, the Occupy/Liberate movements in New Mexico are not ending with October 15. A teach-in is planned for UNM this coming week, while the Albuquerque City Council is poised to issue a proclamation on Monday, October 17, in support of the protests.

Backed by City Council Vice-President Rey Garduno, the proclamation puts the contemporary movement in historical context, declaring that “Albuquerqeans know that being the 99% also means dealing with the historical legacy of occupation by foreign powers in pursuit of profit; being targeted today by polluting industries; and watching our tax dollars go to bail out wealthy corporations while young people can’t afford to go

to college."

In continuation, the proclamation declares that workers, people of color, immigrants and indigenous nations “know all too well what occupation really means,” and that the privileged one percent of the population and “their protectors in government” threaten to slash and squeeze safety nets and economically beneficial programs. The proclamation ends, “We are the 99 percent and we stand with the Occupy Wall Street Movement.”

By Sunday, October 16, less than a month after the first spark was lit in New York, nearly 2,000 cities worldwide were involved in one way or another in the new movement that’s beginning to shake up global politics, according to the website occupytogether.org.

excerpted from Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news

Center for Latin American and Border Studies

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM

For a free electronic subscription email: fnsnews@nmsu.edu

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Su Teatro's second full season in Denver art district opens with Enrique’s Journey

As Su Teatro embarks tomorrow on its second season at their new location, it is garnering even more attention with a stage production of “Enrique’s Journey,” based on the book by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sonia Nazario about a Honduran boy’s difficult journey to the U.S. to join his mother.

“Enrique’s Journey” began Oct. 13 and will run Thursdays to Saturdays, ending with a Sunday matinee Oct. 30.

For more details on this, see the Denver Post article by Matthew Rodriguez.