Sixto Rodriguez - Tucson

When Sixto Rodriguez came out on stage at the Pascua Yaqui tribe's Casino del Sol Amphitheater in Tucson last week, the ironies rang all around. His long straight black hair, dark face, pronounced musculature and small build could pass for a Southwestern indigene. He looked apache. My own roots to the Yaquis added to that irony.

Then the 70-year-old physically assisted by a young Chicana made his way to the mic area some which he would hardly wander during the performance. Glaucoma is the official explanation for this. So I asked, can he see well enough to pluck the string and hold the chords?

A floppy gray fedora, lots of dark leather, boots. He stands there. And all of us realize we are in a Presence. I know that because without moving very far during his entire play, his stance looked tougher than any chuco on a street corner. His stoop sent a message that I interpreted as the dark, withheld emotions of a life so unfair, as was done to him.

I'm not saying he looked, acted, moved like an oppressed, deprived minority. In one sense, he reminded me of a slave who'd been beaten, simmered within, yet possessed a superior fortitude and soul no whip could break. It lingered under the fedora that hid eyes and face, rippled in the muscles covered by the dark clothes.

Even maybe shrouded anger, but along with personal belief in himself. Something that could explode at any minute. And if you were the slave owner, the music aficionado even partly responsible for harming him, you prayed that what lay underneath never exploded. Forget about sleeping giants. This was Power. Of creative spirit. And more than a mere man.

My wife and I didn't know what to expect, as few concerts as we go to. First, we were disappointed. Most of the audience appeared older than our over-60 friends, like going to the concert of any has-been rock band. Why were there not more young people? Like under 59?

I'm not one of the few Americans of any nationality who followed and loved Sixto Rodriguez from back in the 60s. Like most of us, I learned of him from the documentary Searching for Sugarman. That story of course is about him, but it's about all of us, back then.

Racism, prejudice, Anglo-corporate musicdom deprived the majority of us from ever knowing or enjoying Sixto's music until now. And it took a European filmmaker and fans from Australia and South Africa to bring him to us. If Sixto had performed at Woodstock or the Monterey Bay Pop Festival, maybe we would have known about him. Woodstock got Santana pass the racism. And Richie Havens, who at 72 died this past week. More irony.

Here's what Sixto looked like when he should have been discovered. Other photos here show how much time passed for our country to make it up to him. But really, it's something that can never be made up for.

In that sense, the injustice done to Sixto was the same injustice done to all young Chicanos who were never encouraged to go to college, never got in, were bypassed for promotion, never received a scholarship or were asked to audition or show their art or dance or creativity. His country and their country lost out.

When he started playing on stage, everything was forgotten, if not forgiven. The tunes, the singing, the sounds were live, alive, and rhythm and blues and folk. And strong. The hombre musician who performed in Tucson

didn't miss a beat

moved his fingers through chords, across strings like a twenty-year-old

had a voice with none of the raspiness of a smoker or old man

had the style that any young performer would die to possess.

Sixto played many of the best songs from his albums. The audience wasn't disappointed there. He also performed three other classics like Lucille and I Only Have Eyes for You. He did each in his style and connected to the audience with appropriate emotion. What you could only get from someone who lived back when those classics were first performed.

When Sixto pulled off his light coat, down to a sleeveless black leather vest, his biceps shown like one of the baddest vatos on the block. It's crazy that an old guy could be so fit. Individual muscles on his forearms throbbed as he plucked and strummed, nothing like an old man should be able to do, much less look so fine doing it.

Even after so many worldwide performances, Sixto didn't seem totally comfortable being there. His words were sparse and sometimes reflected this.

Acoustic backup - incredible.

People like to comment how great it is that Sixto finally got rediscovered. How good he must feel that his patience was rewarded. That good things eventually come to those who wait. I think that's total bullshit. Even if Sixto says any of that is true, there's much more lying under the dark fedora than that. And I commiserate with him that some of it is not . . . forgiveness.

In Tucson, Sixto came across as incredibly charming, or charmingly funny:

"Don't rush me; I want to be treated like an ordinary legend."

Some pure wisdom: "About your love: don't be a silent partner."

Appropriately, he ended the show with a song from Dylan, who he's been compared to so often. He wasn't Dylan when he sang this; he was Sixto and worth hearing.

Then at the end he sent us home with:

"Go gentle with your anger." - which seemed more about him than us.

I call him Sixto because I can't think of him as Rodriguez, something attached to the whitewashing he was branded with when producers wanted him to be Rod Riguez. Similar to Ritchie Valens who couldn't be Valenzuela that sounded too ethnic. That's why to me he's Sixto.

Yes, you should see and hear Sixto perform. But before that, I recommend doing more than that. Read his lyrics to learn the passion there. To realize the level of his self-education. To remember the radical thinking of the 60s. To feel the melody of his poetry.

And when you do attend a concert, forget everything written here. Just try to absorb the Presence, feel Sixto's history, ours, and try to understand what it's like to be Sixto. I think it's something unique, maybe never fathomable.

I've tried to get the only Chicano interview of Sixto. Not surprisingly, his staff hasn't responded. Maybe never will. But, that doesn't disappoint me because I can't imagine that in one hour I'd be able to learn enough about this legend. And maybe all that I learned wouldn't want to share. What's above is what I know and think.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Latina Poet Laureate. Bloguista in Aridzona 1

First Latina Texas State Poet Laureate

“The Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) is pleased to announce the Texas State Legislature’s appointment to the position of state poet laureate: Rosemary Catacalos.” (Texas Commission on the Arts press release). Catacalos is the first Latina to hold that post. You can learn more information on her author page.

In September, Wings Press will publish the 30th anniversary edition of Rosemary's first book, Again for the First Time, and a limited edition (1,000 copies) of a chapbook of newer poems, to be entitled Begin Here. The signed and numbered chapbook will feature a cover of handmade paper printed by letterpress. (Wings Press has published books by poets laureate of Virginia, Delaware, Louisiana, Utah, Kansas, and Texas -- and the U.S. For more info, contact Bryce Milligan, Publisher, Wings Press)

Catacalos was awarded the Dobie Paisano Fellowship by the Texas Institute of Letters and the University of Texas in 1985, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellowship. She directed the literature program at the Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center (1986-1989). Catacalos spent 1989 to 2003 in California, where she was a Stegner Creative Writing Fellow at Stanford University, then executive director of The Poetry Center/American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University (1991-1996). She was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford until she returned to San Antonio in 2003 to become the executive director of Gemini Ink, a literary arts center. She retired from Gemini Ink in 2012. In 2008 Catacalos received the Macondo Foundation's 2008 Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award.

A Bloguista in Aridzona 1

Not getting away from it all

This week, my wife and I  wanted to do three things: take a short cheap vacation (Tucson), experience a Sixto Rodriguez concert (Denver tickets, sold out) and, as they say, “get away from it all.” We got tickets for the first two and headed for the airport.

So, what is the “all” that a marginalized Chicano wants to get away from on a vacay? A list of that could fill a paragraph, but let’s just call it: the political, economic and social pressures of U.S. society, the kinds of things bolded below.

Snow-ice granules fall as we head to the DIA terminal. They increase. I’m thinking Global Heating’s going to interfere with our getaway, but forecasts assure us it’s “just a spring storm.”

As we work through airport security, for the first time I notice how few Blacks and Latino-lookers are in line. I count those queued, and come up with an estimate that only about every 30^th person looks like they’re not Anglo. I’m privileged, I’m reminded, one of few able to enjoy “freedoms” of air travel.

I don’t make it past the scanners. Two jars of homemade jelly that apparently look like nitroglycerine are confiscated. Okay, fine. But then, “You’ve got a knife in your bag.” “But I thought the rules were changed.” “They don’t change until tomorrow.” They confiscate my second Swiss Army knife in a year. It’s my fault for not reading closely Homeland’s motto: “Give us your billions of dollars and we’ll make you safe by taking away your jelly and precious little knife.”

I’m more pissed at myself than them because I forgot cardinal rule #1 about living under Big Homeland Brother’s repression: The rules can change; you were safe yesterday, but keep up on how you might transgress, today.

We get on the plane and for over an hour the pilot will strategically reassure us with varying explanations how it won’t be that much longer before we take off. He never mentions Global Heating is responsible. We sit on the tarmac for over an hour, waiting our turn for deicing. I’m wondering about the poor souls who took later planes and how long before they’ll get out.

Landing in Tucson is good; rental car; motel (America’s Best Value Inn – exit 262 on I-10 is $50 cheap, clean and recommended by Visitor’s Bureau. Now we’ve gotten away from it all?

Except the motel TV, car radio and Arizona newspaper are filled with the Marathon bombings. Conjectures, misreporting, photos of pain and suffering, again. And strange pieces, like, of all people, Putin assures the U.S. Russia is ready to assist however they can. Why’s the Russian Prez entering the picture?

We hit the Biosphere 2 facility, full of the sciences of arcane worries like self-sustainability, recycling wastes and vibrant ecosystems. Not once during the hour lecture do I hear the words Global Anything, no connections made to how the mostly retired, Anglo visitors contribute more than anyone else to planetary degradation.

Next to Arizona State University, we have beers and good eats one night, an area filled with college people, yeah, very few are black and brown. In the bathroom standing up to do my business, I hear a couple of Anglo kids share and laugh over some nigger-jokes that I thought were dead history. I forget Aridzona is a hothouse of anti-bilingual/Chicano studies/immigration sentiments. At least the guitar player tells me about R&B performed at a few good bar/eateries.

Like at home, I’m up at 6, reading the newspaper, going online for Denver and national news:

1. A cop shot at MIT, but “it has nothing to do with the Bombing.”

2. The layer of dust on motel swimming pool furniture is from Asarco copper mines in the area and more severe, recent desert dust storms that violate Clean Air Act levels. Will they get their jelly and knives taken away for that?

2. U.S. children rank 26^th internationally in quality of life, only a little better than Latvia and Estonia; kids like I once taught.

3. The storm that escorted us out of Denver hit the Midwest. Tornados, snow, rain, flooding, car-eating sinkholes, a few deaths, stretching from Mexico to Canada. I don’t hear mentions of Global Anything.

4. Snow pack in Colo. Mountains will melt too fast because of dust from NM and AZ. Likely cause flooding and the drought to continue. No mention of Global Anything.

5. Homeland Empress Napolitano is on the news asking we give her more of our money that should go to kids’ welfare, instead, so she can install more surveillance, even though the billions we already gave her accomplished nada to stop the Bombing. Sounds like Putin deserves the money more than her.

6. Arizona pipeline and Keystone XL Pipeline in the news. Here it threatens Native American sacred grounds. XL threatens the continent.

7. Boston shut down for a day. MIT cops killed by Marathon bombers. One suspect dead, the other captured, bloody. Chechnyans, maybe. So, somehow Putin knew? Which means Obama knew, though maybe too late. Americans, of course, were the last to learn.

They’re cheering, clapping, tweeting and celebrating in Boston. After the residents of an American metropolitan area was on lockdown--no transportation, no schools, businesses open, people walking the streets, shut into their homes, self-incarcerated for the All-Clear.

It’s good the ALLEGED perpetrators were caught, stopped, taken off the streets. But millions of supposedly free Americans on Lock Down for hours and hours scares me more than the terrorists, whoever they were, whatever they were armed with. They were no nuclear threat. To our knowledge, there were only two of them, on the run and in hiding. To willing give up my right to travel, conduct my life and pursue my endeavors and hand it over to Homeland threatens me in a way that’s too 1984. But that’s just me, unable to get away from it all and unable to forget that I’m supposed to be living in the Land of the Free, not the Home of the Shut-In.

Great Mexican food in Tucson

For lunch on Friday. we head to Mi Nidito, the so-popular place to eat in Tucson, for lunch with Tom Miller--and wife Regla--who’s leading a Cuba trip of alternative-media journalists this July that I’d give my next Swiss Army knife to be on.

Tom is as tall as the restaurant’s famous visitor Bill Clinton, when he was still Prez and after he’d recovered from Monica. According to our host, Jimmy Lopez, Clinton came in and ordered almost one of everything on the extensive menu. He ate all but one tamal.

The walls of the waiting area of this appropriately named, Little Nest, are covered with photos of the famous and the notorious, including Cheney. Tom Miller’s photo’s there, but mine won’t be until my next book, apparently, because Jimmy didn’t rush for his camera.

We’re treated like, not kings, but gente. Moderately priced, the food is extravagantly served, with my wife and I unable to finish one order between us, even though we’d had no breakfast. Attentive staff, crammed Mexican décor, a busy place that was worth waiting for. Go here for more info about a place not to miss.

Friday night we head to the Pascua Yaqui tribe’s Casino del Sol Amphitheater for the Sixto Rodriguez concert. I need to digest Sixto—not Rodriguez—before I tell you about the experience. Next time, more about that, and about heading to Phoenix to meet, for the first time, Bloguista Ernest Hogan. And the saguaro cactus. And Phoenix. Y más. But very little about getting away from it all.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Negative pedo. USC Centro. Banned Books Update. On-Line Floricanto

Movimiento Veteranos Resolve Negative Pedo

Michael Sedano

Update! • Late Monday, La Bloga received this email from Joe Razo:
As a previous editor of La Raza Publications which included La Raza Newspaper and Magazine plus Chicano Student Newspaper, Raul Ruiz and I met this morning and cleared our misunderstanding of facts. We are in accord and stand united as La Raza and El Barrio Communication Project Staff. The photographers mentioned in the prior letter also are in accord and will soon meet with me to claim ownership of their negatives. We hope that this valuable history of our movement will soon be accessible to educators, researchers, and the community.


Long-simmering tensions boiled over last week between a who’s who of movimiento photojournalists seeking access to historic photographic negatives. When LatinoLA published Luis C. Garza's Open Letter pointed at Raúl Ruiz, settlement quickly ensued.

The pedo arises from Ruiz’ apparent refusal to return to the photographers negatives of fotos published in La Raza newspaper and magazine. La Raza stands as paper of record for the chicano movement. It  published in Los Angeles from 1967 until it folded in the early 1980s, with Ruiz its closing editor.

Pitted against Ruiz are a dozen contributing photographers--former staffers--who want their images back. The collective of aggrieved photogs includes such notables as USC J-school profe Felix Gutiérrez, media magnate Moctezuma Esparza, and celebrated photographer Oscar Castillo.

Such negatives are cultural treasures. Through their prints today’s readers can witness only once removed the only extant participant observer images of pivotal moments in U.S. history. It was the incarnation of a political awakening that has grown into today’s electoral landslide for Obama. This is important material.

Here are the street level frames taken by students in high school student walk-outs, marchers with the Brown Berets, and Catolicos por La Raza giving the archbishopric hell. Garza's Open Letter claims the trove to be “likely the largest collection of photographic documentation produced of the Chicano urban movement in the United States.”

Negatives hold not only an image of a moment but also, to the photographer, something of personal importance. Given access to one’s old negatives opens those images to modern tools and materials, permit one to re-imagine an expression for today. There is no way to express the personal pain from loss of one’s youthful work, nor measure the regret for what might be done to make new prints using today’s abilities. Abelardo alludes to something similar, one thousand masterpieces hanging only from his mind.

In many ways, this negative pedo stands in sad epitaph for the chicano movement pictured in those negatives. La Raza newspaper and magazine, according to the artists, represented a collective effort of grass roots gente enfrentando the establishment for la gente.

Detail, O'Gorman, Castillo de Chapultepec, Mexico DF, 

Back then compañeras compañeros didn’t sign waivers and declare their rights, and all that establishment crap. It was la causa, and their burgeoning skills and a la brava energy got the work produced.

Now matured and seasoned, some may have strayed from that idealism, vencido, perhaps.

Ruiz enjoys a solid reputation as a scholar and has the lasting gratitude of history for being in the right place at the right time with his lens when that Sheriff Deputy fired his tear-gas gun into the Silver Dollar. Ruiz' lens told the truth, so it must hurt to be seen as a sin vergüenza, or worse, over these missing negatives.

I do not know Ruiz' motive. The foregoing summarizes the feelings of twelve photographers named in Luis C. Garza’s “Open Letter to all concerned,” published November 10 at the popular LatinoLA. I include the full text, below. Ruiz did not reply to La Bloga’s inquiry via email, so I can draw no firm conclusions but like any pedo, it stinks.

See the Update at the top of this column. Ruiz' actions Monday now put the pedo in the past. It's good to see matters righted and the negatives headed home. La Bloga will update the conclusion of the agreement.

Here’s the Open Letter La Bloga has via email from Luis C. Garza. Leave a Comment below to share your views on ownership of the fruits of collective labor, these events, documenting the movimiento:

Chicano Movement Photographic Negatives

Open Letter to all concerned
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contact: Luis C. Garza

We write to inform you of an extraordinary community resource of photo archives containing thousands of photographic negatives and related document materials, which cover the Chicano movement and community from the late l960s through the l970s. Yet this invaluable archive is unavailable to either the photographers who created these materials and hold legal copyright, or to the large number of scholars, community organizations, filmmakers and others who have attempted to access this resource over the past forty years.

Why? Raul Ruiz, a Chicano Studies Professor at Cal State Northridge, and also at Santa Monica Community College, took physical possession of these archives as a co-editor of La Raza magazine, when former editors Eliezer Risco, and then Joe Razo passed the responsibility on to his safekeeping in 1971, for temporary custody (not ownership). Since the demise of the magazine, in early 1980s, he has refused all requests to return the negatives to the photographers who created them or to make these materials available to these photographers, researchers or the community.

We are writing to alert you to the theft of this Intellectual Property, explain the development of this problem, and to make clear our commitment to have the negatives returned to the photographers who hold the legal rights, and to finally make this resource available to the broader community through a university archive.

Under the auspices of the publications, Chicano Student Movement and La Raza magazine (newspaper and then magazine), an archive of photographs and written materials were compiled between 1967 and mid-1970s. This work reflects the efforts of magazine staff members and primarily that of twelve photographers who documented the civil rights struggle of the Chicano movement in the city of Los Angeles, Southern California, and the southwest United States. Our collective work is contained in this LA RAZA archive and is likely the largest collection of photographic documentation produced of the Chicano urban movement in the United States.

PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT QUESTIONED

ACCESS DENIED!

These publications and the related photographic archive were started as a grass roots community endeavor and not for the enhancement of a single individual’s career. Raul Ruiz’ appropriation of this material is a tremendous disappointment to all of us who know him, and certainly does not live up to the ideals within the Chicano Movement that we fought for. We did not struggle to replace an oppressive and inequitable system with another one controlled by a brown face. Raul’s actions are incongruous with, and contradictory to what he is supposed to stand for as a Chicano Studies Professor and have significantly damaged the cause of the Chicano Movement and the communities that it serves.

We intend to challenge this problem in two ways:
• Generate community support to pressure for the negatives’ release to their rightful owners via a Los Angeles University archive, where materials will be available for public access.
• Work through all legal means to obtain rightful possession of the negatives.

LA RAZA staff-photographers: (partial list)

Pedro Arias Manuel Barrera Patricia Borjon Oscar Castillo Moctezuma Esparza Luis Garza
Felix Gutierrez Fred Lopez Ruth Robinson Rivera Devra Weber Eliezer Risco~Editor 1967-1970
Joe Razo~Editor 1967-1971

La Raza photographic archived events: (partial list 1967-1978)
• East Los Angeles high school student walkouts
• Board of Education Los Angeles educational issues
• Board of Supervisors Los Angeles mental & health facility demonstrations
• Chicano Moratorium demonstrations against Vietnam War
• August 29, 1970 anti-war rally; murder of LAT journalist Ruben Salazar
• Brown Beret demonstrations
• Catolicos Por La Raza, Saint Basil Church demonstrations
• Police brutality and local/regional/national incarceration issues
• Political suppression, reapportionment & representation
• Teatro Campesino and UFW Farm Movement
• Mexican-American stereotypes, and its negative media overload
• La Raza Unida political party origins, influence and impact
• Corky Gonzalez-Crusade For Justice, Colorado
• Reies Lopez Tijerina- Land Grants, New Mexico

How to Comment on This Open Letter

Google's blogger software--that's what makes La Bloga look like this--makes adding your views on issues like artist intellectual property and ownership somewhat easy.

1. Scroll to the bottom of this post, below the biographies of On-Line Floricanto poets. If someone's already begun a conversation, the space resembles the image below. Click the pencil. To email the column, click the envelope.

2. If no one's joined in yet, the bottom of the post looks like this:

3. Click on "Post a Comment".

4. Stay in touch. When you're at the Comment screen, click the "Email follow-up comments to" box. La Bloga notifies you when someone's left a follow-up comment.




El Centro Chicano at USC Celebrates 40 Years

I arrived on the USC campus for grad school in 1972, with some trepidation. I figured I'd once again be the only Chicano in sight. Wrong.

Living in LA since exiting the Army in 1970, I elected to exit the world of work into full time grad school. The GI Bill covered tuition and fees--twelve units at $75 a hit.

That first year of grad school coincided with the first year of El Centro Chicano. Frank Sifuentes QEPD engaged recruiters who brought 110 raza students to USC. That such an organization would exist countermanded the popular stereotype of USC’s insular exclusivity.

Over the next couple years I would photograph centro activities, usually on Daily Trojan assignment. I especially looked forward to the frequent tardeadas, which meant free food and the laughter of the serving line.

I recently learned that, being I was an older vato--and one who always had a camera pointed at them--the youngsters thought me a narc. That explains why the women wouldn't let me help in the kitchen, I guess.

December 1, 2012 marks an opportunity for that group of 110 suspicious kids to return for the 40th Anniversary of El Centro’s existence. Not only that crew but all USC alumni looking to recognize and celebrate forty years of centro history at USC, and help raise money to promote another 40.

The original centro occupied the most prominent spot on campus, a storefront space where Hoover Street ended at the gate to campus. Everyone walking onto the University of Southern California campus from nearby student housing passed el centro’s parking lot mural and the wraparound mural crowning the façade.

Led by Sy Abrego, that group of students breathed new energy into campus life. On Cinco de Mayo, MEChA held festivities in the student center patio as well as the lawn of el centro. President John Hubbard came for a formal update and left more convinced than ever to support el centro.

Thost years, at the emcee mic of most centro public events was locutor and student Marco Antonio Dominguez. Dominguez would read his poetry at chicano literature's first floricanto in 1973, then return in 2010 for the reunion floricanto, when Marco Antonio shares the stage with his poet son.

That centro structure was razed years ago, the site today uncommemorated, buried under lovely landscaping and a parking lot.

Today’s centro occupies a beautiful penthouse suite in the nearby architectural gem of the campus church.

Town and Gown, where the original Festival de Flor y Canto sponsored by el centro took place, hosts the 40th Anniversary celebration of El Centro Chicano. Director Billy Vela notes:

For 40 years, we’ve been providing invaluable services and programs to USC Latino students and we’re excited to announce that we will be having a 40th Anniversary Gala on Saturday December 1st, 2012 from 6:00pm to 9:00pm at Town and Gown.

Full details on attending, corporate sponsorships, contacting Billy or El Centro, are at the event website: http://sait.usc.edu/elcentro/

Banned Books Update

The books are still banned in Arizona, but the Special Master has opened the policies--but not the hearts and minds--of the Tucson Unified School District.

The original 1974 desegregation order led to implementing the successful raza studies core curriculum. Then the court took the district's word that it had straightened up and was flying right. Federal oversight lifted, the district dismantled the raza studies program and banned their materials from classrooms. Bureaucrats and teachers pulled the titles from classroom shelves while children looked on in stunned silence. "I thought she was our friend," one student sadly related.

The current court orders admitted the foolishness of trusting these tipos, and returned community sensibilities to TUSD's core. The court goes a step further, demanding the program's expansion to the K-12 gamut.

In the long-awaited report, the Federal Court's Special Master reinstates a core curriculum that restores openness and cultural appropriateness to the curriculum. The story is not burning up the presses, so in addition to the order reproduced by Tucson Sentinel, check out Three Sonorans, whose ongoing reporting has kept the news alive over the long slog to today's status quo ante snafu.

Ironically, per Three Sonorans, fighting the progressive court order are prominent members of Arizona's Democratic Party establishment. Instead of tearing up the banned books list, these people are fighting for the right to ban books.

The voters gave Obama four more years to cure Unitedstates ills like Arizona disease. After Obama brings the troops home--next week would be fine--he needs to clean up the mess in Arizona.


Santa Ana Bowers Museo Fêtes Oaxaca

Click image for a larger size, or visit the Bowers website for details of what looks to be a holiday gift bonanza so early in the shopping season.

La Bloga On-Line Floricanto Day 13 Month 11 Year 2012

Tara Evonne Trudell, Iris De Anda, Sonia Gutiérrez, Esmeralda Bernal, Andrea Mauk

La Bloga celebrates six poems from five poets in the month's second On-Line Floricanto:
“Border Song” by Tara Evonne Trudell
“500 Years” by Iris De Anda
“Herencia / Legacy” por Sonia Gutiérrez
“Rosita” by Esmeralda Bernal
“Mudos Across the Ocean Divide” by Andrea Mauk

Border Song
by Tara Evonne Trudell

will I be
the border song
you sing
against
rusty tall
fences
will I be
the warm
flesh
you ache
to feel
in cold
distances
will humanity
ever comprehend
how deep
brown
can feel
so many years
suppressing
generations
taking fear
and crafting it
to the masses
keeping souls
trapped
in far away
places
continual stealing
taking earth
and
killing her people
will children die
playing sticks
and stones
growing
into living
a walking dead
society
tireless ancestors
spirits fighting
revolutions
over and over
in an America
that doesn't care
to question
will I be
your
last border
song?

tara evonne trudell c/s november 4, 2012



500 Years
by Iris De Anda

Amputated thought discarded in delusion
of too much money
too much gain
Sell you ideas of futuristic dreams
things unseen
& you will never see
Sell the cycle to the middle class
think you're made of glass
made of extremes
Keep the poor in the dark alley
covered with the newspaper that tells of your greed
on them you feed
Radicals seek to misshape your kingdom of doom
for them you have no room
Liberals fight to magnify your lies
try to inform of the underprivileged cries
Labels drown in the abyss
of ultimate creation
Because before
there was or were or is a name
Everything became one in the same
So who's to blame
Present day, month, & fears
It's been 500 years
It's been 500 years
It's been 500 years



Herencia
por Sonia Gutiérrez

Soy la lengua de Frida—vulgar
como la de mi abuela.

Y la punta del bolígrafo azul,
doblegando al papel callado.

También soy la flor de tuna,
asomandome por la madrugada.

Soy orejas de olla de barro, escuchando
el paladar de mis antepasados.

Mujer de cara redonda
como la tortilla de maíz y nopal.

Cuerpo de abeja punzante
de donde nace el mañana.

Y soy, por supuesto, letras armadas
con azadones arreando nuestro destino.

La mariposa sedienta, bebiendo
del sudor de una mano humedecida.

Soy las garras del jaguar, rasgando
las líneas esclavas del bufón de vista corta.

Soy la poeta que las leyes escupen muy lejos—
al exilio de los poetas.

Soy herencia—que pinta de mil matices
de verde a esta nuestra tierra natal.

Pero definitivamente soy una manita de puerco
si tu horquilla del diablo asoma su rostro feo.

A esos los vestimos de esqueletos
y los ponemos a bailar por las calles, eternamente.


Legacy
by Sonia Gutiérrez

I am Frida’s tongue—vulgar
like my grandmother’s.

And the tip of a blue ballpoint pen
kowtowing shy paper.

I am also the prickly pear flower
peering at dawn.

The ears of a clay pot, listening
to the palate of my ancestors.

A woman with a round face
like the corn and cactus tortilla.

Body of a throbbing bee
where tomorrow is born.

And I am, of course, armed letters
with hoes spurring our destiny.

The thirsty butterfly drinking
from the sweat of a moist hand.

I am the claws of the jaguar, tearing
the enslaved lines of the nearsighted fool.

I am the poet whom laws spit far away—
to the exile of poets.

I am legacy—who paints this our homeland
a thousand shades of green.

But I am most definitely an arm twist
if your devil’s pitchfork shows its ugly head.

To those, we dress up like skeletons
and make them dance through the streets, eternally.


Rosita
by Esmeralda Bernal

if I had a thick accent
my words, in your mind,
would flow with memories
of mexico and
your ears would love
the sound of their hands
cleaning house

in your mind
every spanish tinged word
would be a once a year call
back to the fence
your white bread smile
an approval of Rosita
climbing over the fence
directly to your services

if my words were
unbarbed metallic
sounds without
accent
an English cusped in
a spun dream
you would combust
in outrage and
send Rosita packing

© Esmeralda Bernal 11/4/12



Mudos Across the Ocean Divide
by Andrea Mauk

I shed the flag in which I'm draped
so I can see myself bare breasted
unadorned by donkey tails and elephant tusks.
I pluck the stars one by one
from the field of blue
and launch them out the window sill
wonder if they can still
fly
but they twirl back to earth
in a tailspin
and melt like snowflakes
as they touch down.

I come from an island
a goddess
of red, white and blue
Spain's last outpost,
one star, her voice
washes between
coastlines
loudly unheard,
testing ground
for the pill,
breeding ground of
beauty queens...
And here, we are hemming skirts
and stocking shelves
rolling up sleeves,
as they're trading coffee beans
and sugar cane
for tax-free trade
and tourism.
Would you like an umbrella with that?

I sew the stripes together
and wind them 'round me
walk to the nearest polling place
enthusiasm of a mummy,
close the curtain
and cast my net across the wide
froth of Atlantic blue
catch my fill of calamar
and octopus,
fry them up with
Green Party platano
but loving arms, tostones and tentacles aside,
I am awash in my own
milk and honey land,
they call me
that other kind
of Mexican (?)

I am not a slave but I am owned,
possessed like a noun
watched over by the eye
and the pyramid.
And I question the Goddess,
does she really want
to be a state
when the state of the nation
is unraveled, just broken
coming unglued
link by link
on the partisan spine
and the laborious backs,
to be owned by the
boardroom masters on the
87th floor?

I run down the stairs
out the front stoop
to gather the stars
that have yet to dissolve
upon the bodega's
sidewalk
place them in my eyes,
their sparkling hope
fleating,
let the ribbon of stripes sewn
red after white
fly towards home from the boardwalk
on this starless night,
send my voice
spinning out to sea,
a gift to those who stayed behind.

We are citizens both here and there.
We are mudos across the ocean divide,
our borders drawn by Poseidón.
We are peripheral,
between the shores.
I have given away my stars and stripes
left only with the yellow fringe
belted around my nakedness.
It doesn't really matter.
No one will even notice me
on this election eve.


BIOS
“Border Song” by Tara Evonne Trudell

“500 Years” by Iris De Anda

“Herencia / Legacy” por Sonia Gutiérrez

“Rosita” by Esmeralda Bernal

“Mudos Across the Ocean Divide” by Andrea Mauk

Tara Evonne Trudell has resumed writing poetry after a break of almost ten years and is passionate about combining poetry and film to create a visual art form of her own. She is a mother of four children and raising them to be socially aware and conscious of the injustices that plague our society. This is a top priority of hers as a she rediscovers her own word in a world that only attempts to silence the Indigenous spirit.

Iris De Anda is a writer, activist, and practitioner of the healing arts. A native of Los Angeles she believes in the power of spoken word, poetry, storytelling, and dreams. Follow her story @ http://irisdeanda.typepad.com/la_writer_underground/

Sonia Gutiérrez, a promoter of social justice and human dignity, first contributed her poems to Poets Responding to SB 1070 in 2010. Sonia teaches English at Palomar College, where she advises the Palomar Poets. Her poetry and vignettes have appeared in the San Diego Poetry Annual, contratiempo, CRATE, Mujeres de Maiz, City Works Journal and La Jornada Semanal de México. Sonia’s poem, “La Maza y cantera de una poeta”/“A Poet’s Mallet and Quarry,” was selected “10 Best Poems of 2011” by La Bloga. Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman/La Mujer Araña, is forthcoming; she’s at work on her novel, Kissing Dreams from a Distance, among other projects.

Esmeralda Bernal resides in Phoenix, Arizona. She strongly supports the dreamers and their valiant efforts to have the Dream Act become a reality. Her poetry has appeared in La Bloga, HaLapid, Yellow Medicine Review and recently in Nahualliandoing Dos: An Anthology in Nahuatl, Espanol and Engish.

Andrea García Mauk grew up in Arizona, where both the immense beauty and harsh realities of living in the desert shaped her artistic soul. She calls Los Angeles home, but has also lived in Chicago, New York and Boston. She has worked in the music industry, and on various film and television productions. She writes short fiction,
poetry, original screenplays and adaptations, and is currently finishing two novels.

Her writing and artwork has been published and viewed in a variety of places such as on The Late, Late Show with Tom Snyder; The Journal of School Psychologists and Victorian Homes Magazine. Both her poetry and artwork have won
awards. Several of her poems and a memoir are included in the 2011 anthology, Our Spirit, Our Reality, and her poetry is featured in the 2012 Mujeres de Maiz “‘Zine.”

She is a regular contributor to Poets responding to SB 1070. Her poems have been chosen for publication on La Bloga’s Tuesday Floricanto numerous times. She is also a moderator of Diving Deeper, an online workshop for writers, and has written extensively about music, especially jazz, while working in the entertainment industry.

Her production company, Dancing Horse Media Group, is currently in pre-production of her independent film, “Beautiful Dreamer,” based on her original screenplay and manuscript, and along with her partners, is producing a unique cookbook that blends healthful recipes with poetry and prose from the community.

When Your Book Is Banned...Comunidad.

Melinda Palacio

Melinda Palacio and Banned Book Author Elena Díaz Bjorkquist

Last week, I spoke on immigration and Ocotillo Dreams at CSU Fresno. The generous students and faculty filled the room to capacity and later asked thoughtful questions and lined up to have their books signed. At the invitation of Dr. Cristina Herrera, I met MeCha students and saw Alex Espinoza again. Yesterday, I had the honor of being the visiting author for the Spring Arts Literary Festival at EPCC. Thanks to Rich Yañez for the warm welcome and to Pat Minjarez for her hospitality. On the road to El Paso, I stopped in Tucson to meet with Elena Díaz Bjorkquist and Rosi Andrade of Sowing the Seeds, a collective of women writers. We had chorizo, pan dulce, coffee, and discussed the banning of books in Tucson, specially Suffer Smoke.

Elena Díaz Bjorkquist was taken aback at the idea of having her book, Suffer Smoke, banned. The book is an important part of Chicano history. The stories record what life was like in Morenci, a copper mining town. Among her many hats, Elena was once a history teacher. "There was nothing in the book, just sharing the reality of the people who lived in the mining town in Arizona, and were taken advantage of," she said. "I wrote for myself, then for my kids. When I read at the university where I attended college, the kids related to my stories; my book needed a wider audience."

Ernest Hogan's post from on La Bloga yesterday outlines the absurdity of banning books and banning songs, all in fear that we will take back Aztlán if we know our history. Elena Díaz Bjorkquist says she feels a sense of loss for the banning of Chicano books in Tucson Unified School District in Arizona, her home town. "These kids are are being robbed of their right to know of their heritage," she said. "Once you learn your history, you're proud."

Elena Díaz Bjorkquist wants to see a dialogue open up. Her solution to this shameful problem is communication. Part of her work with Sowing the Seeds is to empower women through written communication. Her stories and books celebrate history. Bjorkquist would like to see TUSD free the banned books and engage in a dialogue with its community.

Here's to promoting dialogue, communication, and freedom.

****

Last week, I had the pleasure of being interviewed on KPFA by Darren de Leon, Aztec Parrot DJ on Radio 2050, before my lecture on immigration and Ocotillo Dreams at CSU Fresno. Thank you poet Marisol Baca for hosting me in Fresno. Yesterday, I visited students at EPCC and was the visiting author for the Spring Literary Arts Festival in El Paso.

Next Stops: East L. A. Library and CSU Channel Islands

April 10, East L.A. Library, Tuesday 6pm to 7pm, at 4837 E. 3rd street, Los Angeles, CA 90022.

April 12 CSU Channel Islands, Broome Library 1360 4pm.

Chicanonautica: A Specter is Haunting Arizona

I may not make much sense here. This is a raw feed from the crisis zone. The dust has not settled, and we have a lot of dust here in Arizona.

The night before the shootings in Tucson, at the place where I work, someone had written the ever-popular “F.U.” all over the men’s room. I wasn’t surprised. I had been sensing a lot of undifferentiated hostility among the customers. I had also seen it on the streets of Phoenix.

Something was in the air. Not a recognized scientific phenomenon.

I was shocked when I heard about the shootings, but not surprised. Ever since Spring of last year, with the news about SB 1070, things have been building up in Arizona. Somebody was going to get shot sooner or later.

Jared Lee Loughner had no racial/ethnic agenda. His is a paranoid/schizophrenic fixation on grammar. “What is the government if words have no meaning?” Not quite up there with William Burroughs’ “Language is a virus from outer space.” We lucked out, we got a Latino hero saving Gabrielle Gifford’s life instead of a backlash.

But just because Loughner listened more to the voices in his head than to those coming in on radio, television, and the Internet, doesn’t let all the screaming pundits off the hook. Here in Arizona, it gets hard to tell the schizoid homeless from the concerned citizens if you look at the wild words and ideas flying around. The governor hallucinates about human heads being found in the desert, then passes laws to protect against such things. And of course, guns are everywhere.

Combine this with the sad fact that Arizona follows the American tradition of treating mental illness with denial and neglect, and it’s only a matter of time before the craziness in troubled brains bubbles into random, violent action. It doesn’t matter if the first spark of the firestorm was about the border issue; that issue -- all issues -- and everyone involved will be dragged into the bloody mess.

I hoped that people would calm down over the last week. But the night after the shooting I heard gunshots in my own neighborhood -- back to business as usual in Arizona.

Over the last few months I’ve been rereading the works of Oscar Zeta Acosta and Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Strange how Acosta’s writings from the Seventies, and Gómez-Peña’s from the Nineties, echo the situation in Twenty-First Century Arizona. My own sketchbook cartoons from years ago illustrate current situations perfectly when I post them online. It’s like nothing has changed.

Except that these days there are more Hispanics/Latinos/Chicanos than ever. The label “minority group” is becoming obsolete.

It’s enough to drive some folks crazy. Especially if they see brown skin and “foreign” languages as a serious problem and think that the key to law and order is keeping the “Mexicans” out.

Meanwhile, there are others who worry about the government making deals with the flying saucer people from the center of the Earth.

They’re all alive and well here in Arizona.

Ernest Hogan is also alive and well and living in Arizona.

MLK answered Obama about Tucson

With Martin Luther King Day approaching, and the Tucson shooting and its aftermath in the news, I thought it appropriate to provide La Bloga readers with excerpts of President Obama's Tucson speech to compare to MLK's "A Call to Conscience."

Note that, while the times have changed, the wars and enemies have different names, what the two men speak to hasn't. I leave it to readers to make your own connections and draw your own conclusions.
RudyG

Barack Obama, 1/12/11
at a Memorial Service for the Victims of the Shooting in Tucson, Ariz.

There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts. But know this: The hopes of a nation are here tonight. We mourn with you for the fallen. We join you in your grief. And we add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy will pull through.

These men and women remind us that heroism is found not only on the fields of battle. They remind us that heroism does not require special training or physical strength. Heroism is here, in the hearts of so many of our fellow citizens, all around us, just waiting to be summoned -– as it was on Saturday morning. Their actions, their selflessness poses a challenge to each of us. It raises a question of what, beyond prayers and expressions of concern, is required of us going forward. How can we honor the fallen? How can we be true to their memory?

[A]t a time when our discourse has become so sharply polarized -– at a time when we are far too eager to lay the blame for all that ails the world at the feet of those who happen to think differently than we do -– it’s important for us to pause for a moment and make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.

Bad things happen, and we have to guard against simple explanations in the aftermath. For the truth is none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can know with any certainty what might have stopped these shots from being fired, or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man’s mind. Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the face of such violence. We should be willing to challenge old assumptions in order to lessen the prospects of such violence in the future.

As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let’s use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy and remind ourselves of all the ways that our hopes and dreams are bound together.

Perhaps we question whether we're doing right by our children, or our community, whether our priorities are in order.

We recognize our own mortality, and we are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this Earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame -– but rather, how well we have loved -- (applause)-- and what small part we have played in making the lives of other people better.

And that process -- that process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions –- that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires.


The loss of these wonderful people should make every one of us strive to be better. To be better in our private lives, to be better friends and neighbors and coworkers and parents. And if, as has been discussed in recent days, their death helps usher in more civility in our public discourse, let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy -- it did not -- but rather because only a more civil and honest public discourse can help us face up to the challenges of our nation in a way that would make them proud.

They believed -- they believed, and I believe that we can be better. Those who died here, those who saved life here –- they help me believe. We may not be able to stop all evil in the world, but I know that how we treat one another, that’s entirely up to us.

And I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.

I want to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as Christina imagined it. I want America to be as good as she imagined it. All of us -– we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children’s expectations.

May God bless and keep those we’ve lost in restful and eternal peace. May He love and watch over the survivors. And may He bless the United States of America.
_________________________

MLK {& Vincent Harding]
Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence
Delivered 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City

I come to this magnificent house of worship tonight because my conscience leaves me no other choice. I join you in this meeting because I am in deepest agreement with the aims and work of the organization which has brought us together: Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam. The recent statements of your executive committee are the sentiments of my own heart, and I found myself in full accord when I read its opening lines: "A time comes when silence is betrayal."

Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world.

And we must rejoice as well, for surely this is the first time in our nation's history that a significant number of its religious leaders have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of a firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history. Perhaps a new spirit is rising among us. If it is, let us trace its movements and pray that our own inner being may be sensitive to its guidance, for we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness that seems so close around us.

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

My third reason moves to an even deeper level of awareness, for it grows out of my experience in the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers. As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over. So it is that those of us who are yet determined that America will be -- are -- are led down the path of protest and dissent, working for the health of our land.

This is a calling that takes me beyond national allegiances, but even if it were not present I would yet have to live with the meaning of my commitment to the ministry of Jesus Christ. To me the relationship of this ministry to the making of peace is so obvious that I sometimes marvel at those who ask me why I'm speaking against the war. Could it be that they do not know that the good news was meant for all men -- for Communist and capitalist, for their children and ours, for black and for white, for revolutionary and conservative? Have they forgotten that my ministry is in obedience to the One who loved his enemies so fully that he died for them? What then can I say to the Vietcong or to Castro or to Mao as a faithful minister of this One? Can I threaten them with death or must I not share with them my life?

This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation's self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls "enemy," for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.

The only change came from America, as we increased our troop commitments in support of governments which were singularly corrupt, inept, and without popular support. All the while the people read our leaflets and received the regular promises of peace and democracy and land reform. Now they languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese, the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off the land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our bombs.

So they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must weep as the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children. They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless, without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see the children selling their sisters to our soldiers, soliciting for their mothers.

We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops. We have cooperated in the crushing -- in the crushing of the nation's only non-Communist revolutionary political force, the unified Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men.

Now there is little left to build on, save bitterness. Soon, the only solid -- solid physical foundations remaining will be found at our military bases and in the concrete of the concentration camps we call "fortified hamlets." The peasants may well wonder if we plan to build our new Vietnam on such grounds as these. Could we blame them for such thoughts? We must speak for them and raise the questions they cannot raise.

At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless in Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called "enemy," I am as deeply concerned about our own troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese, and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak of the -- for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation: The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately, the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horrible, clumsy, and deadly game we have decided to play. The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways. In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war.

[W]e in the churches and synagogues have a continuing task while we urge our government to disengage itself from a disgraceful commitment. We must continue to raise our voices and our lives if our nation persists in its perverse ways in Vietnam. We must be prepared to match actions with words by seeking out every creative method of protest possible.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

And if we will only make the right choice, we will be able to transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of peace. If we will make the right choice, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our world into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. If we will but make the right choice, we will be able to speed up the day, all over America and all over the world, when "justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream."

[You can read the full text of MLK speech by going clicking here.]