Fotos: Not Here, Not Ever, No Kings

Pasadena, California Joins the Nation: No Kings

Michael Sedano

One day, I hope soon, 2025's resistance movement will be fodder for a literary movement equal to the spirit and energy that filled the streets of cities across the nation with five million people the weekend of June 14, 2025. I'll settle for massive voter turnout and landslide rejection of the disastrous actions of the new regime in the United States.

Saturday, June 14^th’s No Kings demonstrations captured the ears and eyes of 340 million United Statesians who weren’t on the street.

Not even twice the five million people massing in the nation’s No Kings demonstrations can capture the conscience of the would-be king nor his villainous cabinet. But right now, mass protest is what we resisters have.

Pasadena, California manifestation’s numbers swelled from the April “Hands Off” demonstration on Colorado Boulevard. Growing protest numbers on the streets and empty parade stands in D.C. signal an awakening.  The other 340 million Unitedstatesians watching the Constitution evaporating like tear gas fumes wafting into a summer breeze need to take to the streets, too. 

Allons enfants de la patrie, but make sure to register and vote in the midterms. Read the signs, heed the rejection of the regime. The entire bola de pendejos has got to go.

text

Hands Off! Festival On Colorado Blvd

Michael Sedano

There are no rude bridges along this stretch of Colorado Boulevard--the famed Route 66--where the Rose Parade marches along on January First. Here, embattled citizens stood, their flags to April's sunny weather unfurled. These thousands weren't alone; the crowd is  fired up knowing they're part of a national shout heard round the country: Hands Off!

Shoulder-to-shoulder throngs of people jostling at curbside shake placards at honking cars cruising the scene. Groups of cars move past with the regularity of traffic signals, many shouting affirmations, several holding signs or throwing hand signals. The people shout and scream with joyful anger.

Steady lines of excited people move in both directions on the sidewalk, phalanxed by people leaning against storefronts, perhaps taking a breather from the frenetic energy in the front rows, where motivation grows from a full agenda of issues.

Public Land. Our Bodies. Universities. USPS. Medicaid. Private Data. Our ballots. Our children's future. FDA. FEMA. EPA. Libraries. The Press. LGBTQ+ Rights. Free Speech. Our courts. Environment. Our energy. Our Sanity. Our jobs. Our wallets. SocialSecurity. 

The grievances addressed make diverse sources of public pain and suffering. The insults of the regime in power go on beyond the ability to couch one's feelings on a single placard. One protestor has a succinct view of why she and everyone else is here on the street today: 

I have too much outrage to fit on this sign.

Not all signs come with an ironic smile. There's a perceptible damper on the crowd when they see the ominous portrait in blood red labeled, Traitor. For some sign-makers, it's a no-holds-barred event where they let it all hang out.

Traitor

Our signs are useless: they don't read the Constitution 

Angry women will change the world

Fight back for the rule of law

What a stupid mess.

It's a warning not a manual!

Democracy not Dictatorship

Fight Ignorance not Immigrants 

Hands Off All Of It!

Protest and Patriotism define the history of this nation's ongoing struggle to reflect its foundation values and Constitution. Old Glory was hailed proudly in the gleaming sunlight carried by walkers, rampant from car windows, on the bicycle.

Democracy shouldn't be messy, and the Pasadena demonstration was as clean and orderly as one could imagine, given the chaos that leads to this community of voices. You can't tell a Republican from a Democrat from an Independent in a crowd speaking as with a single voice.

Hands Off!

It's not grasping for straws to see the coalescence of like-minded, high-spirited people coming together for these few hours in a community, because community matters. Acting as if what they're doing out here matters. Like it makes a difference. The subrosa anger smoldering beneath smiles and silly signs waits for something to ignite it. Not empty words filling a filibuster, not vandalizing someone's fancy car, not wrongfully deported souls; something. Someone.

The festival on Colorado occasioned genuine joy among thousands of people who got the word. That alone--communication and networked messages--offers a hopeful sign that the energy witnessed along the boulevard will reach these, and more ears, at some future day when something substantive arises, when masses of protesting dancing revelers can make a difference and get something done..

A ver.

Liberty and Justice for All

Chinga tu MAGA

Foxtrot Delta Tango

Stop President F Elon Now

Does this ass make my country look small?

Fight Fascism

F D T

c/s

Support Walmart workers this holiday season: Protest

"Walmart: Always low wages. Always!"
"Pay us enough to raise a family!"
 "Give us full-time hours and affordable health care!"
 "Walmart: Stop bullying workers!"

These are some of the chants I heard after joining protesters at a Denver Walmart yesterday, Black Friday, 2012. Instead of running to the annual American getting-frenzy of the day after Thanksgiving, I decided to extend my Giving Day to support people less fortunate than me.

Me who is without a job, me who is older than the species dirt, and whose prospects of retiring in the pursuit of happiness rests in the hands of the Powerball results today. Yeah, too many of those with jobs in 21st Century America exist at a level of basic survival. So, I consider myself less fortunate.

If you want to know more about Walmart workers, go here and here to learn about that. This post is more about an ex-70s movimiento radical's experience forty years later. Times have changed, but then too, they haven't.

Nationally, the protests were led by Walmart "associates," as their workers are called--perhaps to better disguise their terrible working conditions--and supported by United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

So, I spent part of Black Friday Morning walking the picket line with OUR Walmart (Organization United for Respect at Walmart), chanting whichever ones inspired me, smiling even at customers who crossed the line and generally trying not to bait Walmart execs who stood by doors acting as if "their" customers were in danger from picketers. I didn't do well on the last one, but I didn't get accosted or take their mierda, either. It was more fulfilling being there than having gorged on pavo the previous day.

On the other hand, Walmart gorges more and more: 
"Return on investment for the 12 months ended Oct. 31, 2012 was 18.0 percent. Year to date, the company returned $8.7 billion to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. It reached #1 in 2002 and stayed there until 2009, when it fell behind Exxon Mobil. The only firm in the top four of the Fortune 500 not an energy company. The world’s largest corporation, with revenues of about $300 billion and almost two million employees."

The 1% keeping much of our 99% in Third-World status. Possibly our greatest American product these days: "Huffington Post uncovered what reporters call a rigid pay structure for hourly employees that makes it difficult for most to rise much beyond poverty-level wages.”

I've shopped there maybe six times in my lifetime, to-date. I avoid it, knowing I'd be supporting Congressionally backed shipping of more jobs to the prospering Chinese, not that I have anything against Chinese prosperity--just not for the benefit of our 1%. And I avoid it because my saving pennies or dollars reminds me of those who survived Nazi Germany by ignoring the lines headed into the concentration camps and ovens. A stretch in some ways, but a logic my brain follows.

I wasn't in the picket line only because raza work there. I was also there because it's what I believe democracy requires, especially in these times. Support especially the bottom half of the 99%, even if it's only a centavos or dolares sacrifice. In perspective, not that big of a deal.

A woman passing through picketers in front of me heard the protesters chant: "We say fight back!" Her response: "I say be glad you have a job." Typical individualistic, politically myopic, self-destructive American thinking. An Ugly American. But she got me thinking.

Because many customers were walking through the lines, although there were as few as 9 customers in line at the 32 registers inside at that moment, I put down my picket sign, picked up flyers (unfortunately, not in Spanish) and headed to the parking lot where I got customers to stop and listen.

It was great. No, I didn't re-educate and rally the masses or put much dent in corporate profits, but after explaining the purpose of the picket line, working conditions at Walmart, and what they were asking customers to do--not shop Walmart that day--I did learn some things.

I found mexicano shoppers most receptive. They remembered their mexicano general-strike heritage. They were more open to postponing their shopping. In some cases, they were unaware of anything and at times left without purchasing anything. I gave some time and was thankful it produced something good.

Next time I join anything like this, I'm grabbing flyers, switching to español and heading for cars parking. To get that sense of accomplishment. To strike back at the 1%. To Give in my country where Get or Buy is our national sickness. Plus, it'll work off some of that added weight from turkey-gorging. And maybe a tiny bit, it will erase some of that vergüenza that sometimes shames those of us who once gritoed "Que viva la causa!"

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, aka author Rudy Ch. Garcia of the Chicano fantasy, The Closet of Discarded Dreams, who's working on the YA prequel that will feature a ridiculous chapter about Walmart. Interested publishers and agents can go here for details.

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

______________

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.