YOUR FAITHFUL OREGON representative for the MTV Street Team ’08 (ahem, yours truly) is invisible on this day, because Oregon doesn’t exist when it comes to Super Tuesday. But my Street Team peeps are LIVE on the scene in each Super Tuesday state.  Read more 

LIMA, Ohio — The air of Southside is foul-smelling and thick, filled with fumes from an oil refinery and diesel smoke from a train yard, with talk of riot and recrimination, and with angry questions: Why is Tarika Wilson dead? Why did the police shoot her baby?

“This thing just stinks to high heaven, and the police know it,” said Jason Upthegrove, president of the Lima chapter of the N.A.A.C.P. “We’re not asking for answers anymore. We’re demanding them.”

Some facts are known. A SWAT team arrived at Ms. Wilson’s rented house in the Southside neighborhood early in the evening of Jan. 4 to arrest her companion, Anthony Terry, on suspicion of drug dealing, said Greg Garlock, Lima’s police chief. Officers bashed in the front door and entered with guns drawn, said neighbors who saw the raid.

Moments later, the police opened fire, killing Ms. Wilson, 26, and wounding her 14-month-old son, Sincere, Chief Garlock said. One officer involved in the raid, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, a 31-year veteran, has been placed on paid administrative leave.

Beyond these scant certainties, there is mostly rumor and rage. The police refuse to give any account of the raid, pending an investigation by the Ohio attorney general.

—Police Shooting of Mother and Infant Exposes a City’s Racial Tension  Read more 

THIS WEEK in Eugene, Oregon and the surrounding areas, there has been a lot of talk about the weather. But not in a mundane fashion, such as when you are having your gas pumped (remember that ‘round here, you cannot pump your own gas, it is all full serve!) and offhandedly offer the station worker an observation about the local and eternal wintry curtain of rain.

No, the talk has been more along the lines of "what is going on with this weather?" Because the past couple of winters have brought an atypical amount of snow to this city west of the Cascade Mountains. In fact, 2008 has seen the most snowfall to hit Eugene, Oregon, since 1996.

Here’s your faithful Street Team 08 Oregon rep with a short visual presentation of the latest strange winter to visit us.  Read more 

CLICK the pic to the left to find yourself magically transported to a page hosting my latest MTV Street Team ’08 video, which was shot in Eugene, Oregon at a Martin Luther King Jr rally and march on January 21, 2008.

All shooting, editing, and sleeplessness by Nezua.  Read more 

NOT BAD for a sick man working all gear and angles himself! Just a little intro vlog for my MTV gig. And hey, I only look a little bleary. Which is actually what impressed me. Aside from the fact that gettting through the entire approval process (for Street Team members, not just any member) felt like a patdown in an Israeli airport.  Read more 

DEAR MISTER ROMNEY, I really appreciate your steadfast commitment to your faith. I’ve heard people choose these types of ideologies because it grounds a person in morality and integrity and human values. And of course I can admire that. With all the hate- and fear-mongering filling the public square today, I welcome men of your caliber.

I only have a small question. Given that a central tenet of Mormonism is that the Indians of the Americas are descended from the Lost Tribes of Israel, how do you reconcile your current anti-immigrant stance with the fact that Mexicans are descended, too, from these same people? How do your actions fit into the theological framework now that you are the one trying to stop them from wandering?

and furthermore—  Read more 

I see a screenplay blooming. Dealing with a favorite theme: time travel. You now think you’ll steal this zeitgeisty gem from me, but you cannot because in the future, I have already finished it, and am mailing it to myself yesterday in a walnut sealed in Presidential earwax and pressurized to resist even election-year terror alerts.

OUR TALE BEGINS with a man who desperately seeks an answer to his deepest, heart-sprung questions, headed up by the quintessential and Googlicious How Do I Get Rid of the Mexicans? You see, our protagonist feels his very nation is under dire attack by the filthy mongrel hordes from the South, those who bark that most Arrogant and Sickening of Languages—Español, those who dare to settle into his beautiful nation, hellbent on storming the kitchens and fields and meatpacking plants and canning plants and steel factories or to otherwise seek to implement that most foul of Mexican behaviors: the trading of work for pay.  Read more 

SOME OF MY regular readers (I do not, at this point, necessarily refer to the bran-eating amongst us, though they are a well-stirred crew, I’m sure) remember the day back in August I casually (you should have seen me, I was sipping a mint julep as I typed) posted on the MTV Choose or Lose ’08 Vlogger competition.  Read more 

Three Florida fruit-pickers, held captive and brutalised by their employer for more than a year, finally broke free of their bonds by punching their way through the ventilator hatch of the van in which they were imprisoned. Once outside, they dashed for freedom.

When they found sanctuary one recent Sunday morning, all bore the marks of heavy beatings to the head and body. One of the pickers had a nasty, untreated knife wound on his arm. Police would learn later that another man had his hands chained behind his back every night to prevent him escaping, leaving his wrists swollen.

The migrants were not only forced to work in sub-human conditions but mistreated and forced into debt. They were locked up at night and had to pay for sub-standard food. If they took a shower with a garden hose or bucket, it cost them $5.

Their story of slavery and abuse in the fruit fields of sub-tropical Florida threatens to lift the lid on some appalling human rights abuses in America today.

Between December and May, Florida produces virtually the entire US crop of field-grown fresh tomatoes. Fruit picked here in the winter months ends up on the shelves of supermarkets and is also served in the country’s top restaurants and in tens of thousands of fast-food outlets.  Read more 

YOU MAY RECALL, I posted a request for Olbermann last week or so, passing on the wish/hope/dream that one person in the Native American comunidad expressed for a greater level of exposure of their particular need.  Read more 

OLBERMANN, I already know you read me, dawg. Stop LYIN’. And we all know you are down with tha populace, and have been a beacon of hope to many of the voiceless. You have put that pretty mug in front of the camera and scoffed forth many important statements on many crucial topics. (The War on Billoism is fun to watch, too.) So yeah. We’re in this together, and even tho you iz da elite, you have positioned yourself in the endzone of social justice lately. Please push your envelope (sorry to abandon the football metaphor, I roused it in your honor, but I just feel too damn corny to continue), let’s get that Olbermann® brand up there with the hardcore truth-to-powers, let’s get all Historical on their asses. Let’s bring attention to an epidemic of violence and poverty among those who have already suffered too much at the hands of this nation’s “development” (forgive the gross euphemism, indigenous friends, I’m trying to butter up Olbermann sssh).

Keith, you and I don’t need to quibble at the ubiquity of violence that seeks women in our culture. We know it is a reality. And in the American Indian Reservations, this violence flourishes in disproportionate numbers. And consequences for those who would harm these women—as well as protection and justice—withers, caught between indifference, legal complications, and/or hostility. There are at least shelters on-rez for them. It’s not a cure. But it is something. A place to go to be safe, to learn, to find some comfort and figure out what to do next.

Except when there is no money for such a place. Then, where could these women hope to find help?  Read more 

RECENTLY I posted on YouTube’s yanking of a vlogger’s account due to the torture practices he was exposing that are perpetrated by Egyptian police. I was definitely disappointed in YouTube, although I sort of expect any large corporate entity to ultimately suppress free speech, because inevitably, free speech involves telling the truth, and at the end of that road can be found many ideas that might not support the agenda and behavior of corporate entities. As the RAND Corporation, “a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex” sees it:

RAND maintains “homegrown terrorism” will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who ’challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world’s ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare.’ …

Further, RAND claims anti-globalists and radical environmentalists ’exist in much the same operational environment as al Qaida’ and pose ’a clear threat to private-sector corporate interests, especially large multinational business.’

—Truthout.org, The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act: A Tutorial in Orwellian Newspeak

So through these types of statements, we begin to see it all come together. The War of the future, already taking place now. Those who refuse to consider any ill effects upon the world and the animals and the poor and simply the common gente, a breed who refuses to let go of a philosophy of greed, despite the mounting consequences of such a failed paradigm vs. those of us concerned first and foremost with the weakest of us, the meekest of us, the poorest of us, and Mother Earth herself.  Read more 

AND WILL THEY SAY nobody could have foreseen the weakness of the levees?

For the first time, Washington D.C. has collected data on H.I.V. and found that in the nation’s capital, the “modern epidemic”—as the Washington Post calls it—is now primarily one affecting blacks.

The numbers most starkly illustrate HIV’s impact on the African American community. More than 80 percent of the 3,269 HIV cases identified between 2001 and 2006 were among black men, women and adolescents. Among women who tested positive, a rising percentage of local cases, nine of 10 were African American. […]

The District’s AIDS rate is the worst of any city in the country, nearly twice the rate in New York and more than four times the incidence in Detroit, and it has been climbing faster than that of many jurisdictions. […]

—Study Calls HIV in D.C. A ’Modern Epidemic’; More Than 80 Percent Of Recent Cases Were Among Black Residents

And big propz must go to the woman who dares try and change the world, as well as shout out the truth as she lives and sees it:  Read more 

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY is now training firefighters to inspect your home and your behavior when you are visited by them, even for emergency purposes! According to FOX “News,” aside from blueprints, chemicals, flight manuals, and bomb-making books, one of the things they are going to be on the lookout for is “hostility to Americans.”

So! Word to the wise. Make sure you are only nasty to fireman without green cards. Maybe you can suss this out with some small talk at the hydrant. But even if not, if one day your kitchen explodes and your roof is on fire and you happen to be talking, yelling, or otherwise communicating with the brave men who are lugging their hoses into your driveway, it’s probably best to sprinkle a few pleasant words about the country and the government in there while you’re at it. You know, like right after you scream “my cousin is trapped in the attic!” just drop in a “God bless America!’ or something. Just slide it right in there. “HELP! We want to keep on living in the USA! Help us!” Something casual. Something that clears you right away. Because the last thing your cousin needs is for the firemen to get caught up rooting through your junk drawer on their way upstairs.  Read more 

“We’ve worn handmade peace shirts every Thursday since the first week of school, without fail,” Skylar said.

But what started out as a light-hearted gesture soon started to be taken out of context.

Students started approaching the group members, yelling obscene things at them, said Lauren.

“People just turned on us like that,” she said. “At least 10 boys stood up and yelled things at me at once, and we couldn’t even walk through the halls without a harsh comment being made.”

The heckling began early in the school year, according to group members. They said they were putting small posters promoting peace on friends’ lockers with their permission.

They thought it was OK, because the cheerleaders and football players had signs on theirs. Eventually, though, group members said they were told by the school’s administration they could no longer hang up the posters.

“People tore them down and drew swastikas and ‘white power’ stuff on them,” Lauren said.

Skylar had similar things written on her posters.

“Someone taped an ‘I Love Bush’ sign over my ‘Wage Peace’ sign,” she said. “So I tore it down, threw it away, and the whole commons starting booing. I walk by later and find that someone has completely tore my sign down and placed an ‘I Love America, Because America Loves War’ sign up.”

—Students Wear Confederate Flag Shirts To Oppose Peace-Shirt Group, commondreams.org | sombrero tip to C&L

IT SAYS SOMETHING very revealing that there are young people who think that symbols made immortal by Adolf Hitler are a valid response to a peace sign today. Who see the confederate flag (and it is not being used here to represent “heritage,” if you don’t mind) as a sane response to a peace symbol. Who feel that White Supremacy is the counter-argument to those who ask to live without war between nations. And maybe those pundits who entertain the notion that the USA is engaged in wars of “Liberation” and such should look to the children, who so often lead the way. When we care to pay attention, that is. Because clearly, the kids are not misled. Not by our equivocating fairNBalanced frenzies. When they go crazy it is because of the binds we provide, a series of traps to which we’ve often long been blind. But those newer, more naive, less compromised and cluttered minds always suss out the truth behind our apathy-weighted sighs and rationalized diatribes. And they know what these wars are about. No, not about Freedom, or Peace, or Liberty, or Democracy, of course. Those are soundbytes for Fox-Watchers, para-citizens on brain vacation. The wars of our dear United States of America are about that dark desire that moves mobs to cheer a lynching; they are about about colonialism and imperialism and genocidal impulse and an all-too-human lust for dominance and violence and power at any cost.  Read more 

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thanksgiving, i think of grandpas, grandpa, the last time we all sat together and ate was at that place, that restaurant, i remember it was remarkable, it was the first time Jane didn’t cook, the first time we weren’t all gathered together there in montgomery, in grandpa’s house, the house in front of the hill of slate, the hill of wasps and their hidden nests, the quiet little house where at the end, the leaves piled up and nobody cleared them away, where we could all take our turns hovering over the yellowed pictures from the 1970s, fotos of me on the tractor fotos of josh with long, curly hair, fotos of grandpa as a young, grinning man, fotos of everyone at some ridiculous age, in ridiculous clothes, with some beautiful glow on their faces, faces from the past, faces from my mother’s side of the family, at grandpas where we would laugh and argue and eat pearl onions and peas and cranberry sauce and turkey and yams and stuffing and later drink scotch and coffee and desert, of course someone would hop up on the organ and make repetitive and corny sounds but it was still a good time, we all get fatter but basically stay the same, that’s what’s comforting about family, that they are predictable, or at least they are until they are gone. somehow i ended out here on the west coast again, my grandfather is dead, i don’t believe in thanksgiving, i don’t believe in mass production the turkeys-in-bags, and Jane is now trying to ignore grandpa’s last wishes of what he wanted to leave for his daughters.  Read more 

NOVEMBER 20 is the day, in 1910, that the Mexican Porfiriato—the rule of Porfirio Díaz [aka José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz], showed its first serious cracks. November 20 is understood as the day that began the Mexican Revolution of 1910, as it is the day Francisco Madera made his call to arms to overthrow the dictator.

As Mexico is a land of so many campesinos (mi abuelo was one), the People are moved by those who remember how important the land is, how important the farmers are, how important the maize is, how important agrarian priorities are. This is why Lopez Obrador roused so many when he ran against the illegally installed Felipe Calderón, todays Mexican “President.” He ran on a platform of helping la gente. Calderón ran on a platform of economic progress and cozying up to the USA and other foreign interests.  Read more 

SOMETIMES YOU WONDER if blogging is a component of Real Change, done for distraction, provided as a social experience, or is just a game. And of course, it is all these things at different times. In their better moments, blogs can affect people and their views profoundly, just as a Great Book might, when dropped into your hands on a crucial day. In a “blogswarm,” the People are given voice—the computer literate, Internet-connected, and blog-using People, that is—and companies can be informed of how many support or do not support their products and sponsored efforts. Money can be directed to politicians who in turn (at least in theory) are accountable to the views of those who sent them money.

Just recently Michelle Malkin struck a great victory against Verizon, and with her work, musical Artist Akon will no longer be represented by the corporation. She was upset with this partnership, feeling Verizon was letting its customers down by partnering with this man who held a dance contest where apparently a 14 year old girl was the winner, and to win she had to “dance like a whore.” Now, I wasn’t at the Akon concert, I don’t know his music, and I’m not trying to validate his “Freaking” (as Malkin put it), but when I see Malkin getting roused and righteous about this Verizon partnership because Akon held freaking-dance contests in many places, and one time he let an underage girl take part, I have to wonder. I have to wonder why, on her far-reaching blog, I see more venom and calls to action about that, than I did for stories such as this from CNN:  Read more 

I WAS WAITING FOR MY SANDWICH at Subway®, and I heard a woman on the phone with her daughter. I knew it was her daughter because she was on the phone from the time my bread was cut in half to the time it was slid into a wax paper bag. It was all I could do to keep from interrupting her and telling her how to raise her daughter. But I have found in the past that people are not always happy to get this kind of input. And I was unsure as to whether my message would get through to her at all, given our differences in class and race. So I bit my tongue and listened to another child being slowly murdered with the toxic sweetness of a parents’ insecurities.

My sandwich was delicious. But I did not enjoy it.  Read more 

VAYA CON DIOS, Kurt! You were a storyteller, a teacher, and a friend.  Read more 

JON MAKES US LAUGH as always, and yet there is a tone conveyed in these jokes that imply that there is too much attention on this “offhanded remark uttered by an elderly man on the radio,” as Jon calls it. That Imus is not the entirety or end-all be-all of RACISM, and yet we all paying sooooo much attention to his “gaffe.”

This minimizing by the non-targeted of the claims of the targeted reminds me of certain complaints of hidden speech rules that I am sometimes told are so hard (and unnecessary) for the White to navigate.  Read more