Category Archives: Politica

The World Upside Down

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“Country estates for all!”

One of my favorite writers is former Uruguayan exile, Eduardo Galeano. His historical-ish books on Latin America (he claims he is no historian but he makes the past come alive like no other) are filled with the absurdities and the small joys that make up the upside down world we live in. Like Galeano, I sometimes feel the logic of the world we live can become so twisted that it simply ceases to make sense. The current spectacle of electoral politics is an example. From today’s Los Angeles Times:

Obama Elitist, Says Lady Rothschild

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild is an ardent Hillary Rodham Clinton supporter who raised scads of money for the New York senator’s failed presidential campaign. She and her husband, Sir Evelyn Robert Adrian de Rothschild of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England, split their time between New York and a British country estate.

It’s not a bad life, she says, and she’d like you to have one just like it. Which is why she’s backing Sen. John McCain for president, not her party’s nominee.

Sen. Barack Obama? He’s an elitist, she says.

More on Lady Rothschild here.

The California Dream Act Online Petition

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Higher Education is something that shouldn’t be limited only to those who can afford it, it should be available to those who seek it and want to improve their lives. As of Sunday August 31, The Governor has Senate Bill 1301, Institutional Financial Aid on his desk waiting to be signed or vetoed, again. Various organizations and groups have been working to get the medias and publics attention on the bill and its importance to undocumented college students. Now there is an online petition in support of the bill and getting the governor to sign it. There are students right now attending community colleges and universities paying in-state tuition fees. All this bill will do is help make life easier and help those students pay for their education. It doesn’t take away from the state budget or other college students either.

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“Ain’t I a woman?” National politics, a view from down here.

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“Last night, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin accepted the nomination to the vice-presidency at the Republican National Convention.

Originally the buzz about Palin, focused on her having a vagina. Her presence was analyzed as a calculated McCain strategy to lure disgruntled, hard core Hillary Clinton supporters.

Then the shift went internal, to her uterus, her identity as a mother to five, the youngest with some form of developmental delay, and a 17 year old daughter, unmarried and pregnant.

So what does this Palin parranda of information and analysis mean to mamis of color, Latina mamis like me? Not surprisingly, nada.

Sarah Palin wants to put herself out there as “every woman”. She wants to be seen as “just your average hockey mom”, and other mommies see themselves and their reality reflected through Palin, except, mamis of color, that is.”

excerpt by Maegan “La Mala” Ortiz, Racialicious from the post: Mccain’s VP pick Palin and the Politica and Privilege of White Woman’hood/ Mommy’hood

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Memories of A Lost Boulevard- The Center Theater Part 2; A Date With Destiny

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The Center Theater; A Date With Destiny. Commemorating the 38th Anniversary of the E.L.A. Chicano Moratorium Demonstrations and the Murder of Ruben Salazar on August 29th 1970.
It was a roasting, sweaty Saturday. I was on summer vacation from elementary school. Mom had been edgy all day with all that news coming over Canal 34 and KWKW radio about the “Chicano Riots” coming down Whittier Blvd…. Continue reading →

Los Angeles bicycle master plan is being updated

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A quick joke, What do bicyclist and skateboarders have in common ? They both hate people in unicycles…chirp…chirp… The City of Los Angeles is updating it’s bicycle routes through out the entire city and it’s asking for public comments and suggestions to make improvements. According to the site, “The following documents provide a summary of public input gathered from February through April of 2008.   This information is being analyzed and used as a reference as we conduct fieldwork and develop policies and programs for the draft plan.  Additional comments and suggestions will be accepted throughout the process.” There are links to lamp route suggestions, route suggestions, commuter routes, and a survey report of people willing to take their time to answer questions like, “Are you a bicycle rider ?” and “30. If you checked yes to question 8 or 9, please provide the following information…” I gave the site a quick run through and the Eastside is practically ignored. In the bike route list, there is a link that reads “Eastside,” but if you click on it, this is what your are linked to. I think that the Eastside bike club will have something to say about that. Anyone interested in the cities plans for adding and updating bike routes should go to the site and speak their mind and tell the city to improve and in our case add new bike routes. 

Serving the people, my ass

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Shit is going down in Cudahy in the name of keeping the political status quo.

Since 1999, Cudahy did not have contested elections until 2007, when two newcomers, Daniel Cota and Luis Garcia, ran for positions in the City Council and lost by a few dozen votes. A third newcomer, Tony Mendoza, was forced out of the race after receiving death threats against him and his family.

A year after that election, Cota and Garcia decided to run for office again and set up their 2009 election website a few weeks ago. Last week, Garcia’s house was firebombed (video taken by a security camera), burning the outside of his home and one of his trucks. Below is a picture of Garcia and the damage done to his truck, from the L.A. Now blog.

What’s incredible is that this is the SIXTH time since the past election that he has been vandalized at home. His truck has been showered with gallons of paint four times and two weeks ago, a brick sailed through his window. Continue reading →

Ugly Americans

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(This next post was submitted by reader and commenter Dorit, a piece that highlights some of the ways White Americans perceive the Others.)

I am the offspring of a Celt and a Hillbilly. Thus I am a white-American. And when stripped of the accoutrements of my current tribe (make up, hair color from a bottle, costume and the like) I look just like many of the gazillion people who inhabit our great nation. Some of whom (not all of course) get their news from the fear mongers at Fox News (how can a network that gave us Married with Children, the Simpson’s and King of the Hill give us such right wing rubbish?). And being that I am White-American and to some extent look like them or people they are use to being around, these folks will talk to me and will share with me their demented ideas, fueled more by the AM talk radio, cable news and political TV ads than actual interactions with people unfamiliar to them. And after talking to or overhearing a few of them during a family trip to Sea World California, I can testify:

Ugly Americanism is alive and well.

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Regulate the Rich. Make them play nice.

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  • Exxon Mobil makes $76,000 per minute.
  • Exxon Mobil paid on $5 bililion dollars in income taxes last year to the US government.
  • Exxon Mobil paid $25 billion dollars to foreign governments.
  • Exxon Mobil made $400 billion dollars last year.

Also take a look at this yesterdays FT(7/29) article pg 18 “Shells sets pace as big oil lifts R&D spend” in the Financial Times by Ed Crooks to see how they are apparently price fixing, which I deduced sense the oil companies are spending far less than they should on R&D. And the article pg 2 “US Treasury blames supply and demand for oil prices” by James Politi that shows how they even have the US Treasury Department in on this deadly game.

Facts from Conde Nast Portfolio, Crude Reporting by Howell Raines 08/08

Hey they pay less of a percentage of their income on taxes than I do? I’m a human being that works.

Exxon Mobile Oil formerly Standard Oil was started by the John Rockefeller and his descendants still sit on the board (puts it all in an interesting historical perspective).

Now Rockefellers is synonymous with arts and NY and some odd looking guy running for various offices and another one who was VP, but that was just a great PR campaign. Pretty easy for them, since they own pretty much own either indirectly or directly everything we read.

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Don’t Flip THIS House!

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Piedmont Investment Office/Mia Sushi Bar in Eagle Rock

Rudy Martinez a character on A&E’s Flip This House, along with his associate, Paul Pagnone comprise the Piedmont Investment Company, the development firm that recently purchased the historic Self Help Graphics & Art Building in East Los Angeles.

The Self Help Graphics & Art building, a visual art piece of tile work by international artist Eduardo Oropeza, has been a sanctuary for over 30 years to hundreds of marginalized artists. Through Self Help Graphics’ print ateliers, use of studio spaces, premiere instruction, use of gallery walls and mutual interchange—major Los Angeles artistic voices were born. It is not by chance that an overwhelming number of artists whose work is now exhibited in the Phantom Sightings: Art After the Chicano Movement and the Cheech Marin collection at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) have a deep allegiance to Self Help Graphics.

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Scratch to Lose!

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The photo above was taken from a moving bicycle and with an awkwardly held camera, thus the blurriness. It’s a woman crossing her fingers, scratching for hope, and wishing for a small financial windfall, so long as the symbols match up into an appropriate pattern. I wish I could say this was something due to “La Crisis” but this is a pretty regular scene in communities of the working poor. Yes, the lottery is a waste of money and a tax on the poor, but it still represents one of the few imaginary options out of poverty. And when you don’t have many real options, those few threads that offer a lifeline to a better standard of living take on an importance they should not deserve. When you only make minimum wage, why not risk a small part of it in the hope of escaping that interminable prison? There’s a pretty messed up logic to this lottery business. I suggest you read the article by Kim Phillips titled “Lotteryville, USA” which was in The Baffler #7, now available via this google books link.