March 2, 2012
Today Silver City and I suppose in surrounding cities too everyone is in a festive mood. A drive through downtown this morning where ribbons and light pole decorations greet people drove home the point that if you’re not taking a moment out of your day to recognize and honor a wily cat who wears a funny hat and who can trick or treat you or trap and trip you with his verbal stew then you’re probably just not in the spirit of things. Today is Dr. Seuss’s birthday.
Reading is important no doubt and the truth is that Dr. Seuss does deserve recognition for his contribution to children’s literature – even if you don’t like green eggs and ham. But, this is not what is in question. What I’d like Grant Countians to think about today is why did not a mere month ago the entire county, every school, and all of those folks over in that ever more cliquish downtown area go out of their way to promote Black History Month? More importantly, on January 16, 2012 it was another Dr.’s birthday – Martin Luther King’s. During that time, the community did not experience the same amount of excited effort by all that is being put into celebrating the life of Dr. Seuss’s.
The month of February is Black History Month in our nation. In this month we reflect or are supposed to be encouraged to reflect upon great contributions that African descendants have made to our lives in the country and world. In February alone the poet and activist Langston Hughes was born as well as the great educator, writer, and orators Fredrick Douglass and WEB Dubois. February 21, 1965 is also the day that marks the assassination of Malcolm X.
There was no mention of any of this history in my child’s classes before or after MLK’s birthday and national holiday. During this time these important dates and more is what we set aside family time to study and teach to our seven and five year olds who attend schools in Silver City. The schools haven’t creatively and consistently integrated this history into the classrooms so we as parents have had to deliver. When Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday arrived in January we spent seven hours together on the computer learning about segregation, boycotts, sit-ins, demonstrations, voting rights, equality, standing up and speaking out, lynching’s, hangings, and murder. This was just a prelude in January that helped prepare my children for Black History Month in February.
We took it upon ourselves to teach our children this because no one in positions of power, no institutions charged with educating our children, and no Main St. decoration brigades took it upon themselves to do so for King or Black History Month. Today, they’ve posted happy birthday signs to Seuss in clear view on school poster boards and marquees, every teacher in every class will choose to read passages from Seuss’s books, video’s will be shown, popcorn will be eaten, and kids who forgot or who were not allowed to wear their dreamy-sleepy pajama wear to school at the behest of the entire school staff and administration’s blessing will cry and probably feel left out. Similarly, arts & crafts, poetry and costume contests will take place and children and adults who will spend countless hours dressing up and competing for cash prizes will be awarded for whipping themselves up and jumping head first into the “love the Cat in the Hat” madness. In the midst of this frantic frenzy we must remember that all of this would be even more special if Martin Luther King and Black History were given the same amount, if not more attention than Dr. Seuss and his cartoon characters.
When my 2nd grade son asked his teacher yesterday why this wasn’t so she replied, “because people can celebrate whatever they want to celebrate.” I think that this points to the heart of the matter. Anglos, especially those in positions of power, aren’t that ready and willing to put their heart and soul into teaching and honoring diversity and the history of contributions through struggle, sacrifice, and overcoming great odds that real life human beings have had to live through. But, they can in a massive way and city-wide effort comfortably celebrate a white author named Seuss and his Cat adventures because it is safe for them to do so. No matter how complex the verbal gymnastics of the Cat are, severe tongue twisting is less painful than having to pick scabs off of old wounds by recalling, remembering, and teaching about what whites in positions of power have and are still doing to persecute people in the world who are different than them. (Think nation- wide anti-Mexican legislation, exploitation, & the Arizona Mexican-American Studies & book ban)
Organizing a day or month of festivities that celebrates non-white greatness and the ability to overcome oppression does nothing to liberate Anglos from the shame and guilt they feel or would feel every time they have to think about their privilege, inherited money, wealth, and social status because of that privilege and sense of superiority passed on from one generation to the next. Maybe this is why European celebrations reign supreme every month of the school year.
By choosing to emphasize and elevate Dr. Seuss over MLK and even heroes such as Cesar Chavez, Anglos show their extreme inability to put an end to racism once and for all. Choosing to do the opposite would do just that and our little one’s impressionable minds and our earth would be the healthier for it. Instead, a sanitized version of history through the life of an imaginary cat in a twisted hat is intimately presented and joyfully celebrated while our history remains in the shadows. On Dr. Seuss’s birthday and sadly year round our great contributions to the human family and our existence on earth does not and will not rule the day.
-Hueteotl Lopez
"The Machete serves to cut the cane, to open paths in shadowed woods, to decapitate serpents, to cut down weeds, and to humble the pride of the impious rich." - Diego Rivera
Friday, March 2, 2012
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
One Year to the Rebirth of our Sun 12/21/2012
ONE HUNAHPU
Source of matter, Source of spirit
Spiraling in and Spiraling out
Thirteen phases - numbers, vectors
Twenty hieroglyphic pictures
People growing toward the Sun
Grow together and live as One
Hunab Ku, Hunahpu
Hub of everything we do
Search the stars for what we are
And find we need not look so far
Inside of us, deep down inside
Are kept the secrets of all time
Finding rhythm, speaking rhyme
Renew the ancient Paradigm
Movement and Measure
Sowing and Dawning
Star of the Evening
Star of the Morning
One Ahau will start the Churning
Watch for Venus, Begin the Learning
Teaching us the way to See
And how to climb the Sacred Tree
Tzolkin, Haab, and Calendar Round
Spherical music, Magical Sound
Eye at the center, Dawn of our Face
Edge of the cosmos, Heart of all Space
Mysterious day-sign
Bringer of Birth
It comes from the Stars
And springs from the Earth
-2012-
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Open Letter to Silver School District on WAR
November 16, 2011
Open Letter to the Silver Consolidated School District:
Re: Jose Barrios Principal Michael Koury, Staff Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Padilla
CC: Superintendent Dick Pool, Ms. Jan Zinc, 2nd Grade Instructor
My name is Hueteotl Lopez and I am the father of a son who is in second grade attending Jose Barrios Elementary School. He is instructed by Ms. Jan Zinc. I write to you today first and foremost as a parent who wishes to express my concern about the tone in which the topic of war is being introduced to our children at Jose Barrios.
As you may or may not know, during this year and last year’s Veteran’s Day program that Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Padilla coordinate, I asked Mrs. Anderson and Michael Koury if there would be any invitation to a veteran for peace made that would teach and introduce the children to the concept of the need to end war. They said, “No. That their program wasn’t about that but simply to thank soldiers for their service to our country.” I disagreed and shared with them my feeling as a father of a young boy under their care that dismissing the teaching of peace and the end to war was hurtful. That leaving it out of their program is detrimental to the student’s development and understanding of the importance and need to get along with each other. That not mentioning peace in their thanking the soldiers in front of the students could easily lead to a child believing that war is good, heroic, necessary, and just an everyday part of life and that these thoughts are easily engrained deeply in the human mind when coupled with things that trigger an emotional response such as music, singing, salutes, prayers, colors, videos, flags, and men dressed in uniform.
My thoughts are for the growing children, whose hearts and minds are innocent and are especially sensitive to this. Children’s health and our community health depend on the cultivation of a peaceful world outlook that ensures compassionate behavior. I believe that this is what has been behind the effort to widely teach and commit ourselves in all schools to a “Bully Pledge”. It is also what has been the inspiration for the families of the Columbine killings to bring Rachel Scott’s teachings to the world through “Rachel’s Challenge” and begin to teach kids and adults to replace bullying with compassion and love for others.
War is bullying on a grand scale. It is the worst manifestation of the adult inability to challenge ourselves to find peaceful solutions to life’s problems. It is the worst example that we can provide and the most terrible legacy we can leave to our children. Teaching them to believe and obey by supporting the soldiers without questioning war is teaching them that they are somehow superior through war. The long line of soldiers in my family taught us differently. They taught us that fighting for freedom in some far off land and killing others for profit and wealth does nothing but bring the eventual death to all human life and freedoms.
As my children’s mentors and teachers I wish for you on Veteran’s Day and everyday to find it within yourself to creatively incorporate the message of peace. When our soldiers are honored please make it your patriotic duty to reinforce and incorporate school teachings that cultivate intelligence, a sense of co-existence, and peaceful behavior such as to not fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to not hurt other creatures, and to share and not be greedy. In the presence of our children I hope that you will not continue to romanticize war. I hope that as leaders that you will take responsibility by being honest with the kids about the realities of combat and call for its end and never resort to war yourself by dismissing, demonizing, removing, or ignoring those who lift their voice up in conscience for a better world. I invite you to view the videos below.
-Hueteotl Lopez
http://youtu.be/Y38GCA7qMOo & http://youtu.be/Y38GCA7qMOo
"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service". -Albert Einstein
Open Letter to the Silver Consolidated School District:
Re: Jose Barrios Principal Michael Koury, Staff Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Padilla
CC: Superintendent Dick Pool, Ms. Jan Zinc, 2nd Grade Instructor
My name is Hueteotl Lopez and I am the father of a son who is in second grade attending Jose Barrios Elementary School. He is instructed by Ms. Jan Zinc. I write to you today first and foremost as a parent who wishes to express my concern about the tone in which the topic of war is being introduced to our children at Jose Barrios.
As you may or may not know, during this year and last year’s Veteran’s Day program that Mrs. Anderson and Mrs. Padilla coordinate, I asked Mrs. Anderson and Michael Koury if there would be any invitation to a veteran for peace made that would teach and introduce the children to the concept of the need to end war. They said, “No. That their program wasn’t about that but simply to thank soldiers for their service to our country.” I disagreed and shared with them my feeling as a father of a young boy under their care that dismissing the teaching of peace and the end to war was hurtful. That leaving it out of their program is detrimental to the student’s development and understanding of the importance and need to get along with each other. That not mentioning peace in their thanking the soldiers in front of the students could easily lead to a child believing that war is good, heroic, necessary, and just an everyday part of life and that these thoughts are easily engrained deeply in the human mind when coupled with things that trigger an emotional response such as music, singing, salutes, prayers, colors, videos, flags, and men dressed in uniform.
My thoughts are for the growing children, whose hearts and minds are innocent and are especially sensitive to this. Children’s health and our community health depend on the cultivation of a peaceful world outlook that ensures compassionate behavior. I believe that this is what has been behind the effort to widely teach and commit ourselves in all schools to a “Bully Pledge”. It is also what has been the inspiration for the families of the Columbine killings to bring Rachel Scott’s teachings to the world through “Rachel’s Challenge” and begin to teach kids and adults to replace bullying with compassion and love for others.
War is bullying on a grand scale. It is the worst manifestation of the adult inability to challenge ourselves to find peaceful solutions to life’s problems. It is the worst example that we can provide and the most terrible legacy we can leave to our children. Teaching them to believe and obey by supporting the soldiers without questioning war is teaching them that they are somehow superior through war. The long line of soldiers in my family taught us differently. They taught us that fighting for freedom in some far off land and killing others for profit and wealth does nothing but bring the eventual death to all human life and freedoms.
As my children’s mentors and teachers I wish for you on Veteran’s Day and everyday to find it within yourself to creatively incorporate the message of peace. When our soldiers are honored please make it your patriotic duty to reinforce and incorporate school teachings that cultivate intelligence, a sense of co-existence, and peaceful behavior such as to not fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to not hurt other creatures, and to share and not be greedy. In the presence of our children I hope that you will not continue to romanticize war. I hope that as leaders that you will take responsibility by being honest with the kids about the realities of combat and call for its end and never resort to war yourself by dismissing, demonizing, removing, or ignoring those who lift their voice up in conscience for a better world. I invite you to view the videos below.
-Hueteotl Lopez
http://youtu.be/Y38GCA7qMOo & http://youtu.be/Y38GCA7qMOo
"The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service". -Albert Einstein
Friday, August 27, 2010
"Hope for Change" - An Essay on the 40th Anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium
“Hope for Change”:
The Slogan of the Established Opposition to the Establishment
August 29, 2010
Around 1971 in an autobiographical essay, The Brown Buffalo -Oscar Zeta Acosta- our famous militant Chicano lawyer who used key cases as a platform to put the entire system on trial, and who defended among others the East Los 13, the Biltmore Six, and Corky Gonzales, put it succinctly regarding why as Mexicans we can’t or won’t ever realize our goals of freedom when he stated, “We don’t kid ourselves anymore. We know we’re headed for a head-on collision with the rest of society. We’re absolutely convinced of it and we’re not being paranoid or nothing. We know that the main thing we want now is not better education or better jobs or better housing, because we know that they are not possible to achieve.” “You can’t be a class or a nation without land. Without it, it doesn’t have any meaning. It’s that simple. So we are beginning to see that what we’re talking about is getting land and having our own government, period. It is that clear-cut. As to what land, that is still in the future. We have to develop the consciousness of land as the principal issue, just as three years ago we had to develop the consciousness of identity as the principal issue.”
We arrive 40 yrs. later preparing this month to memorialize the attacks of rioting police, Ruben Salazar’s assassination, and to celebrate the August 29, 1970 Chicano moratorium against the war in Vietnam. What we are facing today as indigenous people is no different from when Oscar spoke these prophetic words four decades ago. Land is still the number one issue at hand in which all else, class, race, and social-political standing falls under. Was Acosta correct? Let us look at history.
Ask yourself: was it not land that was at the heart of the issue in 1498 when the pirate Columbus and his invader henchmen touched down on our shores? Land was at the heart of the matter in 1519 when Columbus’ homeboy the European boat person Cortez illegally immigrated here. Land was at the heart of the issue in 1776 when those European alien Pilgrims declared their independence from their British oppressors and began, step-by-step, from the east coast all the way to the west to dispossess our ancestors of Native tribal land. Land was at the heart of the matter on September 16, 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo’s “Grito de Dolores” summoned all Mexicans to pick up arms and fight for our independence from Spain. Land was likewise at stake in 1863 when the French invaders tried to install the imperial government of Maximilian. In response, President Benito Juarez, defender of land and independence, resisted against the foreign occupiers and put Maximilian and his wife in front of a firing squad, killing them for violating Mexican sovereignty and trying to continue to propagate the enslavement of our race. After Juarez died, land was still at the heart of the matter in 1848 when the descendents of the Spanish ownership class in the government of Mexico sold us out and allowed the U.S. to use military force to steal all of the Southwest and occupy it. When the early 1900’s rolled around we witnessed the Mexican Liberal Party jump on the scene whose war cry was, “Tierra y Libertad!” or “Land & Liberty!” Its leaders included courageous men like Ricardo and Enrique Flores-Magón, Librado Rivera, and Práxedis Guerrero - one of the most developed Mexican writers and military strategists who coined the slogan, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees”. His contemporary was Emiliano Zapata who used this slogan successfully to continue to rally the people to realize that land and the control of it was at the heart of the matter and would be the only way that the Mexican Revolution of 1910 would be won. In 1994 the Zapatista’s (EZLN) in Chiapas did not forget their history.
Flash forward to 2010. The Chicano Moratorium and its organizers use the number 40 to denote the continuation in the struggle for justice. But, have we in the Chicano movement always been faithful to our predecessors land based struggles? It goes without saying that every aspect of the Chicano Movement plays a very important role and saying that it failed in certain respects does not make the entire struggle irrelevant. Unquestionably the Moratorium was the beginning of a more serious anti-war/anti-police brutality stance in L.A. and at the same time Chicano’s everywhere were addressing education, housing, drugs, jobs, and civil rights. But I will venture to say that outside Reies Lopez Tijerina, Corky Gonzales, and maybe even the Brown Berets to a certain extent, the Chicano movement by and large has failed to develop a sustained consciousness of land as our principal issue. The consequences and repercussions associated with land acquisition or repossession which is one of the gravest threats to an occupier, a homesteader, or a squatter may have prevented this. But today, it is imperative for us to resurrect the idea that land held in common is the only path to peace and justice. It is the only way to feed and clothe ourselves which in turn will provide us with the opportunity to benefit entirely from our labor, employ our creative talents, and create the opportunities to further develop our intellectual capacity that will make us free human beings and not slaves in bondage to private land owners and corporate profiteers who pimp us.
Whether working as wage slaves or on land that we don’t own or organizing ourselves around a cause that is intimately connected to property, all of our struggles have in on way shape or form originated from land dispossession. It has been this way ever since the first thief appeared and said, “This piece of earth is mine”. Today, as it always stands, the most critical issues we face such as education, housing, employment, imprisonment, health-care, and so-called immigration reform are deeply connected to our lack of land. This cannot continue to be overlooked or left out of the equation because it has everything to do with self-determination. The Brown Buffalo was right. Until we come to accept and rally around this historical reality we cannot begin any meaningful discussion or debate or much less get to the root of our problems if the issue of land is not taken into consideration and at the forefront of our thoughts and organizational strategies.
Will our leaders agree? Unfortunately not once since Obama has been (s)elected have I heard any of the Chicano/a political establishment and their religious and academic counterparts mention land with regard to immigration and our lack of control thereof in Mexico or in the Americas. Could it be that they have been made afraid to say anything about land by those who scare everyone into thinking that we supposedly want Aztlán back? Or that we absurdly hate and want to expel all white people? Every one of their internal discussions and public debates is always framed around asking the ownership class for permission for us to either stay here and absurdly be licensed, made legal, be given a pardon (amnesty), or a pinche green card to be allowed freedom of movement in occupied America. We have the numbers and power to demand and receive everything and anything we want but why is the opposite happening? Because the Chicano establishment, who are no different from that heavily entrenched Spanish/Mexican establishment south of the boarder, have continuously allowed the discussion of our presence here to be framed around us as visitors which allows our very long and distinct history and relationship to the earth/land in the so-called Americas to be overlooked and outright hidden.
This is behavior that can best be identified as cultivating submission and begging for acceptance. For example, their relationship and faith in the Democratic Party has turned us into nothing but political chumps who invest our hopes and dreams in Obama as a fraud. Through buying into false hope the Chicano elite has nicely adopted and allowed words of mass appeal to be used such as immigrants, reform, the Dream-Act (American Dream), and amnesty (a pardon) to frame our demands. And, as if it is possible, they even go so far as to plead with our tormentors for us to be treated fairly and humanely. This is a very non-confrontational response to lethal attacks on our children, families and community. The Chicano elite commits a severe disservice to all of the people of the world fighting for their humanity when they behave this way. But it is not without reason. The words adopted for our demands by most of our leaders express their aspirations and it’s safe to say can do nothing but lead to actions that sell us out and secure their own careers. These words speak volumes about their goals and intentions for our lives. When they materialize it will only keep us in a tight straight jacket on display as good little Mexicans and continue to pull us head first by the chains around our necks into one category: INTEGRATION. The kind of integration that causes Mexicanos by the thousands to become Border Patrol Agents, police officers, lawyers to prosecute us, judges to give out life sentences to our youth, doctors who push poison for profit, and Scabs that cross picket lines and kill the union. It’s the type of poisonous integration that causes immigrant college graduates to become blindly loyal to their host nation and use their degrees as a springboard out of the community to never return and help the Barrio but to go on to help international capital consolidate its power for trade-offs such as nice cars, expensive homes, thousand dollar purses, and all the other trappings of a society that should not be emulated any place on a sane earth. We’re talking about the type of wretched integration that gives our people debt, diabetes, shopping sickness, dyed hair, fake breasts, alcoholism, and war fever. Thus, when speaking of our future and freedom and the kind of change we are seeking, anything connected to integrating in any way whatsoever into the American nightmare will only continue to destructively feed us to Capitalism and bring us full circle right back to the same problems over and over again chasing our tails and pausing only long enough to lick our masters feet and ask for more scraps to eat from his table.
For centuries during any and all of our upheavals the Mexican political establishment on both sides of the imposed border have worked closely hand in hand with our oppressors to guide and steer any grassroots working class movement towards the clutch of the hairy hand of the beast that, when all is said and done, is lifted up to his bloody insatiable mouth where he hungrily puts all of us whole to be chewed up, swallowed and sent down the same old tunnel of conformity where we’re digested and assimilated and then evacuated devoid of any revolutionary substance. At his dinner table, which is the world and everything in it, the bloody beast sinks his fangs in and severs our spine effectively putting out any rebellious fire through the ages that keeps us standing on our own two feet to challenge him. Again and again it happens and always with the unwavering help of his favorite little faithful children and messengers….The Mexicano/Chicano elite, the House Negroes of the Barrios…those whose strategy throughout all time has been self-preservation and placing no real demands on the power structure.
They represent and uphold its power and inequality while faking progress by calling on us in the present day to believe in the hope for change served up and embodied in a black president whose bloodlines are the same that course through his slave masters veins. In this way we infinitely shuffle forward in a stupor paralyzed so that we may never be able to leave the realm of that ring of formal and electoral prison politics where the creators of slavery and its perpetuators eternally defend their heavyweight accomplice titles as Mayors, Priests, CEO’s, Senators, Governors, Congressmen/women, and Presidents whose names on the floor of the House and Senate and in the halls of all government are co-operation, compromise, moderation, patience, reform, respect, submission, non-violence and hesitation in the face of exploitation by rapacious bankers and bosses, terror by tyrants, bloody pursuits by La Migra, occupation by war mongering invaders, mass murder by malignantly wicked bomb droppers, hunger because of gluttonous hoarders, and imprisonment by sadistic men in a suit who wear the symbol of the noose in the form of a tie around their necks who consult with men in robes with gavels falsifying and misrepresenting their power over our souls in this earthly prison they build to house our bodies in. But, the Mexican soul cannot be imprisoned! Ya Basta! We are not naïve. We have a long tradition of resistance. We do not want your standards! Our ancient indigenous hearts are not self-serving and we do not seek any longer to trade our long term visions and goals for short term gains. Our children are too important to us, our mother earth and the entire universe as human beings means too much to us. Everything is on the line.
Do you think you can outwit the underdogs? Our strength as Mexicans in the face of prejudice, alienation, and being used as scapegoats has always been in precisely the fact that we do not fit in and don’t want to. From the underground, no papers or fingerprints to track us, illegal, with no choice but to rebel, we squeeze our trigger fingers and push forward with pride in our brown griminess, our sweat, our dirt, our gutters, our partaking in food we harvest and eat with our hands, and all the while embodying absolutely the greatest expressions of beauty the world has ever seen. Deport us? We are the ultimate desert guerrillas who flower when there is no water and like our ancestors when banished can survive on frogs, snakes, bugs, and mosquito larvae long enough to return and build a cosmic society. We are master improvisers and can adapt to any and all of the worst and most inhospitable conditions you can throw at us. We can survive alone on empty stomachs with only the spiritual food our protector Tonatzin can provide. We labor passionately with pride and Beavers are put to shame with the massive amount of work we do.
Under attack, our survival as a species, as artists, as a group will never be above ground, in the spotlight, in the malls, in the voting booths, on tell-a-lie-vision, on Facebook, or in the halls of any government built with the materials and on the foundation of authority that shelters all of the vultures, shacklers, and bloodsuckers of humankind. Our future victories, like the Vietnamese, will be won from the underground sown together with the threads of poverty that has kept us humble before God for centuries. Call us pagans if you will but our spiritual reality is grounded and connected to that which can be our only provider – the land -La Tierra. And we will defend it to the death.
“Bloodthirsty radical Chicano communists” is what they hurl at us for talk like this. For wanting nothing less than what America’s “founding fathers” killed everyone for, land to empower ourselves. For this we are counseled to have respect, to be non-violent, and given speeches, warnings, and chastisements about our being murderous for calling upon our connection to land and the need for independence. But we are not and never have been the initiators of violence because violence begins with poverty and today we are poorer and dying faster than the time when the Chicano Moratorium was founded. Are we evolving as a people? Maybe Oscar Acosta was right on point when he wrote about progress and the Chicano establishment, identity, and integration when he said:
“I don’t think you’re going to see too much more of demonstrations against education or things of that sort. I think that has petered itself out. A lot of kids have gotten into OEO projects and school projects as a result of the movement, so they’ve been in college for a few years now and they are as hip to what’s being taught in the colleges as the white radicals have been for some years now. They think it is a waste of time, that it takes away what little you have of your identity.
A perfect example is the National La Raza Law Students Association, here in Los Angeles, which I am pretty much associated with. The very first day they started school here on some OEO project I went in and spoke and told them, ‘Half of you will never be lawyers. Those of you that do are going to become so only because of your race. You got into these programs because you’re Chicano. So you owe something to your Raza. Yet, I predict that in three years I’m going to be fighting fifty percent of you guys. You’re going to be my enemies.’ They laughed. But it is a fact. This past year I’ve been working on these major cases of importance to Chicanos not only organizationally but legally, and often I’ve been unable to get the assistance of the Chicano law students. My prophecy to them has come true, except I was wrong in one respect. It is not fifty percent I’m fighting. It is about seventy-five percent. This is why I’m no longer pushing for more school programs, more handouts, and more welfare. I think that will destroy the movement.”
On the 40th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium let us not become so nostalgic that we romanticize our prior actions and confrontations with Capital and the military industrial complex. Let us continue to evolve in our political and social movements for justice with nothing less than land in mind. I implore you to remember our prior struggles with a sober sense of militancy, what worked and what didn’t, and most of all to defend yourselves and stop asking the creator of your punishing and impoverished co-dependent existence for your freedom or for anything that will hold you in bondage to them. In many ways we can’t blame the system anymore. We have to stand up in mass together and create our independence. One of our most effective weapons for accomplishing this when they stand in our way is to push the idea that their “American Revolution” continues. And why can’t we call upon their historical fight for liberation? Every one of us should carry a copy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights with us and commit it to memory. Our struggle is of the same cloth and like other people who have used the American Revolution to inspire their struggles for freedom and independence the entire world is watching to see what the Mexican is going to do.
Today, they have you believing that Arizona is where the fight is. And while this happens and they have the entire nation focused on one southern state, Obama and his henchmen receive another $33.5 billion for a total of $321 billion dollars in their colonial war to consolidate power and the monopoly over the land, resources, and drugs in the Middle East. They put Arizona in the spotlight and quietly send over 46 U.S. warships and 7000 Marines to Costa Rica to prevent any liberation movement from taking control away from their CIA arms and drug money in Colombia. And while they have you believing that Obama is a benevolent black man who inherited a bad situation that is causing him to leave his promises to us unfulfilled, you are peacefully marching in Arizona while they pass a bill on the floor of the House for $600 million in border militarization dollars on top of all of the million dollar spy-drones, surveillance cameras, radar technology, ground sensors, National Guard soldiers, and more fencing. And all of this in fear of the Mexican! Wake up Raza! Arizona is a microcosm of the entire country and like all U.S. citizens who can be deported under the Patriot Act, Mexicans are under siege! No more apathy. We are indigenous to this entire continent and have a psychological advantage because of it. You are not a visitor much less an immigrant. Act like this is your home!
Follow the example of among others, Unión del Barrio, the South Central Farmers, Mujeres de Maíz, and the gente at El Proyecto Jardín. These are our current day heroes who exemplify courageous acts of independence: that of challenging big developers who stop at nothing to keep land away from impoverished communities and who bulldoze and clear-cut, killing trees and destroying food to keep us poor and in a dependent state. The brothers and sisters from the collectives above hit after hit continue organizing around life returning full-circle back to our roots and gathering what resources we have and improvising, organizing, creating, planting, sharing, building, growing, cultivating, tending, and helping every human being from every race produce our freedom in the form of carefully fed soil and tenderly picked food. Gardens are our present day political parties and independence is our harvest. Multiply these sacred spaces by the millions and our future will be in our hands. Communities like this are not hoping for change. They are creating it by teaching and turning out youth whose loyalty is being invested not in political figures or lies but in the earth, art, music, eachother, and plants for knowledge, medicine, balance, understanding, and healing. As we acquire knowledge in this way we revolutionize and learn that it’s in our best interest to reject what the devil offers up in the form of energy sucking cancer causing cell phones, vaccinations, oil dependence, chemically laden foods, drugs, cosmetics, poisoned water, or obesity and laziness causing reservation and mission foods like beef, pork, milk, soda, alcohol, and fast food. Our indigenous selves have stepped forward and arrived on the scene with pride and solutions to our preservation as a species. We are here…the original “organic” gardeners whose traditions will save the planet and the human race from the destruction set upon it by the emissaries of Babylon. Adelante! Tierra y Libertad!
-2012-
Your Local Field Chicano,
El Machete
Hueteotl Lopez -
(Nephew of Mangas – Chief of the Brown Buffalo Party – East Los 13)
*Immediately following this essay on my blog you will find Union del Barrio's essay on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Please read it. It is one of the most engaging and forward thinking essays written immediately after Obama was elected.
The Slogan of the Established Opposition to the Establishment
August 29, 2010
Around 1971 in an autobiographical essay, The Brown Buffalo -Oscar Zeta Acosta- our famous militant Chicano lawyer who used key cases as a platform to put the entire system on trial, and who defended among others the East Los 13, the Biltmore Six, and Corky Gonzales, put it succinctly regarding why as Mexicans we can’t or won’t ever realize our goals of freedom when he stated, “We don’t kid ourselves anymore. We know we’re headed for a head-on collision with the rest of society. We’re absolutely convinced of it and we’re not being paranoid or nothing. We know that the main thing we want now is not better education or better jobs or better housing, because we know that they are not possible to achieve.” “You can’t be a class or a nation without land. Without it, it doesn’t have any meaning. It’s that simple. So we are beginning to see that what we’re talking about is getting land and having our own government, period. It is that clear-cut. As to what land, that is still in the future. We have to develop the consciousness of land as the principal issue, just as three years ago we had to develop the consciousness of identity as the principal issue.”
We arrive 40 yrs. later preparing this month to memorialize the attacks of rioting police, Ruben Salazar’s assassination, and to celebrate the August 29, 1970 Chicano moratorium against the war in Vietnam. What we are facing today as indigenous people is no different from when Oscar spoke these prophetic words four decades ago. Land is still the number one issue at hand in which all else, class, race, and social-political standing falls under. Was Acosta correct? Let us look at history.
Ask yourself: was it not land that was at the heart of the issue in 1498 when the pirate Columbus and his invader henchmen touched down on our shores? Land was at the heart of the matter in 1519 when Columbus’ homeboy the European boat person Cortez illegally immigrated here. Land was at the heart of the issue in 1776 when those European alien Pilgrims declared their independence from their British oppressors and began, step-by-step, from the east coast all the way to the west to dispossess our ancestors of Native tribal land. Land was at the heart of the matter on September 16, 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo’s “Grito de Dolores” summoned all Mexicans to pick up arms and fight for our independence from Spain. Land was likewise at stake in 1863 when the French invaders tried to install the imperial government of Maximilian. In response, President Benito Juarez, defender of land and independence, resisted against the foreign occupiers and put Maximilian and his wife in front of a firing squad, killing them for violating Mexican sovereignty and trying to continue to propagate the enslavement of our race. After Juarez died, land was still at the heart of the matter in 1848 when the descendents of the Spanish ownership class in the government of Mexico sold us out and allowed the U.S. to use military force to steal all of the Southwest and occupy it. When the early 1900’s rolled around we witnessed the Mexican Liberal Party jump on the scene whose war cry was, “Tierra y Libertad!” or “Land & Liberty!” Its leaders included courageous men like Ricardo and Enrique Flores-Magón, Librado Rivera, and Práxedis Guerrero - one of the most developed Mexican writers and military strategists who coined the slogan, “It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees”. His contemporary was Emiliano Zapata who used this slogan successfully to continue to rally the people to realize that land and the control of it was at the heart of the matter and would be the only way that the Mexican Revolution of 1910 would be won. In 1994 the Zapatista’s (EZLN) in Chiapas did not forget their history.
Flash forward to 2010. The Chicano Moratorium and its organizers use the number 40 to denote the continuation in the struggle for justice. But, have we in the Chicano movement always been faithful to our predecessors land based struggles? It goes without saying that every aspect of the Chicano Movement plays a very important role and saying that it failed in certain respects does not make the entire struggle irrelevant. Unquestionably the Moratorium was the beginning of a more serious anti-war/anti-police brutality stance in L.A. and at the same time Chicano’s everywhere were addressing education, housing, drugs, jobs, and civil rights. But I will venture to say that outside Reies Lopez Tijerina, Corky Gonzales, and maybe even the Brown Berets to a certain extent, the Chicano movement by and large has failed to develop a sustained consciousness of land as our principal issue. The consequences and repercussions associated with land acquisition or repossession which is one of the gravest threats to an occupier, a homesteader, or a squatter may have prevented this. But today, it is imperative for us to resurrect the idea that land held in common is the only path to peace and justice. It is the only way to feed and clothe ourselves which in turn will provide us with the opportunity to benefit entirely from our labor, employ our creative talents, and create the opportunities to further develop our intellectual capacity that will make us free human beings and not slaves in bondage to private land owners and corporate profiteers who pimp us.
Whether working as wage slaves or on land that we don’t own or organizing ourselves around a cause that is intimately connected to property, all of our struggles have in on way shape or form originated from land dispossession. It has been this way ever since the first thief appeared and said, “This piece of earth is mine”. Today, as it always stands, the most critical issues we face such as education, housing, employment, imprisonment, health-care, and so-called immigration reform are deeply connected to our lack of land. This cannot continue to be overlooked or left out of the equation because it has everything to do with self-determination. The Brown Buffalo was right. Until we come to accept and rally around this historical reality we cannot begin any meaningful discussion or debate or much less get to the root of our problems if the issue of land is not taken into consideration and at the forefront of our thoughts and organizational strategies.
Will our leaders agree? Unfortunately not once since Obama has been (s)elected have I heard any of the Chicano/a political establishment and their religious and academic counterparts mention land with regard to immigration and our lack of control thereof in Mexico or in the Americas. Could it be that they have been made afraid to say anything about land by those who scare everyone into thinking that we supposedly want Aztlán back? Or that we absurdly hate and want to expel all white people? Every one of their internal discussions and public debates is always framed around asking the ownership class for permission for us to either stay here and absurdly be licensed, made legal, be given a pardon (amnesty), or a pinche green card to be allowed freedom of movement in occupied America. We have the numbers and power to demand and receive everything and anything we want but why is the opposite happening? Because the Chicano establishment, who are no different from that heavily entrenched Spanish/Mexican establishment south of the boarder, have continuously allowed the discussion of our presence here to be framed around us as visitors which allows our very long and distinct history and relationship to the earth/land in the so-called Americas to be overlooked and outright hidden.
This is behavior that can best be identified as cultivating submission and begging for acceptance. For example, their relationship and faith in the Democratic Party has turned us into nothing but political chumps who invest our hopes and dreams in Obama as a fraud. Through buying into false hope the Chicano elite has nicely adopted and allowed words of mass appeal to be used such as immigrants, reform, the Dream-Act (American Dream), and amnesty (a pardon) to frame our demands. And, as if it is possible, they even go so far as to plead with our tormentors for us to be treated fairly and humanely. This is a very non-confrontational response to lethal attacks on our children, families and community. The Chicano elite commits a severe disservice to all of the people of the world fighting for their humanity when they behave this way. But it is not without reason. The words adopted for our demands by most of our leaders express their aspirations and it’s safe to say can do nothing but lead to actions that sell us out and secure their own careers. These words speak volumes about their goals and intentions for our lives. When they materialize it will only keep us in a tight straight jacket on display as good little Mexicans and continue to pull us head first by the chains around our necks into one category: INTEGRATION. The kind of integration that causes Mexicanos by the thousands to become Border Patrol Agents, police officers, lawyers to prosecute us, judges to give out life sentences to our youth, doctors who push poison for profit, and Scabs that cross picket lines and kill the union. It’s the type of poisonous integration that causes immigrant college graduates to become blindly loyal to their host nation and use their degrees as a springboard out of the community to never return and help the Barrio but to go on to help international capital consolidate its power for trade-offs such as nice cars, expensive homes, thousand dollar purses, and all the other trappings of a society that should not be emulated any place on a sane earth. We’re talking about the type of wretched integration that gives our people debt, diabetes, shopping sickness, dyed hair, fake breasts, alcoholism, and war fever. Thus, when speaking of our future and freedom and the kind of change we are seeking, anything connected to integrating in any way whatsoever into the American nightmare will only continue to destructively feed us to Capitalism and bring us full circle right back to the same problems over and over again chasing our tails and pausing only long enough to lick our masters feet and ask for more scraps to eat from his table.
For centuries during any and all of our upheavals the Mexican political establishment on both sides of the imposed border have worked closely hand in hand with our oppressors to guide and steer any grassroots working class movement towards the clutch of the hairy hand of the beast that, when all is said and done, is lifted up to his bloody insatiable mouth where he hungrily puts all of us whole to be chewed up, swallowed and sent down the same old tunnel of conformity where we’re digested and assimilated and then evacuated devoid of any revolutionary substance. At his dinner table, which is the world and everything in it, the bloody beast sinks his fangs in and severs our spine effectively putting out any rebellious fire through the ages that keeps us standing on our own two feet to challenge him. Again and again it happens and always with the unwavering help of his favorite little faithful children and messengers….The Mexicano/Chicano elite, the House Negroes of the Barrios…those whose strategy throughout all time has been self-preservation and placing no real demands on the power structure.
They represent and uphold its power and inequality while faking progress by calling on us in the present day to believe in the hope for change served up and embodied in a black president whose bloodlines are the same that course through his slave masters veins. In this way we infinitely shuffle forward in a stupor paralyzed so that we may never be able to leave the realm of that ring of formal and electoral prison politics where the creators of slavery and its perpetuators eternally defend their heavyweight accomplice titles as Mayors, Priests, CEO’s, Senators, Governors, Congressmen/women, and Presidents whose names on the floor of the House and Senate and in the halls of all government are co-operation, compromise, moderation, patience, reform, respect, submission, non-violence and hesitation in the face of exploitation by rapacious bankers and bosses, terror by tyrants, bloody pursuits by La Migra, occupation by war mongering invaders, mass murder by malignantly wicked bomb droppers, hunger because of gluttonous hoarders, and imprisonment by sadistic men in a suit who wear the symbol of the noose in the form of a tie around their necks who consult with men in robes with gavels falsifying and misrepresenting their power over our souls in this earthly prison they build to house our bodies in. But, the Mexican soul cannot be imprisoned! Ya Basta! We are not naïve. We have a long tradition of resistance. We do not want your standards! Our ancient indigenous hearts are not self-serving and we do not seek any longer to trade our long term visions and goals for short term gains. Our children are too important to us, our mother earth and the entire universe as human beings means too much to us. Everything is on the line.
Do you think you can outwit the underdogs? Our strength as Mexicans in the face of prejudice, alienation, and being used as scapegoats has always been in precisely the fact that we do not fit in and don’t want to. From the underground, no papers or fingerprints to track us, illegal, with no choice but to rebel, we squeeze our trigger fingers and push forward with pride in our brown griminess, our sweat, our dirt, our gutters, our partaking in food we harvest and eat with our hands, and all the while embodying absolutely the greatest expressions of beauty the world has ever seen. Deport us? We are the ultimate desert guerrillas who flower when there is no water and like our ancestors when banished can survive on frogs, snakes, bugs, and mosquito larvae long enough to return and build a cosmic society. We are master improvisers and can adapt to any and all of the worst and most inhospitable conditions you can throw at us. We can survive alone on empty stomachs with only the spiritual food our protector Tonatzin can provide. We labor passionately with pride and Beavers are put to shame with the massive amount of work we do.
Under attack, our survival as a species, as artists, as a group will never be above ground, in the spotlight, in the malls, in the voting booths, on tell-a-lie-vision, on Facebook, or in the halls of any government built with the materials and on the foundation of authority that shelters all of the vultures, shacklers, and bloodsuckers of humankind. Our future victories, like the Vietnamese, will be won from the underground sown together with the threads of poverty that has kept us humble before God for centuries. Call us pagans if you will but our spiritual reality is grounded and connected to that which can be our only provider – the land -La Tierra. And we will defend it to the death.
“Bloodthirsty radical Chicano communists” is what they hurl at us for talk like this. For wanting nothing less than what America’s “founding fathers” killed everyone for, land to empower ourselves. For this we are counseled to have respect, to be non-violent, and given speeches, warnings, and chastisements about our being murderous for calling upon our connection to land and the need for independence. But we are not and never have been the initiators of violence because violence begins with poverty and today we are poorer and dying faster than the time when the Chicano Moratorium was founded. Are we evolving as a people? Maybe Oscar Acosta was right on point when he wrote about progress and the Chicano establishment, identity, and integration when he said:
“I don’t think you’re going to see too much more of demonstrations against education or things of that sort. I think that has petered itself out. A lot of kids have gotten into OEO projects and school projects as a result of the movement, so they’ve been in college for a few years now and they are as hip to what’s being taught in the colleges as the white radicals have been for some years now. They think it is a waste of time, that it takes away what little you have of your identity.
A perfect example is the National La Raza Law Students Association, here in Los Angeles, which I am pretty much associated with. The very first day they started school here on some OEO project I went in and spoke and told them, ‘Half of you will never be lawyers. Those of you that do are going to become so only because of your race. You got into these programs because you’re Chicano. So you owe something to your Raza. Yet, I predict that in three years I’m going to be fighting fifty percent of you guys. You’re going to be my enemies.’ They laughed. But it is a fact. This past year I’ve been working on these major cases of importance to Chicanos not only organizationally but legally, and often I’ve been unable to get the assistance of the Chicano law students. My prophecy to them has come true, except I was wrong in one respect. It is not fifty percent I’m fighting. It is about seventy-five percent. This is why I’m no longer pushing for more school programs, more handouts, and more welfare. I think that will destroy the movement.”
On the 40th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium let us not become so nostalgic that we romanticize our prior actions and confrontations with Capital and the military industrial complex. Let us continue to evolve in our political and social movements for justice with nothing less than land in mind. I implore you to remember our prior struggles with a sober sense of militancy, what worked and what didn’t, and most of all to defend yourselves and stop asking the creator of your punishing and impoverished co-dependent existence for your freedom or for anything that will hold you in bondage to them. In many ways we can’t blame the system anymore. We have to stand up in mass together and create our independence. One of our most effective weapons for accomplishing this when they stand in our way is to push the idea that their “American Revolution” continues. And why can’t we call upon their historical fight for liberation? Every one of us should carry a copy of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights with us and commit it to memory. Our struggle is of the same cloth and like other people who have used the American Revolution to inspire their struggles for freedom and independence the entire world is watching to see what the Mexican is going to do.
Today, they have you believing that Arizona is where the fight is. And while this happens and they have the entire nation focused on one southern state, Obama and his henchmen receive another $33.5 billion for a total of $321 billion dollars in their colonial war to consolidate power and the monopoly over the land, resources, and drugs in the Middle East. They put Arizona in the spotlight and quietly send over 46 U.S. warships and 7000 Marines to Costa Rica to prevent any liberation movement from taking control away from their CIA arms and drug money in Colombia. And while they have you believing that Obama is a benevolent black man who inherited a bad situation that is causing him to leave his promises to us unfulfilled, you are peacefully marching in Arizona while they pass a bill on the floor of the House for $600 million in border militarization dollars on top of all of the million dollar spy-drones, surveillance cameras, radar technology, ground sensors, National Guard soldiers, and more fencing. And all of this in fear of the Mexican! Wake up Raza! Arizona is a microcosm of the entire country and like all U.S. citizens who can be deported under the Patriot Act, Mexicans are under siege! No more apathy. We are indigenous to this entire continent and have a psychological advantage because of it. You are not a visitor much less an immigrant. Act like this is your home!
Follow the example of among others, Unión del Barrio, the South Central Farmers, Mujeres de Maíz, and the gente at El Proyecto Jardín. These are our current day heroes who exemplify courageous acts of independence: that of challenging big developers who stop at nothing to keep land away from impoverished communities and who bulldoze and clear-cut, killing trees and destroying food to keep us poor and in a dependent state. The brothers and sisters from the collectives above hit after hit continue organizing around life returning full-circle back to our roots and gathering what resources we have and improvising, organizing, creating, planting, sharing, building, growing, cultivating, tending, and helping every human being from every race produce our freedom in the form of carefully fed soil and tenderly picked food. Gardens are our present day political parties and independence is our harvest. Multiply these sacred spaces by the millions and our future will be in our hands. Communities like this are not hoping for change. They are creating it by teaching and turning out youth whose loyalty is being invested not in political figures or lies but in the earth, art, music, eachother, and plants for knowledge, medicine, balance, understanding, and healing. As we acquire knowledge in this way we revolutionize and learn that it’s in our best interest to reject what the devil offers up in the form of energy sucking cancer causing cell phones, vaccinations, oil dependence, chemically laden foods, drugs, cosmetics, poisoned water, or obesity and laziness causing reservation and mission foods like beef, pork, milk, soda, alcohol, and fast food. Our indigenous selves have stepped forward and arrived on the scene with pride and solutions to our preservation as a species. We are here…the original “organic” gardeners whose traditions will save the planet and the human race from the destruction set upon it by the emissaries of Babylon. Adelante! Tierra y Libertad!
-2012-
Your Local Field Chicano,
El Machete
Hueteotl Lopez -
(Nephew of Mangas – Chief of the Brown Buffalo Party – East Los 13)
*Immediately following this essay on my blog you will find Union del Barrio's essay on the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. Please read it. It is one of the most engaging and forward thinking essays written immediately after Obama was elected.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Union del Barrio on the U.S. Presidential Election (Nov. 2008)
November 5, 2008
Real change will only come from those who struggle for dignity,
justice and self-determination.
With the historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United
States we can say with certainty that there has been a paradigm shift
in the mythology of capitalist white rule. Without a doubt the
backwards concept of race superiority has suffered a blow, but the
transfer of political power from one capitalist party to another
should not be taken lightly. Race relations has entered a new level of
discussion in an empire that has built its existence on the genocide
of indigenous people, the theft of African labor and the premise of
expansionism under the ridiculous assertion of divine intervention to
settle land and conquer people. The significance of the 2008 U.S.
presidential election is that for the first time in the history of
capitalism, the most powerful country in the annals of human history
will be led by a black man. This phenomenon signals a decline in the
ability of white power capitalism to rule openly and viciously as it
has since its inception; but more importantly it signals the need for
those that financed the Obama campaign to promote president elect
Obama as the beacon to keep alive this unjust and decadent capitalist
system. In short, president-elect Obama was formed by the elite and
will rule with the elite, but the historical feat of a black
politician winning the presidency of the United States cannot be taken
for granted.
The election of the first black president of the United States signals
for us as well a new paradigm of struggle. Certainly the triumph of
Obama cannot and does not mean that our struggle for
self-determination, justice and dignity is now over. Quite the
contrary, our struggle must be intensified, it must be unyielding. For
in a time in which the empire finds itself in the midst of the worst
economic crisis, a crisis that has propelled the rest of the world
into a certain global economic depression. In a time in which endless
war is a failed and only remaining strategy for the empire to plunder
the resources of the peoples of the world. In this time, in which our
communities are under siege, raided, persecuted, deported by one of
the most sinister campaigns ever launched by the empire within its
boundaries. In this time in which the wall of death has been built all
along the borderlands as a damming monument erected by the empire in
order to reassure its theft of our lands. That horrendous monument not
only destroys communities, divides our people, wounds our collective
memory, but it kills with impunity.
In a time of crisis for those in power, we offer our commitment to
struggle, our willingness to be free, our hope for a better tomorrow.
In a time of the elite’s crisis we must seize the moment and
transform their crisis into our victory, their weakness into our
triumph, their hesitation into our steadfast movement forward, change
only comes when we, those who have been persecuted, exploited,
incarcerated, marginalized, disenfranchised, stand together and say
enough, and demonstrate our ability to resist. For the empire is more
dangerous when it is wounded, when its ideals are shattered, when its
economic systems are in turmoil, the United States and its capitalist
system has an outstanding ability to be resilient. It has risen
triumphant and empowered on many occasions out of multiple crises, for
such is the nature of the empire. It must self-degrade to gain
strength. Their crisis will not become our victory until we build a
movement with enough political strength to once and for all rid our
people of the yolk of oppression.
Apologists of the empire, and those scrambling to hold on to the now
dilapidated notion of white power will say, that Obama as president of
the United States signifies the end of class and race relations in the
United States. The end of history, the triumph of the Civil Rights
Movement; nothing can be further from the truth. Race and class
differences have been taken to never-before seen levels, while for the
first time the white minority ruling elite must address race relations
when addressing the political superstructure, the system however is
still very much entrenched in white power, it is still resilient, it
is still powerful and it will not concede much more political space.
This is precisely why capitalism was in need of a facelift and the
reason why the Democratic Party has won the contest for control, not
only of the White House, but also for Congress. It is based primarily
on the capitalists’ prospects and ability to confuse poor working
class people into believing that some change has occurred and that
this “change” will represent their interests. We don’t believe this
for a minute. Capitalism by any other name is still capitalism,
oppression by any other means is still oppression, and colonialism by
any other face is still colonialism.
For these reasons the results of this election should not be an
assertion that change is coming. We have always stated that both the
Republican and Democratic parties are representatives of the ruling
class, therefore their interests lie in keeping the wealth produced by
the working poor. Obama, who was criticized by his opponent for his
comments on wealth distribution, reaffirmed his stance by stating that
all he wants is to go back to the tax structure of the 1990s. This
point is best illustrated in the open thievery which took place last
month, as the largest bailout packages in the history of capitalism
were negotiated by Congress- of which both McCain and Obama were a
part of. The bailout was a safety net for some of the largest
corporations and was paid for at the expense of poor people the world
over.
There is no evidence to suggest that the election of Obama will
fundamentally change the economic problems faced by the great majority
of people living within and outside of the political borders of the
United States. After all, Obama attended the elite places of learning
of the United States; his candidacy was supported by the ruling class
of the United States. Obama as president, by itself, does not signify
a fundamental change to the reality of working people and oppressed
people within the boundaries of the United States, on the contrary,
everything points towards the need for the United States to continue
the theft of resources of the people the world over in order to rescue
and maintain the economic system known as capitalism.
The triumph of Obama, over the war criminal McCain, must be viewed as
a weakening of the socio-political understanding of class and race of
the empire. But this feat, by itself does not guarantee change,
although we recognize that the election of a black man to the White
House is of historic proportions, now is the time for people of color
and working people who live within the boundaries of the United States
to unite
The struggle we have before us, beyond the Presidential election, is
the need to articulate what we mean by change. Our immediate task is
to organize ourselves in every community, in every school, in every
field, in every factory, hotel, prison, and wherever we may find
ourselves; for one thing is true, that while the economic crisis
continues to escalate, those in power will continue to fire workers,
all the while more and more people continue to have their homes stolen
by banks in the form of foreclosures.
This is why we support the efforts of those that call for a moratorium
on foreclosures, those who call for a halt to the raids and
deportations, and those that call for reparations for the African
community as well as support for cleaner sources of energy and the
elimination of green house gases, and finally the rights of people to
determine who they want to marry regardless of gender.
To all workers we say that your struggle to build unions and
independent associations at every worksite, free from ICE raids and
intimidation by the bosses signifies change. The struggle of women for
inclusion and equality in our society, to combat all forms of gender
violence is and must continue to be part of our change. To all
educators: your struggle to infuse class-consciousness in the
classroom despite the criminal budget cuts is our struggle. The
struggle of the youth and students for education, cultural, social and
political participation is our struggle. The struggle for relevant
education and access to higher learning is our change. The struggle
for human rights by grass-root community organizations that document
migra and police brutality and have organized themselves to promote
raids-free communities is the change that we need. To all non-profit
workers: your struggle to provide the necessary tools and resources to
help grassroots organizations build a movement from the bottom and to
the left and rid social movements of the paralysis generated by the
non-profit industrial complex, is the change that we are building. To
the intellectuals and academia: your struggle to generate ideas, write
our history and analyze our social conditions despite the restrictions
of bureaucracy of think tanks is the change that is coming. For
artists and cultural workers: the canvas, the mural, the musical
instrument, spoken word, their body, their written word, la flor y el
canto, and to those who continue to use culture as the most beautiful
tool against oppression, this is the change that we must build. To the
environmentalists who have struggled tirelessly against degradation,
pollution, health rights, toxic-free communities, yours is the change
we must build.
We must unite for self-determination of all oppressed people no matter
the nationality; we must unite as a working class people; and our
struggle must be an anti-imperialist struggle, based on the struggles
of all of us, when that happens then change becomes possible. Ours is
not a change based on empty hopes for a better future; it is based on
a need to ensure that all of us build a better community, a better
society, a better world.
¡Concientizació n!
¡Organización!
¡Acción!
¡Liberación!
Union Del Barrio!
www.uniondelbarrio. org
Real change will only come from those who struggle for dignity,
justice and self-determination.
With the historic election of Barack Obama as President of the United
States we can say with certainty that there has been a paradigm shift
in the mythology of capitalist white rule. Without a doubt the
backwards concept of race superiority has suffered a blow, but the
transfer of political power from one capitalist party to another
should not be taken lightly. Race relations has entered a new level of
discussion in an empire that has built its existence on the genocide
of indigenous people, the theft of African labor and the premise of
expansionism under the ridiculous assertion of divine intervention to
settle land and conquer people. The significance of the 2008 U.S.
presidential election is that for the first time in the history of
capitalism, the most powerful country in the annals of human history
will be led by a black man. This phenomenon signals a decline in the
ability of white power capitalism to rule openly and viciously as it
has since its inception; but more importantly it signals the need for
those that financed the Obama campaign to promote president elect
Obama as the beacon to keep alive this unjust and decadent capitalist
system. In short, president-elect Obama was formed by the elite and
will rule with the elite, but the historical feat of a black
politician winning the presidency of the United States cannot be taken
for granted.
The election of the first black president of the United States signals
for us as well a new paradigm of struggle. Certainly the triumph of
Obama cannot and does not mean that our struggle for
self-determination, justice and dignity is now over. Quite the
contrary, our struggle must be intensified, it must be unyielding. For
in a time in which the empire finds itself in the midst of the worst
economic crisis, a crisis that has propelled the rest of the world
into a certain global economic depression. In a time in which endless
war is a failed and only remaining strategy for the empire to plunder
the resources of the peoples of the world. In this time, in which our
communities are under siege, raided, persecuted, deported by one of
the most sinister campaigns ever launched by the empire within its
boundaries. In this time in which the wall of death has been built all
along the borderlands as a damming monument erected by the empire in
order to reassure its theft of our lands. That horrendous monument not
only destroys communities, divides our people, wounds our collective
memory, but it kills with impunity.
In a time of crisis for those in power, we offer our commitment to
struggle, our willingness to be free, our hope for a better tomorrow.
In a time of the elite’s crisis we must seize the moment and
transform their crisis into our victory, their weakness into our
triumph, their hesitation into our steadfast movement forward, change
only comes when we, those who have been persecuted, exploited,
incarcerated, marginalized, disenfranchised, stand together and say
enough, and demonstrate our ability to resist. For the empire is more
dangerous when it is wounded, when its ideals are shattered, when its
economic systems are in turmoil, the United States and its capitalist
system has an outstanding ability to be resilient. It has risen
triumphant and empowered on many occasions out of multiple crises, for
such is the nature of the empire. It must self-degrade to gain
strength. Their crisis will not become our victory until we build a
movement with enough political strength to once and for all rid our
people of the yolk of oppression.
Apologists of the empire, and those scrambling to hold on to the now
dilapidated notion of white power will say, that Obama as president of
the United States signifies the end of class and race relations in the
United States. The end of history, the triumph of the Civil Rights
Movement; nothing can be further from the truth. Race and class
differences have been taken to never-before seen levels, while for the
first time the white minority ruling elite must address race relations
when addressing the political superstructure, the system however is
still very much entrenched in white power, it is still resilient, it
is still powerful and it will not concede much more political space.
This is precisely why capitalism was in need of a facelift and the
reason why the Democratic Party has won the contest for control, not
only of the White House, but also for Congress. It is based primarily
on the capitalists’ prospects and ability to confuse poor working
class people into believing that some change has occurred and that
this “change” will represent their interests. We don’t believe this
for a minute. Capitalism by any other name is still capitalism,
oppression by any other means is still oppression, and colonialism by
any other face is still colonialism.
For these reasons the results of this election should not be an
assertion that change is coming. We have always stated that both the
Republican and Democratic parties are representatives of the ruling
class, therefore their interests lie in keeping the wealth produced by
the working poor. Obama, who was criticized by his opponent for his
comments on wealth distribution, reaffirmed his stance by stating that
all he wants is to go back to the tax structure of the 1990s. This
point is best illustrated in the open thievery which took place last
month, as the largest bailout packages in the history of capitalism
were negotiated by Congress- of which both McCain and Obama were a
part of. The bailout was a safety net for some of the largest
corporations and was paid for at the expense of poor people the world
over.
There is no evidence to suggest that the election of Obama will
fundamentally change the economic problems faced by the great majority
of people living within and outside of the political borders of the
United States. After all, Obama attended the elite places of learning
of the United States; his candidacy was supported by the ruling class
of the United States. Obama as president, by itself, does not signify
a fundamental change to the reality of working people and oppressed
people within the boundaries of the United States, on the contrary,
everything points towards the need for the United States to continue
the theft of resources of the people the world over in order to rescue
and maintain the economic system known as capitalism.
The triumph of Obama, over the war criminal McCain, must be viewed as
a weakening of the socio-political understanding of class and race of
the empire. But this feat, by itself does not guarantee change,
although we recognize that the election of a black man to the White
House is of historic proportions, now is the time for people of color
and working people who live within the boundaries of the United States
to unite
The struggle we have before us, beyond the Presidential election, is
the need to articulate what we mean by change. Our immediate task is
to organize ourselves in every community, in every school, in every
field, in every factory, hotel, prison, and wherever we may find
ourselves; for one thing is true, that while the economic crisis
continues to escalate, those in power will continue to fire workers,
all the while more and more people continue to have their homes stolen
by banks in the form of foreclosures.
This is why we support the efforts of those that call for a moratorium
on foreclosures, those who call for a halt to the raids and
deportations, and those that call for reparations for the African
community as well as support for cleaner sources of energy and the
elimination of green house gases, and finally the rights of people to
determine who they want to marry regardless of gender.
To all workers we say that your struggle to build unions and
independent associations at every worksite, free from ICE raids and
intimidation by the bosses signifies change. The struggle of women for
inclusion and equality in our society, to combat all forms of gender
violence is and must continue to be part of our change. To all
educators: your struggle to infuse class-consciousness in the
classroom despite the criminal budget cuts is our struggle. The
struggle of the youth and students for education, cultural, social and
political participation is our struggle. The struggle for relevant
education and access to higher learning is our change. The struggle
for human rights by grass-root community organizations that document
migra and police brutality and have organized themselves to promote
raids-free communities is the change that we need. To all non-profit
workers: your struggle to provide the necessary tools and resources to
help grassroots organizations build a movement from the bottom and to
the left and rid social movements of the paralysis generated by the
non-profit industrial complex, is the change that we are building. To
the intellectuals and academia: your struggle to generate ideas, write
our history and analyze our social conditions despite the restrictions
of bureaucracy of think tanks is the change that is coming. For
artists and cultural workers: the canvas, the mural, the musical
instrument, spoken word, their body, their written word, la flor y el
canto, and to those who continue to use culture as the most beautiful
tool against oppression, this is the change that we must build. To the
environmentalists who have struggled tirelessly against degradation,
pollution, health rights, toxic-free communities, yours is the change
we must build.
We must unite for self-determination of all oppressed people no matter
the nationality; we must unite as a working class people; and our
struggle must be an anti-imperialist struggle, based on the struggles
of all of us, when that happens then change becomes possible. Ours is
not a change based on empty hopes for a better future; it is based on
a need to ensure that all of us build a better community, a better
society, a better world.
¡Concientizació n!
¡Organización!
¡Acción!
¡Liberación!
Union Del Barrio!
www.uniondelbarrio. org
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Year 2012 - An Essay in Honor of Today's Solar Eclipse
*The following essay was written directly to a group of men in my family whom i deeply care for. It was written on December 21, 2008 and has been edited for your reading. i hope that you'll receive it with understanding for all of the struggles that i face in life and in solidarity with our human family. i chose to publish it today because tomorrow, July 22, 2009, is my eldest son's birth-day and i was even more inspired to share it with you because we are right now in the midst of a Solar Eclipse.
December 21, 2012
-Winter Solstice-
With respect I ask that you please take the time to read this document. You will want to know about this and take it into consideration without setting it aside to get to it later or throwing it away if it becomes to challenging to your current awareness. I write today not only with you in mind but with our entire human family in my heart. Most importantly, this letter will be available to my two sons Kinan & Illimani in the future as a way of reaching out to them through writing to their family and community. With this letter and many of the others I have or will write to you over the years my children and all of our future generations will have firsthand knowledge from one who loves them on the issues we face and how I feel about all of the many complexities in our lives that they will face. They will have my thoughts and hopefully my example to measure up to other experiences and ways of seeing things that are or will be related to them. This is extremely important to me as their Father. I want them to know that through it all I did not use silence to try to protect me or our family. Silence will not protect any of us. They must know that I risked it all to pursue clarification. That by challenging our way of thinking with knowledge and some morality I summoned enough courage to be able to stand open and bare to criticism, being wrong, accused, judged, or even worse attacked, abandoned, and hated. All of these things can be damaging but nothing is more so than silence. Our measure will be in where we stand in moments of challenge and discomfort and our children should always know that we hold fast to all the principles of light during these times. I for one do not wish to fail them. With this in mind, I write not to destroy but to share in the wonderful tradition of all the great writers and thinkers in history who have used the pen to communicate to one another the need for continuous growth, change, and rebirth. Let's evolve!
I open with a prayer:
CREATOR
I do not ask to travel the easy road, but for courage to endure the road I am on.
I do not ask for fulfillment but for humility to accept what is in my path.
I do not ask for perfection in all I do, but for the wisdom not to repeat my mistakes.
I do not ask for these gifts before saying thank you for all you have given me.
Mitakuye Oyasin – All our relations – Aho
On this Winter Solstice – the longest night of the year – our psychological tolerance for darkness is profoundly being challenged. It is a visionary time. It is a time that represents not only the pitch black of night, but also a seed of something that will unfold in the coming year. In this time, we pray for a future as great as our ancestors give to us, for their wisdom to see the prison we are constructing for ourselves, the graves we are digging. To be able to look around at all of the artificial constructs that separate us from nature and know that in the years to come they will be multiplied a hundredfold. A world without direct sunlight, with no fresh air, water, or natural food, can our spirits survive in such a world? The challenge and opportunity that is now is unprecedented. Being the leaders that we are I know that we can rise to the challenge and make the choice to respond appropriately.
December 21, 2012 is four years away and I’d like to take this moment to ask you if you have heard of or have been able to set time aside to study the book, “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012”? I ask this and write about this date because it is so important and connected to our lives and behavior. 2012 is fast becoming commercialized and becuase of this in ways many people are being misled as to the deep and profound meaning of our “date with destiny”. One good thing though is that people are asking questions. They want to know more. I hope that you take the time to read Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins and any other books you will encounter on 2012. (There is a list at the end of this) Read them all. Take in every perspective because so many people are talking about it, writing about it, and attempting to find out exactly what it means and it would benefit you greatly to study and come to your own conclusions.
As for myself, in 1998 I was fortunate to have stumbled upon the work of John Major Jenkins. I was up very late listening to the radio and changing the dial when I heard the words “Mayan” and “calendar”. I tuned in and could barely hear over the static just enough to catch the end of an interview with the author. It was new and amazing information he was sharing about an end date, cosmology, calendrics, pyramids, and our Sun being reborn. I listened intently and then was absolutely astonished when he spoke of the Mayan Sacred bible the “Popol Vuh” because just the day before I had finished reading it in its entirety. It took me a good month to study this text, one of the last 3-4 holy scriptures the murderous Spanish priests didn’t destroy. I had much trouble understanding the text at the time because it was the very first real study I had made of our ancestral literature that uses mythological story form to relate and teach us all about astronomical phenomenon. But when Jenkins spoke that night everything became clear. All of the information I had taken in became understandable. He spoke of the Popol Vuh as the book, the sacred text written in the 1500’s that is the code or piece of many puzzles that tells about the date December 21, 2012.
The Popol Vuh is one of our creation stories. It is a piece of our biblical texts that encompasses the written form of our spiritual knowledge. How is it related to the Mayan Calendrical end date and Winter Solstice on December 21, 2012? You’ll have to study deeply both the Popol Vuh and Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 to know but it’s important in this letter to tell you that both teach us that we are in the midst of a universal change that is so profound that you would never believe what is taking place if you don’t make an attempt to study it. I’ll do my best for you here though with the hope that you’ll trust in what I’ve learned and my ability to be honest.
We are talking about nothing less than revolution. According to Maya science, prophecy, Maya time philosophy, cosmology, astronomy, architecture, mythology, and calendrics we are in the midst of the end of a 5,125 year time cycle. What’s more, is that our ancestors discovered this world age end date while observing and mapping a slow celestial cycle or cosmic shifting called the “precession of the equinoxes” which is the big word used to describe how the earth wobbles on its axis. While spinning, moving around the Sun, and wobbling, the earth through precession has been causing the celestial position of the December solstice sun to slowly approach the center of our galaxy better known among many names as: THE MILKY WAY- THE DARK RIFT- NUCLEAR BULGE – THE ROAD TO THE UNDERWORLD (OUR UNCONCIOUS) OR “XIBALBA BE” IN THE POPOL VUH – THE GALACTIC CENTER – THE WOMB OF OUR MOTHER – THE BIRTH CANAL – OUR GREAT SKY MOTHER – THE GOAL RING IN THE BALLGAME “TLAXTLI” – THE THRONE – OUR HEART.
I open with a prayer:
CREATOR
I do not ask to travel the easy road, but for courage to endure the road I am on.
I do not ask for fulfillment but for humility to accept what is in my path.
I do not ask for perfection in all I do, but for the wisdom not to repeat my mistakes.
I do not ask for these gifts before saying thank you for all you have given me.
Mitakuye Oyasin – All our relations – Aho
On this Winter Solstice – the longest night of the year – our psychological tolerance for darkness is profoundly being challenged. It is a visionary time. It is a time that represents not only the pitch black of night, but also a seed of something that will unfold in the coming year. In this time, we pray for a future as great as our ancestors give to us, for their wisdom to see the prison we are constructing for ourselves, the graves we are digging. To be able to look around at all of the artificial constructs that separate us from nature and know that in the years to come they will be multiplied a hundredfold. A world without direct sunlight, with no fresh air, water, or natural food, can our spirits survive in such a world? The challenge and opportunity that is now is unprecedented. Being the leaders that we are I know that we can rise to the challenge and make the choice to respond appropriately.
December 21, 2012 is four years away and I’d like to take this moment to ask you if you have heard of or have been able to set time aside to study the book, “Maya Cosmogenesis 2012”? I ask this and write about this date because it is so important and connected to our lives and behavior. 2012 is fast becoming commercialized and becuase of this in ways many people are being misled as to the deep and profound meaning of our “date with destiny”. One good thing though is that people are asking questions. They want to know more. I hope that you take the time to read Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 by John Major Jenkins and any other books you will encounter on 2012. (There is a list at the end of this) Read them all. Take in every perspective because so many people are talking about it, writing about it, and attempting to find out exactly what it means and it would benefit you greatly to study and come to your own conclusions.
As for myself, in 1998 I was fortunate to have stumbled upon the work of John Major Jenkins. I was up very late listening to the radio and changing the dial when I heard the words “Mayan” and “calendar”. I tuned in and could barely hear over the static just enough to catch the end of an interview with the author. It was new and amazing information he was sharing about an end date, cosmology, calendrics, pyramids, and our Sun being reborn. I listened intently and then was absolutely astonished when he spoke of the Mayan Sacred bible the “Popol Vuh” because just the day before I had finished reading it in its entirety. It took me a good month to study this text, one of the last 3-4 holy scriptures the murderous Spanish priests didn’t destroy. I had much trouble understanding the text at the time because it was the very first real study I had made of our ancestral literature that uses mythological story form to relate and teach us all about astronomical phenomenon. But when Jenkins spoke that night everything became clear. All of the information I had taken in became understandable. He spoke of the Popol Vuh as the book, the sacred text written in the 1500’s that is the code or piece of many puzzles that tells about the date December 21, 2012.
The Popol Vuh is one of our creation stories. It is a piece of our biblical texts that encompasses the written form of our spiritual knowledge. How is it related to the Mayan Calendrical end date and Winter Solstice on December 21, 2012? You’ll have to study deeply both the Popol Vuh and Maya Cosmogenesis 2012 to know but it’s important in this letter to tell you that both teach us that we are in the midst of a universal change that is so profound that you would never believe what is taking place if you don’t make an attempt to study it. I’ll do my best for you here though with the hope that you’ll trust in what I’ve learned and my ability to be honest.
We are talking about nothing less than revolution. According to Maya science, prophecy, Maya time philosophy, cosmology, astronomy, architecture, mythology, and calendrics we are in the midst of the end of a 5,125 year time cycle. What’s more, is that our ancestors discovered this world age end date while observing and mapping a slow celestial cycle or cosmic shifting called the “precession of the equinoxes” which is the big word used to describe how the earth wobbles on its axis. While spinning, moving around the Sun, and wobbling, the earth through precession has been causing the celestial position of the December solstice sun to slowly approach the center of our galaxy better known among many names as: THE MILKY WAY- THE DARK RIFT- NUCLEAR BULGE – THE ROAD TO THE UNDERWORLD (OUR UNCONCIOUS) OR “XIBALBA BE” IN THE POPOL VUH – THE GALACTIC CENTER – THE WOMB OF OUR MOTHER – THE BIRTH CANAL – OUR GREAT SKY MOTHER – THE GOAL RING IN THE BALLGAME “TLAXTLI” – THE THRONE – OUR HEART.
This is a very rare astronomical process/ alignment that culminates in 2012. And it’s an alignment that happens only once in every 26,000 years! This 26,000 year cycle or world age represents a cycle of spiritual unfolding for humanity. It is in a sense a process of human spiritual gestation. As stargazers we were very in tune and interested in our orientation to the larger cosmos. We were/are Galactic Cosmologists who have developed a science and philosophy that exceeds anything yet encountered by western science. It is a science of cycles of time that we learned about by tuning in to and observing nature cycles, plant growth, the human life cycle, and the cycles of the planets. Through this we come to understand profound things about the processes that created beings go through. And we learn that the processes in the heavens reflect all of the processes on earth and the other way around too. It is the principal of – AS ABOVE SO BELOW or THE MICROCOSM REFLECTS THE MACROCOSM. This principal lies at the heart of and is the foundation of our worldview as INDIGENOUS THINKERS.
And it wasn’t primarily a sky/earth connection that sewed together our mind and body but also all of the inner dreams and visions of spiritual unfolding that happens on our planet is reflected in the outer universe in the cycles of the planets. This is one reason why we built our pyramids, temples, homes, and lodges oriented to the skies in very specific and mathematical ways. We were making a statement about the relationship between our architecture, our inner reality, and the larger universe. We designed to reflect the cosmic order and project our love of GOD within. In effect, we are the cosmos! Know that this is relationship. Not ego. It is self-sacrifice for power in terms you or I have been indoctrinated by Western minds to look down upon because it does not lead to the false power and status so many of us seek in our daily lives dressed up in a suit and tie mimicking the white Capitalist authoritarian patriarchal CEO who serves money and greed. These are the megalomaniacs whose ego has run rampant with extreme selfishness such that it blinds him/her to having a real connection and relationship to our true selves and others. The true self is an eternal/infinite source consciousness. So the struggle plays out: Limited consciousness vs. the eternal divine self from which we all spring. Which do you choose to work towards? How do we balance? How do we come back into right relationship with ourselves and decolonize our minds? We must reclaim our indigenous minds. Not annihilate but sacrifice the ego to make it transparent so that the eternal wisdom of the true self reflected in the cosmos can shine through. This is a core teaching embedded in the Mayan creation mythology and all Native original teachings. This is power. This is decolonization.
The colonizers changed our tribal perception of reality. They changed and altered the spiritual perception of reality and turned it into a religious perception of reality. Religious perception is about submission and obedience and authoritarianism. For example, they put our physical bodies on reservations and in Missions to break the mind and used curfews, fences, and slave labor to break the body. They disallowed us to live on our traditional diets of fruits, seeds, grains, and introduced the Cow, Pig, and Goat, alcohol, milk and other putrefying fast food substances that have created diabetes, heart disease, and cancers in all of our families today. Through their populare culture glamorized in the media they have created fashionable watches to wear and made us believe that the Gregorian calendar and method of keeping time was/is superior to our balanced and in sync cosmological sacred and solar calendars. They separate your head and body, make you believe that matter comes before energy, and that spirit is non-existent effectually shattering your heart and they call this power. But we know according to our original teachings that power is not a man made device or structure. Power is not a political, religious, or social system. That’s not power. These are systems of authority that lead to destruction and disunity. The reality of power is an entirely different reality, and that reality is US – human beings…the power of highly evolved human beings. And to be a human being, we have to connect to the reality of our relationship to power. We have to transform and renew and we are indispensable participants in this process of transformation. Free will! Can we live up to the responsibility of reclaiming our cosmological birth right? December 21, 2012 is upon us and the previous world age along with all of its behaviors are coming to an end. This chapter in the human experience is terminated. A great cycle comes to completion and challenges us to seize the opportunity to establish right relationship with the true self. It is our duty.
On December 21,2012 the cosmic solar father and the Galactic center, the heart of the cosmic mother will be united. We align with the alignment. We will be restored if we choose to sacrifice and surrender our attachment to limitation and the illusion of security, contentment, progress, or success under the Devil’s forms of unity and organization in its structures of false reality. We speak here of the Satanist’s because they are the historical roamers over land and sea who bring destruction and chaos. They are the atomic bombers, the mass murderers whose purpose in this plane of existence is to and has been to attempt to disrupt and destroy the earth and all love. They are the drugs and arms dealers, creators of private property, massive prisons, and The Corporation. They are the invaders of our DNA and cell structures, and the negative energy workers who profess that their reality of fear is the only reality. Their existence is a crime and they too are in touch with the astronomical fact that their time is up. They have always been in a crisis of connection with the eternal energy, the cosmic mother, the solar father, the galactic womb because of their way of acquiring and promoting the non-intuitive approach to acquiring knowledge. Their approach is external and based on satisfying their taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing through the collection of data, graphs and charts, suits and ties, banks and land deeds. This is their relationship to the world and to power. It is this relationship to existence that has caused them to want to control and own everything they can. They are vain and extremely uncompromising. They are false rulers, controlling and deceiving humanity. They are the descendants of darkness whose egos try to rule and who create a backward upside down world. This is the ego believing it is the true center of the world. It is the story of the Fallen One.
Our prophecies tell us that this is an expected and predicted development that happens at the end of every great cycle or world age. The perennial teachings of all of the world’s great spiritual traditions teach us that at the end of the cycles vain egoism is the dominant paradigm ruling and ruining everything and almost everyone on the planet. Each forgets his/her true nature and eternal consciousness loses itself in the vicissitudes of mortal life disconnected from being in contact with the source. But, in the great mythic structure of time the lost consciousness comes around to remember itself with all of the help from the cosmos and gets reinitiated back into an awareness that instead of being lost in the limited state of egoism actually arrives in a deeper essence that is rooted in the eternal and infinite. This is redemption, salvation, rebirth, evolution! Unless, we refuse in our cemented minds, reactionary and stale emotions, and handicapped visions to humble ourselves and eliminate ego consciousness we will not survive or be truly at peace and connected in balance and love in 2012.
This is not some arbitrary belief system of a forgotten people. What we find through INDIGENOUS philosophy is the key to our holistic health. Our responsibility now is to remember and ultimately ACT. And after committing to remembering what we have been taught to forget and be ashamed of we must stay dedicated and honest in our attempt to be a new individual, community, parent, friend, lover, and reborn warrior organizing not for money, fortune, fame, microphone time, camera shots, or shallow recognition, but for true freedom and the return to the path of the true self our ancestors exemplified.
At this point you may be a bit dismissive of what I’m relating to you especially if you see the world through the Colonizers lenses. If you’ve even convinced yourself over many years and through adolescent rebellion that you’re an Atheist and call yourself one you may laugh at the thought of human behavior and existence being shaped and molded by cosmological energy and the position, motion, vibration, and weight of the planets. It’s okay. You don’t have to believe or confirm for it all to be taking place. You only have to look at the condition of your life and all of the relationships you have come into on this planet. Are you connected? Are you trying to be in touch with others in a real way and more importantly with your own soul, your pain and anguish, and with your past? In turn, are you in touch with our Mother Earth? Do you protect and honor her by planting trees, cultivationg love by growing food, saving water, reducing everything you consume and throw away? Do you wholeheartedly defend her right to exist? Can you work in unison with her or do you cement and build over her flesh, destroy her lungs by killing trees, pollute her womb by not recycling, reusing, and conserving? Do you use her plant medicine to prevent and cure sickness and dis-ease or do you vaccinate, swallow pills, and cut body parts out that speak to loud for your soul to hear? Do you make a ritual and ceremony with others using alcohol to feel good? What relaxes your unbalanced emotions and stress? Can you hunt in time of need to find your own food and properly use an entire animal for sustenance? Can you find your own water to quench your family’s thirst? What will you do when that inevitable day arrives under the Colonizer’s control when the stores close, banks shut down, police take to the streets, curfew’s are imposed, and all of the state provided energy to your home is cut? Will you remain an Agency Indian begging for hand-outs and rations, working within the structure and framework they establish to petition and redress grievances or will you rebel and encourage others to do the same? Can you fix things, use tools, and most importantly improvise or do you depend on and hire others to fix your leaky and lazy habits? Can you truly say today as leaders, role models, organizers, teachers, and community activists that your personal life reflects your public life and persona…(The microcosm/macrocosm – as above so below Maya/Indigenous time philosophy)? Or do you feel like you’re living 2,3,&4 lives?
It has been said that the true measure of a community is in the condition of its women. How are your daughters? Your wives, what men are in their lives and are you in touch with yourself enough as men to know and acknowledge that their relationship to and with men is a direct reflection of their feelings toward and for you? How are they able to get your attention as your offspring, negatively or positively? How are all of your grandchildren?
“Indigenous people love children above all else, they are the hope of the future and justification for all of the trials and tribulations we face in life as parents. Kids guarantee the perpetuation of our family and continuous upholding of our honor. They are the focus of very much of our time – or should be – and almost all of our attention so that the future is guaranteed as for the majority successful. Most importantly is the time they spend with their grandparents, as these have both the most time to devote to their care and wisdom to pass on to the next generation. If we’re too busy as parents our most important sense of self and continuity come from the very old, who are kind, gentle, considerate, and wise with us, particularly as children.” (Taken from the book: "The Spirit of Indian Women" by Judith Fitzgerald)
Is this your feeling or do you look upon your grandchildren/children as a burden, an income, a punishment for your own parental shortfalls with your own children? Do you strive to use gentleness and all of the other positive techniques you are happy to use with others in public and at work? Or do you strike your grandchildren/children with belts, your fists, your feet, your words, and overt power? Do you seek to punish, be vengeful, manipulative, or create guilt dependency in your relations?
In essence, what I am asking is are you ready and preparing for the completion of the circle, the galactic alignment, harmonic convergence, and REBIRTH! Are you on linear time or a circular thinker? Are you reaping well sown seeds in the evolutionary process of becoming or growing old, stale, burdened, spiritually handicapped, Godless, cemented and unmoving, reactionary, illogical, and a slave to your 5 senses? Let us pray together:
And it wasn’t primarily a sky/earth connection that sewed together our mind and body but also all of the inner dreams and visions of spiritual unfolding that happens on our planet is reflected in the outer universe in the cycles of the planets. This is one reason why we built our pyramids, temples, homes, and lodges oriented to the skies in very specific and mathematical ways. We were making a statement about the relationship between our architecture, our inner reality, and the larger universe. We designed to reflect the cosmic order and project our love of GOD within. In effect, we are the cosmos! Know that this is relationship. Not ego. It is self-sacrifice for power in terms you or I have been indoctrinated by Western minds to look down upon because it does not lead to the false power and status so many of us seek in our daily lives dressed up in a suit and tie mimicking the white Capitalist authoritarian patriarchal CEO who serves money and greed. These are the megalomaniacs whose ego has run rampant with extreme selfishness such that it blinds him/her to having a real connection and relationship to our true selves and others. The true self is an eternal/infinite source consciousness. So the struggle plays out: Limited consciousness vs. the eternal divine self from which we all spring. Which do you choose to work towards? How do we balance? How do we come back into right relationship with ourselves and decolonize our minds? We must reclaim our indigenous minds. Not annihilate but sacrifice the ego to make it transparent so that the eternal wisdom of the true self reflected in the cosmos can shine through. This is a core teaching embedded in the Mayan creation mythology and all Native original teachings. This is power. This is decolonization.
The colonizers changed our tribal perception of reality. They changed and altered the spiritual perception of reality and turned it into a religious perception of reality. Religious perception is about submission and obedience and authoritarianism. For example, they put our physical bodies on reservations and in Missions to break the mind and used curfews, fences, and slave labor to break the body. They disallowed us to live on our traditional diets of fruits, seeds, grains, and introduced the Cow, Pig, and Goat, alcohol, milk and other putrefying fast food substances that have created diabetes, heart disease, and cancers in all of our families today. Through their populare culture glamorized in the media they have created fashionable watches to wear and made us believe that the Gregorian calendar and method of keeping time was/is superior to our balanced and in sync cosmological sacred and solar calendars. They separate your head and body, make you believe that matter comes before energy, and that spirit is non-existent effectually shattering your heart and they call this power. But we know according to our original teachings that power is not a man made device or structure. Power is not a political, religious, or social system. That’s not power. These are systems of authority that lead to destruction and disunity. The reality of power is an entirely different reality, and that reality is US – human beings…the power of highly evolved human beings. And to be a human being, we have to connect to the reality of our relationship to power. We have to transform and renew and we are indispensable participants in this process of transformation. Free will! Can we live up to the responsibility of reclaiming our cosmological birth right? December 21, 2012 is upon us and the previous world age along with all of its behaviors are coming to an end. This chapter in the human experience is terminated. A great cycle comes to completion and challenges us to seize the opportunity to establish right relationship with the true self. It is our duty.
On December 21,2012 the cosmic solar father and the Galactic center, the heart of the cosmic mother will be united. We align with the alignment. We will be restored if we choose to sacrifice and surrender our attachment to limitation and the illusion of security, contentment, progress, or success under the Devil’s forms of unity and organization in its structures of false reality. We speak here of the Satanist’s because they are the historical roamers over land and sea who bring destruction and chaos. They are the atomic bombers, the mass murderers whose purpose in this plane of existence is to and has been to attempt to disrupt and destroy the earth and all love. They are the drugs and arms dealers, creators of private property, massive prisons, and The Corporation. They are the invaders of our DNA and cell structures, and the negative energy workers who profess that their reality of fear is the only reality. Their existence is a crime and they too are in touch with the astronomical fact that their time is up. They have always been in a crisis of connection with the eternal energy, the cosmic mother, the solar father, the galactic womb because of their way of acquiring and promoting the non-intuitive approach to acquiring knowledge. Their approach is external and based on satisfying their taste, touch, sight, smell, and hearing through the collection of data, graphs and charts, suits and ties, banks and land deeds. This is their relationship to the world and to power. It is this relationship to existence that has caused them to want to control and own everything they can. They are vain and extremely uncompromising. They are false rulers, controlling and deceiving humanity. They are the descendants of darkness whose egos try to rule and who create a backward upside down world. This is the ego believing it is the true center of the world. It is the story of the Fallen One.
Our prophecies tell us that this is an expected and predicted development that happens at the end of every great cycle or world age. The perennial teachings of all of the world’s great spiritual traditions teach us that at the end of the cycles vain egoism is the dominant paradigm ruling and ruining everything and almost everyone on the planet. Each forgets his/her true nature and eternal consciousness loses itself in the vicissitudes of mortal life disconnected from being in contact with the source. But, in the great mythic structure of time the lost consciousness comes around to remember itself with all of the help from the cosmos and gets reinitiated back into an awareness that instead of being lost in the limited state of egoism actually arrives in a deeper essence that is rooted in the eternal and infinite. This is redemption, salvation, rebirth, evolution! Unless, we refuse in our cemented minds, reactionary and stale emotions, and handicapped visions to humble ourselves and eliminate ego consciousness we will not survive or be truly at peace and connected in balance and love in 2012.
This is not some arbitrary belief system of a forgotten people. What we find through INDIGENOUS philosophy is the key to our holistic health. Our responsibility now is to remember and ultimately ACT. And after committing to remembering what we have been taught to forget and be ashamed of we must stay dedicated and honest in our attempt to be a new individual, community, parent, friend, lover, and reborn warrior organizing not for money, fortune, fame, microphone time, camera shots, or shallow recognition, but for true freedom and the return to the path of the true self our ancestors exemplified.
At this point you may be a bit dismissive of what I’m relating to you especially if you see the world through the Colonizers lenses. If you’ve even convinced yourself over many years and through adolescent rebellion that you’re an Atheist and call yourself one you may laugh at the thought of human behavior and existence being shaped and molded by cosmological energy and the position, motion, vibration, and weight of the planets. It’s okay. You don’t have to believe or confirm for it all to be taking place. You only have to look at the condition of your life and all of the relationships you have come into on this planet. Are you connected? Are you trying to be in touch with others in a real way and more importantly with your own soul, your pain and anguish, and with your past? In turn, are you in touch with our Mother Earth? Do you protect and honor her by planting trees, cultivationg love by growing food, saving water, reducing everything you consume and throw away? Do you wholeheartedly defend her right to exist? Can you work in unison with her or do you cement and build over her flesh, destroy her lungs by killing trees, pollute her womb by not recycling, reusing, and conserving? Do you use her plant medicine to prevent and cure sickness and dis-ease or do you vaccinate, swallow pills, and cut body parts out that speak to loud for your soul to hear? Do you make a ritual and ceremony with others using alcohol to feel good? What relaxes your unbalanced emotions and stress? Can you hunt in time of need to find your own food and properly use an entire animal for sustenance? Can you find your own water to quench your family’s thirst? What will you do when that inevitable day arrives under the Colonizer’s control when the stores close, banks shut down, police take to the streets, curfew’s are imposed, and all of the state provided energy to your home is cut? Will you remain an Agency Indian begging for hand-outs and rations, working within the structure and framework they establish to petition and redress grievances or will you rebel and encourage others to do the same? Can you fix things, use tools, and most importantly improvise or do you depend on and hire others to fix your leaky and lazy habits? Can you truly say today as leaders, role models, organizers, teachers, and community activists that your personal life reflects your public life and persona…(The microcosm/macrocosm – as above so below Maya/Indigenous time philosophy)? Or do you feel like you’re living 2,3,&4 lives?
It has been said that the true measure of a community is in the condition of its women. How are your daughters? Your wives, what men are in their lives and are you in touch with yourself enough as men to know and acknowledge that their relationship to and with men is a direct reflection of their feelings toward and for you? How are they able to get your attention as your offspring, negatively or positively? How are all of your grandchildren?
“Indigenous people love children above all else, they are the hope of the future and justification for all of the trials and tribulations we face in life as parents. Kids guarantee the perpetuation of our family and continuous upholding of our honor. They are the focus of very much of our time – or should be – and almost all of our attention so that the future is guaranteed as for the majority successful. Most importantly is the time they spend with their grandparents, as these have both the most time to devote to their care and wisdom to pass on to the next generation. If we’re too busy as parents our most important sense of self and continuity come from the very old, who are kind, gentle, considerate, and wise with us, particularly as children.” (Taken from the book: "The Spirit of Indian Women" by Judith Fitzgerald)
Is this your feeling or do you look upon your grandchildren/children as a burden, an income, a punishment for your own parental shortfalls with your own children? Do you strive to use gentleness and all of the other positive techniques you are happy to use with others in public and at work? Or do you strike your grandchildren/children with belts, your fists, your feet, your words, and overt power? Do you seek to punish, be vengeful, manipulative, or create guilt dependency in your relations?
In essence, what I am asking is are you ready and preparing for the completion of the circle, the galactic alignment, harmonic convergence, and REBIRTH! Are you on linear time or a circular thinker? Are you reaping well sown seeds in the evolutionary process of becoming or growing old, stale, burdened, spiritually handicapped, Godless, cemented and unmoving, reactionary, illogical, and a slave to your 5 senses? Let us pray together:
“Grandfather, Grandmother,Great Spirit...
You have been always, and before you no one has been.
There is no other to pray to but you.
Everything has been touched by your soul.
The star nations universe wide you have finished.
The four quarters of the earth, the day, and in that day,
everything you complete.
Great Spirit, lean close to the earth so you may hear the voice I send.
Where the sun goes down, behold your son; Thunder Beings, behold me!
Where the white giant lives in power and lightening, behold your creation.
Where the sun shines continually, whence the day-break star and the night,
I stand before you in humbleness where summer lives, in the depths of the heavens,
An Eagle of Power.
And Mother Earth, our provider, you have shown mercy to your children.”
Fe, Amor, Y Paz.
Inlakech,
Hueteotl Lopez
You have been always, and before you no one has been.
There is no other to pray to but you.
Everything has been touched by your soul.
The star nations universe wide you have finished.
The four quarters of the earth, the day, and in that day,
everything you complete.
Great Spirit, lean close to the earth so you may hear the voice I send.
Where the sun goes down, behold your son; Thunder Beings, behold me!
Where the white giant lives in power and lightening, behold your creation.
Where the sun shines continually, whence the day-break star and the night,
I stand before you in humbleness where summer lives, in the depths of the heavens,
An Eagle of Power.
And Mother Earth, our provider, you have shown mercy to your children.”
Fe, Amor, Y Paz.
Inlakech,
Hueteotl Lopez
– 2012 –
* Here is a list of books that you will most definately like to read if you are interested in learning more:
1. The Mayan Factor - Jose Arguelles - This is one of the greatest most important life changing books i have ever read that brought to me the beginning of the understanding of HARMONICS. That is, the vibratory nature of the universe and how our indigenous ancestors were in tune mathmatically with God's cosmological music. I recommend this book to everyone for a deep and slow study of 2012.
2. Time and the Technosphere - Jose Arguelles ....same as above.
3. The Mystery of 2012 - Predictions, prophecies, & possibilites...a wonderful collection of work by many authors that gives different but balanced points of view on the idea of Maya cosmology and thought.
4. Galactic Alignment - John Major Jenkins...another fantastic book by Jenkins that builds on all of his work in his book Maya Cosmogenesis 2012.
5. The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness - Carl Johan Calleman, Ph.D. with a forward by Jose Arguelles. This is an absolutely fantastic read!
6. The Mayan Code - Time Acceleration and Awakening the World Mind By: Barbara Hand Clow. Please read this book and especially her wonderful work on all the people in the world who believe in the "End Times" philosophy. Her book is aptly entitled "Catastrophobia". An amazing book that puts to rest all of the fear and loathing over the world coming to an end and all the professors of that idea.
7. The Hopi Survival Kit - The Prophecies, Instructions, and Warnings Revealed by the Last Elders. By: Thomas E. Mails. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK. i cannot stress this enough. This book shook me to the core and will always be a classic read in my library.
8. Return of the Bird Tribes - Ken Carey . Absolutely deep reading when you have already read all the basic material on indigenous thought processes.
9. Mitakuye Oyasin - "We are all Related" By: Dr. A.C. Ross...This book was given to me in the year 2000 by a person who i consider one of my spiritual mentors. He knew that it would help decolonize my mind and open up the path for me to begin my journey on the Red Road. I met Dr. Ross many years later and had a wonderful conversation with him about how his writings affected my soul. This book is a must for all young people.
10. Ancient Americas - Maya, Aztec, Inka & Beyond. By: Nicholas J. Saunders. This book and the next two i will list go good together.
11. Day of Destiny - John Mini. If you want an amazing understanding of the deep intracies and math of the Mexica Sun Stone, the cosmos, your body, electricity, medicine, chemistry, physics, etc. then find this book and you won't put it down!
12. The Aztec Calendar Math & Design - Charles William Johnson.
13. Breaking the Mayan Code - Michael D. Coe. This and any of Coe's books are a great starting point and always good reference forever on Mayan culture..
14. 2012 and the Galactic Center - The Return of the Great Mother. By: Christine R. Page, M.D. You'll really enjoy this little story that connects Mayan/Egyptian thought.
15. And...for the Athiest's i leave you with the last two recommendations among so many other books:
*Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya - By: Miguel Leon-Portilla
*The Natural History of the soul in Ancient Mexico - By: Jill Leslie McKeever Furst. These books will decolonize!
**Almost forgot one of tha bible's of decolonization:
*Time and Reality in the Thought of the Maya - By: Miguel Leon-Portilla
*The Natural History of the soul in Ancient Mexico - By: Jill Leslie McKeever Furst. These books will decolonize!
**Almost forgot one of tha bible's of decolonization:
The Wretched of the Earth - By: Frantz Fanon -
Sunday, July 5, 2009
"Papa, What is The 4th of July?"
July 4th, 2009
At 4 years old my little boy has asked questions that he never asked at the age of 3. Such as, “Papa, why do they blow things up like that?” “Who makes the fireworks?” “Why is it so loud?” “Why don’t we buy fireworks Papa?” As for my 3 year old, he’s not even aware that humans under the cover of darkness are lighting those things. For all I know, to him the sky could just be on fire and exploding, coming to an end right before his eyes. Which, judging from him saying he’s scared and wanting to go back inside to watch Dora the Explorer could very well be the case.
As a father of these two beautiful little human beings I’ve come to remember something that I forgot: For little newcomers to our earth and all the adult inventions and creations the 4th of July can be a frightening experience. It definitely scared my son’s, neither of whom could sit outside on our back porch for more than a half hour and watch everyone else explode fireworks around them in their neighborhood so I hugged them and we sat together answering his questions and I took the opportunity to feed his little but very intelligent, concerned, and truth seeking mind with information about our country’s love affair with explosives.
“You see son, every year about this time the entire country we live in celebrates war. In fact, in this country that we are citizens of during every month of the year everyone knowingly or unknowingly celebrates war. This happens by being told, persuaded, suggested to, and sold war and the culture of celebrating it in movies, commercials, billboards, football games, before all athletic games, and even on school campuses. The latter of which you will have to remember the most because after growing up year after year being bombarded with an entire culture and way of life that is built on the foundations of war, you’ll turn 18 years of age and a man called a recruiter will be given your phone number and address and approach you in a clean cut hair cut, firm words and muscles, shiny shoes and a perfectly pressed suit and ask you to join him in training to join the army, Navy, Air Force, or Marines, travel to exotic distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people and kill them.
The sounds you hear every year on the 4th of July will in many ways prepare you for this. And you’ll need it if you decide to listen to them because these are the sounds millions of people all over the world have heard when airplanes fly over and moments later drop tons of bombs or several massive bombs on earth in places like Hiroshima or Nagasaki killing 350,000 – 500,000 humans or 300,00 humans in Vietnam (50,000 + U.S. soldiers too), 500,000 humans in Laos, 600,000 in Cambodia, over 400,000 humans in Central American countries, 4million five hundred thousand in Korea, or over 1 million Iraqi’s to date so far…………and the invasions and conquest and plunder keep rolling forward like everlasting U.S. made thunder. And, my son, since we are Native Americans indigenous to this land I have to tell you about all of our ancestors, all 80million plus of our grandfathers and grandmothers in the America’s who were not only killed but who’s souls were destroyed by the outlawing of our culture, our language, our dress codes, hairstyles, our religion, our concept of time, our food, and most importantly our whole continental land mass was lost to invaders led by a group of people who have never stopped celebrating, teaching, preaching, and promoting war as an answer to every one of life’s complexities.
You must remember first and foremost too son that, as Brigadier General Smedley Butler, America’s most decorated soldier once said, “War is a Racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.” “A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small “inside” group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of a war a few people make huge fortunes.” “How many of these millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dugout? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried the bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?”
These are the questions you’ll have to remember to ask my beautiful son when they come knocking on our door to try to take you and thousands of other young men and women away and off into the world to hurt others for their corporate profits wearing the mask of a corporate created bogey man or terrorist in the world.
I love you so much son and I cannot lie to you. The 4th of July is no longer a celebration of revolutionary wars of liberation. It no longer reminds us to support all of those self-defensive combat necessities fought for and buy people seeking to be truly free. It is now a celebration of any war but those kinds. And surely it is not about patriotism or the celebration of the right to live by and practice the principals of the world’s most greatest and sacred document: The Constitution of the United States of America. This is because every time young men and women led by mislead adults light a rocket or a firecracker it is all training to prepare him or her to be comfortable and desensitized to the deep booming explosions the smell of gun powder, and the bright fiery lights of bombs being sent up into the sky. Only in war it’s the other way around. Bombs drop and even rain down upon the earth and its inhabitants and destroy everything the creator has blessed us with.
Fireworks.... I know son, they’re exciting and hard to not look at and everyone is having fun buying them and lighting them but for everyone involved how many think or will ever think about the 4th of July in ways that we’re discussing it right now or the way those English revolutionaries died and were persecuted for in the 1700’s in the midst of a war fighting for their independence? Today war can get so twisted and tied up in so many pretty ways, in beautiful wrapping paper and happy celebrations. But please don’t forget its brutality. Let’s not forget son. And please forgive me for laying so much on you at an early age. I know that at this time it may seem that I’m denying you so much fun and maybe even shattering your dreams. But in the end I pray for you to dream of peace, love, happiness, kindness, togetherness, and to live in the spirit of questioning everything like the great thinker and intellect Fredrick Douglass did in 1852 when he wrote, “What to The Slave is your 4th of July?”
Love,
Papa
* Who makes all of your fireworks? Take a minute to see this....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UesTUelRJGw
Frederick Douglass' 4th of July Speech:
“What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”
July 5, 1852 Rochester, New York *[See full text] ....Fellow Citizens: Pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?
Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap like as an hart."
But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary. Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin. I can today take up the lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people.
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yes! We wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive, required of us a song and they who wasted us, required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth."
Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.
My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July. Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse"; I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.
But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being?
The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute-books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!
For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that while we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men-digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshiping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave-we are called upon to prove that we are men?
Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer and insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.
What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the last, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No; I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.
What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is past.
At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.
What to the American slave is your Fourth of July I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy's thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.
Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.
* Occasion: Meeting sponsored by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society, Rochester Hall, Rochester, N.Y. To illustrate the full shame of slavery, Douglass delivered a speech that took aim at the pieties of the nation -- the cherished memories of its revolution, its principles of liberty, and its moral and religious foundation. The Fourth of July, a day celebrating freedom, was used by Douglass to remind his audience of liberty’s unfinished business.
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