Support this amazing collective of Latin@ musicians known as Las Cafeteras. They are celebrating traditional Mexican folk music of Son Jarocho and sharing the stories of peoples’ struggles and common human experiences through their lyrics and performances.
Support my favorite Latino webseries by helping them produce a full season via Kickstarter http://kck.st/HzE3MT!
from the creators!
Tell everyone you know about our journey, show them our videos, and share the love. We are challenging the roles for Latinos on mainstream media by taking on the industry and creating our own programming. We only have 25 days left to make a difference and we want you to be a part of our journey and a part of our success story. 25 days, here we come!
Vikki Law: Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons
Visions of Abolition: from Critical Resistance to A New Way of Life
A new documentary that introduces the history, theory and practices of the contemporary prison abolition movement. Weaving together the voices of women entangled in the criminal justice system, along with leading scholars on prison abolition (Angela Davis and Ruth Wilson Gilmore), this film provides a critical analysis of the disfunctionality and violence of the prison system. The film focuses on the life story of Susan Burton demonstrating how her work at “A New Way of Life” is an inspiring example of abolition in practice.
(Source: tumii)
Resistance has a face.
Image: Chenalhó, Chiapas, photographed by Pedro Valtierra. Published in the Mexican newspaper La Jornada, January 1998.
“What connects me to this photograph is not a scholarly reflection or a sovereign and distanced observation but what Roland Barthes called a punctum, which ‘rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me.’ The phrase global uprising escaped many a mouth in the past twelve months. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly the last time people of otherwise lukewarm, muted political temperament spoke so plainly and widely this way. Rebellion—if one dares evoke revolution—often carries a hue of embarrassment in the polite global North, not least of all in the one industrialized country on earth where capitulation to powerful and inbred ruling elites has been par for the course. In a communiqué about this image, Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos wrote, ‘Do these pictures lie when they show the look in those Zapatista women’s eyes? Do you see submissiveness or shyness in those looks? The government says they’re not persecuting Zapatistas, that their army is helping the population. Do you see gratitude in those eyes?’ What traces this image (taken during arguably the first major alter-globalization uprising) to the present and, one hopes, the present-future, is the loss of submissiveness, shyness, and gratitude.”
—Maryam Monalisa Gharavi
(via Call and Response - Triple Canopy)
(via aprilseye)
“…nosotros no nos levantamos en armas por el gusto de matar y morir… Para nuestros niños y niñas no hay escuelas ni medicinas, no hay ropa ni alimentos, no hay un techo digno en donde guardar nuestra pobreza. Para nuestros niños solo hay trabajo, ignorancia y muerte. La tierra que tenemos no sirve para nada. Nuestros hijos tienen que entrar a trabajar desde muy pequeños para poder conseguir algo de alimento, ropa y medicinas… comen lo mismo que nosotros: maíz, frijol y chile. No pueden ir a la escuela y aprender la castilla porque el trabajo mata todo el día y la enfermedad la noche mata. Así viven y mueren nuestros niños y niñas desde hace 501 años. Nosotros sus padres, sus madres, sus hermanos y hermanas no quisimos más cargar con la culpa de nada hacer por nuestros niños y niñas. Buscamos caminos de paz para tener justicia y encontramos muerte; encontramos siempre dolor y pena. Ya no pudimos más… era tanto el dolor y la pena. Y entonces tuvimos que llegar a encontrar el camino de la guerra, porque lo que pedimos con voz no fue escuchado.”
(via aprilseye)
(via mytongueisforked)
Xuyen Pham’s Garden; East New Orleans, LA
After Xuyen Pham lost her New Orleans home to Hurricane Katrina, she turned the property into a farm to feed her community. She fled Vietnam with her husband and children at the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. After months in Southeast Asian refugee camps they were moved to Fort Chaffee in Arkansas. The family was eventually sponsored by a hotel owner in Oklahoma, but the cold proved too much so they moved yet again, settling in the “Mary Queen of Vietnam” community in East New Orleans.
This farm is surrounded by houses (we are right in the middle of a suburban housing tract in East New Orleans).
Xuyen stands amidst taro plants in her home garden. The plant stems are a base ingredient in traditional soups and congees found on most Vietnamese dinner tables. By growing taro and other vegetables, she keeps Vietnamese traditions alive in her community.
Xuyen’s definition of “food sovereignty”: The ability of community members to control food access (both effluent and influent) independent of outside food sources (such as supermarkets). Members of the community grow traditional fruits and vegetables and fisherfolk go shrimping, fishing, and crabbing to sell at local stores, the local Saturday farmers market, and most importantly, to feed their families and community members.
Xuyen is also a participant in a local New Orleans East aquaponics project. The project is being implemented by MQVN Community Development Corporation and was established originally by fisherfolk displaced by the BP oil drilling disaster as a way to create jobs and to ensure adequate food access in New Orleans East (a USDA-identified food desert). In the near future, she and her husband, with the help of MQVN Community Development Corporation, will construct greenhouses and an aquaponics growing system on their farm plot.
(via daughtersofdilla)
