May 2013
4 posts
Drawing Blood: Being a Poor Person in America
michaelmlekoday:
Drawing Blood: Being a Poor Person in America
Last night, I met my classmate’s significant other, let’s call him L, at a Ghostface concert. Waiting for the opening act to finish, four of us (my classmate, L, and another friend of mine—all grad students) sat in a booth and did the usual getting to know each other stuff—talking about where we were from, where we went to school,...
“I love my job and I can’t imagine doing anything else, but doing it here at the...”
– An Open Letter to Karen Warren Coleman, Vice President for Campus Life and Human Services (by Kaya Williams)
as most grad students of color know, Kaya Williams is not alone in feeling this way. this is a persistent problem on university campuses nationwide.
at Washington State University, for...
1 tag
In and for itself, or Our Limitations are...
Kiss me, stroke
my face as if
the hearts of trees
had hidden daggers
and loaded guns.
Hidden from campisinos.
Grab the roots of my hair
like you are pulling overgrown
weeds from productive
fields. (Small hours of the night)
Union meetings; clandestine.
Run (past this story, through history)
your hands through me
as if I were a ghost damned.
The Holy Spirit,
a breath...
April 2013
5 posts
chanclazo:
If you’re a nopalero who can’t speak Spanish, who has never had a chapulín or a quesadilla in their life, despite the fact that you’re el pinche hijo de la misma India María—I don’t blame you.
This country does everything it can to bleach you into the landscape. You come out whiter and cleaner than polished rice, if they have their way.
What Happened to Working-Class New York? | The... →
“In some respects, working-class New York is thriving. With more than 40 percent of the workforce foreign-born, it has a cultural vibrancy only occasionally noted in the mainstream media (except in reviews of ethnic restaurants), but evident to any casual visitor to immigrant neighborhoods. People still flock to New York from all over the world seeking economic opportunities and personal...
March 2013
5 posts
4 tags
Sam Gindin on the crisis in labor →
“There’s a perception in the broad public that unions are mostly interested in themselves. The leaders seem to be very interested in their own salaries and perks, too. But it seems that the leadership thinks it has a product to sell. That product is a contract and certain privileges in wages and benefits. That seems to foster a perception among the broad public that unions just don’t care...
“One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an...”
– Alexander Solzhenitsyn (via kurtlac)
February 2013
7 posts
“The Spanish men left babies right and left. When most of the indias had given...”
– Remedios: Stories of Earth and Iron from the History of Puertorriqueñas (via onthemargin) (via malditafeminista)
January 2013
14 posts
“What’s Genocide?” by Carlos Andrés Gómez
swarajist:
their high school principal told me I couldn’t teach poetry with profanity so I asked my students, “Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.” in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas then straightened out like an SS infantry “Okay. Please put your hands down. Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.” blank stares mixed with curious...
2 tags
Ivory
My dreams have taken on spectral qualities.
Sounds of lurid pianos, a borderland of care taking
and abandonment.
A women riding on a horse of oil, against
a purple dusk.
The moon, horns of a bison whispering a
lover’s prelude.
Her arms cascading behind her like
tense arrows. The hum of fire
presenting itself like water, colors of
nobility.
“Show the sun miracles!”
...
-Magical realism
-Politicized
-Children
-History
-Family
-Interweaving narratives, relationships
-Cyclical/repetition
-Longing, neither despair nor hope, but something different, perhaps a complete ‘nothing’ in the Heideggerian sense, but definitely how Lorca uses longing
-The sea
-Women, Love
-Smiles
-Differences in class/race/ethnicity/language
-Spatial problems...
“Shrugging off her weariness, she did what many women of her background would...”
– Junot Díaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, pg. 144
“INTERVIEWER
Do you see a difference between the social roles of American and...”
– Carlos Fuentes, The Art of Fiction No. 68
(via thecaribbeanbinder)
2 tags
Hemlock
Pray, skeleton!
Not even the seven luck dragons stay hence!
Marduk has died in some bastard corner,
or has become a hermit in senility.
The Monkey King, full of clouded flowers and
fruit, saw his own rebellion against heaven like
blocked algae in a stream of ponds. The released
horses laughed the vibrant mischief their liberator
always laughs.
Quezacotl, pruning the diamonds...
December 2012
10 posts
“What is interesting, is that the Frida Kahlo venerated by American feminists is...”
– Coco Fusco (via plastickitten)
“African Americans are sometimes too quick to speak about Dominican race...”
– Junot Diaz, Same Trip, Different Ships By Milca Esdaille (via howtobeterrell)
Where is the .gif with a fully applauding audience?
(via lati-negros)
2 tags
A pain without object
What is desired is not what is held.
I can’t see green eyes or hold eyes
so brown they reflect a movement of
crude oil. I can’t feel or touch the
forgetting longing of deep songs.
I have made myself as wide as blueness
and painful as clear skies. Weeping
alligators, listing off foreclosures the
sun has set, implicitly long for another
Homer in our children. Giggling pelicans...
1 tag
Some paths are wrapped in green dresses
with while flowers. Some paths are disclosed
to us only when we mask what is internalized.
Some paths must be pierced with shattered
ice. Some paths begin and end. Some paths
include the necessity of a mother, deep-rooted,
carrier of history, dynamic diplomat, her
strength is like the twilight of a panther’s flesh.
Some paths smile is sharpened...
2 tags
Chilean rebel Camila Vallejo: 'The problem is... →
“”We’re talking about the now,” says Vallejo. “We’re talking about taking our proposals to the elections next year.”
It’s a position that puts her at odds not just with other Chilean students, but with leftwing ideas on the rise in the rest of the world too. The Occupy movement – with which the Chilean student occupations are sometimes lumped – is...
November 2012
11 posts
Provocatoria: Angela Davis - The Prison Industrial... →
superheru7:
Angela Davis - The Prison Industrial Complex (17 parts all MP3 files) 01 - On Becoming An Activist.mp3 02 - Race, Class & Incarceration.mp3 03 - Young Black Men & Prison.mp3 04 - Technologies Of Punishment.mp3 05 - The Specter Of Crime.mp3 06 - Political…
“So why are [people of color] not filling the ranks of the Anarchist movement?...”
– Pedro Riberio, Senzala or Quilombo: Reflections on APOC and the fate of Black Anarchism
i havent read all of this yet, but i want to read the whole thing soon. i also want to tag this with “hello my experiences in white anarchist space forever”
(via feral-femme)
Ahhh so many of my feelings about...
“Youths are passed through schools that don’t teach, then forced to search for...”
– Huey P. Newton (via nirvikalpa)
1 tag
Why BP Isn’t a Criminal →
Punishing corporations as a whole almost always ends up harming innocent people – especially employees who lose their jobs because the corporation has to trim costs, and retirees whose savings shrink because their shares in the corporation lose value.
Remember the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, convicted in 2002 of obstruction of justice when certain partners destroyed records of the auditing...
