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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Stitch in MKE!!!
Interviewee: Milwaukee activist and artist, as well as Young Communist League leader, Jeanette Martín talks about a local open mic series that she and two other local activists put together.
Interviewer: Ursula Mlynarek is the National Membership Coordinator of the Young Communist League, U.S.A. and native Milwaukee-ian.
UM: What is Stitch?
JM: STITCH is the name that we, Alida Cardos Whaley, Tony Garcia & myself came up with. We we're thinking about what this open mic series entailed of, and what it meant to us. I yelled out STITCH! Since this open mic series is our own way of trying to stitch both sides of Milwaukee, and build community.
UM: What is the format of Stitch?
JM: This weekly open mic series travels from one venue to the other- bringing in youth from one side of town to the other. Youth share thoughts, ideas, poems, songs and other art forms. Each night has different featured artists. Features were chosen through word of mouth, connections and people that heard about this open mic series.
UM: Are a lot of the features political?
JM: I believe that many of the features have strong messages to send across to the audience, but I would not label all of them political.
UM: Why is Stitch unique?
Stitch is unique since it is being organized from the actual folks that are part of these communities, for a good cause. I've gotten tons of emails from other coffee shops and venues that were very excited about what we were doing-and wanted to help us in any way that they could. That was one thing that really showed me that we were doing something positive for our comunidades.
UM: You keep referring to Milwaukee's "two sides" of the city. Please describe what you mean by these different sides, and what the importance of connecting them.
JM: The north side of Milwaukee is disenfranchised and financially deprived, and most of its residents are African American. The eastside of Milwaukee, UW-Milwaukee campus area, known to be the "nice" side of town, and there is a diverse group of folks living there, but the majority being white. The east side of Milwaukee also hosts financially wealthy Milwaukee residents. The Southside of Milwaukee, that was a majority Polish neighborhood since the early 1900s has now transitioned into being a predominantly Mexican, Puerto Rican as well as Hmong community. In the deep Southside of Milwaukee is the home to mostly white working class. By having the open mics alternate weekly, people are exposed to a place they may have never been to before, or would even think about going to otherwise.
UM: Tell me about Son MUDANZA, one of the key performers tonight.
JM: Son Mudanza established itself 2 years ago through influence of Son del Centro, a Chican@ Son Jarocho group in Santa Ana, California. Son Mudanza uses dance, poetry and song to built community as well as use as a form of cultural resistance here in the United States. A lot of the poems are the struggle on both sides of the border, as well as personal realities about being a Chican@ here in the United States.
Son Mudanza believes in solidarity and supports other social movements that believe in the power of difference. We're all friends, organizers and activists in our communities.
REFLECTIONS OF FIDEL
What must be demanded of the
United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
What must be demanded of the
United States
(Taken from CubaDebate)
THE meeting in Costa Rica did not lead and could not lead to peace. The people of Honduras are not at war; only the coup perpetrators are using weapons against them. They should be called on to end their war on the people. Such a meeting between Zelaya and the coup leaders would only serve to demoralize the constitutional president and wear down the energies of the Honduran people.
World public opinion knows what has taken place in that country via footage circulated by international television, fundamentally Telesur which, without losing a second, faithfully transmitted each and every one of the events that took place in Honduras, the speeches given and the unanimous agreements against the coup by international agencies.
The world was able to see the blows rained down on men and women, the thousands of teargas grenades fired on the crowds, the gross gestures with weapons of war and live rounds to intimidate, wound or kill citizens.
The idea that Hugo Llorens, the U.S. ambassador in Tegucigalpa, was unaware of or discouraged the coup is absolutely untrue. He knew about it, as did the U.S. military advisors, who didn’t stop their training of Honduran troops for one minute.
It is now known that idea of promoting a peace move initiated in Costa Rica emerged from the offices of the State Department in order to contribute to the consolidation of the military coup.
The coup was conceived of and organized by unscrupulous individuals on the extreme right, dependable officials of George W. Bush and promoted by him.
All of them, without exception, have a bulky file of anti-Cuba activities. Hugo Llorens, the ambassador in Honduras since mid-2008, is a Cuban-American. He is part of a group of aggressive U.S. ambassadors in Central America comprising Robert Blau, ambassador in El Salvador; Stephen McFarland in Guatemala; and Robert Callahan in Nicaragua, all appointed by Bush in the months of July and August of 2008.
The four are continuing the line of Otto Reich and John Negroponte who, together with Oliver North, were responsible for the dirty war in Nicaragua and the death squads in Central America, which cost the peoples of the region tens of thousands of lives.
Negroponte was Bush’s representative at the United Nations, czar of U.S. intelligence and finally assistant secretary of state. In distinct ways, both of them were behind the Honduras coup.
The Soto Cano base in that country, headquarters of the Joint Task Force Bravo belonging to the Armed Forces of the United States, is the central support point of the coup d’état in Honduras.
The United States has the sinister plan of creating five further military bases around Venezuela, on the pretext of replacing the Manta one in Ecuador.
The ridiculous adventure of the coup d’état in Honduras has created a really complicated situation in Central America, which will not be resolved by traps, deceptions and lies.
Every day, new details are emerging of the implication of the United States in that action, which will also have serious repercussions in all of Latin America.
The idea of a peace initiative based in Costa Rica was transmitted to the president of that country from the State Department, when Obama was in Moscow and when he stated, in a Russian university, that the only president of Honduras was Manuel Zelaya.
The coup perpetrators were in a difficult situation. The initiative transmitted to Costa Rica sought the objective of saving them. It is obvious that every day of delay has a cost for the constitutional president and tends to dilute the exceptional international support that he has received. The Yankee maneuver does not increment the possibilities of peace, but exactly the opposite, it reduces them and the danger of violence is growing, given that the peoples of our America will never resign themselves to the fate programmed for them. When Micheletti, the de facto president, proclaimed yesterday that he is prepared to resign from his post if Zelaya resigns, I knew that the State Department and the military coup leaders had agreed to replace him and send him back to Congress as part of the maneuver.
The only correct thing to do at this point is to demand that the government of the United States ends its intervention, stops lending military support to the coup perpetrators and withdraws its Task Force from Honduras.
What is being demanded of the Honduran people, in the name of peace, is the negation of all the principles that have been fought for by all the nations of this hemisphere.
"Respect for the right of others is peace, said [Benito] Juárez.
Fidel Castro Ruz
July 16, 2009
1:12 p.m.
Translated by Granma International
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Poor Man's Stroll
The 2nd single from ((Stero))type's album Ultrasound. The song chronicles the "ills of capitalism and captures the sentiments of millions of americans, living poor and under appreciated." says half of ((Stero))type, Drematic.
Want more? Check out music collective Indi-Arts at indi-arts.org .
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