Protests at Baldwin Park: White Nationalists vs the Chican@ People

SOS and Minutemen: Heroes.

LaRaza and MEChA: NAZIS!

VIVA LA MIGRA!!!!

Oh, and original poster? Your story was boring and stupid as hell.

From another website:

Re:The Battle of Baldwin Park: Land




Chicomozteca, I feel your sharing, thank you,

I hear a mix of many emotions in your sharing. The anger at the disrespect indiginous people are shown even to this very day by the people who destroy the land and traditions of the people who were here FIRST.

I admit I have been ONE of those disrespectfull people.

I needed to hear the pain and anger, that my actions of supporting economies, governments and consumerism through my american DREAM has caused the indiginous people and the SPIRIT of the land.

I am sorry I have hurt you. I intend to SHOW more respect to you all, I have awakened to the FACT that I walk on ground where I asked no permission, I thank the anger I feel from my brothers who help me know myself.

I ask permission to remain on YOUR lands and learn of your traditions and history. My ancestral home and indiginious traditions are near lost and far away.

This is why White brothers show no respect. We have stripped ourselves of our history and traditions, It leaves us behaving like animals. Fearing the power and unity the people who hold their culture sacred. we all know spirit and unity will survive long after the invaders lay no more claim to the land. It is just a matter of TIME.

You speak much of the ignorant words of others, and offer some well spoken words of your own. I have heard the words of racism and dominance of others enough, I will acknowladge the wrongs we have done to you and share that with others. I will listen if you will share more about your traditions and beliefs, I know nothing of Toipurinah, or the Danzas, tell of these things in honor of keeping the spirit of tradition, unity, humanity and strength and courage.

If you show these things in yourself and your people the blind invaders will begin to see, To SEE the beauty of these lands and people, instills immediate respect deep from the heart, even the blind begin to SEE this, You speak of self hatred amoung the indian people, I see this amoung all peoples, it is the disease of disrespect of the spirit. It is because of the loss of tradition and culture that connects us to the phase and rythm of nature, we only love and respect ourselves if we live the way our heart calls us to live.with honor

This is why invaders destroy culture and tradition, these things resist oppression and displacement, so keep them ALIVE, share what you know about the lost villages, what names were they known by? What were the people like?

If people like me see the HUMAN BEINGS we have destroyed with our selfish actions we can become more aware of your rights and our responsibilities.

You speak of refreshing the tree of liberty, I believe it is time to refresh the tree of life with the waters of life and climb the tree of liberty. Free yourself from the anger as you express it, Then move with your spirit into compassion and help more of us understand what we are doing to your people so that we can guide our behavior more appropriatly and return the respect you ALL deserve. Emotions are effective tools if projected with intent and focus on the expected outcome. I expect the unified voice of the Indiginous peoples combined with a few stragglers like me can wake up a lot more souls if together we can speak from the heart. MSW



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Friday, June 24 2005

Re:The Battle of Baldwin Park: Land




Hi;

Well, you know, the European has a lot to work through. To me, from a Chicano / Indigenist perspective, I see Europeans as the most deeply colonized people.

It's like this. Any abuser has been abused. So, usually the victim of an abuser is not too interested in the apologies of the abuser until somehow the victim can trust the abuser, you know?

And, in this analogy, an abuser can't be trusted until they have worked through enough of the way _they themselves_ were abused that the whole character structure of the abuser is transformed, or collapses, or whatever.

I am really just trying to talk with you as one person to another here, and not as a representative of anything.

I noticed sometime back that (name deleted) tried to start a thread on decolonization - but really, that's _our_ job, when it comes to the Americas. Yours is different, and I got the feeling that maybe (name deleted) was trying to point the way to dealing with that.

I feel strongly that your job is to get the way that you as a people - as a sub-continent, were colonized.

I mean there is very little in indigenous European culture that has anything to do with all this Plato and Aristotle and Roman garbage that the current Euro-elites try to pass off as your culture.

You were all conquered, stripped of your culture, stripped of your religion, colonized by Rome and its church, suffered teh demise of your languages, native spiritualities, etc., long before we were.(All one has to do is look at the remains of the Celtic and Pictish peoples in England, for example, to see the deep connection to the Earth that is yours by birthright, and the beauty of it...)

On the other hand, I mean, where do you think you got it from? What Europeans did here, I mean.

Well, like any abuser, you did what was done to you. It's no mystery.

The genocides in the Americas (100 million dead) in Africa (100 million dead) in the Phillipines, etc, are a reflection and continuance of the gynocide (mass killing of women and destruction of women centered cultures) that took place in Europe under the church.

And because the killing and torture of these 11 million women happened over a protracted period, its impact sunk deepy into the culture. There was no one who didn't lose a mother, cousin, wife, daughter, friend, neighbor to the Burning Times / Inquisition.

There were snitches in every little village waiting to turn in the traditionals, just like the church targets tradtional Indians in Latin America today. Just like the efforts to destroy First Nations spiritual practices through their banning in the US.

And from my experience, at least, all of that is still operative in the oppressive dynamics of white American culture today. Racism operates because those who don't go along with it get punished.

I believe that there is an immese fear of being different in European culture - that its so locked in because to be different is to be subject to death - that that's the _cultural memory_.

This is why liberal guilt is so useless. It doesn't get to the root or heart of any of this.

Just like in any abusive relationship, the sincerely repentant abuser first stops the abuse - that's primary - but then, if its for real, they deal with who _they_ are. Becuase if they don't, then they will never really undo their potential as an abuser, they can never deal with honest, inside out, understanding in a one on one equal relationship with those they've abused.

But as important, unless an abuser deals with their own history, they will never have real self respect - and so they _can't_ authentically respect the "Other."

White American - White Amerikkkan - culture is oppressive as hell - including to white people. "Whiteness" - ie the embrace of these repressive mechanisms as they function culturally and psycholocically, is devastating to all concerned.

Because whiteness in this sense of the term _is_ colonialism and terror embodied.

I feel that Euro-Americans need to look deeply at that - because not only were you colonized first - you Still Are colonized first - forced to adapt to paranoia of difference - forced to obey, then enforece, destructive cultural, political, moral economic and other norms. Until you all but "become" them.

So, first, play the role of stopping the abuse wherever you see it.

Then deal with getting free of what has been imposed on you as painful and destructive norms and emotional channels of reaction.

If you can do this, then we can free oursleves at the same time that you are freeing yourself.

And that, and only that, can lead to any equality, and lay the basis for a new and healthy way of relating.

To state some of this in the negative, there is always an element of condescencion in white liberal guilt. It comes from a lack of understanding that we really are equals and products of very similar processes.

Except that, because the impact of gynocide and colonization hit Europe earlier, the disease has gone deeper, and the culture is more distorted and the people in even deeper pain - locked from awareness as it may be - than more recently colonized and genocided peoples.

I hope this is of some use.

Respectfully,

Chicomozteca

That was a superb article. It should get printed up somewhere more formal than IMC.

Thanks, John;

Your comment is appreciated.

But, on the other hand...

I wrote this to reach those who would be on the Land at Baldwin Park, so they would understand what it _means_ to be there.

I wrote it for Indymedia and other web sites that would reach the Chican@ and broader activist communities here in LA.

Indymedia doesn't seem to like dealing with Chican@ issues from a Chican@ , indigenist or nationalist perspective.

Ask yourself why this article, which frankly took an immense amount of work, didn't get posted to the center of the page. In my view, this piece has been the most comprehensive overview of the issues yet posted here, and the only interview with Judith Baca yet.

The answer is simple enough.

The reason this article isn't listed under the banner on the center of the page with other Baldwin Park articles is racism. Pure and simple

I don't really care if its conscious or unconscious racism, because the _impact_ of both is the same.

Here at Indymedia it's the same old story, or lack thereof.

I won't ask you to do something about it. The problem can't be "fixed" by repositioning this one article. It's deeper than that.

Indymedia is white controlled, and the white commuity is not about to give that up, even to appoint someone to be editor for Black, Asian, Indigenous peoples, someone who understands those issues.

One of the sad things is that no one with the sensibility and experience to play such a role would want to work in an atmosphere where there is basically no coverage of (especially) Black and Asian and FIrst Nations issues.

Indymedia will remain what it is.

A liberal expression of the white colonial settler state.

Chicomozteca

Hey, I just found out that Telemundo will be coming to Baldwin Park. We need lots of signs in Spanish for the cameras. In case you're Espanol is a bit rusty, just bring signs with these slogans. My roommate help me figure these out:

¡No, usted no puede comprar a mi pequeña hermana para tan poco dinero!

Usted los gringos no puede bailar a la derecha y huelen divertidos.

¡No necesitamos una tarjeta verde! ¡Tomamos lo que deseamos, cuando lo deseamos!

Let's give these racists hell tomorrow.

No you can't have my little sister for so little money

[?]You foreign them it cannot dance to the right and smell amused.

We did not need a green card! We took what we wished, when we wished it!











You do have too much time on your hands.

...geez, and spamming the same post over and over in a lame attempt to have me silenced?

I've been here a while, and I'll still be here when school starts up and these dingleberries are back to failing math...

So far the only reasonable voice I have heard here regarding support for the SOS is Tim...even though I do not agree with him on all points, he is very articulate and presents the type of common ground arguement that can appeal to many progressives regarding labor issues.

Of course I don't speak spanish - this is America. All the decent paying jobs in America require you only speak fluent English, not spanish - NEWS FLASH for all you reconquistas.

The stilted spanish was provide courtesy of the friendly computers at Dictionary.com.

http://dictionary.reference.com/translate/text.html

The 2nd one roughly translates into English as "You Gringos can't dance and you smell funny." Now how did that guy translating these things miss the term "gringo"? You're all full of shit, so that's what you'll get treated as.

Learning a foriegn language requires a functioning CNS which you have a program but not the 'software' for. And of course you have no Spanish speaking friends -duh- to translate.

BTW gringo is a derivation on 'green coat' you ignorant piece of bat shit.

I don't think it was conscious or unconscious. I think the volunteers are overworked and were focused on putting the GG feature together, and didn't think to link it, if they read the article at all. People in IMC seem to exist in a state of almost-burnout.

I noticed that the article is having a second life on the mailing lists. I know one of the collective members is spamming her lists with it (because I got it back). I've asked for permission to add the story.

As for the charges that it's liberal. I think in the context of the radical left, it's true, because the policies of the IMCs prevent it from becoming an organization with a political platform aside from the local mission statement. This is inherently liberal, when there is no party line -- the centrist positions tend to have more "gravity" than the radical positions. On the other hand, because of this attitude, it's become a place where different sectarian groups, as well as different liberal tendencies, exist in the same space.

The race charges stand. The composition of the organization has become less racially diverse over time. I don't know why this is exactly. Partly, it's because organizations that are disorganized establish hidden structures of power. Partly, it's because of people don't deal with their own racism (myself included -- people of color are not exempt), and even finding out how to deal with it, is like a hidden path. Partly, it's not racism, but crosscultural communication and interaction issues. There's also a class aspect that's hard to deal with.

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This IMC needs more participants, particularly someone who can do a better job with meeting announcements and organization. (The people who join up tend to be really good at most of the things that make it happen, but organizationally, it's always a struggle to operate it.) People in it tend to be very self-motivated and hard-working, but are also very individualistic workaholics. (I think that's the same thing, really.)

That said, any IMC can be formed by 5 people living near each other, who meet monthly, agree to the "principles of unity" and do the work. (See http://process.indymedia.org) It usually takes one "techie" person, people to write stories, and people to do the organizational labor of organizing meetings, creating a public presence, and so forth. The basic ideology is "anarchist", but the tendency is toward a class-oriented left perspective.

In my opinion, and of others, the IMC's been around five years, and we're in a very different situation than 1999. New ideas are certainly in order. When IMC started, blogs as we know them did not exist, and few of the IMC people had heard of them.

The main thing that hasn't changed is that recording and preserving history remains a political act.

It's bad form to add to a post that you wrote, but I'll do it here.

I think IMC's coverage of POC issues is pretty good. It could be better, but, many things could be better. I still find it a vital and essential site.

Hey Chico and the Man:

it's really been bugging me how you compose this image of yourself through text because I have recently seen the real guy behind your identity in action and there is a big fat discrepancy that should be addressed.

first off, props to you: your article here and your previous piece that they used bits of to make the mural on saturday were some really great writing, no doubt about it.

but I just don't like this rational, intellectual, respectful, "woman-centered" portrait of yourself that you put out there with your postings because it's just not true. I've been in meetings and communication with you and frankly, you can be a real jerk. While people are talking, you mutter nasty things about what they're saying, make ugly faces, shake your head rudely and in a disruptive manner, and you effect this macho intellectual/artiste posture like you think you're the second coming of Diego Rivera or something. Also, I have seen you totally crap on other people's ideas without even actually LISTENING first to what they are saying, and even though you might later apologize and offer self-criticism, it still doesn't erase the fact that you seem to approach people with a disdainful lack of respect that is at odds with this humble, respectful image you have constructed of yourself with your words.

There is a way in which people in the activist world (and the world at large, actually) have figured out all the "right" things to say--i.e., men championing women's rights, whites championing POC rights, and so on. I'm sure we have all come across this--men who talk about how we have to honor our sisters in the struggle and who then go home and act like the biggest sexist macho pigs with the women in their lives. My impression of you, chico, is that you exhibit some of these characteristics. You paint yourself as a champion of women's rights, but I have SEEN you on several occasions act out macho power structures. You portray yourself as wanting to engage in honest dialogue, but I have seen you completely dismiss what other people are saying as they are speaking, in the rudest manner possible, and instead of truly dialoguing with people (like this example with johnk and IMC) you simply reach your conclusions and shoot off at the mouth all your criticisms and that's the end of it. To be fair, I actually agree with a lot of what you say about IMC (as does johnk, apparently). But it's your approach that I take issue with. You are so self-righteous about everything.

All these contradictions point to some serious egotism that needs to be checked.

While your work is good and your writings are excellent, I think your reactionary, egotistical bullshit and the way it disrupts the sincere, earnest efforts of others is in serious need of being checked.