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From the mimeograph to la bloga By Nezua, creator of The Unapologetic Mexican
My name is Joaquín. When I was eight years old, I changed my name to Jack. I didn’t intend it as a political statement, of course. I just wanted to fit in with everyone else.
With everyone else in the suburbs of Maryland, that is. That’s where my second family lived at the time the court proceedings were finalized for my legal adoption. My father, a politically-minded poet then in his late 20s, was gone. Gone to the West Coast; gone to the South. Gone to the jungles of Chiapas, machete and pen in hand. He was meeting with ancestors and kin; photographing and writing about the Mayan Indians.
And gone from our lives. He and my mother (she’d say) had been Too Young to work things out. No doubt that was true. I’d not begin to understand until much later the size of the cultural gulf that surely stood between them, as well.
At eight, I imagined I’d become anew. Cast away those things attached to my old life. It was a new time, a new life. I had a new name. And I could be a new self. I’d learn one day that changing who you are is not as simple as changing your name. But for the moment, I thought with these changes to birth certificate and social security card and school attendance sheet, I might finally fit in.
The feeling that I didn’t fit in had grown for a few reasons, I suppose. One was my name. A name that on the East Coast in 1978, was an anomaly. A name that defies the rules of the English alphabet, and so, one that many people will mispronounce. My teachers were some of them. It was a name my peers would either fail to remember, or would in many cases ridicule.
And all by itself, it sounds like a little thing. No? After all, the schoolyard is kind to few. But in class after class of Brians and Joshuas; of Lauras and Jennifers; of Matts and Tonyas, you learn something from being the one with the weird name. You begin to infer. You suspect you are apart from the others in more than just one way. With every souvenir license plate keychain in every gift shop that ignores your name; with every approach of roll call from a new teacher and every introduction to a new person bringing dread to your belly, you are reminded you are Other.
A name tells us who we are, if given with thought. It can tell us where we come from, who came before us, and our place in today’s society. It can even offer glimpses into the future. A name will not always contain so many secrets, but mine did. It had been left for me to discover this. I didn't know it then—when I rejected it in favor of the plainest, shortest, easiest-to-pronounce and least-Spanish name I could think of—but it was as if I had been left a pendant with a treasure map to my own history and legacy inscribed upon it.
My father chose the name Joaquín from a poem written shortly before my birth; a poem important to the Mexican American community. The dramatic narrative foretold a confusion I was already experiencing as a boy, and portended a strength I'd need later.
I look at myself
And see part of me
Who rejects my father and my mother
And dissolves into the melting pot
To disappear in shame.
The name my father gave me tied me to my culture in the strongest possible way—by both naming me after Corky Gonzales' quintessential Chicano as well as describing a path I was already walking. Come the day I turned to re-read the book my father gave me as a teen, I'd find my own past; my own troubled reflection, there in its passages. And I’d understand a bit more of those things that hence had only flitted about on the periphery of my vision.
Maybe I tried to vanish into the American Dream. Repurpose my outline. Maybe I wanted to become just like you; just like him; just like the boy in the poster, the one on the screen, the hero. I wanted to be the Fair one, the Right one, the Good one...the white one. I did not want to be the Mexican one. The one whom the world around me insisted was, instead, the Dark one, the Little one, the Bad one. The Criminal. The Servant. The Thief.
Culture is powerful. Media is powerful. For much of my life, the relationship was one-way. The current of news, opinion, metaphor, imagery, and storytelling was aimed at me. There was simply no way to wield that mechanism. The thick tongue of the dominant culture sang its songs into my mind and I sang along.
I thought that without a Spanish accent, divested of a Spanish name, and with lighter skin than my father, I could walk away from both my blood and what the world seemed to think of my blood. I was wrong. This cannot be done. You are who you are. Your family is your family. Your blood remains your blood. And whether you call it corazón or something else, your heart remains your own heart.
But I was right to understand that there were and are strong currents in place. Undertow that buoys a few, drowns many, and directs the rest into a preferenced route. We call the flow of information, evaluation, entertainment, iconography, story, and slant that is our collective conversation and counsel "the mainstream." And depending on your relationship to it, you may be able to swim to your desired destination without much struggle. Or you may find yourself grasping for purchase and gasping for air.
As the hate crimes perpetrated against Latinos rose higher and higher; as the Right Wing created a culture of fear against the US’ Southern border and all below; as conservative pundits repeatedly reinforced revulsion of the Spanish language and those who speak it or are otherwise touched by it; as the mainstream culture’s historically derisive lens on Mexico and Mexicanos became more intense and hostile in many places, preaching hatred to a virulent degree, I knew I had to grab a hold of that firehose of energy, and help filter and redirect the flow of news, opinion, metaphor, imagery, and storytelling. The world was being made more dangerous for my people, and for me.
This is the terrain from which grows all the content and action launched from my blog The Unapologetic Mexican today. These are the issues that can be found informing the articles I write, the videos I make, the art I produce. The themes of values in culture, symbolism in media, messaging in news copy or slant; racism; human rights; identity; ethnicity; language, power; history; community; self. The day I began my blog was hardly a first step to empowerment and self-awareness. It was an important one, though, making possible many subsequent steps.
When I present at the Transforming Race Conference in March, I will speak about these themes and in what way I’ve been able to engage them, to make change; about the four years I have been keeping this blog, and all the ways in which it aided me in reclaiming a feeling of pride, and a greater understanding of how I can support and inform and empower the communities to which I belong.
New Media is nothing by itself; it is a hammer without the dream of the carpenter; a garden hose on a hot, arid, dusty day. All alone, New Media is but form awaiting function. But given you can access it to a reasonable degree, you can stop being a passive imbiber of the media and all its messaging. You don’t have to shout at the screen, you can speak your reply or alternate view from the screen, too. You need not rest at bemoaning the media’s slant because you have a greater ability to replace it. And you can add your strength to a purpose enjoined by many, and together, affect our common society.
This new format we call "blog" is not like a pad of paper; not like a radio station, not like a community bulletin board, not like a classroom, nor a movie theater, nor a newspaper, nor a meeting room. It is all these things and more.
My father said "in my day it was mimeographs and in yours it is la bloga." He was speaking of the original El Chicano Movimiento, the era from which the poem Yo Soy Joaquín sprung forth. It is no longer 1967, it is now 2010. The shape of la lucha transforms, but the struggle remains at hand:
Like a sleeping giant it slowly
Rears its head
To the sound of
Tramping feet
Clamoring voices
Mariachi strains
Fiery tequila explosions
The smell of chile verde and
Soft brown eyes of expectation for a
Better life.
And in all the fertile farmlands,
the barren plains,
the mountain villages,
smoke-smeared cities,
we start to MOVE.
La raza!
Méjicano!
Español!
Latino!
Chicano!
Or whatever I call myself,
I look the same
I feel the same
I cry
And
Sing the same.
I am the masses of my people and
I refuse to be absorbed.
In the four years I’ve written my blog, I’ve educated myself and others. I’ve enjoined the national conversation, and been invited on panels of web influencers, and into progressive fellowships. I’ve found friends with the same interests, and together we’ve organized sites and groups to work together on issues that concern our communities. I’ve written and co-written pieces that have made it into print. I’ve had my blog used in college courses, and my videos in high school classes by teachers who found my writing online. I’ve had librarians request copies. I’ve launched a weekly web show that is sponsored and that exists to support and empower and inform the Latino/a community. I’ve been employed as a columnist on immigration, and flown to various states to speak on these issues, and to accept awards for groups I’ve helped found. And all this, in place of fuming in the living room, or hiding behind a phony name.
We are the new media. We are the new voice resounding with the old truths. We are the culture changing. And throughout all these changes, we are still right here and moving forward.
###
Nezua is a blogger and creator of The Unapologetic Mexican. He has been able to channel a reactive frustration to the anti-Mexican sentiment in the media into a positive proactive expression online, and connect with many people who engage the same challenges in our society.
Dadaab, the Somali struggle to flee violence By Tariq Tarey, Program Manager, Somali Documentary Project
Somali people have been fleeing the violence in their homeland since before the civil war began in 1991. However, with the Ethiopian invasion in 2006, the exodus has seriously increased. Since that time, nearly 2 million people were displaced from Mogadishu, the capital city, alone. In 2008, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) declared Somalia to be the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. To make matters worse, the World Food Program claims that 4 million Somali people are on the verge of starvation.
Many of these displaced people will make their way south from the Somali border to the refugee camp in Dadaab, Kenya. In 1991 the UNHCR built Dadaab as a temporary solution to house 90,000 people who were immediate refugees to the war. Currently, 300,000 people live in Dadaab and many have been there for nearly 20 years. In November of 2008, approximately 1,000 forced migrants a month were making their way to Dadaab. However, only 5,000 people a year are resettled to the United States, Canada and Australia.
The World Food Program in conjunction with CARE International provide the refugees with food, but the available nutrition is not really sufficient to maintain human life. Every fifteen days, a refugee receives 3.9 kg of wheat flour, 1 kg of red beans, 1 liter of corn oil and 3.4 kg of maize. This diet offers an insufficient number of calories and nutrients, so people have to find other methods of surviving. Some work unloading grain for CARE and earn 30 cents a day. Others earn less unloading firewood. Still others survive by receiving remittances from family members in first world countries.
If diet or mosquitoes make people sick, there is little medical care. There are 3 clinics manned by volunteers within the camp, but their labor and the supplies they receive are terribly inadequate compared with the need.
Nearly half of the occupants of Dadaab are children, but the state of education in the camp is profoundly inadequate. Perhaps we should be glad that there are schools in Dadaab, schools, which are of course better than most could find in war-torn Somalia. However, when you consider that most parents believe that the answer to Somalia’s problems lies with their children, the state of the schools in Dadaab seems sad. More than half the students are unable to move from elementary to secondary schools because a lack of supplies and space.
The Geneva Convention promises refugees the rights to move freely, educate their children, and the right to work equal to the nation granting asylum, and yet asylum for Somali refugees in Dadaab offers little food, almost no health care, inadequate education, work at wages that are nearly slave labor, and terrible boredom because for most people, there is almost nothing to do. Dadaab demonstrates the inadequacy of the refugee regime to live up to the ideals of its own international treaties. It also demonstrates the need of Somali people to work out their differences in a way that does not cause more people to flee to this warehouse of human beings that removes human rights, human freedom and condemns them to boredom and exploitation.
###
Tariq Tarey is the project manager of the Somali Documentary Project. Born in Mogadishu, Somalia , he is a socially-conscious award-winning artist, who has been an active and a vital member of the photographic community in Columbus, Ohio since 2001. Tariq works closely with the Somali community, bridging the gap between the refugee culture and the culture of corporate America.
Wicked opportunities By Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D., Executive Director, Human Systems Dynamics Institute
Racism is a wicked issue. Of course it is wicked because it limits the hopes and dreams of our children; because it robs communities of joy and fulfillment; because it locks us, as individuals and groups, into self-destructive patterns of behavior. Beyond these consequences, racism is a wicked issue because it derives from complex dynamics that are beyond the reach of traditional, analytical ways of knowing and acting. The emerging science of complex adaptive systems offers new ways to see patterns that self-organize through complex dynamics. Human systems dynamics (HSD) is a field of theory and practice that draws lessons from complexity and uses those lessons to help people see and influence the self-organizing processes that form and re-form the wicked and intractable issues that allow us to victimize ourselves and each other.
One of the first times I talked about human systems dynamics to a group, one woman approached me after the talk with tears in her eyes. She said, "I’ve never before seen a model that had a place for me, but this one does. I am an African American woman, human services professional, mother of an AIDS sufferer, poet, wife, and bicycle rider. I don’t fit neatly into any categories I’ve ever seen, and I don’t think anyone else does either. Your model doesn’t tell me who I am, it asks me to tell you who I am... and I thank you." She saw quickly and clearly the differences between HSD and traditional approaches to social issues. Though the contexts of wicked issues are messy and complicated, these differences are refreshingly simple.
Difference One: Difference is the key to understanding and action. The primary—maybe the only—function of the human brain is to distinguish "this" from "that." Distinction leads directly into sorting and categories, where this group is same as each other and different from those others. Categories lead to assumptions, and assumptions sometimes lead to mindless action. The ability to distinguish and sort is fundamental to how we, as human beings, know things, make decisions, and take action. Sometimes we become careless, though. We pay attention to differences that don’t make a difference.
With our attention we exaggerate differences that should be minimized or minimize those that should be brought to light. The history of housing segregation provides a perfect example. I want to live near people who speak my language, share my celebrations, and enjoy the foods I like. That isn’t bad, but when institutions turn those individual choices into collective, informal rules or formal laws, then my personal good gets locked into a public evil. I need to be able to make decisions about the differences that make a difference to me and my family. I need to negotiate my own world of difference and meaning making, so that I can act with power and authenticity.
And, I live in a world with others for whom different differences may be crucial. This leads to . . .
Difference Two: The whole is different than the sum of the parts. Traditional logic says that you should be able to take a big problem, divide it into parts, and solve each part separately. Then, when the parts come back together, the big problem is solved. This traditional logic is frequently illogical in complex adaptive systems where the parts relate to each other in significant ways. Separate the parts, and they cease to be what they were. Bring them back together, and the relationships and the parts are forever transformed. Complex adaptive problems can only be understood and solved when the parts are seen in the context of the whole, and the whole is understood in the context of its parts. My husband and I often had this conversation.
He was a Chinese American who had found a comfortable place in an urban, artistic, and academic environment. He was a part of that whole, but he was a unique part because he also was a part of a Chinese culture, a loosely knit nuclear family, and a remarkable ancestral family. As a member of an ethnic diaspora, he lived as a vibrant part of many coherent and powerful wholes. Each was different because of his presence, and he was different because each of the wholes was coherent in its own right. Our frequent conversation was not about how different his experience was from mine (raised by an English teacher in small West Texas towns). Rather we talked about how similar our human experiences were of living in relationship to others in complex networks of wholes that were all greater than sums of parts.
And still, every day, I make decisions and take actions. This leads to...
Difference Three: All change is agent-based. Every human being takes action to change his or her environment. We don’t always act consciously or in our own best interests, but we do act. Communities, cultures, institutions, organizations are simply aggregations of many, many individual acts. The systemic patterns we see are a result of the actions of the many that get synchronized over time. So, even though we may think of food security as a systemic issue with institutional causes and global results, we also must remember that parents procure (or not) the food that sustains health of their children.
Sometimes that is easy, sometimes it is difficult. Sometimes institutions and collective patterns make it virtually impossible, but always the individual is seeing and acting for self in a context of local resources and opportunities. No institutional or market solution to food security will be effective if it doesn’t also acknowledge the agency of the individual.
My African American, bicycle-riding friend glimpsed a vision of a world of human interaction that was agent-based, greater than the sum of parts, and driven by difference. This was a world in which she was free to be herself and to value and co-evolve with others. She saw that racism was not just wicked because of its evil effects. She recognized the complex nature of the problem and began to glimpse new opportunities to shift those wicked patterns. It brought her to tears.
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Glenda H. Eoyang, Ph.D. is a master teacher with deep insights into the art and science of self-organizing systems. As a pioneer in the field of human systems dynamics, Eoyang applies principles of self-organizing to help people thrive in unpredictable environments. Since 1988, she has provided training, consulting, coaching, and facilitation support in both the public and private sectors. As the founder of the field of human systems dynamics, she brings a strong and cogent voice to public discussions about the field.
She currently serves as founding Executive Director of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, a network of professionals working at the intersection of complexity and social sciences. A master teacher and facilitator, Dr. Eoyang supports change for individuals, organizations, and communities around the world. Her experiences as teacher, leader, entrepreneur, author, and public speaker provide a wealth of resources.