Marches, Demonstrations... What Now?

This week, historic walkouts across the country in support of immigrant rights--read human rights--dominated the news, Congress, and most conversations. This morning, I was on "Democracy Now," hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales (Pacifica Radio), along with Yasmin Chavez, a junior from Montebello High School who led student walkouts in her community. On the phone was Montesuma Esparza, producer of the HBO film, "Walk Out," which premiered on March 18.

It wasn't planned this way, but then again, this was no accident neither. The "Walk Out" film, directed by Edward James Olmos, is about the 1968 Chicano "Blowouts" when thousands of students, teachers, parents, and activists walked out of schools in the East LA area. Until this week, this was the largest walkout of middle school and high school students in the United States.

We talked about the meaning behind the current civil demonstrations, including thousands of students walking out of schools in LA, Phoenix, Sacramento, Detroit, Denver, and other cities. Most importantly was the 38-year connection made between Montesuma, who helped organize the "Blowouts," getting arrested in 1968, and this young woman from Montebello (who attended a Chicano youth leadership conference this past weekend that also featured 1968 walkout leaders like Sal Castro).

Other veterans from 1968 include LA Mayor Antonio Villaragoisa, State Senator Gil Cedillo, radio personality Luis R. Torres, and countless others. We didn't lose it with our activism (the media and so-called politicians claimed, then as now, that we would be losers for walking out of school). The point is many of us from those times have continued on to become skillful, relevant, and alive.

This is leadership engendering leadership, across the years and generations with deep and lasting links.

My first political act at age 13 began in 1968. I walked out with a handful of other students from South San Gabriel's Garvey Intermediate School in solidarity with the greater East LA walkouts. I took part in Chicano Youth Leadership Conferences that eventually helped create the Brown Berets and the United Mexican American Students (that later transformed into MeCha: Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan).

At age 16, I participated in and got arrested during the Chicano Moratorium Against the Vietnam War, which was eventually attacked by sheriff's deputies, culminating in a so-called riot that destroyed millions of dollars of property and the deaths of several people, including Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar.

Although I had dropped out of school by then, and had became active in gangs and drugs, the movement provided me with revolutionary ideas, tactics, and a new imagination about my life and my community. I eventually returned to high school, taking part in a Chicano student organization, fighting for Chicano Studies and representation on the school board as well as the school's decision-making process.

As a senior, I helped lead three walkouts for Chicano rights and dignity. I wrote plays and poems. I also danced Aztec/Mexika dances and painted several community murals.

Paula Crisostomo, the student leader in 1968 who is the main character in the HBO "Walk Out" film, worked at my high school, helping mentor us young activists and leaders in that rough year of 1972.

In time, I found purpose and meaning in organizing, studying revolutionary texts outside of the school curriculum, and meeting other revolutionary leaders. This eventually helped me remove myself from the violent and paralyzing street life--including seven years of drug use since the age of 12.

At age 18, while I faced a six-year prison sentence, leading members of my community rallied on my behalf, writing letters and convincing a judge to give me a lesser charge and sentence (which I served in the LA County Jail, then as now, one of the worse jails in the country). When I got out of jail, I made a vow--never to do a criminal act that would jeopardize my ability to be a well-rounded and disciplined revolutionary thinker, writer, and leader.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I found a movement and a cause. This also helped shape my creative spirit that took the form of murals, dance, music, photography, but most importantly, writing.

Watching these young people, and hearing the voice of someone like Yasmin Chavez, I felt emotional and proud. Close to 40 years have amassed between the time of "Walk Out" and this week's actions. But it felt as if it were only yesterday, when the words, the ideas, the rhythms, and the dreams filled the blood and awoke my soul to a life that now I know I was destined to live.

Some schools have locked out students. Many administrators are demanding that students return to schools and "get their education." Police in places like Santa Ana, have attacked and beaten up protestors. Everything now is about closing the imaginations, the purposeful possibilities, and the hopes of these students.

We have to keep the momentum going, but on a higher level. Now it's time for real teachings, real strategies, for vision and direction to come out of all this activity. The fact is these walkouts are education.

It's time to teach and realize a new kind of leader. The youth are hungry to be involved, to change things, to better this world. Real knowledge of where the world has been, where it's going, and how to organize to get it there must now be the order of the day.

I will do my part. I call on all veteranos, OGs, revolutionaries, and thinkers to help make this happen. Not by telling the youth what to do (they have great ideas and energy already), but by helping forge the kind of unity, political savvy, and imagination needed to bring about humane and encompassing policies on our rights and our continual contributions to this country and world.

In time, these youth should be the future Montesumas, the future writers, the future Mayors of cities, the real rulers of this land. Let's help prepare the way.

March for Our Lives

I was 13 years old in 1968 when the East LA School Blowouts happened (which the current HBO movie, "Walk Out" is based on). Several thousand students, teachers, parents, and supporters stepped out of their schools, confronting police, a confused media, and general indifference (I heard from one young person that she never heard about the "Blowouts" until the HBO film first aired on March 17, although she grew up in LA).

I also walked out of my middle school in 1968, although it was only a handful of us. It became my first political act that would soon become a lifetime of political acts.

Then starting last Friday, thousands of students walked out of LA-area schools (and around the country--I heard from one student activist in Phoenix) against the anti-immigrant Sensenbrenner Bill that passed the House of Representatives in December, and is presently being debated in the Senate. From 500,000 to two million people demonstrated in downtown LA on Saturday--the largest demonstration in the city's history. More demonstrations on Sunday, including one in honor of Cesar Chavez, led to some 40,000 students walking out of schools throughout Southern California on Monday--but also thousands more in the Bay Area and schools from the Midwest to North Carolina.

That morning I almost drove into a couple of hundred students from Sylmar High School as they walked down Hubbard Blvd to San Fernando Road in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. I stopped, honked, and placed my fist in the air. Truckers and others did the same. The students were noisy, but peaceful, displaying a massive Mexican flag (US flags were also quite evident in most of these demonstrations). Later my wife Trini and I caught up with them further along their walk.

By Tuesday, school officials were "locking down" schools (students who come in, won't be allowed to leave until the end of the day). It's no coincidence schools in urban core communities were using prison terms to describe their tactics. For many students, schools are a prison. One adminstrator said the students needed to return to school for their "education." Yet, I see some fantastic education going on in the civil demonstrations and actions the students were taking.

Today, as in 1968, I support these marches. We have seen so many bold infractions and felonies against our future with war (defended by lies), corruption (not just the most recent with Abramoff and DeLay, but the billions stolen by Enron, World Com, Halliburton, and others, all friends of the present White House administration), and civil liberties (Patriot Acts, wiretappings, and torture in US-controlled prisons around the world).

People have to stand up. They must also strategize, think of the next step, reshape the vision, reinvigorate more people, and truly bring about real change.

We need it. The world needs it. In my life--slightly more than 50 years--I've seen the detrimental affects of capitalism, its wars, its divisions, its tactics, and the dense indifferences that result from this.

I'm honored to know our youth, and many of the veteran warriors from the 1960s through the 1980s, are coming together and demanding an end to the direction and motion of this country. Everything the Republicans (and their lame cronies in the Democrats) do now only gets worse for us and worse for them. They don't know how to do anything else.

We can show them there are other ideas. Other ways to go. Where peace, cooperation, community, incorporation, and true security really comes from. At crucial times in history, it's been shown that the people know better than their "leaders."

Immigrant Rights are Human Rights

HR 4437, the anti-immigrant law the House of Representatives passed in December (and which comes up for vote in the Senate on March 27) is a rotten piece of legislation that would place the United States in violation of basic human rights. Here’s why:

HR 4437 will impose jail time for over 12 million undocumented immigrants (where are we going to get the money for all these jails? The US is already the world’s largest jailer). It allows local police and the U.S. military to serve as immigration agents. It allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to build an enormous wall across our southern border. It will also make it a felony for anyone—be they churches, charities, employers, and even family members—to assist undocumented people. At the same time, there are no provisions in HR 4437 for undocumented immigrants to apply for green cards or to become citizens.

Already a prison in Texas has been created to accommodate 7,000, mostly Mexican, undocumented criminal offenders.

Instead of becoming the land of equality, opportunity, and reaching out, we’re becoming the backward, mean-spirited, and divided land that millions of Americans spent more than half of the last century fighting to change.

These laws are the revenge of the right-wing conservative and pro-capitalist rich and powerful who have wanted to destroy the gains of the 1960s ever since the freedom marches, protests, uprisings, and laws came down on the old Jim Crow and Segregation Black Codes of the South (and the de facto segregation and discrimination in the North).

We must not allow these rights to be taken away. Moreover, we must continue to expand our rights for all people—including the right to live healthy and solid lives. While people themselves have to prepare, get the skills, and do the work to achieve those things, government can help move the resources and social energy to make sure nothing gets in their way.

Right now, the Old Guard is back with a vengeance. In the guise of neo-conservatism, they have brought back war to our doorstep (again sacrificing our children for the sake of markets and power as in Vietnam), neglect (look at the Katrina debacle), corruption (Tom Delay, Abramoff, and others), and fear (every other word from Bush and his cronies builds on fear).

We’ve been through this—perhaps with different characters and nuances—many times before. We must now move forward toward our interests for peace, cooperation, and security like we did thirty years ago—only with a vision that incorporates the future, technology, new ideas, and new strategies.

We need to stop HR 4437. But we also need to lay the basis for the human and civil rights of everyone, regardless of their papers, regardless of their economic standing.

If Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream, we need to dream even harder. Fight and organize even harder. And get the maturity and intelligence to not be taken off track and into complacency ever again. Many of the leaders of the 1960s and 1970s were killed, drugged, imprisoned, or rendered impotent. It’s the people themselves who must insure the future of us all.

The Politics of Redemption

Governor Schwarzenegger on Thursday decided to parole convicted-murderer-turned-priest, James Tramel, after some twenty years in prison. This is good news. This is a step in the right direction. Tramel, 38, who was convicted of participating in the stabbing death of a homeless man in 1985, was a Christian and deacon before becoming well known as the first ordained Episcopal priest behind bars.

Many people fought for his release, and rightly so.

But now this begs the question: Why is Schwarzenegger, or any government official, determining who is reformed and who is not, who dies—as in the case of Tookie Williams—and who gets to be free?

If a right-wing conservative politician is in power, it appears they will make decisions about granting freedom based on their own politics and even race—releasing a white, conservative Christian, for example.

Tookie Williams was African American, a former Crip leader, and a non-Christian who had reformed and began to write and speak out against gang violence. He also had many supporters, even famous ones. A movie was made on his life. He wrote books. Yet Schwarzenegger, in his statement denying Tookie his life, implicated Williams’ politics and his supposed “lack of remorse” (largely because Williams would not accept guilt for crimes he has always maintained he didn’t do).

Politics killed this man. Politics freed another man. This, by the way, is California history. It’s US history. It has nothing to do with right and wrong, real redemption or fake redemption, remorse or lack of remorse. In many people’s eyes (not the right people, apparently), Tookie Williams did about as much as any man in his circumstances to turn his life around. So did Tramel. Only one went one way and the other went another way. And being that race and class are always at the heart of most major decisions in this country, this also prevailed.

Such a system must not continue. Fairness, objectivity, judging a person on a true measure of what is change and not change is sorely needed here. However, let’s not fool ourselves—such things don’t exist in the current political environment. Taking this reality in account, people should not die just because they don’t correspond politically, culturally, economically, or racially as those in power.

Remember, the last two men executed in California were African American and Native American. These men were convicted of murdering people outside their race and culture. The next person to die was Latino, also found guilty of killing someone other than Latino. So far, he has been spared due to a federal court’s ruling on the cruel and unusual punishment surrounding lethal injections (a doctor was supposed to make sure the prisoner would die without pain, but a qualified physician couldn’t be found who would do this).

Unfortunately, the state may still find a way to kill this guy.

Simply put, it’s time to stop. It’s great that Tramel has been released. Many more men should probably be given the same opportunity. I doubt that will be the case. Most of the men in California prisons are Latino, Black, and poor white. They happen to be nothing like Schwarzenegger. Nothing like those in power.

Mexika New Year 2006: Year of Xikome Tochtli

More than ten years ago, not long after I began my sobriety from seven years of drugs and 20 years of drinking, I became active in indigenous ceremonies, teachings, and communities, both Native Mexican and Native American. I did sweat lodge ceremonies and other indigenous sacred rites in California, Arizona, New Mexico, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Chicago, eventually involving my wife Trini; my sons Ramiro, Ruben, Luis, and daughter, Andrea (and even a couple of my grandchildren).

I took part in a kalpulli (a spiritual house in the Nahuatl/Mexika traditions) called Kalpulli Yetlenazi Tolteka Trece (including with the Frank and Lou Blazquez family, a strong Xicano family born and raised in Chicago). Frank was also a recovering drug and alcohol addict; together we helped bring the spirit of balance, truth, love, and community to the work we were doing with gang and nongang youth in the not-for-profit organization I helped found, Youth Struggling for Survival.

Around nine years ago, my Xicano friend Luis Ruan (of Purepecha indigenous descent from Michoacan, Mexico) began introducing me to the Dine Roadman and Elder, Anthony Lee, his wife Delores, and their wonderful children, in Lukachukai, Arizona. Every year we did prayer meetings and sweat ceremonies there, honored by the presence of many Dine/Navajo men and women, teachers and medicine people. In short time, Anthony Lee adopted Trini (and consequently the whole family) in a wonderful ceremony--they have been our spiritual family ever since.

I also had my son Ruben, when he was 12 years old, undergo a rite of passage ceremony under the guidance of Anthony Lee. We both received ceremonial names in the Dine language.

Soon after my family moved to the Northeast San Fernando Valley in the summer of 2000, Luis Ruan, Trini, myself, and a circle of Xicano men and women here created two sweat lodges--one in the Pacoima barrio in the back of Trini's old family home (she grew up there); and one behind a sober-living home called Casa Rivas in San Fernando. In the past years, we've grown to include many former addicts, gang members, and troubled youth, but also just fantastic men and women who have incorporated their roots and cosmologies into the complexities of the modern world (as guides to get through this world with dignity, valor, beauty, and coherency). Although we no longer have the Pacoima sweat, we continue to grow and do our ceremonies with the sweat at Casa Rivas.

Years before I moved back to LA from Chicago in 2000, I also received a Mexika name through the Kalpulli Yetlenazi based on the Mexika Sun Stone, known as the Tonalamatl. My name involved a correspondence with my date of birth in the Gregorian calendar to the much more efficient and still accurate Tonalamatl. The name given to me by our Mexika elders there was Xikome Tochtli. This translates into Seven Rabbit.

On March 12, the Mexika New Year begins. Based on the Mexika Calendar, we are entering the year of Xikome Tochtli, my namesake. All over Aztlan, sunrise ceremonies, danza events, sweats, and other commemoration will be going on that weekend of March 12.

To help with the vitality and importance of these celebrations, I include here the wise and studied words of my friend and fellow Mexika warrior-teacher, Michael Heralda, who has taken his Aztec Stories around the country and beyond the borders:

Have you ever asked yourself “how can I incorporate some of the ancient traditional practices of my ancestors into my daily life?” Well, with the coming of the Mexica New Year and its preceding Nemotemi day’s (5 days of reflection) fast approaching you have an opportunity to start that reconnection is ways that are easy to follow and maintain.

Traditionally, the 5 days that precede the New Year ceremony are dedicated to days of self reflection, contemplation, rumination, meditation and prayer. During these 5 quiet days important decisions were postponed, participants practised abstinance, and old items were also cast out and/or broken – a symbolic and ceremonial action designed to represent the end of one cycle and the beginning of another.

Do you have personal items (things) that have gone past their usefulness? If so, make some time to sit down (with them) and recall what they represent to you, how were they used and what memories, fond or sad, are associated with them? Did you learn things from them? Did they advance your life in a positive or negative way? It is not as important to recall only the good memories, but also those that became markers in your life – good or bad. It is because of these associations that we learn and advance. If your personal belongings have served their purpose and usefulness, then these may be good candidates to discard or break (it is not necessary to discard more than one object, only those or one that needs replacing). Remember, our ancestors understood that by giving away something important it made room for something else (maybe more important) to take its place.

“Fasting” is also another symbolic action we can take as a means of acknowledging the end of one cycle and the beginning of another – we cleanse our bodies to prepare for the new cycle and new year. Maybe you might consider not eating the foods that are harmful to your body (you know what I am referring to) and focus on eating the 7 warrior foods of our ancestors:

Corn
Beans
Squash
Chili
Nopal
Chia/sage
Amaranth

These 7 foods chemically interact with your body to supply all the nutrients you need to be strong and healthy – they are the foods of the great Mexica Warriors!

In addition, try adding some Spirulina to your (food) dishes and then finish off your healthy meal with a piece of (what else) CHOCOLATE!

If you don’t know all of the foods listed above then do your research. This is a part of re-educating yourself to the beauty of the Nahuatl/Mexica culture. A good book I recommend with regards to learning about a number of the foods listed above is titled “Chilies to Chocolate: Food the Americas gave the World” there is a great essay about the origins and importance of Amaranth/Huauhtli (in the Nahuatl language) and other inportant indigenous foods.

Want more guidance or a recommended plan with regards to a beautiful culinary indigenous experience? Start tomorrow (Tuesday, March 7th) with a simple but nutritious meal consisting primarily of Corn and Beans. Then everyday after that add one (or more) of the remaining 5 warrior foods to your healthy indigenous meal (of corn and beans) on through Sunday when by then you will have eaten all 7 of the Warrior foods and you will have arrived at the Mexica New Year.

One last action to consider is doing a sweat (bath) - a TEMEZKAL in the Nahuatl language. Some people prefer to do this at the beginning of the New Year while others during, or preceding, the Nemotemi days. This form of purification is not only healthy for you to do periodically but will also allow you time to relax and contemplate.

Reflect, contemplate, ruminate, meditate, and pray during these important ceremonial days. These simple recommendations will work with your body, mind, and spirit in a re-awakening process that will draw you closer to your indigenous roots. Embrace who you are and where you come from. In return this acceptance and embracing of your culture will guide you to where you need to be.

Many people around the world will be acknowledging and celebrating the Mexica New Year on Saturday and Sunday, March 11th/12th. To learn more about the Mexica New Year, its meaning and importance, plan on attending one of the many celebrations planned in a community near you and ask questions from those who have this knowledge to share. Remember that coming together as a group (Tloke Nahuake - Together and United) to honor something is very important. As a group we create a very powerful energy field that affects all that exists. In addition, honoring something on a singular and personal level is also powerful medicine. However you decide to honor and celebrate this very important event do it with your heart.

Mexica Tiahui! Onward Mexica!
Michael Heralda