Good times on Singapore Airlines??

Through drugs I think…I don’t really know what else they can be advertising  with these stylish playing cards:

That or hookers. I can’t tell. Maybe both, it’s possible they are equally good ways to fly! Though drugs are better at making the stars do that spinning thing, and grown men’s beards turn blue. I mean, if he were dressed as a pirate it might make sense, but…well. I shall speculate on what they were thinking, but probably I shall never know. I did enjoy playing cards.

some love from the streets

I got some today…as I biked along 31st street towards Grand, an older black woman yelled at me “JESUS LOVES YOU!”

And I wondered, why does she think I don’t know that?

The fact that I don’t believe in Jesus is an entirely interior characteristic (except for that one carefully concealed tattoo). So I started thinking about what made me look like someone down and out and in need of some saving! Did she think I was going to the new Planned Parenthood clinic that just opened there? Did she think any white girl on a bike in that neighborhood was looking for some kind of fix? Did she think I was lost…on the physical or metaphysical plane? I know I wasn’t dressed like a hooker, at least not today.

Hmm. It reminded me of a sunny Sunday morning when I was on my way to the farmer’s market, and some cholo straight up offered me pot, crystal, AND a good time. These things make me worry.

LAPD officer wounded, resident killed, in Boyle Heights

Yesterday a gun battle broke out on Malabar Street, when police tried to serve a narcotics warrant. The four hour stand-off left one of the men in the building dead, and a police officer in the hospital with a wound in his leg, and the mark of a ricocheting bullet on his helmet…the swat team evacuated 30 residents from the block, and this is what they looked like to the folks living in Boyle Heights:

It’s an armed invasion team really, how can this make anyone feel safe?

I was talking to my friend Leonardo yesterday, who has been organizing in Boyle Heights for years upon years…they’ve done a lot of work on the issues of gangs and drugs. And the reality is that there are systemic reasons that these things exist, the lack of jobs, good schools, opportunities. The reality is that our economic system is broken, and while it remains broken we will continue to struggle with gangs and drugs because they provide for very real needs, whether an escape or income or sense of belonging or protection.

And so while fighting to change the system, we must also fight to control the violence. And in Boyle Heights the community is beginning to do it, people are beginning to walk the neighborhoods at night, to talk to their youth, to build altars together to those have died and work together to try and stop it. It is slow, but sure, and Union de Vecinos is having an impact. The idea that humvees full of police carrying automatic weapons can bring any kind of security seems almost funny, if an endgame where people die riddled with bullets could ever be funny.

Another War: Juarez, Mexico

Over 210 people have been killed in Juarez since the beginning of the year…it’s hard to know the exact figures, they keep finding bodies. It’s an all out war between the drug cartels, and the victims include corrupt cops, hired mercenaries, local street gangs, the soldiers sent in force to try and control the situation…and one can always hope not too many innocents. But this is a war complete with mass graves, automatic weapons, masked men roaming the streets, humvees full of men in fatigues. Such wars find it hard it hard to limit themselves to the active participants. It is generated and funded by the immense wealth to be found in supplying the immense demand in the United States for drugs and good times. Of course, the profits do not just come from trafficking drugs into the United States, they also come from trafficking people, many of whom are the afore-mentioned innocents. These people seeking hope and a better life (and miles between themselves and Juarez) also make good times possible by cleaning kitchens, cooking food, taking care of children, picking crops, building houses…In short, a lot of good times in the US are sponsored by Mexico. A lot of them are even enjoyed in Mexico, border towns are always good for hopping into for a cheaper currency, and picking up cheap goods along with your sex and drugs. Tijuana, Nogales, Juarez, they all have their strip of excess with their sex shows their buckets of cheap beer their drunken underaged drinkers their sunburned tourists. Survival is a difficult business, an ugly business here where extreme poverty collides with extreme wealth.

Juarez is famous in Mexican corridos for the drug running exploits, the colorful characters of the cartels, and its legion of corrupt officials. It is almost as famous for acres of maquiladoras manufacturing things very cheaply to sell quite expensively across the border. The women working in the maquiladoras are more victims, not only due to low pay and horrifying working conditions, but also the hundreds dead or disappeared over the past 15 years and no one prosecuted. They too have made it into song, these things might not hit the news very often but communities are always working to make sense of the world, talk about what is happening, try to improve thinsg for their children…

Las Mujeres de Juárez (Letra y música de Paulino Vargas, grabado por Los Tigres del Norte en su disco Pacto de Sangre [2004])

Humillante y abusiva la intocable impunidad
Los huesos en el desierto muestran la cruda verdad
Las muertas de ciudad Juárez son vergüenza nacional

Mujeres trabajadoras de maquiladoras
Cumplidoras y eficientes, mano de obra sin igual
Lo que importan las empresas no lo checa el aduanal
Vergonzosos comentarios se escuchan por todo el mundo

La respuesta es muy sencilla cuáles saben la verdad
Ya se nos quitó lo macho o nos falta dignidad
La mujer es bendición y milagro de la fe, la fuente de la creación
Parió al zar y parió al rey y hasta al mismo Jesucristo lo dio a luz una mujer

Es momento ciudadanos de cumplir nuestro deber
Si la ley no lo resuelve, lo debemos resolver
Castigando a los cobardes que ultrajan a la mujer
Llantos, lamentos y rezos se escuchan en el lugar

De las madres angustiadas y al cielo imploran piedad
Que les devuelvan los restos y poderlos sepultar
El gran policía del mundo también nos quiso ayudar
Pero las leyes Aztecas no quisieron aceptar

Tal vez no les convenía que esto se llegue a aclarar
Ya hay varias miles de muertas en panteones clandestinos
Muchas desaparecidas que me resisto a creer
Es el reclamo del pueblo que lo averigüe la ley

---

The Women of Juárez (Words and music by Paulino Vargas, recorded by Los Tigres del Norte on their album Pacto de Sangre [2004])

Humiliating and abusive, the untouchable impunity(1)
The bones in the desert show the raw truth
The dead women of Ciudad Juárez are a national shame
Women workers of the maquiladoras
Reliable and efficient, hired hands without peer

What is important to the businesses is not checked by the customs office
Shameful commentaries are heard throughout the world
The response is very simple to those who know the truth
Either we have lost our manhood or we lack dignity
Spoken: Woman is a blessing and a miracle of faith, the fount of creation

She gave birth to the czar and gave birth to the king, and even Jesus Christ himself was born of woman
It is the moment, citizens, to live up to our responsibility
If the law does not resolve this, we must
Punishing the cowards who abuse women

Tears, laments, and prayers are heard in the region
Of the agonized mothers and they cry on heaven to have pity
That the bodies be given to them so that they can be properly buried
The great world policeman also wanted to help us
But the Aztec laws did not allow it (2)

Perhaps it was not in their interest for this to be cleared up
Already there are thousands of dead women in hidden graves
Many disappeared, that I can hardly believe
The public demands that the law investigate this.

(1) “impunidad” is a common term in Mexico, referring to the routine failure of officials to bring criminals to justice. (2)This appears to be a reference to the Mexican government’s refusing US law enforcement assistance.
Translation ©2004 Elijah Wal

also published at http://www.allvoices.com/users/Andrea#tab=blogs&group=2

Pick Up lines

Holy mary mother of god, it is fucking hot!!  Took a little walk this morning to the metro to go to Hollywood/Vine farmer’s market, and met a nice cholo named Tony…as he passed me he looked me up and down (no better way to make me mad), turned around and walked with me a block or two…he said hey girl, (in the best rico suave homeboy style) what’s up, looking for a party?  I think I heard that right but am not sure because I still had my i-pod on to protect me from strangers (didn’t work with this guy…he was persistent).  Still, Sunday morning?

No.
Can you hear me?
Noncommittal shrug. (I was still hoping he’d take the hint…boys, if a girl doesn’t take out her headphones when you talk to her on the street, you’re not going to get her number)
You like to smoke weed?
No.
Never?
Never.
Come on girl, why not, did you quit or something?
I quit, it did nothing for me.
What??  Nuh-uh. You like chrystal?
Hell no.
Do you like to drink?
No, I never drink. (though I do hate to lie on a Sunday)
Where you going?
The metro, and here we are.
Don’t you want my number?
No thanks, I’m married and have lots of kids (The second lie is always easier).  Take care now.

A brief moment where i feared he was going to get on the train…i thought about trying to convert him to mormonism if he continued, but luckily, he accepted defeat…while admiring his courage, i have spent some time this afternoon staring into the mirror trying to figure out what gave away my tendency to spend wild and crazy Sunday mornings tweaked out with a joint in one hand, chrystal in the other, and a forty clutched between my knees…I’m really really hoping it was just wishful thinking on his part and my long legs…

I mean, do I look like a stoned meth fiend??

I know, I know, my room is a dead give away but I swear I’m cleaning it…