The Reality Dysfunction - Unscripted/Unsilenced

A conversation with the Brown Berets

This special episode of The Reality Dysfunction is a recording made May 14, 2020 in a Zoom/Facebook live webinar hosted by Mexicanos 2070 an organization I have been working with for close to a year now. 

The moderators on behalf of Mexicanos 2070 are Daniel Osuna and Ernesto Ayala. The three Brown Berets present are Connie Gonzalez of San Bernardino, Sergio Lujan of El Paso, Tx, and Argelio Grion of Northern Califas. They are speaking on behalf of their own chapters and La Mesa a national organizing structure for Brown Beret chapters all over the country.

This is a fascinating discussion,  especially for anyone wanting to know more about the current state of the Xicano movement.

We ain't fake news

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction: X/L edition the crew takes on where we get our news and how important it is to maintain those open lines of communications in our respective communities. One way to combat misinformation is to double check your facts. Social media gives a whole new perspective on the practice of chisme so we have to ask ourselves, how can we use the advances of modern technology to push a social, political and economic agenda forward for our community? We talk about this and more. 

 

Justice for All Tucson Style - making sure immigrants are legally represented

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction we have the very real pleasure of talking with Margo Cowan, Lupe Castillo and Gage Stewart. Margo and Lupe are organizers of many decades who have taken on the US immigration system over and over with surprising success. Their secret is building community power through community mobilization. We talked about their ongoing campaign - Justice for All - which takes as one of its central tenets that the right to legal counsel should not depend on charity. It is a brilliant campaign that Castillo and Cowan are heading up through their grassroots “fighting machine” Keep Tucson Together.  These veteranas are on point.

Lupe Castilla is arrested at Tucson MAS protest

Here is the link to the campaign website:

https://sites.google.com/view/justiceforallinpimacounty

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Follow me on Twitter @ernestomireles

Or my blog at waroftheflea.org/laxicanadx

 

Can Obama sway Xicano/Latinos for Biden?

This episode of The Reality Dysfunction is a wide ranging conversation on the relationship between the Xicano/Latino community and Biden, Obama and Trump. The question is are we even a consideration anymore in this presidential contest? Or, even more importantly, have we ever been a consideration to any party for any presidential election? In one corner we have the incumbent republicans and in the other is the challenging democrats. Are Latinos once again standing in limbo having to choose between the lesser of two evils? 

Come listen to our expert panel of Rainer Delgado, Alexandra Lozada, Francisco Lopez, Magda Sanchez and myself Ernesto Mireles. If anyone out there has ideas for podcast subjects or wants to be a part of that discussion hit us up at fightforxicanostudies@gmail.com or DM me on Twitter @ernestomireles. 

Dr. Jerry Garcia - Preserving Xicano History in the Pacific Northwest

This episode we are talking with Dr. Jerry Garcia vice president of Education Services, Sea Mar Museum, and Sea Mar Housing is talking with us about his passion for Xicano history, his work creating a Xicano history museum in the Pacific Northwest and how happy he is to be back in his home state of Washington.

Xicanos and Latinos are the Essential Workers

Today our panel of experts on the Xicano/Latino community who will be hashing it up about the role of essential workers and how these men and women, a vast majority of them Xicano/Latino, have gone in the short span of two months from being ignored, and considered unskilled low paid disposable labor to essential.

In the crucible of the covid 19 crisis the very definition of essential and non essential is being debated, and discussed as wage lines are being redrawn. What this means for the future also becomes important as there is little evidence of a quick vaccine and repeated warnings of the virus resurging at regular intervals. Because of these two facts, the term “essential worker” takes on a much wider scope in terms of the demand for worker safety, collective bargaining and the respect due to our community members who continue to work and keep the rest of us safe.

#essentialworker

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Follow me on Twitter @ernestomireles

On the Front line: managing community center response to pandemics

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction I am talking with Daniel Soza III, a dear comrade from my MEXA/Brown Beret days who now lives in his hometown of Saginaw, MI., where he runs a community center that is still open and provides essential services to the people in the neighborhood surrounding the center. 

Danny comes from a long line of Midwest Xicano activists, his father Daniel Soza II was a long time city councilman in Saginaw and member of the Brown Berets in Saginaw during the 1960s. In the 1990s when me and Danny were at Michigan State University fighting for a Xicano Studies program Danny was one of six students that undertook what turned out to be a six day hunger strike to force the University to honor the united farm workers grape boycott.

Xicanx sheroes and heroes building the resistance narrative

One of the main topics that constantly come up in discussion like the one we are having is how our community has very little sense of history. We are very clear about the historical myths that found the United States. These myths are taught to us from the moment we walk into school as babies (literally) and are then relentlessly pounded into our heads for the next 12 years. For many of us our first contact with Xicano/Mexicano/Indigenous history of any kind does not happen until we get to college. Therein lies the rub – most of us never make it to college.

We have our Sheroes/Heroes, martyrs, and minstrels/jokers. The epic figures that stand above all as beacons of resistance to Anglo oppression and we fixate on them as we have been taught to do. The truth is every one of us has benefited from the love and mentorship of someone from our community both in and out of our families.

Let’s talk about those people. Let’s talk about the example they have set and how our forgotten ancestors have dragged the very notion of being Mexican, Puerto Rican, Colombian, Xicano into the present/future. The more we name our Sheroes/Heroes, martyrs, and minstrels/jokers the more we can put to rest the idea we are disorganized, and the movement is dead. Because clearly it is not. 

Escaping Rikers Island in the time of Covid19

On April 4, 2020 Jose Diaz a masters student in NYU’s social and cultural analysis program and student services coordinator for the NYU prison education program was released from Rikers Island after being put there on a technicality. It was through an epic effort lead by the director of NYU’s prison education program Dr. Kaitlin Noss worked to bring together a number of organizations who joined in the effort to get Jose Diaz released. 

Jose was incarcerated at Rikers on the same day NYC’s Mayor De Blasio publicly stated there would be no more people sent to Rikers. Rikers Island has long been under scrutiny and calls from the public for its shuttering. Rikers is also infamous for being a warehouse for black and brown folk who are there in one of the US’s most notorious prisons because they are unable to pay their bond.

Join myself, Drs. Kaitlin Noss and Zoe Hammer, along with Jose Diaz for a far ranging conversation about the conditions inside Rikers Island, the far reaching implications of quarantine for Black and Brown communities and what Latino Studies brings the table in terms of understanding and making sense of the era of Covid19.

 

For another excellent discussion from Jose Diaz check out this podcast by the Beyond-Prisons.com crew.

https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/released-from-rikers-island-nyu-student-speaks-out-about-covid-19

Bad Ass Latinas on The Reality Dysfunction

Bad Ass Latinas are in full effect on The Reality Dysfunction in this episode. We are talking to NYC education activists Lilah Mejia, Naomi Pena and Los Angeles area teacher activist Consuelo Frausto, about the complexities of navigating the public education system as women of color and outspoken advocates for their children and children in general. These women are destroying through their organizing and advocacy work the long held stereotypes of the submissive, compliant Latina. Although as many of us already know that stereotype is one dramatically out of touch within the reality of the Latinidad.   

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Follow on Twitter:

Naomi Pena - @naomi325

Lilah Mejia - @motherLeeEarth7 

Alex Lozada - @alexandralozada

Ernesto Mireles - @ErnestoMireles

Marc Pinate: Creative Place Making and Xicano Theatre

Greetings Dysfunctionals, we're back again with another episode of The Reality Dysfunction. This time I am talking with a dear friend Marc Pinate. Marc is the director of the Borderlands Theatre Company in Tucson, AZ. I met Marc years ago when he was touring with his band Grito Serpentino. He is, and has been a Xicano rock star, guerilla theatre actor, and national slam poet champion. He is a father and husband. Currently, Marc is creating large-scale “creative place” projects in Tucson and Nogales. He talks about place making what it means in the Xicano context and his current book project.

Check out Borderlands Theatre Company.

 

Follow me on Twitter: @ernestomireles

Xicano/Latino representation: Reclaiming our narrative

Another episode of The Reality Dysfunction’s CoronaVirus WTF! Series. Join our cast of experts as we discuss Xicano Latino image and representation in education, media and literature. The recent American Dirt kerfuffle is just one recent example of how we as a community continue to be defined by the ideologies of settler colonialism and proxy narratives. A conversation about what we might be able to do as a community to take back our image and power.

Biden and Bernie : what's the deal for the Xicano/Latino community?

Biden or Bernie? What does our panel of Xicano/Latino experts say on the matter? Only one way to find out! Listen now!

CoronaVirus WTF

First in a series of conversations bringing different voices from the Latino community around the in to talk about daily life in a pandemic. Our goal is to publish daily.  

Mayfield Brooks - Performance Artist

This is an older recording from last fall. I just forgot about it and am now posting. Excellent conversation about performance art, understanding the body and some about afro pessimism. 

The Rhetoric of Hate - Conversation with Berte Reyes on hate rhetoric and the gaming industry

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction Dr. Ernesto Mireles and Alex Yanish speak with Berte Reyes a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona in the Rhetoric, Composition and teaching of English program. In this episode we will talk about the nature of hate and how video games are being used as a recruiting tool by the far right. 

Milta Ortiz - Salvadoran playwright bridging indigenous realities for the 21st century.

Milta Ortiz is smart, passionate about her community and showcases her commitment through the arts. Ortiz is a bilingual, bi cultural playwright, poet, and performer born in El Salvador. She moved to the United States at the age of eight and was raised in Northern California. She currently a director of the Borderlands Theater Company in Tucson, AZ., where she lives with her family. 

I had some trouble with the recording so the first couple of sentences are a little garbled but its fine after that. 

Here is the Wikipedia page for Milta.

Please share widely and feel free to leave comments. If you want to contact me directly you can do that on Twitter @ernestomireles. 

Oscar Medina - Raza educator bringing indigenous perspectives to the classroom.

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction Dr. Ernesto Mireles and Oscar Medina a recent Ph.D. student in Sustainable Education and a high school teacher in Tucson, AZ., talk about their own educational journey and how bringing Indigenous epistemologies to Raza students is helping to heal the inter-generational trauma of settler colonialism. 

 

https://changemakerhighschool.org/

https://www.facebook.com/Praxis2019/

 

Please DM me on Twitter @ernestomireles
www.waroftheflea.org

The El Paso Shootings - A Xicanx response to anti-Mexican violence and the need to build political organization

In this episode of The Reality Dysfunction our panel of Xicanx experts will be discussing the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso, Tx., and possible responses that could be pursued by the Xicanada. 

 

 

As always you can DM me on Twitter @ernestomireles or Alex Yanish @bingbongvictory

 

Check out www.waroftheflea.org 

Dr. Anita Fernandez - Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing and the fight for culturally sustaining curriculum.

Dr. Anita Fernandez is the director of the Prescott College Tucson Center, located on the campus of Changemaker High School. Dr. Fernandez has been critical here in the state of Arizona in defending Mexican American Studies in the public schools and has helped to found the Xicanx Insitute for Teaching and Organizing (XITO) a professional development institute for teachers that is working with school districts across the country. 

In this conversation we cove a wide range of topics about the attacks on ethnic studies in the past 10 years, the victories not only in Tucson but across the country and how it is more important now that ever for dedicated RAZA educators, artists, organizers and parents to get deeply involved who will be responsible for bringing ethnic studies to our K - 12 schools. 

 

 

When you get a chance DM @ernestomireles on Twitter with questions or comments.

Also, check out www.waroftheflea.org.